PSYCHOSYNTHESIS INSTITUTE

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From the center

unfolding into life.

Tools for Personal & Social Transformation 

 

Psychosynthesis: Beyond Healing Where Psychology Echos Myth

Healing matters.

And yet healing is not the whole journey. It brings us to a threshold where something larger can begin: the unfolding of who we are, what we value, and how we are called to participate in life.

Our healing helps us regain our ground, reconnect with ourselves, and become more available to life. Because our psyche is not a collection of separate parts, but a living field of relationship, one movement of inner healing can begin to shift our larger being.

In psychosynthesis, we understand the inner realm of the psyche as a living and dynamic whole: touch any part of it and the entire field responds.  Assagioli’s egg diagram, the model of the psyche, is not a static map. It offers the starting place for a visual language of movement. Much like a spiral dance, when we attend to one dimension of consciousness, we circle round to expand and activate the whole.

This is where psychology echoes myth.

The myth of Psyche, the soul and spirit of psychology, is a story of a young woman’s descent into the underworld. Her journey is a metaphor for stepping into the lower unconscious as an initiation into wholeness. Psyche’s tests, her “impossible tasks”, do not diminish her. With each trial her inner life expands . She develops deeper connection to love, meaning, and her place in the wider world. And, as in all myth, descent is a portal to the heights of the transpersonal. When darkness is met with care and consciousness, unexpected allies and ‘magical guides’ appear. What once felt fragmented becomes integrated and expanded. There becomes a greater opening, lighting the way to self-realization; and in the case of Psyche, immortality.

Healing work in the lower unconscious, does not remain “below”. The wounds, shadows and early patterns, that may keep us stuck in habitual ways of being are brought into the light of awareness. Through the practice of identifying, disidentifying, self-identifying, what was once fragmented or hidden can begin to reorganize. It is then that we can then begin to integrate, in healthy ways into fuller experience.

The middle unconscious is reshaped, expanding how we think, feel, and choose to act in service of our life creation. This is where healing become more than repair, it is transformative.

Our relationship with the higher unconscious, our capacity to hear and respond to the ‘call of the self,’ opens us to the realm of meaning, intuition, creativity, and transpersonal qualities. This is the expansive, work of psychosynthesis.

In psychosynthesis we understand that while we may carry unintegrated material in our lower unconscious, we also have rich, unrealized potential in the higher unconscious. Latent evocative qualities of courage, compassion, creativity and love may not have found full expression. These qualities can seem, at times, to be inaccessible because so much of our energy and attention is drawn unconsciously to our pain, fears, and trauma.

As we develop our capacity to observe, rather than be identified with our suffering, we can bring what needs to be healed into the light. When lower unconscious material is met with care and skill, we are more fully able to explore the darkness with awareness and care. In this way, the psyche does not contract, it expands. The work in the lower unconscious opens up a fuller connection to higher unconscious . The fractures open to the light, offering insight, and orientation, giving voice to purpose and meaning. What once felt aspirational or distant becomes quietly available. This movement of consciousness is not linear, it is reciprocal.

Our healing in one area reorganizes the whole, our contact with transpersonal values and qualities strengthen our capacity to not only face our trials, they propel us toward meaning-making. The middle unconscious becomes more integrated, less reactive, and more coherent. We develop a growing capacity to listen and observe. This opens us to the guidance of the Self to express what truly matters through the act of our will.

And, we must hold in remembering and intention, that the aim of psychosynthesis is not simply to attend to the personal, individual psyche. Our work on the personal level facilitates our engagement and participation in relationships, in creative and social life, in the forming and reforming of culture; the ways we make a difference in the larger world.

Our inner healing towards greater coherence can become the foundation for purposeful action to emerge. In these turbulent times, our inner experiences have outer consequences. When our psyches are fractured we are more likely to feel powerless in fragmented systems. (There is method in the current ‘madness’)

As Assagioli understood, personal development and social transformation are aspects of the same unfolding. From our living center of Self, our psyche becomes capable not only of recovery, but of contribution. We become empowered to take action in manifesting what truly matters, in a world that urgently needs both depth and vision.

This is the fuller arc of healing that psychosynthesis offers.

In the journey through the depths and heights of being, we become engaged in more than an escape from suffering. We become a part of a widening of consciousness towards visioning and embodying a better world for all.

~ Originally published on Synthesis Muse, Susan Jewkes Allen’s Substack publication exploring psychosynthesis, inner work, and the call of the self. Republished here with permission as part of Psychosynthesis Musings.