It is interesting to follow the work of a visionary.

As early as 1910, the neurologist and psychiatrist Roberto Assagioli (1888-1974) of Florence, Italy, saw the need for psychology to include spirituality: he chose the term psychosynthesis to support the synthesis of the psychological and spiritual aspects of human nature. From a health perspective, he saw that spiritual experiences bring breakthrough understandings and new courage to face the difficulties of life. As a result, health professionals, creative and spiritually-minded people of every background and clergy of every faith have sought out psychosynthesis professionals for training and psychotherapy.

Assagioli’s work sprang from both the scientific study of the human mind and the long mystical traditions of both East and West. Perhaps his single greatest influence was Dante (1265-1321), a fellow Florentine who described the steps of the Western spiritual journey in his world literary masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, which has had more books written about it than any other book in history except for the Bible.

It presents a powerful description of the human journey from suffering to enlightenment.

The special feature of psychosynthesis psychology is that it recognizes the need to balance the three primary drives hard-wired in our brain – biological survival, social belonging, spiritual realization.  A 100 years ahead of his time, Assagioli included many forms of meditation, imagery, visualization and energy work in his medical and psychological practices. Professionals in psychotherapy, nursing, medicine, counseling, psychiatry, psychology, pastoral care, social work, chiropractic, body work, coaching and other helping fields have integrated psychosynthesis into their skills.

Origins

“Self-Realization is the direct personal experience of the aspect of your nature that is identical to the energy pervading the universe.”  Roberto Assagioli

Roberto Grego was born in 1888 in the Jewish ghetto in Venice, Italy. His father died when he was two, and his mother remarried a Dr. Assagioli. Young Roberto took his stepfather’s last name and, by the age of seventeen, was enrolled in medical school in Florence. Upon graduation, he studied the then new form of psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, corresponded with Sigmund Freud, trained at Burghölzli Hospital in Zurich, Switzerland with Eugen Bleuler, received supervision from Carl Jung and was one of the founding members of the International Psychoanalytical Association.

He served as a doctor in the Italian army in World War One. Upon the return to peacetime, Assagioli felt ready to begin to teach his psychological and spiritual synthesis – psychosynthesis  – and opened his first training institute in 1928.  It was devoted to psychiatric patients learning self-care.

At the start of World War Two in Europe in 1939, he was arrested for being an intellectual and a Jew by the Italian Fascist police and was put in solitary confinement. In his cell, he meditated for hours every day and declared he had achieved freedom from circumstances:

 “A sense of boundlessness, of no separation from all that is. A sense of universal love. A wonderful merging. No separation – only differing aspects of wonder…Essential Reality is so far above all mental conceptions. It is inexpressible. It must be lived.  Joy inherent in Life Itself, in the very Substance of Reality.” Roberto Assagioli

Strikingly, the latest neuroscience refers to such an experience as absolute unitary being when the higher region of the brain is awakened by meditation and other practices.

His prison enlightenment led him to vow that, if he ever got out of jail, he would “help to free people from their inner prisons.” Later released, but under police surveillance, he eventually had to hide in the Tuscan hills with his only child. The boy, Ilario, contracted tuberculosis, and Assagioli desperately tried to bring him across the border into Switzerland to get treatment. His letters asking, unsuccessfully, for help from his Swiss colleague, Carl Jung, are heartbreaking. His son died soon after the war was over.  A visit to Assagioli’s personal library shows that he read many books on loss and grief and underlined key passages to refer to for help with his own grief.

In 1950, he established a psychosynthesis training institute in his home in Florence.  With the cultural movements of the 1960s and the widespread use of meditation practices and psychedelic drugs, many people were searching for a way to understand their new experiences – and found their way to psychosynthesis.  The current trend of psychedelic medicine, which will introduce some people into new states of consciousness, will bring a renewed relevance to the psychological and spiritual integration in Assagioli’s drug-free work.  

He was clear that psychosynthesis psychology was not a movement to be promoted but a process to be learned and practiced inside each person. Taught at training institutes throughout the world, one of the four forms of psychotherapy approved by the European Union, and a graduate degree specialty at English universities, psychosynthesis helps to increase each person’s experience of the potentials in their brain-mind.

Psychosynthesis Study

Psychosynthesis Study provides professionals with a clear understanding of the different impulses in our nature – survival, social, spiritual – and how to actively engage with them for a peaceful and purposeful life. 

You can start with a one hour live Zoom introduction session.

You can then go deeper with four 3 hour classes (a total of 12 hours) in which you will learn about and experience the key points in psychosynthesis.  The sessions presented will be:

• Levels of consciousness and their varied and competing impulses.
• Deeper self-understanding and greater choice through the study of our sub-personality patterns.
• An intellectual and experiential exploration of the higher region of our brain-mind, known in psychosynthesis as the higher self.
• The synthesis of our self-knowledge into a focused ongoing practice and a source of inner development.   

These courses will be presented in live online sessions.  The study will be available in the Spring, 2025. 

If you choose, you can then join a small group of in-depth study guided by highly-experienced psychosynthesis practitioners.

The study will offer NBCC approved continuing education credits.