Editing Psychosynthesis (section)

===The Lower Unconscious===
For Assagioli, the lower unconscious contains the elementary psychological activities which direct the life of the body; the fundamental drives and primitive urges; many emotionally charged complexes; many dreams and imaginings of a “lower kind;” “lower” uncontrolled parapsychological processes; and various pathological manifestations such as phobias, obsessions, compulsive urges and paranoid delusions.<ref name="Assagioli, R. 1965 p.204"/> By another account, 'the lower unconscious, which contains one's personal psychological past in the form of repressed complexes, long-forgotten memories and dreams and imaginations'.<ref>William Stewart, ''An A-Z of Counselling Theory and Practice'' (2005) p. 386</ref>

According to John Firman and Ann Gila, "the lower unconscious is that realm of the person to which is relegated the experiences of shame, fear, pain, despair, and rage associated with primal wounding suffered in life. One way to think of the lower unconscious is that it is a particular bandwidth of one's experiential range that has been broken away from consciousness. It comprises that range of experience related to the threat of personal annihilation, of destruction of self, of nonbeing, and more generally, of the painful side of the human condition.<ref name=":3">{{Cite book |last1=Firman |first1=John |title=Psychosynthesis: A Psychology of the Spirit |last2=Gila |first2=Ann |publisher=State University of New York Press |year=2002 |isbn=0-7914-5533-5 |location=Albany, NY |pages=153–154}}</ref> As long as this range of experience remains unconscious, the person will have a limited ability to be empathic with self or others in the more painful aspects of human life."<ref name=":3" /> Firman and Gila assert that the lower unconscious is ''formed'' when a person separates experiences of empathic failures from consciousness.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Firman |first1=John |title=Psychosynthesis: A Psychology of the Spirit. |last2=Gila |first2=Ann |publisher=State University of New York Press |year=2002 |isbn=0-7914-5534-3 |edition=1st |location=Albany, NY |publication-date=2002 |pages=47 |language=English}}</ref>

Roberto Assagioli’s approach to the lower unconscious is diametrically opposite to this: he regarded it as part of the fundamental constitution of a human being.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Assagioli |first=Roberto |title=Psychosynthesis |publisher=Hobbs, Dorman & Co. Inc. |year=1965 |edition=1st |location=New York |publication-date=1965 |pages=16–17 |language=English}}</ref> He did ''not'' assert that either the lower and higher unconscious are by definition repressed. Comparing his egg diagram to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, he states: “We can look at the diagram of the psychological constitution of man [egg-diagram]. The basic and normal personal needs concern the lower and middle psychological life, both conscious and unconscious.”<ref>{{Cite book |last=Assagioli |first=Roberto |title=The Act of Will |publisher=Viking |year=1973 |isbn=9780140038668 |edition=2nd |location=New York |publication-date=1973 |pages=110 |language=English}}</ref> Assagioli accepted that parts of the lower unconscious are repressed, but not all of it. There is also no evidence that Assagioli accepted the concepts of “personal annihilation” or “nonbeing” that these writers discuss. These writers share an outlook and use terminology derived from certain existentialist philosophers (Jean-Paul Sartre asserted that nothingness is part of reality, and nothingness is a ''lack of being'').<ref>{{Cite web |last=Daigle |first=Christine |title=Sartre's Being & Nothingness: The Bible of Existentialism? |url=https://philosophynow.org/issues/53/Sartres_Being_and_Nothingness_The_Bible_of_Existentialism |access-date=2025-01-10 |website=Philosophy Now}}</ref> Assagioli explicitly contradicted this position, saying, “In certain periods men can feel internally isolated, but the extreme existentialist position is not true, ''neither psychologically nor spiritually''.”<ref>{{Cite web |last=Assagioli |first=Roberto |title=Psychosynthesis and Parapsychology |url=https://kennethsorensen.dk/en/product/psychosynthesis-and-parapsychology/ |access-date=2025-01-10 |website=Kenneth Sørensen|date=30 May 2022 }}</ref>

"The lower unconscious merely represents the most primitive part of ourselves...It is not ''bad'', it is just ''earlier'' '.<ref name=":6">Pierro Ferrucci, ''What We May Be: The Vision and Techniques of Psychosynthesis'' (London 1990) p. 204.</ref> Indeed, 'the "lower" side has many attractions and great vitality'.<ref name=":6" />