Self-Knowledge as the Key to Overcoming Obstacles in Therapy

Assagioli and Self-Realization

Roberto Assagioli’s Psychosynthesis, published in 1965, takes into account a wide range of theories that developed in the wake of Freudian psychoanalysis and, as its title suggests, it attempts to synthesize them. One key development that influenced the writing of the book was Maslow’s notion of self-actualization. In his hierarchy of needs, self-actualization stands at the very top as the final motivator in human development. It could be described, briefly, as the actualization of one’s creative and self-transformative potential. Assagioli supplements this notion with the idea of self-realization as part of a program that aims at liberation from the bases of internal conflict through inner integration.

In contrast to self-actualization, self-realization is correlated with finding one’s true self apart from one’s ego. It amounts to a program of self-discovery that involves the “experience and awareness of the synthesizing spiritual center,”¹ a “higher self” that, when discovered, leaves us “in a position to build around it a new personality — coherent, organized, and unified.”² Thus, for Assagioli it is self-knowledge that is the key to personal development and therapeutic success. It aims at a transformation that has as its goal the creation of a new self that is capable of being realized as “authentic,” with a dynamic, creative power.

A Program for Self-Realization

Self-realization as the key idea in Assagioli’s program of psychosynthesis provides a good entry point for discussing the initial stages whereby the program of self-realization is to be carried out. As described in chapter 3 of Psychosynthesis, it involves a dis-identification with one’s conscious personality, carried toward a “pure self-awareness, the pure sense of self-identity” through a process of journal writing and verbal reflection upon one’s own history with a kind of objective, scientific attitude. ⁴ By virtue of the ongoing application to journal writing and verbalizing one’s life history, the process comes to involve a progression from the known, conscious aspects of one’s personality toward the disclosure of those that are unconscious and unrecognized. As a result, one’s self-knowledge and understanding can become deeper and more authentic.

By cultivating, with the therapist, “the attitude of the observer” toward his own self description, the patient may be able to realize a dis-identification with any particular aspect of his or her life story and a growing realization of what Assagioli calls an “external unifying center.”⁴ Assagioli describes this type of attitude as the frame of mind of an investigator at the scene of a crime, with the dispasionate objectivity the image implies. It might be reflected that the development of this type of attitude amounts to a technique for getting outside or standing apart from the experiences of the ego in a way that is reminiscent of meditation. It allows for the progressive development of this technique as a coping strategy for experiences that may be experienced as engulfing the attention of patient.

The process of self-description involves a few different aspects:

• Developing a written biography

• Verbalizing one’s life history

• Exploring the origin of various personality traits, noting one’s relationship to those that may be national, ancestral, familial, and even belong to the collective psyche of humanity as a whole

• Recognizing conscious complexes

• Recognizing conflicts, polarities, and ambivalences

• Recognizing the personality traits of one’s various sub-personalities or roles

• Recognizing the persistence of traits associated with one’s youth, adolescence, adulthood

These points will help to develop a complete personality assessment. The process of developing self-knowledge assists the patient in moving toward a better sense of one’s total personality that is integrated around one’s higher self rather than the operating self-concept associated with the ego. The higher self is meant to function as a “point of consciousness and self-awareness”⁵ beyond or above the ego’s concern with the affairs of everyday life. Assagioli describes this process of integration as a move beyond an unacknowledged duality between the ego and true self toward a sense of self that brings the two into harmony.⁶

There is much in Assagioli’s approach that is reminiscent of Heidegger’s discussion of the “call of conscience” back to the authentic self. Assagioli writes that “some representatives” of new trends in psychology begin with the assumption of an already unified personality, whereas Assagioli lays strong emphasis upon the need overcome “the illusion of an already organically and harmoniously functioning personality” and writes that the inner drive toward integration is a basic aspect of the human personality.⁷ Here is Assagioli’s description of the approach of a crisis that precedes spiritual awakening:

The change begins often with a sense of dissatisfaction, of “lack,” but not the lack of anything material and definite.; it is something vague and elusive that he is unable to describe.

To this is added, by degrees, a sense of the unreality and emptiness of ordinary life; all personal affairs, which formerly absorbed so much of his attention and interest, seem to retreat, psychologically, into the background; they lose their importance and value. New problems arise. The individual begins to inquire into the purpose of life; to ask what is the reason for so many things he formerly took for granted; to question, for instance, the meaning of his own sufferings and those of others, and what justification there may be for so many inequalities in the destinies of men.⁸

The similarities to an existential crisis are are certainly present in this description. Assagioli writes that if an attempt is made to avoid the new awareness of self by plunging oneself into distracting activities, the result will be that it “continues to ferment in the depths of their being, undermining the foundations of their ordinary existence, whence it is liable to break forth again, perhaps after a long time, with renewed intensity.”⁹ With a new sense of self, a new awareness of oneself, may come a nagging disturbance to change one’s way of life, lifestyle, or means of livelihood and as Assagioli writes, the complexity of the modern world, as well as our own more highly developed sense of self and critical faculties may serve to intensify this sort of crisis.¹⁰

Commentary

1. A point not made here, but one that emerges elsewhere in Assagioli’s writing¹² is the way in which meditation can be used to assist toward the development of the kind of neutral conscious awareness Assagioli has in mind. Meditation has been put to excellent use in the case of patients with PTSD, for example, and the development of a neutral conscious awareness might be very beneficial as a therapeutic goal in such situations.
2. Meditation itself might be the best way to help a patient initially develop the kind of initial awareness Assagioli is after. A common technique used in mediation is to let thoughts go after they have arisen as part of a process of moving toward a clear mind that is free of any fixations. In such a state, one’s attention may be directed toward a self that simply observes rather than to the ego of one’s conscious attachment to the world of our concerns. In practicing the technique of letting thoughts that grab one’s attention go, one can take steps toward the realization of this free, unencumbered part of oneself that may act as the kind of ideal observer Assagioli emphasizes.
3. The integrative aspect of the process that leads from self-knowledge to self-realization may be an excellent technique for developing a kind of therapy in which the answers the patient is seeking reveal themselves as an outcome of self-knowledge and self-realization. If the therapist can take on the role of a facilitator in this process, it will enable a better sense of their role to the patient and avoid becoming a problem solver for the patient or someone who guides the patient according to their own personal system of values.

References

1. Roberto Assagioli, Psychosynthesis: A Manual of Principles and Techniques (Penguin 1981), 24-26 and 37.
2. Assagioli, Psychosynthesis, 26.
3. Assagioli, Psychosynthesis, 69.
4. Assagioli, 26 (See the accompanying diagram).
5. Assagioli, 71-78.
6. Assagioli, 20.
7. Assagioli, 36.
8. Assagioli, 42.
9. Assagioli, 42.
10. Assagioli, 40.
11. Assagioli, 87.
12. See Assagioli 304-315 for a brief overview.