Who’s in Charge Here?
A discussion of subpersonalities
It’s no secret that we present ourselves to others according to who they are and what we think they expect of us. There’s an immediate and subconscious process for finding the most flattering and beneficial projections of ourselves.
The idea of the organization of the inner self as “subpersonalities” was introduced by Roberto Assagioli, MD, an Italian psychiatrist who lived during the same era as Freud and Jung, a time when new psychologies were being developed and shared with the public. This branch of psychology/psychiatry developed by Assagioli is called Psychothensis.
According to Assagioli, the sub-personalities are naturally-occurring identity patterns that develop throughout our lives, mostly derived from the social roles that we learn to play in life. These are taught to us by parents, teachers, religious figures and peers, beginning in early childhood, we learn how to please and impress others. Interestingly, each subpersonality is a miniature personality with access to the same qualities as are found in the general personality.
Assagioli proposed that the will is the primary function of the self which integrates, harmonizes and directs these personality functions toward self-realization. He taught that the purpose of life is to learn how to use and express these qualities in our interactions in the world. He visualized the self with this star diagram.
The traits in each point of the star represent basic human traits. Each individual also develops personal and specific subpersonalities as they move through life. Assagioli discerned complex psychological laws by which, he says, we exist, and his work was devoted to helping his patients understand themselves within these laws.
He visualized the relationship of the self to a Higher Self through his egg diagram, a model of individual consciousness. At the center is the personal self that descends from the Higher Self at the top of the diagram.
Decades after my career as a mental health therapist ended, I began to study the wisdom of Kabbalah, the science of the correct perception of true reality: what it is and how it is manifested. To my surprise, I discovered that Assagioli was also a student of this esoteric wisdom. He was able to combine his model of the human psyche with Kabbalah’s Tree of Life illustration, thus their similarity.
Spirituality As the Organizing Force
Assagioli strongly promoted a spiritual definition of the self. His intent as he developed his thinking was to create a method that contemplates the love, will, wisdom, creativity and spirituality of the human being. It is more than the breaking down of resistances and ego, as Freud and Jung postulated, but the building of a strong inner edifice containing the highest qualities possible for humanity.
As I’ve progressed in the study of Kabbalah, Spirituality has grown in me as an organizing principle within my own psyche. I’ve begun to rename for myself the center of the star diagram which Assagioli called self as Spirituality. By giving Spirituality this exalted place on the diagram, I’m able to see how my thinking and my feelings, my very life, are organized around it.
Spirituality began in me in childhood as a subpersonality that took on the role of a guiding principle. As I moved through family, school, career, marriage, childbearing and retirement, the energy of spirituality has grown and it now vibrates as a resonating feeling that frames my thinking, my actions, my relationships. Kabbalah has provided a path to walk as my spirituality matures.
Kabbalah teaches that Spirituality is above our corporeal reality. It is a completely opposite perception and sensation to our inborn bodily one called egoism — the prioritizing of self-benefit over benefiting others. Spirituality operates in an opposite, altruistic way to our egoistic nature — as an attitude of absolute love for the other.
Instead of identifying with our “I’s,” we identify with the causal force behind its corporeal manifestations. That is made possible by attaining an identical intention toward others as the Creator: an intention of absolute love and bestowal.
Michael Laitman, PhD
The goal of our lives, according to Kabbalah, is to invert egoism to altruism. Laitman’s description gives credence to the idea that Spirituality for me holds the central position that Assagioli called Self (star diagram). I suspect that he would take exception to my placing Spirituality at the center of his diagram, but I feel that I am now a spiritual person, above everything else.
I think of Spirituality as a subjective experience of the sacred that expresses the deepest values and meanings by which people live. I’ve taken care to grow Spirituality throughout my life through explorations of different religions and spiritual paths. When I think of it as a subpersonality I see that other traits I’ve carried through a life have been challenged by it. One example of this is the Gossip, a trait I developed along with my peers during adolescence. That trait is so antithetical to Spirituality, that it makes me cringe to think of how much I enjoyed this subpersonality back then.
As a global community, humanity needs a common principle around which we can unite. Currently humanity lives in separation. Competition, anger, greed, hate, and war are the traits that seem to be the basis for the personality of humanity. What would it take to unite us, thus quelling these negative motivators for human behavior? If we were to develop Spirituality as the basis for our local, national and global relationships, we could create an environment that is truly a spiritual home. By connecting with each other in this way we could create heaven on earth. This is the definition of Eden.