{"id":22618,"date":"2025-01-22T15:08:26","date_gmt":"2025-01-22T14:08:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kennethsorensen.dk\/?p=22618"},"modified":"2026-05-06T14:47:34","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T13:47:34","slug":"politics-and-psychology-the-ways-of-reconstruction-1944","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kennethsorensen.dk\/en\/politics-and-psychology-the-ways-of-reconstruction-1944\/","title":{"rendered":"Politics and Psychology, The Ways of Reconstruction \u2013 1944"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Assagioli’s wartime essay on nations as living organisms, the soul of each people, and the work of national psychosynthesis as the foundation of stable peace<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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By Roberto Assagioli<\/strong>
Assagioli Archives, Florence, Doc. #24233
Original title: Politica e Psicologia \u2013 Le Vie della Ricostruzione \u2013 1944<\/em>
Translated and edited with notes by Jan Kuniholm [i]<\/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 Sorensen, to support readability, navigation, and archival consistency. The original wording has not been altered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

In this essay, written in the closing year of the Second World War, Roberto Assagioli applies psychosynthesis to politics and the work of postwar reconstruction. He proposes that nations are not abstractions but living organisms, even living spiritual entities, with personalities and souls that can be studied, educated, and brought to maturity. The current war, he argues, is the tragic demonstration that no people can prosper at the expense of others, and that the world’s economic and material interdependence now makes solidarity not a sentiment but a practical necessity. He examines the developmental stage of national personalities, locates the soul of each nation in its great cultural figures, and proposes the slow disciplined work of national psychosynthesis as the deliberate cultivation of a people’s authentic character. The essay closes with a vision of organic democracy: cooperation rather than partisan struggle, the constructive role of dedicated minorities, and the formation of small core groups of committed people who can quietly carry the work forward and shape public life from within.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It has often been said \u2014 by Manu (the great lawgiver of ancient India), by Plato, by Menenius Agrippa, <\/span><\/span>[ii]<\/span><\/span><\/a> and others from St. Paul onward \u2014 that a people, a state, a community are analogous to a living organism, of which individuals are the cells, and groups of people and social classes are the limbs and organs. Never before has this analogy proven true and responsive by <\/span><\/span>applying it to all humanity.<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A tragic demonstration in the negative sense has been given by the present world war. For its essential causes can be traced to the illusions that one people can truly prosper at the expense of others; that one people can allow themselves to keep other peoples permanently enslaved by force; that an unjust peace can be stable. Ignorance or disregard of the simple and great law that all violence and all injustice \u2014 which disturb harmony and balance \u2014 cause equally violent counter reactions, has been paid at a very heavy price by all mankind.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a solidarity among all people that is no less close, intimate and necessary than that which connects the cells of the same living organism; the positive evidence of this is obvious to every person who is not blinded by passions and preconceptions. As early as the first half of the last century Emerson, the American thinker, could write,<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If The Rothschilds at Paris do not accept bills, the people at Manchester, at Paisley, at Birmingham are forced into the highway, and landlords are shot down in Ireland. The police records attest to it. The vibrations are currently felt in New York, New Orleans, and Chicago. <\/span><\/span>[iii]<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n