Roberto Assagioli (27 February 1888 – 23 August 1974) was an Italian psychiatrist 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.
Assagioli's published work in English includes four books and many monographs published as pamphlets as well as numerous lectures and papers in Italian that remain unpublished but which are being translated into English and posted online. His approach to psychosynthesis emphasized the possibility of progressive integration (that is, synthesis) of the personality, as well as the integration of the personality with the Higher Self from which it is derived.
“Psychosynthesis is a dynamic conception of psychic life as a struggle between a multiplicity of disparate, often conflicting forces, and a unifying Center that aims to master and harmoniously organize them.”
In addition, Assagioli's work has been shown to be effectively applicable in such fields as psychotherapy and treatment, medicine, education, organizational development, community development, spiritual life, and personal self-improvement.
Author Piero Ferrucci has said, “As far as I know, Roberto Assagioli is the only individual who has participated personally and actively in the unfurling of two distinct and fundamental revolutions in twentieth-century psychology. The first revolution was the birth of psychoanalysis and depth psychology in the beginning of the century: Assagioli, then a young medical student, presented his MD dissertation on psychoanalysis, wrote in the official Jahrbuch side by side with Freud and Jung, and was part of the Zurich Freud Society, the group of early psychoanalytical pioneers. The idea of unconscious processes in the mind made a lasting impression on him, an impression which he later developed into a variety of hypotheses well beyond the boundaries of orthodox psychoanalysis.
The second revolution in which Assagioli participated was the creation of humanistic and transpersonal psychology in the 1960’s. A. H. Maslow was the pioneer of these new developments. The main idea was simple: rather than focusing on pathology in order to define the human being (as psychoanalysis had all too often done), or on the structural similarities between the human and the animal nervous system (as behaviorism suggested), the humanistic and transpersonal point of view, while not denying the findings of the other schools, put the main emphasis on the organism’s striving for wholeness, on the human being’s potential for growth, expansion of consciousness, health, love and joy.”
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 Dr. 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. He was born with a clubfoot which his step-father straightened without surgery. He was very physically active in his youth, particularly in mountain climbing, swimming and rowing.
He grew up speaking Italian, French and English, which were spoken on alternate days in his home. By the age of 18, he had learned eight different languages, including his native Italian, English, French, Russian, Greek, Latin, German, and Sanskrit. It was at this age that he began to travel, mainly to other parts of Italy as well as England, France, Switzerland and Germany. He also had what he called “an adventure” in traveling for a short time in Russia, where he was exposed to Russian psychology and learned of the very unstable social situation there.
The Assagioli family moved from Venice to Florence in 1904 in order for Roberto to enroll in the Institute of Higher Studies, which became years later a division of the University of Florence. As a young man Assagioli read voraciously and decided on a career in neurology and psychiatry, and the institute was well equipped for such studies, having a psychology laboratory and museum even though there was no formal curriculum in “psychology.” Assagioli chose psychoanalysis for the subject of his doctoral thesis and persuaded his professors to allow this even though this topic was virtually unknown in Italy at the time.
He took his medical degree in 1910. He was considered by Freud and Jung to be among the first advocates of psychoanalysis in Italy, however he criticized aspects of it in his dissertation and later disavowed specific theories that Freud had while continuing to appreciate and use the methods of psychoanalysis. During and after his education in Florence he studied for two years at the Burghölzli Clinic in Zurich under Eugen Bleuler, and while there he met C.G. Jung, with whom he began a cordial friendship that lasted 50 years. He also attended psychoanalytic conferences in Germany and Switzerland and was a member of Freudian Society of Zurich. He submitted essays (in German) to two journals of Freudian psychoanalysis, Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse and Jahrbuch far psychoanalytische und psycbopathologische Forschung. However, by 1911 he had already seen the limitations of Freudian theory and began to distance himself from it, three years before Jung formally broke with Freud.
Also during his early years in Florence he established a friendship with Giovanni Papini and was an active contributor to Papini's magazine Leonardo until the magazine closed in 1907. His readings during this time included studies of Eastern philosophy and religion, especially the Bhagavad-Gita, which he considered wonderful.
Assagioli was actively connected to the theosophical movement from this time, and was probably influenced by it earlier, since his mother had an interest in it. Roberto's connection was to ripen into a more direct involvement later in his life. He also developed a friendship with Giuseppe Prezzolini, with whom he became involved as a contributor to the magazine La Voce.
Shortly after his graduation from medical school Assagioli founded a “magazine of psychological studies” called Psiche, of which he was editor and a major contributor. This work came to a close with the advent of World War I. Assagioli was drafted into the Italian army and served as a medical lieutenant at the Austrian front. Because of his physical disabilities (he had flat feet and had to wear a brace) he was exempted from “front line service” and served in the rear. Little is known about his activities at this time because he never spoke of his war experience. It is likely that he was present at two major operations of this part of the war: the Battle of Caporetto, a major defeat for the Italians, and the Battle of Vittorio Veneto, which was an Allied victory and contributed to the end of the war. We do know that Assagioli did not carry a weapon, and crafted a “replica” of either soap or wood and carried it in a holster to appear to conform to military requirements.
When the war was over, Assagioli married. However, the marriage turned out to be a poor match for both, as they lived in different social and spiritual worlds, and ended in divorce. In his autobiographical reflections years later, he noted that his first wife remarried to an army officer and that marriage worked well for her.
In 1922, he married a young woman named Nella Ciapetti, who was a Roman Catholic but also shared an interest in theosophy with Assagioli. She owned a villa with surrounding land in Capolona, where the family would spend their summers for decades. Nella was an industrious and competent person who managed the family business, which included orchards and wine making. They had one son, Ilario Assagioli, who was born in 1923.
In 1926 the Assagioli family moved to Rome. At this time both Roberto and Nella had been writing articles for the theosophical magazine Ultra, and Roberto had become connected with the Arcane School of Alice Bailey, which was an offshoot of the theosophical movement. In the 1920s Assagioli began to crystallize his psychological ideas, which had roots as far back as 1909 with his work in psychoanalysis and “psychagogy,” which he had adopted from a concept of Plato’s that combined theory and practice with a focus on healthy people rather than on pathology.