An excellent introduction to psychosynthesis can be found on the Psychosynthesis Education Trust website at

https://psychosynthesistrust.org.uk/psychosynthesis-resources/#introducing

Roberto Assagioli

formulated his first ideas in the early 20th Century in Florence, as a synthesis or bringing together of the different, and sometimes conflicting, parts we play in our lives. Some of these are authentic, and we are aware of them, but others we learned in the face of needing to survive life wounds, or may be deeply hidden in the unconscious.

Assagioli's ground breaking ideas developed talking therapy on the unconscious and transpersonal alongside Carl Jung's work in the same areas. During their lifetimes Assagioli and Jung frequently corresponded and carried on developing their ideas. Long after his death in 1974, Assagioli's ideas have continued to have world-wide influence on talking therapy. Present day research looks at what he termed 'the Ways' of being.

Going far beyond the traditional 'hot cross bun model' of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, where mind, body and emotions are linked together with urges to act, Assagioli recognised the important influence of our imagination, intuition and instincts. He stressed the importance of our belief systems and the place of our spirit and soul as having valid influences in how to live, alongside nature, science, imagination, and dreams. His work showed the important roles that Love and Will have in our lives and their impact on your authentic personal self and ways of being.

I particularly enjoy working with imagery, intuition, imagination and creativity as ways of accessing our life force of being

So what is psychosynthesis?

Assagioli writes (Psychosynthesis, 1965, p.6)

"At this point the question may arise as to the relationship between this conception of the human being on the one hand and religion and metaphysics on the other. The answer is that psychosynthesis does not attempt in any way to appropriate to itself the fields of religion and of philosophy. It is a scientific conception, and as such it is neutral towards the various religious forms and the various philosophical doctrines, excepting only those which are materialistic and therefore deny the existence of spiritual realities. Psychosynthesis does not aim nor attempt to give a metaphysical or a theological explanation of the great Mystery—it leads to the door, but stops there.”

Allan Frater writes (Waking Dreams, 2022, pp. 55, 58-60, 73)

" The Image-Centric approach to psychological suffering and transformation... described by James Hillman... is the awakening or engendering of soul. Wherever novel images appear, the effect will be the 'deepening of events into experiences'. That is soul... The Jungian concept of soul is not modern. Here soul is a personal spiritual essence. Soul names a subtlety of experience, neither entirely inner or outer, but belonging to a 3rd category conjoining the self and world in 'a soulful moment'. This enhanced sense of being can be accessed through art, in nature, reading a story, listening to music, tasting food, and socialising with others... where the soulfulness is not just inside us but arises because of the interaction between people, places and things... Image-centred therapy assists clients in noticing, then following through the creative possibilities offered by novel images... Here the therapeutic task is to provide care and attention that allows 'missing stories' to be further explored in the imagination... each step a movement away from safety, into a journey or movement beyond limitations of habitual imagining and into a more expansive and adaptable imaginative life... which is healing and transformative... "

Philip Pullman writes in The Book of Dust vol2 that 'imagination is not about making things up - it's about perception'