Roberto Assagioli

Roberto Assagioli (27 February 1888 – 23 August 1974) was an Italian psychiatrist and pioneer in the fields of humanistic and transpersonal psychology. Assagioli founded the psychological movement known as psychosynthesis, which is still being developed today by therapists and psychologists who practice the psychological methods and techniques he developed. His work, including two books and many monographs published as pamphlets, emphasized the possibility of progressive integration (that is, synthesis) of the personality.
Life
Assagioli was born on 27 February 1888 in Venice, Italy, from a middle-class, Jewish background. He was born Roberto Marco Grego, the son of Elena Kaula and Leone Greco. However, his biological father died when Assagioli was two years old, and his mother remarried to Alessandro Emanuele Assagioli soon afterward. Assagioli was exposed to many creative outlets at a young age, such as art and music, which were believed to have inspired his work in Psychosynthesis. By the age of 18, he had learned eight different languages, including Italian (his native tongue), English, French, Russian, Greek, Latin, German, and Sanskrit. It was at this age that he began to travel, mainly to Russia, where he learned about social systems and politics.
In 1922 he married a young woman named Nella Ciapetti, and they had one son, Ilario Assagioli.
In 1940, Assagioli was arrested and imprisoned by Benito Mussolini's Fascist government, having been accused of "praying for peace and inviting others to join him along with other international crimes." He was placed in a solitary cell in Regina Coeli prison for 27 nights, until he was released and returned to his family. During World War II, his family's farm in Florence, Italy was destroyed, and both he and his family went into hiding in the Catenaia Alps (in the province of Arezzo) and in the Upper Tiber Valley. His son died at the age of 28 from lung disease, which was accredited to severe stress from the harsh living conditions during the war. After the war ended, Assagioli returned to his work and began his legacy, known as Psychosynthesis.
The years after the war were relatively calm, and it was during this time that he founded various foundations dedicated to Psychosynthesis in Europe and North America. Assagioli lived a long and prosperous life with a happy forty-year marriage until he died at age 86 on 23 August 1974. The cause of his death was unknown.
Assagioli did not like to discuss his personal life, as he preferred to be remembered for his scientific work. Very few biographical accounts about the life of Assagioli are available, and most are not in English.
Education
Assagioli received his first degree in neurology and psychiatry at Istituto di Studii Superiori Pratici e di Perfezionamento, in Florence in 1910. During this time, he began writing articles criticizing psychoanalysis, arguing that he had a more holistic approach.
After finishing his studies in Italy, Assagioli went to Switzerland, where he was trained in psychiatry at the psychiatric hospital Burghölzli in Zürich. This led to him opening the first psychoanalytic practice in Italy, known as Istituto di Psicosintesi. However, his work in psychoanalysis left him unsatisfied with the field of psychiatry; as a whole, he felt that psychoanalysis was incomplete.
Psychosynthesis
Inspiration and development
Assagioli is famous for developing and founding the science of psychosynthesis, a spiritual and holistic approach to psychology that had developed from psychoanalysis. He was largely inspired by Freud's idea of the repressed mind and Jung's theories of the collective unconscious. Trained in psychoanalysis but unsatisfied by what he regarded as its incompleteness as a whole, Assagioli felt that love, wisdom, creativity, and will all were important components that should be included in psychoanalysis. Assagioli's earliest development of Psychosynthesis started in 1911, when he began his formal education in psychology. He continued his work on Psychosynthesis right up until his death. Freud and Assagioli were known to have corresponded, although they never had the chance to meet. Assagioli said, "Psychosynthesis presupposes psychoanalysis, or rather, includes it as a first and necessary stage."
However, Assagioli disagreed with theories formulated by Sigmund Freud that he considered limiting. He refused to accept Freud's reductionism and neglect of the positive dimensions of the personality. Psychosynthesis became the first approach born of psychoanalysis that also included the artistic, altruistic and heroic potentials of the human being. Assagioli's work was more in alignment with psychologist, Carl Jung. Both Assagioli and Jung validated the importance of the spiritual level of human existence. Assagioli shared with Jung the insight that psychological symptoms can be triggered by spiritual dynamics. Assagioli considered Jung's theories to be closest to his understanding of psychosynthesis.
Assagioli accredited much of his inspiration for psychosynthesis to his month-long incarceration in solitary confinement in 1940. He used his time in prison to exercise his mental will by meditating daily. He concluded that he was able to change his punishment into an opportunity to investigate his inner-self.
Psychology Today interview
In the December 1974 issue of Psychology Today, Assagioli was interviewed by Sam Keen, in which Assagioli discussed the differences between Freudian psychoanalysis and psychosynthesis:
Assagioli noted that Carl Jung, "of all modern psychotherapists, is the closest in theory and practice to psychosynthesis", and further expanded on the similarities between his own and Jung's views:
He also highlighted the differences between Jung's work and psychosynthesis:
Assagioli asserted about the will:
At the end of the interview, Keen himself concluded:
Spiritual work
Assagioli was also interested and active in the field of consciousness and transpersonal work. Having studied theosophy and Eastern philosophy, his written work developed different meditation techniques, including reflective, receptive and creative meditation. He also contributed to several spiritual groups in the tradition known as the "ageless wisdom." He founded two groups intended to teach meditation based on the ideas of the New Age teacher Alice Bailey: The Group for Creative Meditation and the Meditation Group for the New Age. He was also a co-founder of the School for Esoteric Studies, intended to teach the work of Alice Bailey at an advanced level.
Published works
1906 – Published in Farrari's Magazine – Gli effetti del riso e le loro applicazioni pedagogiche a.k.a., Smiling Wisdom (Italian)
1910 - La psicanalisi Thesis (Italian)
1926 - Psychosynthesis – A new method of healing by Roberto Assagioli. Booklet. Institute of Psychosynthesis, Rome, Italy & Lucia Publishing Company, New York, USA (English)
1965 - Psychosynthesis: A Collection of Basic Writings by Roberto Assagioli (English)
1966 - Per l'armonia della vita. La psicosintesi by Roberto Assagioli. Istituto di Psiconsintesi, Firenze, Italy (Italian)
1973 - The Act of Will by Roberto Assagioli (English)
1993 - (posthumously) Transpersonal Development: The Dimension Beyond Psychosynthesis by Roberto Assagioli (English)
2016 - (posthumously) Freedom in Jail by Roberto Assagioli. Ed. by Catherine Ann Lombard, Istituto di Psiconsintesi, Firenze, Italy (English)
2022 - (posthumously) Creating Harmony in Life by Roberto Assagioli. Ed. by Catherine Ann Lombard, Istituto di Psiconsintesi, Firenze, Italy (English)
See also
Religion and mythology
References
External links
Psychosynthesis a collection of journal articles and information about Assagioli and his work
Video interview with Roberto Assagioli excerpted from the 1973 film Healing the Whole Person
Psychology Today: The Golden Mean of Roberto Assagioli an electronic copy of the full interview with Sam Keen
In Memoriam: Roberto Assagioli Dr. Roberto Assagioli, founder of Psychosynthesis
Roberto Assagioli - his life and work A biography from Kentaur Institute in Denmark
Six interviews with Roberto Assagioli
A few words about Dr. Assagioli by Piero Ferrucci
The Will Project was a project proposed by Roberto Assagioli to explore all aspects and manifestations of the Will.
Giorgio Antonucci on Roberto Assagioli | Giorgio Antonucci speaks about Roberto Assagioli, Università La Sapienza, Rome (audio, Italian)
1888 births
1974 deaths
20th-century Italian Jews
Italian psychiatrists
Italian psychologists
Italian Theosophists
Jewish psychiatrists
Physicians from Venice
Systems psychologists
20th-century psychologists