{"id":22536,"date":"2025-01-21T14:16:53","date_gmt":"2025-01-21T13:16:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kennethsorensen.dk\/?p=22536"},"modified":"2026-05-21T17:18:33","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T16:18:33","slug":"interior-life-iii-the-inner-world-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kennethsorensen.dk\/en\/interior-life-iii-the-inner-world-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Interior Life III – The Inner World (II)\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What if your thoughts and feelings were forms and forces? Assagioli’s working notes on idea-forces \u2014 those living, intelligent fusions of thought and feeling that grow inside us with their own will to live<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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By Roberto Assagioli, MD<\/strong> [i]<\/span><\/span><\/a>
Assagioli Archives, Florence, Doc. #18455
Original title: Vita Interiore III \u2013 Il mondo interiore (II)<\/em>
Transcribed from an original written document by Istituto di Psicosintesi
Translated and edited with notes by Jan Kuniholm [ii]<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Editorial Note<\/strong>
The abstract and contextual subtitle in this online edition have been added by the editor, Kenneth S\u00f8rensen, to support readability, navigation, and archival consistency. As Jan Kuniholm notes in his editorial commentary, this document is taken from undated, unrevised handwritten notes and contains development markers and unfinished phrases that Assagioli left for himself. The original wording has not been altered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Abstract<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

In these working notes, the third in a series on the interior life, Roberto Assagioli sketches the inner world as a field of forms and forces parallel to the matter and energy of the outer world. Drawing on Mulford’s claim that “thoughts are things”<\/em> and his own that feelings are forces, he develops Fouill\u00e9e’s concept of idea-forces: thought and feeling fused into living units that combine into ideo-affective complexes, push to grow, and assert themselves with something like a will to live. The notes outline the territory still to be examined: psychic induction, the bridge between psyche and body, and the spiritual side of inner life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The outer world can be considered, from a general point of view, as consisting of matter and energy, or, more precisely, of  <\/span><\/span>forms <\/span><\/span><\/em> and  <\/span><\/span>forces<\/span><\/span><\/em> . The same can be said in a certain sense and as a first approximation, of the inner world. In the writings of Prentice Mulford <\/span><\/span>[iii]<\/span><\/span><\/a>  and other \u201cNew Thought\u201d authors we often find the phrase, \u201c <\/span><\/span>Thoughts are things<\/span><\/span><\/em> .\u201d This statement, which at first is surprising and may shock some people because of its crude and materialistic appearance, has the value \u2014 precisely because of its extreme and paradoxical form \u2014 of making us realize a truth that is generally ignored or overlooked. Yet it has enormous theoretical and practical importance. Yes, in a sense it is literally true that \u201cthoughts are things.\u201d Thoughts and ideas (taken in their broadest sense as cognitive  <\/span><\/span>facts<\/span><\/span><\/em> , ranging from sensations to images and concepts)  <\/span><\/span>are<\/span><\/span><\/em>  “things” \u2014 that is, they are  <\/span><\/span>realities <\/span><\/span><\/em> that are as definite and distinct in their sphere, in the inner world, as material objects are in the outer world. A preconception, a prejudice, or a fixed idea can be obstacles that are just as real, “hard,” and as difficult to overcome, as a palisade, a wall, or a boulder are in the external world. A philosophical system or a special conception of life truly constitutes a castle or a prison for the soul that has formed them: a dwelling in which it rests, or a limitation it cannot transcend.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the statement that “thoughts are things” must be integrated with another, no less important one, that ” <\/span><\/span>feelings are forces<\/span><\/span><\/em> .” <\/span><\/span>[iv]<\/span><\/span><\/a>  The truth of this one is even more obvious. Feelings are the “living forces” of our personality, the underlying springs that make us act. It is enough to mention the miracles performed by intense and elevated love, the heroism stirred by patriotic sentiment, or the destruction produced by passionate whirlwinds, true storms and cyclones of the soul. These findings are fundamental, but elementary: we need to deepen our examination of complex psychic reality. For ideas and feelings are almost never found in the inner world in a “pure” state and isolated from each other; rather, they are generally intimately associated in various and complicated ways. Each idea tends to be intimately connected with the feeling that corresponds to it, so that the evocation of one immediately awakens the other. The thought of danger immediately arouses fear; the image of the beloved person, the idea of \u200b\u200bthe homeland, the thought of God arouse the corresponding feelings of love and devotion in the lover, the patriot, or the mystic.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conversely, each feeling, as soon as it arises, tends to awaken the representations or ideas appropriate to it. A feeling of sadness, whatever the cause that produced it, awakens images of gray landscapes or heartfelt music, or pessimistic ideas. A feeling of well-being and joy, on the other hand, evokes happy visions, rosy projects, thoughts of success. Such connections are often so strong and intimate that the idea and the feeling become virtually inseparable, forming a relatively fixed and permanent “combination.” Such “combinations” of psychic elements have been designated, especially by Fouill\u00e9e, <\/span><\/span>[v]<\/span><\/span><\/a>  who made the most extensive and accurate study of them, by the very appropriate and expressive term “idea-forces.”  <\/span><\/span>[we]<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Variety of idea forces: <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n