{"id":29773,"date":"2026-04-07T13:24:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T12:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kennethsorensen.dk\/?p=29773"},"modified":"2026-04-22T14:39:31","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T13:39:31","slug":"roberto-assagioli-on-parapsychology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kennethsorensen.dk\/en\/roberto-assagioli-on-parapsychology\/","title":{"rendered":"Roberto Assagioli on Parapsychology"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

An Introduction to His Lifelong Research and a Complete Archive of His Writings on the Parapsychological Faculties<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Artistic<\/a>
This is not Assagioli’s egg-diagram, but an artistic representation<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By Kenneth S\u00f8rensen, 2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Abstract:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Roberto Assagioli (1888\u20131974), the founder of Psychosynthesis, held that parapsychological phenomena are natural extensions of ordinary psychological functions \u2014 not anomalies or supernatural events. Telepathy, precognition, and clairvoyance, he argued, correspond to normal functions of thought, foresight, and perception, operating at various levels of the personality from the lower unconscious to the superconscious. Assagioli treated parapsychology as a legitimate field of scientific inquiry, to be studied through rigorous method rather than credulity or dismissal, and he placed it within the broader framework of transpersonal psychology he had been developing since 1911. This archive collects Assagioli’s principal writings and lectures on the subject, in English translation, spanning the period from 1958 to 1968.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What is Parapsychology? Assagioli\u2019s Definition<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The word \u201cparapsychology\u201d refers to phenomena that lie beyond the reach of the ordinary senses and the conventional frameworks of scientific explanation. Roberto Assagioli preferred to speak of metapsychic faculties<\/em> \u2014 a term common in his time \u2014 but he was precise about what he meant. He defined these as:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCapacities of perception and action that transcend the limits of space and time within which man\u2019s normal faculties operate.\u201d[1]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This definition is deliberately broad. It covers the full range of what we now call parapsychological phenomena \u2014 telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, psychometry, and what Assagioli called the power of irradiation<\/em> \u2014 while leaving the interpretation of their ultimate nature open to continued investigation. For Assagioli’s own definition of the term, see also the parapsychology glossary entry<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Assagioli, the existence of these faculties was not in doubt. Speaking at the Second National Congress of Metapsychics in Salerno in October 1952, he stated:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMetapsychics has now collected such a vast harvest of well-documented facts and has performed such a sum of experiments, that the existence of various supernormal faculties in man can now be said to be definitely proved.\u201d[2]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was equally clear that the field had moved beyond the question of whether<\/em> these phenomena exist to the more difficult question of how<\/em> they work and how they can be responsibly developed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why Assagioli Took Parapsychology Seriously<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Assagioli\u2019s engagement with parapsychology was not a late interest or a peripheral hobby. It ran through his entire intellectual life, from his earliest articles in the journal Psiche <\/i>in 1913 to his experimental work with the Florence Centre for Metapsychics in the 1950s and 1960s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His interest was grounded in both personal experience and empirical research. Historian Francesco Baroni, in his scholarly introduction to the ebook Psychosynthesis and Parapsychology<\/em><\/a> (Kentaur Publishing, 2023), documents that Assagioli personally witnessed psychometric experiments with the medium Roberto Setti, who accurately described landscapes and memories associated with a ring belonging to Zoe Alacevich with a \u201crichness of detail\u201d that left the Croatian noblewoman moved to tears; founded and directed the Florence Centre for Metapsychics from 1952, conducting systematic Rhine card experiments yielding results he described as \u201cdistinctly positive\u201d; and maintained scholarly friendships with figures including C.G. Jung \u2014 a connection cemented, in Paola Giovetti\u2019s words, \u201cnot only by the interest of both of them in psychoanalysis, but also by their interest in paranormal phenomena, astrology and Oriental philosophies.\u201d[3]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

His rationale for taking the field seriously is stated most directly in the 1961 lecture Psychosynthesis and Parapsychology<\/a>, Part Two<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is a great need to enlighten and orient the public regarding the nature of paranormal phenomena, the serious dangers of the imprudent and uncontrolled use of parapsychological faculties, but also the opportunity, one could indeed say the duty, to cooperate in the serious and scientific investigation in this field, in the development and beneficial use of the higher faculties latent in the human mind.\u201d[4]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Piero Ferrucci, who studied with Assagioli personally in the early 1970s and contributed the preface to the second edition of Psychosynthesis and Parapsychology<\/em>, confirms that Assagioli approached these matters with characteristic caution: he was interested, he was willing to experiment, but he consistently warned against enthusiasm without preparation and against confusing paranormal development with genuine spiritual progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Parapsychology Within Psychosynthesis<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Assagioli\u2019s most important theoretical claim about parapsychology is that it belongs, without reservation, within an integral psychology of the whole person. He states this explicitly in Psychosynthesis and Parapsychology, Part Two<\/em> (1961):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPsychosynthesis includes parapsychology without reservation in its integral conception of the psyche and in its techniques of strengthening all functions: bio-psycho-spiritual. This inclusion is one of the characteristics that most differentiate Psychosynthesis from other psychological conceptions and from other methods of psychotherapy.\u201d[5]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a striking and deliberate claim. Where Freudian psychoanalysis recognised telepathic dreams only \u201cincidentally,\u201d as Assagioli notes, and where mainstream psychology treated parapsychological phenomena as anomalies to be explained away or ignored, psychosynthesis placed them within its integral map of the human being.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Assagioli\u2019s egg diagram \u2014 his model of the psychological constitution of the person \u2014 is the key to understanding where parapsychology fits. The lower unconscious contains, among other things, \u201ccertain uncontrolled sensitivities of a parapsychological nature.\u201d The higher unconscious or superconscious is the source of inspiration, illumination, and what Assagioli regarded as the highest parapsychological expressions: the spiritual love and irradiation that he considered the most powerful of all the paranormal faculties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Between the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious, the boundary is \u201cdotted\u201d \u2014 like a semipermeable membrane. Assagioli uses this analogy in Psychosynthesis and Parapsychology<\/a>, Part One<\/em> (1961) to explain the continuous, largely unconscious exchange of parapsychological influences between individuals:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMany facts, certainly established, induce \u2014 I would say indeed oblige us \u2014 to admit that there is a continuous and normal interpsychism, that is, a continuous exchange of parapsychological influences, both between individuals and between each individual and the \u2018psychic environment\u2019, what Jung calls \u2018the collective unconscious\u2019.\u201d[6]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The practical implication is that we are not closed systems. We are, as Assagioli puts it, like fish swimming in a psychic sea \u2014 continuously receiving and transmitting influences of which we are largely unaware. The task of psychosynthesis, as applied to parapsychology, is to bring this unconscious exchange into awareness and eventually into mastery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

See the full texts: Psychosynthesis and Parapsychology \u2013 Part One | Psychosynthesis and Parapsychology \u2013 Part Two<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Parapsychological Faculties: Five Types<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In his 1934 text Metapsychic Faculties<\/em><\/a> (first published in the journal Scienze del Mistero<\/em> in 1946), Assagioli identifies five principal types of parapsychological faculty. He warns from the outset that this is:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe most difficult field that exists\u2026 because of the very nature of the phenomena studied. The metapsychic faculties are eminently plastic, changeable, highly sensitive, not only to every conscious and unconscious influence, to every inner attitude of the subject in which they are produced, of the experimenters, of the spectators, but also to \u2018currents\u2019 and psychic influences from people and causes far away in space and time.\u201d[7]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The five types he identifies are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  1. Supernormal calculation.<\/strong> Mathematical prodigies who produce correct answers to complex problems without conscious reasoning. Assagioli notes the significant and disturbing fact that this faculty sometimes appears more strongly in people of mediocre intelligence than in geniuses, suggesting it is not a product of superior rational capacity but of something else entirely.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Telepathy.<\/strong> The transmission of thoughts, images, emotions, and impulses between individuals, independent of the known sensory channels. Assagioli argues that in this field \u201charmony seems to have more importance than distance\u201d \u2014 telepathic communication is easier between people who are inwardly similar and emotionally connected, regardless of physical separation.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Clairvoyance and psychometry.<\/strong> The perception of material objects, physical conditions, and events at a distance. Assagioli gives documented examples of psychometric experiments in which subjects accurately described landscapes, biographical details, and physical characteristics associated with objects they held \u2014 with results far beyond statistical probability.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. Supernormal perception of people and events.<\/strong> The direct intuition of another person\u2019s psychological state, character, or future, including through practices such as palmistry and graphology. Assagioli suggests that even the rapid, seemingly rational diagnoses of skilled clinicians may partly involve unconscious parapsychological perception.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  5. Premonitions.<\/strong> The foreknowledge of future events, often with precise and verifiable detail. This is the faculty Assagioli examines most carefully in philosophical terms, because it raises the question of determinism. His position, as developed at length in the Two Lectures About Precognition<\/em><\/a> (1957), is that premonitions demonstrate predisposition<\/em>, not fixed destiny \u2014 and that human freedom operates as a genuine causal force within the architecture of the future.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    A critical point runs through all five categories: these faculties are latent in everyone. As Assagioli states in the 1959 text Parapsychological Faculties<\/a> \u2014 Why They Are Interesting, the Dangers of Their Use, and How to Avoid Them<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u201cIn all likelihood, these faculties are latent in all of us, and are often active to some degree without our realising it.\u201d[8]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    See the full texts: The Parapsychological Faculties | Parapsychological Faculties \u2014 Dangers and Potentials<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Precognition and the Question of Free Will<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    The phenomenon that most unsettles people about parapsychology is precognition. If someone can foresee the future, does that not mean the future is already fixed? Does it not reduce human choice to an illusion?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Assagioli addresses this directly in his Two Lectures About Precognition<\/em> <\/a>(lectures delivered March 10 and 17, 1957, Florence Centre for Metapsychics; Docs. #23754 and #24234, Assagioli Archive, Florence). His argument is philosophically careful. He rejects both a naive determinism and a naive libertarianism, proposing instead a model of graduated freedom<\/em> operating at multiple levels of reality:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u201cPrecognitions, or premonitions, constitute the type of phenomena that most impress and indeed disturb those who become aware of them\u2026 The first natural and spontaneous reaction is to say: but then is everything determined?\u201d[9]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    His answer is no \u2014 but the reasoning is subtle. Premonitions, he argues, reveal tendencies<\/em> and predispositions<\/em>, not fixed outcomes. He uses the analogy of an architect\u2019s blueprint: seeing the plans in the architect\u2019s office allows you to predict the villa\u2019s design, but many forces might intervene before construction is complete. The future is being shaped<\/em> but not yet sealed<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    What can modify the trajectory of events? Among the new causes, Assagioli is unequivocal:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u201cAmong the new causes that can modify or cancel, neutralizing them with equal and opposite forces, the effects of the previous ones, there is precisely the intervention of the free will<\/a> of man, of his independent, spontaneous, unpredictable decisions.\u201d[10]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    This is the psychosynthesis position: the world is neither rigidly determined nor randomly chaotic. Freedom is real, but it is graduated \u2014 greater at the psychological and spiritual levels than at the physical level, and achievable through deliberate inner development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    See the full text: Two Lectures About Precognition (1957)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The Relationship Between Normal and Parapsychological Functions<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    One of Assagioli\u2019s most important and least known contributions to the theory of parapsychology is his insistence that parapsychological faculties are not separate, exotic additions to the human repertoire. They are natural extensions of the ordinary psychological functions, operating at a higher octave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    He states the principle clearly in Psychology and Parapsychology<\/em><\/a> (undated; original title: Psicologia E Parapsicologia<\/em>; Assagioli Archive, Florence):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u201cThere is no clear difference between the normal psychological functions and activities on the one hand and the parapsychological, supernormal and spiritual faculties on the other. This is a fundamental principle, which it is good to realise.\u201d[11]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    He then maps the correspondences:<\/p>\n\n\n\n