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Psychosynthesis Quarterly June 2016

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Psychosynthesis Quarterly June 2016 PSYCHOSYNTHESIS QUARTERLY The Digital Magazine of the Association for the Advancement of Psychosynthesis Volume 5 Number 2 June 2016 The Ubiquity of Self Psychosynthesis and Chaos Theory The Call of Self in Chronic Illness The Wall of Silence Dialogue, Continued Integrative Cancer Treatment and Psychosynthesis Bio-psychosynthesis Tapping into Our Children’s Intuition and Our Own The Third Awakening The Work That Reconnects and Psychosynthesis Remembering Sister Paul D’Ornellas and Deborah Smith Onken Supporting the Future of Psychosynthesis in North America Assagioli’s Freedom in Jail Published 1 Psychosynthesis Quarterly contents AAP News and Briefs 3 Editor: Jan Kuniholm The Ubiquity of Self—Yoav Dattilo 4 Assistant Editors: Audrey McMorrow, Walter Polt, and Douglas Russell Publication of Assagioli’s Freedom in Jail 17 Design and Production: IN MEMORIAM Sister Paul D’Ornellas 18 Jan Kuniholm, Walter Polt Psychosynthesis and Chaos Theory – Jan Kuniholm 19 Psychosynthesis Quarterly is published by The Call of Self in Chronic Illness – Dorothy Firman, EdD 21 AAP four times a year in March, June, September and December. Submission deadlines are February 7, The Wall of Silence Dialogue, Continued – Douglas Russell 29 May 7, August 7, and November 7. Integrative Cancer Treatment and Psychosynthesis – Send Announcements, Ideas, Reviews of Richard Schaub, PhD 31 Books and Events, Articles, Poetry, Art, IN MEMORIAM Deborah Smith Onken, PhD 35 Exercises, Photos, and Letters: Tell us what Bio-psychosynthesis – Kathryn Rone, MA 37 has helped your life and work, what can help others, and examples of psychosynthesis theory in action. Supporting the Future of Psychosynthesis Notice of Events should be 1500 words or less, and in North America – Dorothy Firman, EdD 42 articles should usually be 4500 words or less. We Tapping into Our Children’s Intuition and Our Own – accept psychosynthesis-related advertising from Ilene Val-Essen, PhD 45 members. Non-members who wish to run psycho- synthesis-related advertising are requested to make The Third Awakening – Thomas Yeomans, PhD 48 a donation to AAP. Send submittals to: The Synthesis Center 2016 Psychosynthesis [email protected] Training Program 54 The Association for the Advancement The Work That Reconnects and Psychosynthesis – of Psychosynthesis: Molly Brown 55 Founded in 1995, AAP is a Massachusetts nonprofit corporation with tax exemption in the United States. It is dedicated to advocating on behalf of psycho- EDITOR’S NOTES synthesis and conducting psychosynthesis educa- tional programs. Membership and donations are tax deductible in the United States. We are happy to welcome Douglas Russell as Assistant Editor of AAP membership supports this publication and Psychosynthesis Quarterly. Longtime members of our community the other educational activities of AAP: $75 (US) will remember Doug as editor of Psychosynthesis Digest in the per year, with a sliding-scale fee of $45 to $75 for 1980s. Having this skilled editor on board is an inspiration to the those who need it. Go to rest of us, and we look forward to continuing to present work that http://aap-psychosynthesis.org/join-aap/ informs, challenges, and delights our readers. or contact us at (413) 743-1703 or [email protected] This issue is packed with fascinating thought, experience, and If you are NOT a member we invite you to join reflections—in fact, we had so much material submitted for this AAP and support psychosynthesis in North America and the world. issue that we have had to hold some of it for September, including a previously unpublished manuscript by Roberto Assagioli Views expressed in Psychosynthesis Quar- . terly are not necessarily those of the editors or of AAP. AAP makes every effort to ensure the accura- 2016 marks what we hope will be a new beginning for AAP, and a cy of what appears in the Quarterly but accepts no new Steering Committee takes the helm of our organization this liability for errors or omissions. We may edit month. Please check our website submissions for grammar, syntax, and length. http://aap-psychosynthesis.org/ in the Psychosynthesis Quarterly is sent to all cur- coming months to see in what new di- rent AAP members and to others who are interested in our work. Our membership list is never sold. rections AAP will be moving. We hope you, our readers, will provide some © Copyright 2016 by AAP feedback to AAP to help us find direc- 61 East Main Street tions that are meaningful to you. Con- Cheshire, MA 01225-9627 tact our cochairs at All Rights Reserved [email protected] www.aap-psychosynthesis.org And help us share Assagioli’s vision. Jan Kuniholm 2 AAP News and Briefs AAP is preparing to scan our archives for both the AAP AAP ARCHIVES: website and permanent storage with other Psychosynthesis OLD NEWSLETTERS documents at the University of California, Santa Barbara. NEEDED We need one or two of the following newsletters should anyone have them and be willing to donate them for this effort. The following issues are missing from the archive collection: 2007 Fall; 2003 Spring; 2002 Fall; 2001 Winter, Summer; 2000 Spring, Fall; and 1999 Winter, Spring, Fall. If any of you have one or more copies of these particular editions of AAP News, please consider sending them to: Sharon Mandt 114 Janlyn Ave. Somerset KY 42501 AAP is pleased to announce that the first 2016 AAP Mini- 2016 AAP MINI-GRANT Grant award has been made to Catherine Ann Lombard, AWARDED TO an American AAP member living in Germany. She is a regular contributor to Psychosynthesis Quarterly whose CATHERINE ANN LOMBARD latest piece was in the March issue. She has received an award of $1,000.00 to support research at Casa Assagioli in Florence on the subject of “Assagioli in Jail.” She plans to present a more extensive treatment than appeared in the Shaubs’ article in the Quarterly some issues back, and to prepare a pamphlet supported by Gruppo Alle Fonte and the Italian Institute that can be sold or distributed. This pamphlet is nearly publication and we hope to see it in print soon! (See Page 17 of this issue.) AAP has begun an exciting new year with new prospects and new horizons. The Steering Committee of AAP for 2016-2017 includes (in alphabetical order): Susan Bullivant [email protected]), Patricia Elkins ([email protected]), Marjorie Hope Gross ([email protected]), Jan Kuniholm ([email protected]), Julie Rivers ([email protected]), Brad Roth ([email protected]), Ángel Santiago ([email protected]), Bonney Gulino Schaub ([email protected]), Richard Schaub ([email protected]), and Barbara Veale Smith ([email protected]). Feel free to contact any of these people with your thoughts about AAP’s mission, work, direction, or projects. 3 THE UBIQUITY OF SELF Yoav Dattilo [This article is a transcription of the keynote talk given at the AAP Conference in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, Quebec, Canada, in August 2015—Ed.] This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. —William Shakespeare, Hamlet Act 1, Scene III he challenging title of this conference, “Be your true self,” brings us directly to the core of the psychosynthesis Tprocess, so beautifully and clearly evoked by Polonius through Shakespeare’s words in Hamlet, “to thine own self be true.” Arts and poetry go often far beyond psychology in the understanding of the depth and heights of the human psyche as the great psychologists of the twentieth century have shown. Consider Freud’s inspiring knowledge of the Greek Tragedy and Assagioli’s love for Dante, Eastern and Western spirituality, Jung‘s study in depth of Alchemy and of the archetypes of the collective unconscious, Hillman’s unconventional mythological approach, just to mention a few. I am aware that psychology needs to be vitalized by symbols, images, myths, and not restricted in a soulless literal and technical terminology. “Self” is a rather elusive concept in the contemporary landscape of psychology, philosophy and neurosciences, and its overuse in different contexts and with different meanings may cause some confusion and misunderstanding. I will briefly try to mention some of the major commonly used significances of the word “Self” in various approaches. My actual goal is to delve into the theory and practice of psychosynthesis, where Self is a basic seed thought, though sometimes diversely highlighted. In fact in the psychosynthesis community we find different views and perspectives on Self, that properly integrated, may lead to further developments in the overall model and its practical applications. 1. Self as a Subjective Sense of Being. Donald Winnicott emphasized the idea of the Self and the distinction between “true self” and “false self”, and many other psychoanalysts, especially within the object-relations theory up to Heinz Kohut with his original Self Psychology, consider the Self as a core concept, but with different significant nuances. Experiencing Self, at a primal level, is a “reflexive” experience. Self is simulta- neously the subject and the object of experience. Merrian-Webster Unabridged Dictionary defines self as “the integrated unity of subjective experi- ence specifically including those characteristics and attributes of the experiencing organism of which it is reflexively aware,” and Webster Medical Dictionary as “the union of elements (as body, emotions, thoughts, and sensations) that constitute the individuality and identity of a person.” (Continued on page 5) 4 (Continued from page 4) Summarizing, the Self, from a psychoanalytic perspective, is made up of the different elements of the personality that form a “Me,” distinct from the “Not-me” in each individual. Self can thus be perceived namely as a subjective sense of being resulting from the identification with significant personality traits.
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