Activities of the Institute of Psychosynthesis
The Institute offers different pathways for individuals wishing to study or engage in their own journey of self-exploration.
The Fundamentals of Psychosynthesis is a comprehensive four day introduction to psychosynthesis for those wishing to deepen their experience and understanding of their own journey. It is a pre-requisite for the Foundation Year.
The Foundation Year is a year long course in psychosynthesis psychology. It is a prerequisite for further training in psychosynthesis or as it stands alone it can be taken independently as a unique opportunity for individuals to further their exploration of the processes of self-awakening and self-expression.
On completion
of the Foundation Year, application may be made to one of three Diploma Courses,
validated by Middlesex University, which are the professional training at
the heart of the Institute:
MA
in Psychosynthesis Psychotherapy
PG
Dip in Psychosynthesis Therapeutic Counselling
MA
in Applied Psychosynthesis
The London Psychosynthesis Clinic
The London Psychosynthesis Clinic is staffed by psychotherapy graduates of the Institute and offers counselling and psychotherapy to the general public. Under the direction of the Institute's supervisors it also provides low cost therapy to individuals working with the Institute's students in a professional clinical environment.
What is Psychosynthesis?
Psychosynthesis and the New Psychology
At the beginnings of modern psychology stands the discovery that human beings are conditioned by their childhood experiences. Freud and others spoke of the unconscious, a normally inaccessible realm of the psyche which contains our past experiences and which produces very real effects on present feeling, thought and behaviour. Thus psychoanalysis sought to treat psychological disorders by analysing their roots in the past.
In 1911, as a pioneer of psychoanalysis in Italy, Roberto Assagioli began developing the insight that even as the psychological past exists in the present, so too does the psychological future. In other words, just as childhood is affecting our present living, so too is our vast human potential for healing and change. Indeed, repression of this higher potential can lead to psychological disturbances every bit as debilitating as repression of childhood trauma.
Assagioli maintained that just as there was a lower unconscious, there was also a superconscious. He describes this as a realm of the psyche which contains our deepest potential, the source of the unfolding pattern of our unique human path of development. This is the realm of peak experiences and values, later to be studied by Abraham Maslow, giving birth to the field of Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychology.
Assagioli formulated his discoveries into an approach he called psychosynthesis. This term of course distinguishes it from psychoanalysis, but Assagioli did not mean thereby to replace psychoanalysis, but rather to complement and include it.
Plumbing the depths of the past and healing childhood traumas is as crucial to psychosynthesis as it is to other psychological orientations. In psychosynthesis this uncovering work is carried out within the context of discovering and expressing the profoundly rich inner resources of the unfolding Self.
Psychosynthesis then is not simply a model of pathology and treatment, but a developmental approach which can help guide a person to understand the meaning of their human life within the broad context of synthesis - the drive towards the harmonisation of all relationships, whether intrapersonal, or interpersonal, between individuals and groups.
Psychosynthesis attempts to understand suffering from a multi-dimensional perspective. For some the intense and sometimes appalling conditions of early childhood and family traumas have become deeply embedded in the psyche, through the denial of the inner child, through primal splitting and through the building of protective ego structures. These can usually only be worked through in transference relationships in psychotherapy.
There is also the suffering of individuals who seek to understand deeper questions of meaning in their lives as they regularly assess their values, question what they do and how they want to live.
Finally, at our deepest level of Self we see the potential of what can be and at the same time see and deeply experience our limitations. In this sense, we suffer meaning.
With Jung, Assagioli recognised a powerful integrative principle acting within the human psyche - the Self. The Self is seen to form ego structures within which the I becomes conscious. The Self continually invites us to levels of healing and wholeness unattainable by the conscious personality.
Unlike theories which consider the Self as the totality of the psyche, psychosynthesis points to a Self which is distinct, but not separate, from any contents of the psyche. Thus, the Self is a profound source of being which can be present to us in our brokenness as well as in our wholeness.
This Self also stands on the boundary between the personal and the collective, acting as the harmonising fulcrum between these two spheres of existence. It is here the individual finds an inner centre which is shared by others as well, a still point around which personal and social systems can mutually relate.
The Will is a central concept in psychosynthesis and is seen as an essential impulse towards wholeness and synthesis.
At the personal level, the Will is the drive within us which coordinates the often conflicting parts of our personalities into self-expression. Here the Will functions as a sense of direction guiding us towards a personal integration which includes all of who we are.
At a deeper level, the Will of the Self invites us towards ways of being which express our own unique gifts and talents in the larger world.
The depth of this life direction is often only realised in its absence, when formerly meaningful interests begin to seem empty and meaningless. Often there is a period of confusion in many people's lives when they become despairing and lose faith in themselves. This state of confusion is not just an immature restlessness that comes from underlying neuroses, it is often a serious existential issue that many people appear to be struggling with in their personal and professional lives.
These existential crises or turning points do not respond to change of practice or technique, nor even to a change of job, they derive from something deeper and less tangible. For many, these crises mean the start of an inner journey of self-exploration, as at the heart of these crises comes a renewed call from a deeper source of being - from the Self. With that a new direction is gradually discovered.
One of the challenges of the present decade comes increasingly from the nature of reality. In the new physics, biological sciences, medicine and other fields we are faced with phenomena that cannot be explained or understood if we only use the logical, linear analytic mind. As individuals we are having to comprehend systems that are becoming so complex and apparently paradoxical, that we have to find way of going beyond the either/or thinking of our rational minds for understanding, to a realm where unifying ideas and principles exist.
It is common knowledge that our habitual thinking can at times be an obstacle to personality integration, in that it may cut us off from less rational aspects of ourselves, such as feelings, intuition and imagination.
Psychosynthesis recognises and works with a wide range of the creative aspects the mind so often overlooks in contemporary education. Here is an active and personal way of knowing which can be applied in making more creative life decisions, in bridging with the further reaches of our potential and in contacting and expressing the profound wisdom in each of us.
Psychosynthesis - a Context for Today's World
We live today in an age of uncertainty and rapid change. We are educated to deduce absolutes, to 'know' the truth and to function within the parameters of right and wrong. Education rarely takes us through the passage of relativity, uncertainty and chaos; it teaches us to be sure rather than to doubt; to be right at all costs rather than suffer the frustration of the creative process.
A psychology such as psychosynthesis, with its emphasis on the inner process of education, guides the individual into the realm of the unknown so that the healing spirit - that which lies beyond the world of 'right and wrong, good and bad' - can be evoked. In this sense, we are living through a revolution in consciousness with the possibility of more inclusive contexts or our perception being developed.
We believe that psychosynthesis has a valuable role to play in the development of a new depth psychology because it has a theoretical framework which acknowledges the ambiguity of the journey of the soul in terms of the personal and the spiritual; of the past and the future and of the neurotic and the existential.
As we come to understand these different elements of our human existence, so we see the process of synthesis taking place - elements coming together to form larger and more unifying wholes. It is towards this purpose that psychosynthesis is directed, that is, towards the unique expression of individual life within a larger evolutionary context of humanity's destiny on earth.
Relationship with Professional Bodies
United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy
The Institute was one of the founding members of the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP). The UKCP comprises eight sections and the Institute is a member of the Humanistic and Integrative Psychotherapy Section (HIPS) which assesses and validates member organisations.
The Institute's training standards and accreditation procedures are in accordance with HIPS guidelines and UKCP requirements. Accredited practitioners are registered with the UKCP and placed on the National Register.
In February 1996 the Institute sought accreditation and validation for its training in therapeutic counselling and psychotherapy from Middlesex University. This was granted in June 1996 for a programme launched in September 1996. In June 2000 accreditation and validation was sought and granted for an MA in Applied Psychosynthesis.
United Kingdom Association for Therapeutic Counsellors
In June 1999 the Institute was accredited as a full member of the United Kingdom Association for Therapeutic Counsellors (UKATC). Accredited therapeutic counsellors are registered with this professional association.
British Association for Counselling
The Institute has been an organisational member of the British Association for Counselling (BAC) since its inception. Student practitioners are encouraged to seek individual membership and qualified counsellors are prepared for accreditation with the BAC.
Association of Accredited Psychospiritual Practitioners
In 1992, the Institute initiated the founding of the Association of Accredited Psychospiritual Practitioners (AAPP) as a Professional Association with other training and accrediting Institutes of a similar bias who are members of the UKCP. The Association has independent membership of the UKCP.
The Association supports further professional development of its practitioners and monitors Codes of Ethics, Codes of Practice, deals with Complaints Procedures against accredited practitioners and oversees the re-accreditation and registration procedures of individual practitioners.
Since 1973 the Institute has had close working relationships with many psychosynthesis centres throughout the USA and Europe and has supported the founding of psychosynthesis training centres in Eire and Holland, where it was involved for twelve years with the training of the founders of those centres. Other graduates of the Institute have founded Psychosynthesis Institutes in Britain, Sweden, France and New Zealand.
The Institute is also a member of the European Association for Psychotherapy (EAP), the European Transpersonal Association (ETA) and the European Federation for Psychosynthesis (EFP). Towards the end of the 1997/8 academic year, the Institute came together with others in Europe to form the European Federation for Psychosynthesis Psychotherapy (EFPP) of which Joan Evans was the first chair.
