By Roberto Assagioli and Stuart Miller, Source: Intellectual
Digest, october 1972 A pioneer psychotherapist probes the will
and discovers a liberating force For some 50 years, Roberto
Assagioli, M.D., an Italian psychotherapist, has quietly
elaborated a notion of the will, which he fully describes in his
forthcoming book, The Act of Will. Until very recently, the will
has not been fashionable. Disgusted by the Victorian notion of
the will as “will power”, many intellectuals joined the revolt
against the will that in many ways characterizes our century.
Permissiveness, spontaneity, release became the watchwords of
art, psychotherapy and education. With bitter abandon, many
thinking people embraced their sufferings as the inevitable
price of having their joys. Emotions, impulses and desires were
to be embraced because the truth was in them, The Victorians had
repressed their impulses and the Victorians had suffered the
twin punishments of psychological disease and social hypocrisy.
In recent years there have be