“A Psychology Today editor travels to Florence to decide for himself whether Psychosynthesis is a marriage of the best elements of modern psychology or a jumble of words put together.”
Psychology Today editor Sam Keen takes a close look at Roberto Assagioli and his psychosynthesis in this excellent interview. The interview (from 1974) is one of the best living testimonies to the wisdom that made Assagioli known throughout the world and as the father of a psychology with a soul.
By Sam Keen , Translated by Ella Ostermann
Sam Keen
More than half a century ago, when Freud created psychoanalysis in Vienna, Roberto Assagioli, MD, was developing psychosynthesis in Italy.
Opinions about his work are divided. Some believe that he has restored the will to psychology, that he has developed a viable idea of the transpersonal self, and that he has assembled a therapeutic technology that reflects the highest wisdom that modern psychology has to offer. Mike Murphy and Stuart Miller of Esalen believe that psychosynthesis is a comprehensive vision that is likely to lead to a ‘marriage’ of humanistic, transpersonal, and research-based psychology. Others see Assagioli’s ideas about the will as a Victorian throwback, his transpersonal self as a thinly veiled borrowing from idealistic theology, and his techniques as an eclectic mishmash.
Assagioli’s office is a small room in his apartment above the institute’s headquarters. Books line two entire walls; Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Keyserling, Abraham Maslow, and Carl Gustav Jung seem to be the favorites. On the second-bottom shelf, Jonathan Livingstone’s The Seagull sits between Rollo May and Erik Erikson. The desk is antique and filled with objects and papers (the shaman’s talismans); freshly picked flowers (like the tiger lilies I know from Tennessee), a barometer, a clock, a kitchen timer, a scale, the United Nations flag, a starry globe, two word cards—ENERGY and GOOD WILL. The walls, once white, are now yellowed like old bones. An overstuffed Victorian S-shaped sofa occupies one corner of the room.
Assagioli rises to welcome me. He is old, thin, and frail, but his cheerful face is lively and radiant with life. His pointed goatee and salmon-colored velvet tuxedo jacket give him an air of old-fashioned authority.
Keen: What are the main differences between psychosynthesis and psychoanalysis?
Assagioli: We place much more emphasis on the higher unconscious and on the development of the transpersonal Self. In one of his letters, Freud wrote, “I am only interested in the basement of man.” Psychosynthesis is interested in the whole building. We are trying to build an elevator that can give the person access to all levels of the personality. Frankly, a building with only a basement is very limited. We want to open up to the roof terrace, where you can sunbathe and watch the stars.
We want to create a synthesis of all parts of the personality. This means that psychosynthesis is holistic, global, and inclusive. It is not opposed to psychoanalysis or behavioral psychology for that matter, but it insists that the needs for meaning, for higher values, for a spiritual life, are as real as biological and social needs. We deny that there are isolated human problems. Take sex, for example. Sex does not exist in itself . Sex is connected to all other functions. So-called sex problems are often caused by power struggles between two people, and can only be solved by examining the complex interplay between the two.
Keen: The characteristics you have mentioned so far are largely theoretical. Is the therapeutic technology of psychosynthesis in any way different from that of psychoanalysis?
Assagioli: Psychosynthesis uses more exercises and techniques than we can go into here. We have systematic exercises aimed at developing all the functions of the personality. First of all, we explore the conscious and unconscious aspects of the personality by having patients write autobiographies, diaries, fill out questionnaires, and by taking several different tests such as TAT, freehand drawing, etc. As the therapy progresses, we use relaxation, music, art, breathing exercises, concentration exercises, visualization, creative imagination, evocative visual symbols and words, and meditation. But I would like to emphasize that all individuals are different, and that no techniques can be used automatically.
Keen: Did psychosynthesis develop from psychoanalysis?
Assagioli: Yes. In 1910 Freud was unknown in Italy. The committee that was to evaluate my doctoral thesis was reluctant to accept that I wrote about psychoanalysis, but finally gave me permission. I went to Zurich to study with Eugen Bleuler, who discovered schizophrenia. When I returned, I practiced psychoanalysis in Italy, but soon discovered its limitations.
Keen: What was your relationship with Freud and Jung?
Assagioli: I never met Freud in person, but I corresponded with him, and he wrote to Jung that he hoped I would work to advance the cause of psychoanalysis in Italy. But I quickly became a heretic. On the other hand, I had a cordial and good relationship with Jung. We met many times over the years and had some lovely conversations. Of all modern psychotherapies, Jung’s is the one that comes closest in theory and practice to psychosynthesis.
Keen: How are they similar and what are the differences?
Assagioli: Regarding therapy, we agree to distance ourselves from “morbidization”, that is, focusing on signs and symptoms of a supposed psychological “disease”. We see man as a fundamentally healthy organism in which there may be a temporary “malfunction”. Nature always tries to restore harmony, and in the psyche the principle of synthesis dominates. There are no irreconcilable opposites. It is the task of therapy to help the individual transform the personality and to integrate apparent opposites. Both Jung and I have emphasized the necessity for a person to develop the higher psychic functions, the spiritual dimension.
Perhaps the difference is best illustrated with a diagram of the psychological functions.
1. Sensation, 2. Feeling, 3. Desire, 4. Imagination, 5. Thought, 6. Intuition, 7. The will and the self as the observer.
Jung distinguishes between four functions: sensation, feeling, thought and intuition. Psychosynthesis says that Jung’s four functions are not an exhaustive description of psychological life. Our point of view can be described as follows: We consider the imagination or fantasy as a separate function. There is also a group of functions that prompt us to actions in the external world. This group includes instincts, tendencies, impulses, desires and strivings. Here we come to something very central and fundamental in psychosynthesis: There is a fundamental difference between drives, impulses, desires and the will. In the human being’s interior there are often conflicts between desire and will. And we place the will in a very central position at the core of self-consciousness or the ego.
Keen: ( Beware – dangerous ground – where desire is opposed to will, a tragic conflict arises that can only be resolved by the intervention of a strong man. I suspect that the iron fist of willpower lurks in the velvety glove of synthesis.) Why do you place the will at the center of the ego? Are you advocating a new form of voluntarism? (NOTE: The view that the will is the innermost essence of life) Shall we change Descartes to: I will, therefore I am?
Assagioli: I believe that the will is the Cinderella of modern psychology. It has been relegated to the kitchen. The Victorian idea that willpower could overcome all obstacles was destroyed by Freud’s discovery of unconscious motivation. Unfortunately, however, this led to a deterministic view of man as a bundle of conflicting forces with no center. This is in direct opposition to man’s immediate experience of himself. At some point, perhaps in a crisis where danger is imminent, an awakening occurs that leads the individual to discover his will. This revelation that the self and the will are closely connected can change a person’s entire experience of himself and the world. He discovers that he is a living subject, an actor, endowed with the ability to choose, to create relationships, and to create changes in his own personality, in others, and in his circumstances. This experience leads to a sense of wholeness, security, and joy. Since modern psychology has neglected the centrality of the will, it denies that we have an immediate experience of the self. When one becomes convinced that one has a will, one discovers the close connection between the will and the self. It is the existential experience of the immediate attention of pure self-consciousness. It is self-consciousness that distinguishes man from the animals. Man is conscious, but he also knows that he is. We can express the meaning of self-consciousness, the union of will and being, by saying (in contrast to Descartes): “I am conscious of being and will,” or: “I am a willing self.”
Keen: (I think he smashed the deterministic house of cards that “scientific” psychology has lived in since cause and effect took over. My God, he’s trying to make us responsible for our identity! Surprise. Unlucky allies. Introspection and willful actions both lead to the discovery of the will. Assagioli discovers the will by looking inward.
Assagioli: I think most discussions of identity get off track because academic psychologists don’t bother to experiment in appropriate ways. They let rats run through mazes, but they don’t go into the inner laboratory and examine their own experience of the will. They can be compared, somewhat irreverently, to the theologians who refused to look through Galileo’s telescope because they were afraid their worldview would be disturbed.
They neglect introspection, which is the best laboratory a psychologist has.
Keen: Can you describe the will further?
Assagioli: No. It’s indescribable. It’s about immediate experience, like the experience of red or blue. Can you tell me what it’s like to experience blue?
Keen: (The most sacred is always empty. At the heart of all systems of thought lies the indescribable. Ask a rationalist how to spot a clear and distinct idea, or a Freudian how to detect an Oedipus complex, or a positivist how to verify the verification principle, and the answer will be a stammer that covers an embarrassed silence. The starting point is always a mystery) Yes…. Almost. Blue is cool like running water and is different from red, which is like cinnamon or the sun. When you speak of the will, is it more like what is found in a Prussian backbone, or like the warm fluids that run through Henri Bergson’s “élan vital”?
Assagioli: No. In my opinion, élan vital is the true libido without the specific sexual meaning that Freud gave to the term. It is the dynamism, the force, the energy that underlies life. The will is more like the ‘guiding factor’ of the personality than the vital force.
Keen: But that presupposes that there is a single will, a single governing force. From St. Paul to St. Freud, the experience of the divided will has plagued humanity. “The good I would, I do not,” and the will to live is opposed to the will to die. How will you reconcile the conflicting wills?
Assagioli: That is quite true – there is a diversity in the self, but the will is basically that activity of the self which stands above the diversity. It controls, regulates and balances the other functions of the personality in a creative way. I do not believe that there is a fundamental split, an irresolvable conflict, in man. I do not believe that the will to die is opposed to the will to live. What is imprecisely called the “split will” should in reality be seen as the conflict between the central will and a multitude of drives, desires and wishes. It is a common experience. Conflicts exist in all normal individuals. Without them there would be no need for psychoanalysis or psychosynthesis! Every choice implies conflict: should I stay in or should I go for a walk – one cannot do both at once. In neurotic conflicts there is a desperate attempt to achieve two incompatible things at the same time. But in a normal person, the will can either reduce or eliminate conflict by recognizing a hierarchy of needs and by arranging for the appropriate satisfaction of all needs. The central will delegates tasks to other parts of the personality. Let me use an analogy that is central to my way of thinking. The will is like a conductor. He does not lead himself, but is the humble servant of the composer and the score.
Keen: ( I hear feminine voices in the background: “Philosophy and psychology have always been “elevated” to male subjects in the West, often in the company of after-dinner cigars and covert male chauvinism. What about the feminine perspective? Is it the male psyche or the human psyche he is describing?) Doesn’t the placement of the will at the center of the self bespeak a particularly masculine perspective? In traditional terms, leadership, control, assertiveness, and aggression are considered masculine traits. The female part of the species is supposed to be more welcoming, caring, and fluid. Do you believe there is a particularly “feminine” component to the self? A particularly feminine will? How do you balance the masculine and feminine elements of the self?
Assagioli: The will is not only assertive, aggressive, and controlling. There is also the accepting will, the yielding will, the dedicated will. One might say that there is a feminine polarity of the will—the willing surrender, the joyful acceptance of the other functions of the personality. I could say the same thing in another way. At the core of the self there is both an active and a passive element, one that acts and one that watches. Self-awareness involves being a witness—a pure, objective, loving witness—to what is happening within and without. In that sense, the self is not a dynamic in itself, but is a witness, a watcher, an observer who monitors the flow. But there is another part of the inner self—the willing or controlling agent—which actively intervenes to orchestrate the various functions and energies of the personality, which commits itself and initiates actions in the outer world. So at the center of the will is a union of masculine and feminine, will and love, action and observation.
Keen: (Both/and instead of either/or. Such is the synthetic principle, which connects what is usually separate. Eastern philosophy places the essence of man in an out-of-this-world observer. Western philosophy places human dignity – as a result of technological advances – in the ability to control the world, to act. Assagioli unites East and West. Do mixed marriages work, or do they create philosophical bastards?)
Keen: How does psychosynthesis help people create this Olympian attitude of unfettered strength?
Assagioli: Techniques are always linked to the individual’s situation, so you can’t generalize. But I can mention two basic techniques: disidentification and training the will.
I will begin with a fundamental psychological principle: We are dominated by everything with which our self identifies. We can dominate and control everything with which we do not identify. Normally we all make the mistake of identifying ourselves with some content of consciousness and not with consciousness itself. Some people identify with their feelings, others with their thoughts, others with their social roles. But the identification with a part of the personality destroys the freedom that comes from experiencing the pure “I.”
A crisis often robs a person of the function or role with which he or she has identified: an athlete’s body is mutilated, a lover’s beloved runs away with a wandering poet, the dedicated worker must withdraw. This forces the process of disidentification, and a solution is only possible through a process of death and rebirth, through which the person enters into a more comprehensive identity. But such a process can take place through conscious collaboration. The exercise of disidentification and identification requires the practice of mindfulness and the affirmation: I have a body, but I am not my body. I have feelings, but I am not my feelings. I have a job, but I am not my job… Etc. Systematic introspection can help eliminate all limited self-identifications.
Keen: This technique is similar to the Buddhist vipassana meditation where you simply observe thoughts, feelings, and images that come to mind.
Assagioli: Yes, and it leads to the realization that the observer is different from the observed. Therefore, the natural stage for the self after disidentification is a new identification: I recognize and affirm that “I am pure self-awareness. I am willing and able to direct, control, and use all my psychological processes and my physical body.” The goal of these exercises is to learn to disidentify at will, to separate the self from all overwhelming emotions, persons, thoughts, or roles, and to acquire the overview and perspective of the unbound and neutral observer.
Keen: I understand how you arrive at the pure experience of the self as observer, but how on earth can you claim that the will is capable of governing and controlling all the other psychological functions? The will often seems powerless over infantile urges. Sometimes it is a powerless prisoner ruled by an infantile tyrant. When depression sets in, anger boils, or sexual desire erupts, the will seems weak, more like an aging parent than the active boss of the personality.
Assagioli: The will, like the other functions of the personality, can be developed and strengthened systematically. If it is weak, it can be trained through regular exercise in the same way that muscles are developed through physical exercise. And if a person starts with a weak will, he may, almost miraculously, as a result of overcompensation, develop a will that is stronger than normal. Everyone has enough will to start developing more.
Keen: ( When someone talks about developing willpower, I see two conflicting images in my mind. 1) The self-made man: Horatio Alger, Dale Carnegie, and “How to Develop a Strong Self in 30 Days.” I suspect superficiality. 2) The victim: Neurosis is inner passivity. Depression is learned helplessness. Without a strong will, a person remains a victim. Perhaps. The ambivalence about the concept of will, or rather its neglect, in modern psychology is a reflection of the embarrassment of the desire for personal power. Our power instinct has been expressed and channeled into science and technology, politics and war. Why not have the development of inner strength as an obvious goal?)
Keen: What other techniques do you use to develop willpower?
Assagioli: Let me be very clear: Psychosynthesis is not primarily about developing willpower. Willpower is a necessary state of will, but it is not the whole will. It is equally important to develop an intelligent will and a good will. We have many techniques for developing all of these qualities. I discuss them in detail in The Psychology of the Will . One technique is to visualize the “ideal model.” See as vividly as possible what your life would be like if you had a strong will. Visualize yourself having both inner and outer mastery. We also recommend daily use of some “useless exercises” whose purpose is to strengthen self-discipline. One might decide to stand on a chair for 10 minutes, or run a mile a day, or control a violent temper. It is more difficult to develop an intelligent will. If the will is in direct opposition to strong emotions or urges, the will will be overwhelmed, and we must therefore devise a strategy to achieve the goals we want to achieve. Let us take, for example, a person who is in the grip of his desires and wants to free himself from this obsession. The more he thinks about the obsession, the stronger it becomes. But he can withdraw his attention and replace it with a new interest. He can cultivate a useful “obsession.” If you hold up new pictures before your eyes, there is a tendency to create the reality the picture shows. It is a well-known psychological law: Pictures or mental representations and ideas tend to create the physical states and external actions that correspond to them . Or as William James said: “All pictures have a driving force in them.”
Among other things, I use a very simple technique with some cards on which are printed evocative words such as: CALM, PATIENCE, Bliss, ENERGY, GOOD WILL. When these cards are placed around the room, they evoke the attitudes and qualities they symbolize. I also use works of art in the same way. For example, Fra Angelico’s Transfiguration is a visible symbol of the transformation of the personality that takes place when a person comes into contact with the transpersonal Self.
Keen: (Is this naive, or is it a clever use of mind-body interaction? I don’t know. Confession: One night I put up a card with the word GLORY in my hotel room and waited for the results. In the morning I woke up in musty, wrinkled sheets to sunshine streaming in, the sound of church bells, and a golden day full of Florentine coffee, Leonardo da Vinci, and – most definitely – glory. But we all know that such attitudinal packaging is due to suggestion, don’t we?)
Keen: I guess good will is more of a religious thing than a psychotherapy thing. Can’t the will be healthy without being good?
Assagioli: No. A person is always in a social context. He is not an isolated entity. So the more conflict there is, the more energy is wasted. If we are to achieve fundamental peace, the wills must be harmonized. Self-centeredness is incredibly destructive of the cooperation that is necessary for a person to live a full life in society. Why should goodwill be considered a ‘luxury’ virtue that concerns only religious people? I will even go a step further. The same principle applies to an individual’s relationship with nature and the universe. No person can be so arrogant as to consider himself as unrelated to the universe. Whether one likes it or not, man is part of the universal will, and he must somehow tune in to and willingly accept the rhythms of universal life. The harmonization and union of the individual and the universal will – the Chinese identification with Tao, the Stoic acceptance of fate, or the Christian will of God – is one of the highest human goals, even if it is rarely realized.
Keen: Until Maslow started talking about metaneeds, psychology was embarrassed whenever there was anything resembling metaphysics or religion. Now it seems that mysticism and medicine go hand in hand. Does a healthy sense of self necessarily involve religious commitment?
Assagioli: Not necessarily. What I call personal psychosynthesis can be achieved through an understanding of the lower and middle unconscious. But some people experience boredom and a sense of meaninglessness when basic psychological needs have been met and a certain degree of health has been achieved, and they begin a search for a higher purpose in life. As Jung put it, some people are content to be normal and adjusted, while others hunger for transcendence. There is a new “fourth force” within psychology—transpersonal psychology—that seeks to explore the needs and aspirations that lie beyond self-actualization and humanistic psychology.
Keen: In Freud’s time there was a powerful cultural conspiracy to suppress the libido, to force it to remain unconscious. Do you think there is a similar conspiracy to suppress the religious impulse? We seem to be as ashamed of our desire for meaning as Victorian society was ashamed of erections and desires that did not come from the heart.
Assagioli: Many people seem to have voluntarily submitted to a spiritual “white cut,” a suppression of the sublime and a total denial of the transpersonal Self. Therefore, the higher unconscious remains largely unknown to many people. Much of psychology encourages the adoption of a devalued self-image by claiming that all religious and spiritual impulses are simply sublimations of sexual instincts. This kind of reductionism ignores the fact that many of the most creative people in history report experiences of a transpersonal nature. By what right can we deny that spiritual drives are less real, basic, and fundamental than sexual and aggressive drives?
Keen: Why would humans suppress the sublime? What is so threatening about paradise?
Assagioli: It is no more mysterious than the suppression of sexual ecstasy. We fear the sublime because it is unknown, and because if we let reality in in the form of higher values, we commit ourselves to acting in a nobler way. Kindness, cooperation, letting go of self-absorption, and taking responsibility for spiritual growth come with the recognition of the Higher Self.
Keen: What is the nature of the transpersonal Self? Are you talking about a being that is separate from the self we have a direct experience of when we are self-aware?
Assagioli: My dear friend, I cannot tell you what the transpersonal Self is like. Maslow tried to describe it and the nature of peak experiences in The Psychology of Being. A direct experience of the transpersonal Self is rare, and union with it is rare. But many people have a knowledge of it that is mediated by the higher unconscious, or superconscious. I can describe some of its effects. It manifested spontaneously in the creativity of the great universal geniuses like Plato, Dante, and Einstein. Others come into contact with it through prayer and meditation. Or they may feel a calling or a pull from a higher power. Language is always inadequate when it comes to transpersonal and spiritual experiences. All terms are symbolic, and many different symbols have been used: enlightenment, the descent of the psyche into the underworld, awakening, purification, transmutation, psychospiritual alchemy, rebirth, and liberation.
Keen: I suppose there are techniques in psychosynthesis for developing the transpersonal Self.
Assagioli: Yes. Here the technique of inner dialogue works excellently. You imagine a wise person who knows the answers to the problems you face. If you could have an interview with this person, what would it tell you? It is your inner teacher…
Keen: (I’m afraid my inner guru is senile. He gives me conflicting advice: take it easy/work harder, risk everything/stay where you are, allow yourself to mess up/be sensible. He can never decide whether he’s on Dionysus’ or Apollo’s side.)
Assagioli: If you listen for an answer, it can come spontaneously through a third person, a book you are reading, or through the development of what is happening in and around you. It is also always good to practice meditation. Sometimes I suggest to clients to write a letter.
Keen: To the transpersonal Self?
Assagioli: Yes. “Dear transpersonal Self…” Try it and see what happens.
Keen: What address should I send it to?
Assagioli: To the place where you send your angry letters, when you tell a loved one or an enemy what you think of them.
Keen: I can never quite figure out whether psychosynthetic techniques are naive or brilliant. They often seem a bit too simple to me. (Shall I admit that, after yesterday’s meeting and his “simple” analysis of neurosis as a shaky decision-making seat, I stopped smoking cigarettes for good?)
There is an old tradition of linking wisdom and foolishness. Is a wise person simple-minded? Is the simplification that comes with age wisdom or weariness? And is psychosynthesis a modern version of a school of wisdom? What is the difference between a wise person and a fool?
Assagioli: Wisdom is even more outmoded than will. The original meaning of wisdom has nothing to do with foolishness. Of course, wisdom implies greater simplicity of spirit, but it is not simplicity. In Chinese, the sign for wisdom is a combination of wind and lightning. The wise person is not one who is unperturbed and burnt out, but one who can no longer be caught by the wind and who strikes like lightning when necessary. Wisdom is connected to intuition (which is why it has been conceived as a woman – Sophia) and to seeing the whole of things, and in this way it connects to the transpersonal perspective. It is the ability to play with opposites and to create a synthesis. I suppose age helps to gain some of the perspective necessary to create harmony between apparent opposites.
Keen: What are the limitations of psychosynthesis? If you were to criticize your own system, what would you criticize?
Assagioli: That must be your task, but I will. My answer is paradoxical. The limitation of psychosynthesis is that it has no limits. It spreads too much, is too comprehensive. Its weakness is that it accepts too much. It sees too many sides at the same time, and that is a minus.
Keen: (That’s my “self-knowledge” question. Most “famous” people get an 8 at most. I give Assagioli a clean 13. He looks behind his own eyes.)
Keen: Hannah Arendt says that forgiveness is the key to action and freedom. Without forgiveness, life is ruled by repeated compulsions and an endless cycle of bitterness and retaliation. Yet few psychotherapists take their hats off to it. Some, like Janov, seem to encourage bitterness and anger toward parents and society because they are the source of the original pain. Tell me what psychosynthesis has to say about forgiveness, responsibility, and gratitude.
Assagioli: In psychosynthesis, we emphasize individual responsibility. No matter what has happened to a person, that person must take responsibility here and now for the changes he wants to make in his personality, and not blame his parents or society. I am against many things in modern society and am a revolutionary, but we must change it from within because it is our society. I recommend understanding and compassion for the people who have hurt you. Maybe you are not as hurt as you think. Of course we are conditioned by the past, but we have the ability to reject it, to walk away, to change. Parents mostly hurt their children out of ignorance and not because they are evil, and it is liberating to forgive those who do not know better instead of harboring resentment and self-pity. Forgiveness also becomes easier when you come into contact with the real suffering of humanity. I have a proposal that young people, as part of their education, should visit hospitals, institutions for the mentally ill, and slums, so that they come into direct contact with human suffering without theories, statistics, or political ideologies getting in the way.
Keen: After the decline of religion in the West and the loss of the rites of passage – birth and death rituals – it has become the task of psychology to help people cope with transitional crises and pivotal situations. How do you feel about death? At 85, what does it look like for you?
Assagioli: Death is for me first and foremost like a holiday. There are many hypotheses about death, and the idea of reincarnation seems to me to be the most reasonable. I have no direct knowledge of reincarnation, but with my belief I am in good company with hundreds of millions of people in the East, with Buddha and many others in the West. Death is a normal part of a biological cycle. It is my body that dies, and not the whole me. So it doesn’t worry me that much. I may die tonight, but I will gladly take a few more years to do the work that interests me and, I believe, benefits others. I am available. Humor also helps, as does a sense of proportion. I am one individual on a small planet in a small solar system in one of the galaxies.
Keen: (It is not so easy to know what proves the validity of a worldview and the therapy that is put forward. All forms of therapy have dramatic successes and equally dramatic failures. One proof of success in the case of psychosynthesis could be this generally understood fact: When Assagioli spoke of death there was no change in his voice or tone, and the light still played in his dark eyes, and his mouth was constantly on the verge of a smile.)
Roberto Assagioli died on August 23, old and full of days.
Sam Keen, a consulting editor at Psychology Today, holds a master’s degree in theology from Harvard Divinity School and a Ph.D. in philosophy and religion from Princeton. He has taught at Rutgers University, Louisville Presbyterian Seminary, and Prescott College’s Center for the Person in Arizona. He is a freelance writer and lecturer; his books include: Apology for Wonder, To a Dancing God, Telling your Story , and Voices and Visions.
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