Psychosynthesis : A Psychology of the Spirit (9780791487860) by Firman John; Gila Ann & Ann Gila

Author:Firman, John; Gila, Ann & Ann Gila [Firman, John; Gila, Ann & Gila, Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780791487860
Publisher: LightningSource
Published: 2002-09-15T05:00:00+00:00

FIGURE 6.2

In this developmental model, infancy and childhood are not distant but are at our center, similar to the annual rings of a tree. For example, there might be a six-year-old child within you who feels small and vulnerable among “grown-ups,” or who feels that life is too vast and complex, or who feels sometimes like playing with crayons and clay. Or there might be an adolescent in you who feels painfully shy and awkward around potential romantic partners, or who feels rebellious and angry toward authorities, or who seeks freedom and adventure. And so on.

The point is that thinking in terms of the concentric-ring model allows us to become more conscious of our inner world. These major sectors of ourselves are not people we have been but people we are. They do not live in a long-lost time but in the immediate present. Here the word “childhood” does not mean “that time long ago when we were kids,” but rather, “a deeper substrate of our here-and-now experience.”

Of course, the time line arrow model often is favored by many of us as adults, because it can be a way of pushing into the background the feelings and thoughts of the infant, child, and adolescent. Adhering to this more linear model, we will assume that such “immature” thoughts and feelings have been left behind, and it may even be an affront to our self-image to realize that they exist within us, often seemingly unchanged by the passage of time.

Again, the insight held by the ring model is that all stages are present, all can be engaged, and all have something to offer our current lives. We might then visualize the growing personality as expanding harmoniously outward through the various life stages, accumulating the human potential unfolding at each stage. In the words of psychologist Gina O’Connell Higgins, “Like an extensive set of Ukrainian nesting dolls, we are a collection of selves, simultaneously encompassing all of our previous versions” (1994, 70).

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