“The world will never be better than the people who populate it and the feelings and thoughts they express in their daily lives. The crucial challenge will be to teach people to deal with their wounded inner children and complexes, and first and foremost to start with themselves.” This realization became a turning point in my life.
By Kenneth Sorensen
I have been interested in Roberto Assagioli’s psychosynthesis for almost 10 years. However, it was only after a major existential crisis at the beginning of the new millennium that the need to train as a psychosynthesis therapist really emerged. The realization that paved the way for that decision was the discovery that I myself and my surroundings were, to an astonishing extent, governed by completely “banal” emotional patterns.
This despite regular meditation over many years and intensive philosophical studies. One could also say that it was a discovery of the abysmal difference between intellectual theory and lived practice, which with great effect tore the curtain of illusion from my eyes.
The awakening was painful and the disappointment deep. For how could we behave as if we were “completely ordinary people”? Hadn’t we just laughed at and distanced ourselves from the political environment in particular, with all its power struggles and intrigues. Wasn’t the world made of low-level people because the country and the world lacked political leadership of men and women who could “walk the talk”?
But high-pitched analyzes are one thing, and dealing with deep emotional wounds that spring up when reality begins to scratch hard is another. I will not go into the endless glamor that rolled up before my eyes with astonishing clarity, but simply state my main conclusion. I myself and my surroundings had identified with fine philosophical concepts without any emotional basis for them.
We had confused intellectual expertise with practical ability. In short: we were a collection of mediocre peasants in knightly armor.
The difficult emotional life
When the worst disappointment and disgust had subsided and the cool winds of realism had had their beneficial effect, the time for self-examination came. “A peasant in knight’s armor, that’s not so bad after all.” The peasant is a good symbol of practical ability. The knight’s armor is a clear symbol of the aspiration that, despite everything, lived in the heart of myself and my surroundings. It is the testimony of something higher and better that called to my soul – but which I unfortunately could not actualize … yet.
Wasn’t what I experienced a completely universal human experience? How many idealistic people have had their ideals torn to pieces on the shards of emotional life. With a long sigh that unfolded over several months, a fundamental idea crystallized, which was as banal as any idea can be, but which nevertheless forced itself on as an irrefutable truth. The idea can be formulated in the following statement: “The world will never be better than the people who populate it and the feelings and thoughts they express in everyday life. The crucial challenge will be to teach people to deal with their wounded inner children and complexes, and first and foremost to start with themselves.”
That idea was by no means new to me. In fact, it was so recognizable and obvious that I had not thought about the deeper implications of the phrase … to start with oneself.
I had known this statement to be true for many years. From 1989-1991 I completed a psychotherapeutic education, and since then I had worked focused on refining my character, so what had changed?
The answer is clear today: my attitude towards emotional life.
When meditation is not enough
Until these landmark events, I had (unconsciously) considered the emotional life as a troublesome factor that one had to live with and try to refine from the top down . It was a view I shared with many people in my circle. That the personality – thoughts, feelings and body – can be refined by invoking the powers of the Self through prayer and meditation. This practice directs the energy from the Self into the personality and purifies thoughts, feelings and body. I do not doubt for a moment that this practice is truly valuable, effective and important. It is just not always enough .
It was not enough for me, because I had worked in this way every single day for over 12 years. When the method is used as the only path to personal transformation, it can, in my experience, cover up a fear of the pain that a descent into the depths always entails. But as Roberto Assagioli said: “pain is not in the way – it is the way”.
Many idealistic people only want to experience the heights, the joy of the soul, the ecstasy, the contact with the divine. But this striving can, if not balanced with the experience in the depths, and the desire to be of benefit to others and make an effort in society, lead to neurotic behavior. I understood that now. I had seen, experienced and learned so many times how otherwise competent people behaved like tormented children. The conclusion was quite clear. Only when we go directly into the darkness and confront ourselves with the diverse figures that live in our inner space do we have a chance to become master of our own house. I now began training as a psychosynthesis therapist and combined top-down with bottom-up.
The encounter with psychosynthesis and children
The encounter with psychosynthesis during the training as a conversational therapist in psychosynthesis was like coming home. Sharing one’s emotional pain and longing with people at eye level – simply expressing the emotional truth that existed here and now, without covering oneself up and putting on a show, was deeply liberating.
Surrendering oneself to a competent therapist who could guide one to greater emotional understanding , because she took as her starting point her own self-recognized pain and the philosophical clarity of psychosynthesis, was the right thing to do. But what is psychosynthesis? First and foremost, I will first let the vivid impressions speak, and in conclusion, I will summarize the principles of psychosynthesis in four phases.
The first people I met during the training, and in the psychotherapies that I threw myself into with enthusiasm and desire, were the children . My own inner children and the amazing children that my fellow students allowed me to see.
The wounded, defiant, depressed, desperate, happy, indomitable and enthusiastic children who continue to live inside the skin of the adult overcoat we have all worn.
It was truly an overcoming to have to tackle the “inner child”. A concept that, not so long ago, I considered the pinnacle of self-absorbed navel-gazing. But the fact is: The inner children live within us, whether we like it or not. They exert a not inconsiderable influence on our instinctive reactions to life. And often prevent us from expressing our best sides.
Subpersonalities and the inner child
When I talk about inner children, I mean the subpersonalities or unconscious thought images that live in our unconscious. Around the core of our I – the inner consciousness and thinker – live a series of thought images that we have identified with, both unconsciously and consciously. These subpersonalities are expressed and make themselves known through a number of specific personality traits that characterize our behavior. One of my basic character traits is a tendency to be wounded. A vulnerability that gave me great problems as a teenager and that continues to exert a strong influence when it is activated in interpersonal conflicts.
The subpersonality, which I identified through the methods of psychosynthesis as my inner wounded child, has cost me several difficulties and broken relationships. But the therapeutic work with the wounded child has put a face to a dominant character trait. I have drawn and painted its form, described its behavior and felt its powerlessness, despair and loneliness. Above all, working on »Little Kenneth« has given me a beginning compassion and understanding for the hurt feelings that have always been an irritating barrier to my personal expression.
Having but not being a sub-personality
There is probably nothing unique about the work on subpersonalities, as described above, when compared to how other humanistic and psychotherapeutic schools work with the unproven. But the special strength of psychosynthesis lies in the attitude towards subpersonalities. Psychosynthesis does not believe that man is simply the sum of his subpersonalities, as many other psychological schools do. Psychosynthesis is a psychology with a soul called the Self.
It identifies the real man as a center of pure self-awareness and will , who has some thoughts, feelings and a body, but is not these. The real man is the inner witness and observer. The inner consciousness that experiences the diverse psychic forces that live in the total psyche and which it tries to gather into a whole and synthesis. It is this attitude that makes the difference in the therapeutic work.
The task is first and foremost to disidentify from the various self-images that characterize our character after we have lived through and experienced them. Roberto Assagioli puts it this way:
” We are dominated by everything our Self identifies with. We can dominate and direct everything we can disidentify from .”
The therapeutic process therefore aims to achieve the degree of freedom where we, as masters of our own house, can choose how we want to react. This is where the will comes in as a significant factor. It is not about denying any part of our nature, but about achieving the ability to choose the time and place for when and how we want to express ourselves. How this is experienced in practice follows.
Conversation with the inner child
It is my experience and that of many others that when choosing to meet one’s inner children and “demons”, one experiences a simultaneity (synchronicity) in connection with one’s outer life. As soon as I had agreed to look at the children, events in my surroundings triggered the same wounded feelings. It was as if a very unpleasant – but meaningful conspiracy had conspired.
Again and again I experienced “failure” and subsequent triggering of the old powerful feelings of hatred, despair and deep driving forces that sought to cut ties with the people who pressed the buttons. In therapy we worked on identifying the feelings – and again and again the wounded child came to the fore. Gradually I managed to identify the pain that was bound in the sub-personality by experiencing and “feeling with”.
I initiated conversations with the incredibly strong images that I managed to draw without difficulty. This is where the disidentification process begins. By considering the sub-personality as an independent life outside of me , I was able to slowly get to know it better.
I worked continuously with the Gestalt therapeutic method “the warm and empty chairs”. Through this method I identified myself with the wounded child by sitting on one chair and then moved the chair and identity to adult consciousness. This stepping in and out of the role provides experience with the disidentification attitude.
The daily work of disidentification
In everyday life, this work enabled me to gradually learn to recognize the emotional register that belonged to the wounded child and to disidentify myself from it. When an event triggers the old pain in my stomach, and I am seized by a feeling of self-pity and anger that instinctively seeks to “give back” or break the connection, I choose a new strategy today. I register the feeling and gradually quickly identify it as my wounded sub-personality. I try to accept that I feel the way I do by accommodating the feeling and turning it over with those closest to me. After a suitable period of time, when the pain has been allowed to fill, I ask the sub-personality what it needs. I try to fulfill this while taking into account the values I have for my life and the situation in general. I often find that an honest conversation with the people who have triggered the feeling, and where I take responsibility for my part, has the strongest healing effect on me.
It is my experience that these candid conversations can create new and strong bridges to people and actually strengthen the connection. It’s as if vulnerability and many other emotions can become an intimate channel of love and care between people when handled consciously. They awaken the most beautiful in ourselves and others in exactly the same way that outer children do.
Subpersonalities as higher transpersonal possibilities
The principle that our shadow sides contain our higher spiritual possibilities is presented in exemplary fashion in many fairy tales – where the shadow figure gets the princess and half the kingdom. I find that these crippled and condemned sides of our nature are very often the entrances through which love can flow. By closing off these vulnerable sides in elitist self-satisfaction or from the attitude that it is infantile navel-gazing, we only maintain the barriers and the distance that we must necessarily build up to protect ourselves.
In the worst case, they destroy our relationships because only the defense mechanisms, the aggressive and manipulative forces, are allowed to run free, in righteous indignation at the “attacks from outside”. “You are allowed to defend yourself”, is the reasoning. But what you never discover is that it is in reality a small scared child in an adult body who controls events. A very dangerous cocktail.
Of course, working with the inner shadow sides should not become the goal and meaning of life, because then you confuse means with ends. The goal is always to become the best that one can become. To express the true, the good and the beautiful in a creative social commitment, that is the attitude of psychosynthesis.
This brings me to another important point that identifies Assagioli’s psychology as a unique development tool. It is not the work in the depths that produces the actual psychosynthesis. It is a necessary preliminary stage that anchors the personality in the emotional reality and past. Becoming the best that we can become presupposes a personal vision that we can pursue – a contact with the highest realizable potentials of our transpersonal nature, the inner identity that psychosynthesis calls the Self.
How we become ourselves through four stages
For the sake of overview, I will now review a number of the phases that psychosynthesis works with and even though the review is more academic than the previous one, it is about real experiences and experiences that are lived through. Becoming oneself is a journey that, seen from the perspective of psychosynthesis, involves a number of stages that do not necessarily follow each other, but that unfold in parallel along the way . 1. We must understand our personality. 2. We must learn to be the master of our own house and therefore control the different functions of the personality. 3. We must recognize our real Self – and create a personal vision that can act as a unifying center. 4. We must consciously work to induce a psychosynthesis, which is the creation of a whole personality around the new center. Let me elaborate on these four points.
1. We must understand our personality
It is not enough to simply make an “inventory list” of the already known characteristics and personality traits. We must also undertake, says Assagioli: “an immense exploration of the vast unconscious regions”. This applies to both the deep and dark areas of the lower unconscious, but also the unconscious regions of the middle and higher unconscious (see Figure 1.), 
where our highest and hitherto unrealized potentials are located. This journey can be done both through individual daily reflection, meditation, conversation with good friends and actual psychotherapy. I have described elements of this exploration through my personal story above.
2. Mastering the different functions of the personality
Having discovered the new aspects of ourselves, we must work to gradually gain control over them. The most effective method for this is through disidentification , as I have previously described. In this principle lies the secret of our slavery or freedom. Every time we identify ourselves with a “fault,” a fear, or any personal feeling or drive, we limit and paralyze ourselves. If instead, when we experience a limiting feeling, we say: “a wave of discouragement is trying to overwhelm me” – or “an impulse of anger is trying to overpower me,” then the situation is quite different. Two opposing forces confront each other. On the one hand, our alert conscious I, and on the other, discouragement or anger. Even if the I were to lose control over these impulses, only a battle is lost, not the battle itself. Because it can subsequently withdraw and prepare itself for other situations of the same kind. Psychosynthesis contributes a wealth of methods for building up one’s will and mentally training oneself to deal with these difficulties. The most important rule here is never to condemn or suppress any of the impulses we register. We must 1. identify reality 2. accept it 3. accommodate it in whole or in part, because through that: 4. we transform it. These stages are described in the above section called: The daily work of disidentification.
3. Realization of the real Self – and the discovery or creation of a unifying center
It is not difficult to explain theoretically how we achieve conscious contact with the highest potentials within us, but in the real world it is an immense amount of work, and not everyone is prepared for it. The path towards full realization of our highest potentials involves many stages along the way, and those of us who are unable to create a direct contact with the Self in its essence can create an image and an ideal of the perfected personality in thought. These mental ideal images, which can only be created through careful analysis of our values and reflection on our higher potentials, carry great power within them. One could also say that we must know what we could really become in order to become it. What is being talked about is a personal vision of who we would like to be. What characterizes successful top athletes, scientists, artists, etc. is that they often carry a vision that, like a light, guides them through many difficulties to their goal. We must therefore constantly ask ourselves: “What is it that I really want?” Here, however, it is important to warn against building unrealistic ideal images. Therefore, it is also important that the first stage has been started, so that one knows one’s inner resources well. But unfortunately, it is here that so many, especially idealistic people, choose to jump off. The pain is too great and the repressed sides are too dark and too far from the ideal. However, these drives and complexes constitute an absolutely necessary “driving force” and contain important potentials if we are to hope to realize the higher sides of our nature.
4. Psychosynthesis – the reproduction or reconstruction of the personality around the new center.
When the uniting center has been found (the ideal character and the personal vision), we can form a new personality from that center – coherent, organized and united. All the identified resources in the personality are now used towards achieving this goal. It is from this process that Assagioli called his psychology psychosynthesis. The goal is a complete fusion or synthesis of the conscious I and the higher Self. A synthesis where the personal self-conscious I uses all its resources to identify with and express its highest potentials. The higher Self will always seek to express itself in a creative social commitment, because it is precisely an expression of the highest aesthetic, ethical and transpersonal impulses that one possesses.
In practice, points three and four fall largely within the scope of meditation, although we also work in practice to realize the vision. Meditation is the concentrated use of the imagination as we reflect on the vision daily over a long period of time. This focused inner attitude creates actions and character.
One could say that in this phase we work from the top down . But in practice the personality is much more complicated, therefore we must work from the bottom up in parallel, as the first two points indicate. In conclusion, I would like to conclude that contact with the peasant, as a symbol of all that is unprocessed and rough in the character, is necessary if the noble motives and vision of which the armor is a symbol are to be fulfilled.
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Also read the article Psychosynthesis an integral psychology
