Assagioli’s early conception of the subpersonalities was partly inspired by one of the great pioneers of psychology, William James, who, in his monumental work Principles of Psychology (1890), defines the various social selves – i.e. the roles we play in society – which, in Assagioli’s terminology, are one aspect of the subpersonalities. I have a mind but I am not my mind. My mind is a valuable tool of discovery and expression, but it is not the essence of my being. Its contents are constantly changing as it embraces new ideas, knowledge, and experience. Sometimes it refuses to obey me. Therefore, it cannot be me, my self. It is an organ of knowledge in regard to both the outer and the inner worlds, but it is not my self. I have a mind, but I am not my mind.

At first it may seem not true - you may be experiencing parts that really want to take it out on you. But in the course of work with the Internal Family Systems model, we manage to understand them. Usually at first they have no idea in what other way they could support you. That’s what they have been taught to act and they are convinced what they are doing is good. And once they begin to see that what they are doing is harmful, they suddenly start to want to change their behavior. What are these parts in the first place? Some may take it for some kind of a metaphor. We look into ourselves and see that there is an i nner critic, a perfectionist, an inner child and that this is a way to name our thoughts. From the therapy point of view, this is not quite how it works in the Internal Family Systems theory. After all, even now many neuropsychologists claim that our brain works on a modular basis. The modules seem to co-operate - some more constructively, others less, but they all form an internal community of autonomous neural networks interacting with each other. Our subpersonalities activate in different situations and moments of our lives, depending on when they are needed. However, we can also activate them consciously, by self-empathy and visualization. In self-therapy with the IFS method, we look deep into ourselves to get in touch with our parts. This exercise to develop desired qualities can become the focus of a larger program. You can gather together poetry, symbols, music, drama, artwork, photography, dance,’ and biographical excerpts, all evoking or in some personal sense symbolizing serenity, and use them for a total experience. By surrounding yourself with these materials, you can evoke and develop a deep sense of serenity—or of any other quality. You can use all that you find in your environment to foster a sense of serenity through your own creation of a synthesis of experiential forms. We don't do it by forcing our subpersonalities to change, or by exerting any pressure. It wouldn’t work, I assure you. The parts want to be understood and heard. When we start talking to them, it turns out that they want to tell us something about them, and how much they no longer like their role. When they learn that we want to help them change their role, they are very happy to do it, because every part of us has a positive intention, it wants us well.

Notes on techniques of meditation with which you have experimented, seed ideas used, and results obtained. Note any insights or intuitions which come through.

We are dominated by everything with which our self becomes identified. We can dominate, direct, and utilise everything from which we dis-identify ourselves.

7 Key Signs To Know It’s Time To Move On

Readers of the following essays and lectures by Roberto Assagioli will note some redundancy and repetition of some ideas and practices in these essays. The reason for this is that we felt it was important to present Assagioli’s original essays and lectures unedited, so that the authenticity of the material is assured. However these essays and lectures were presented at different times and locations to different types of audiences: some were public lectures, some were published articles, and some were recorded conversations or interviews.