The following is the draft prologue of my forthcoming book ‘The Act of Imagination: Psychosynthesis Psychotherapy in Experiential Context’.
After nearly two years, and counting, the initial stages of writing are slowly coming to completion – and its time to start sharing some preview extracts.
At the time of writing, the plan is to complete the first draft by early June, then spend a couple of months refining it, before sending it to the publisher (Transpersonal Press) to begin the editing process. So there is still some ways to go yet, and publication probably won’t be until sometime early 2026. However, if you are interested, do sign up to my mailing list and/or social media to make sure you get the preview posts to be released semi-regularly over the coming months:
The Act of Imagination:
Psychosynthesis Psychotherapy in Experiential Context
PROLOGUE
I assumed it was a joke when the teacher wrote ‘THIS IS NOT THE TRUTH’ across the top of the whiteboard.
“The following seminar,” she went on to explain, “will not be the truth.”
Which was just too weird to get my head around.
It was the first day of my training to be a psychosynthesis psychotherapist. I’d arrived full of enthusiasm, expecting to have all the best, most efficacious theories and therapeutic methods spelt out clearly and precisely. To be told how things were. To be told the truth.
But as the training went on, whenever I grabbed hold of one truth, it was quickly eclipsed by another. Both of which were psychosynthesis and also not. The importance of finding something called an ‘observer position’ was emphasised by some teachers and critiqued as dangerously alienating by others; for some we were ‘not our feelings’, while others suggested we were ‘more than our feelings’; some teachers offered ‘harmony’ and ‘unity’ as desirable goals, which seemed to clash with the acceptance of tensions and differences favoured by others.
I wanted to know what made psychosynthesis particular. It was all well and good learning about a broad swathe of teachings and techniques. But as time went by a clear outline of something that could reasonably be called psychosynthesis seemed ever harder to recognise. Why were all these seemingly well-meaning teachers being so deliberately eclectic? Was this mystical ‘NOT THE TRUTH’ stuff really necessary? Couldn’t they just agree among themselves on the best version of psychosynthesis and then give me a coherent training?
My wish for a more easily understood psychosynthesis might have been granted in an alternative history. One in which Roberto Assagioli (1888-1974), the founder of psychosynthesis, had only taught his psychology in an isolated Italian town, tucked away at the end of a dusty mountain path, to a small cohort of students who then passed on his teachings faithfully, just as they had received them, to successive generations, all of whom continued to live cut off from the rest of the world. Within such a hermetic society it might have been possible to write up a distinct set of teachings and practices. A book which we could hold up and say, ‘this is psychosynthesis’. But of course, this is just a silly fantasy.
Psychosynthesis has long since stepped down into the world.
Assagioli was no hermit. He travelled widely, speaking at conferences, giving interviews, meeting and corresponding with many of the leading intellectuals of his day. A lifetime of discussion and reflection which poured into his published work across many decades. A written legacy which, far from offering a psychosynthesis orthodoxy, is in fact a complex body of work, with many subtle tensions and contradictions. But we need not stop there.
Assagioli never saw his teaching as the final word on psychosynthesis and encouraged others to build upon the beginnings he had made FOOTNOTE 1,2 & 3. In training schools around the world, a next generation of teachers and writers have now shaped psychosynthesis into a multitude of presentations, some more similar than others, but nevertheless with significant differences emerging between them, moving psychosynthesis ever further away from an easily recognisable and distinct set of teachings and practices. And yet, despite these differences, there is nevertheless something all these presentations hold in common. Something that determines what is and is not psychosynthesis. Something that can be traced all the way back to the original presentation by Assagioli.
The problem is that establishing what constitutes this original presentation is not entirely straightforward. While there are many brilliant teachers and writers who studied directly with Assagioli and can tell us all about his psychosynthesis, their teaching will not be exactly the same as the primary source but an interpretation of the original. In the same way a contemporary performance of Romeo and Juliet, even if we try to make it ‘authentic’, will be seen very differently to how it was received in Shakespeare’s time, so too how we read, understand and practise the original teachings of psychosynthesis will be different to how they were originally conceived and communicated in Assagioli’s time.
Psychosynthesis today happens in a very different world to the one in which Assagioli first presented it FOOTNOTE4. Post-Assagioli teachers and writers will have developed their thinking and understanding, inevitably drawing upon cultural and intellectual influences unavailable to Assagioli, which will have shaped how these contemporary teachers present the wealth of material produced across Assagioli’s lifetime, with some aspects being emphasised and elaborated upon, while other aspects are critiqued, down-played or quietly ignored. And in this way, the practise of psychosynthesis moves on, incorporating new developments.
Which means that rather than trying to figure out which is the correct presentation, a perhaps more immediate or realistic concern is how to make sense of all this diversity and difference. A first quotation from Assagioli shares his thinking on this matter:
“Since each can only be a partial expression of what we call ‘psychosynthesis,’ it is well to gain experience of psychosynthesis through the methods and personalities of various psychosynthesists” (TRAINING, point11)
Assagioli acknowledges in this statement how each book, article, essay, video or training seminar on psychosynthesis will only ever be ‘a partial expression’. Each source will provide a more or less different emphasis or perspective on ‘what we call ‘psychosynthesis’’, but no singular account will express the whole truth. So instead of trying to figure out which is the true or correct version, Assagioli therefore recommends gaining experience from ‘various psychosynthesists’, attending to a multiplicity of sources, as if gathering together the pieces of a jigsaw, to establish as full a picture as possible. Hence the eclecticism in my psychotherapy training.
The protean display of multiple teaching perspectives was entirely intentional. As also was the reluctance to pin psychosynthesis down to any one system or framework. On offer was a smorgasbord of partial expressions, from which students were encouraged to critically evolve their own understanding of psychosynthesis – which would become yet another partial expression. However, as a beginning student, I found this seemingly limitless openness somewhat overwhelming. I felt confused as to what, if anything, was holding it all together. I did not understand where to begin.
My problem was searching for psychosynthesis as something it was not. I assumed it was a set of ideas and techniques, to be found written down on whiteboards and read in books. But this is not really what it is. What we call psychosynthesis, writes Assagioli, “should not be looked upon as a particular psychological doctrine, nor as a single technical procedure” (PS, p30). And yet, to conclude from this that it has no coherence would be to go too far.
Psychosynthesis very much does have a recognisable shape and expression, which this book now sets out to explore. Psychosynthesis counsellors, coaches and psychotherapists will most obviously find this of interest. However, what follows has also been written with a general-interest reader firmly in mind and requires no prior knowledge of psychosynthesis. It is both an introduction and also a new presentation of psychosynthesis emphasising its creative and imaginative aspects in experiential context.
REFERENCES AND FOOTNOTES
PS = ‘Psychosynthesis: A manual of principles and techniques’ (1965) by Roberto Assagioli
‘Training’ by Roberto Assagioli, available: https://kennethsorensen.dk/en/psychosynthesis-training-a-statement-by-roberto-assagioli/
FOOTNOTE1 “I consider [psychosynthesis] as a child – or at the most as an adolescent – with many aspects still incomplete: yet with a great and promising potential for growth. I make a cordial appeal to all therapists, psychologists, and educators to actively engage in the needed work of research, experimentation and application. Let us feel and obey the urge aroused by the great need of healing the serious ills which at present are affecting humanity: let us realise the contribution we can make to the creation of a new civilisation characterised by an harmonious integration and cooperation, pervaded by the spirit of synthesis.” (PS,P9)
FOOTNOTE2: “There is no orthodoxy in Psychosynthesis and no one, beginning with myself, should claim to be its real or true representative, its head or leader. Each of its exponents tries to express and apply it as well as he or she is able to, and all who read or listen to the message, or receive the benefit of the methods of Psychosynthesis, can decide how successful any exponent has been or will be in expressing its “spirits”.”
(Roberto Assagioli,1967, Letterof Freedom, https://kennethsorensen.dk/en/letter-of-freedom/ ) + (also published as: [ Assagioli, ‘RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN THE VARIOUS FOUNDATIONS, INSTITUTIONS AND CENTERS’ – originally published: Psychosynthesis Digest Vol. I, No. 1 . Fall, 198 1 ; reprinted in Psychosynthesis International Directory, Spring, 1988]
FOOTNOTE3: While the following was written in 1983, it nevertheless carries a valid ongoing concern: “Psychosynthesis…is in the early adolescent stage of development. The coming of age, the maturing [ will require a questioning] of the established ideas and models and to see the need for serious research and debate. I think many of the existing psychosynthesis models have been taken too literally and are I believe often used somewhat naively today. I think we need at this time to be more rigorous in our thinking about psychosynthesis theories and models and particularly in how we use them.” (Evans, R. (1983) Mirages of the mind. Yearbook Vol. III., page7 London: Institute of Psychosynthesis – quoted in ‘Reading in Psychosynthesis’ Edited by Weiser and Yeomans,1988, p257)
FOOTNOTE4: Psychosynthesis therapists “now operate in a very different world than the one in which [Assagioli] developed his theories……” (Transpersonal Dynamics, Stacey Millichamp, p19)