ABSTRACT
It is not possible in the course of one chapter to give more than a sketchy outline of the history of psychotherapy in the twentieth century relevant to psychosynthesis. Nevertheless, it is important to delineate some of the major developments as they have been integrated into the theory and practice of psychosynthesis over this period. As we have seen, Assagioli was in touch with Freud and Jung from the beginning of his career, and was in continuing contact with Jungian developments. During the 1930s and 1940s, when Italy was cut off from developments in the rest of Europe and America, Assagioli continued to work within his practice, writing articles and papers during the less fraught times. When psychosynthesis started to expand internationally in the 1950s and become popular in the 1960s, Assagioli learned of the work of Fromm, Horney, Erikson, Frankl, Rogers, Maslow and many others. Fritz Perls’s work in Gestalt became of considerable importance to psychosynthesis therapy and is now used extensively within the training. The technique of guided imagery, springing from work by Desoille, Happich, Leuner and others, was a natural tool for transpersonal psychotherapy. And the many humanistic techniques of the 1960s and 1970s – encounter, groupwork, methods relevant to personal growth – were all incorporated in psychosynthesis which is now well known for its huge range of techniques, both in the one-to-one client-guide relationship and in the training which is largely done in groups. For most of this time, psychotherapists have perceived the relevance of the study of the person to the state of the world – the daunting history of the twentieth century has been a continuing relevant backcloth to the study of personal therapy; there is the insistent question as to whether developing a more complete view of the person might be relevant to the kind of life that people can develop in society, and the question whether both individuals and societies can really change – the ever-present hope of Western culture and one of its main driving forces.
