Character and Characterization Review of Related Theories

13 Assagioli presumes that self shall not be placed inside of the diagram. Self exists in all of the areas of the diagram and beyond. Thus, the diagram uses dotted lines to symbolize self’s possibility to acquire new experience that will affect a person. The dotted lines inside of the diagram symbolize the fact that the entire unconscious is affecting each other, including the “I”. The interaction of the elements on the diagram is explained as follows. 2.2.2.2. Middle Unconscious The middle unconsciousness provides a space to integrate human being’s experiences, learning, gifts, and skills. This area is directly connected to the consciousness. Therefore, middle unconsciousness is having a close relationship to one person’s particular environment. The middle unconsciousness contains profundity, depth, and creativity which have an important role in human development. The development can be seen on how a human learns to walk and talk, learns and masters a new language, and develops social roles. Furthermore, the central of middle unconsciousness is subpersonalities. 2.2.2.3. Subpersonalities Subpersonality is the synthesized experience that then creates a unique expression and behavior. For example, a person who has the love of music, the technical skill to play a piano, the natural ability, and the joy of performance expresses himherself as a pianist, a pianist subpersonality. However, a person’s experience expands as heshe lives. Thus, this pianist subpersonality is only one of wide variety of subpersonalities. Other subpersonalities may occur as a person expresses other aspects within himherself. 14 2.2.2.4. Primal Wounding Not all of the subpersonalities can be accepted by the environment. When a person naturally expresses himherself but then experiences a terrible feedback from the environment, that person will undergo primal wounding. The wounding occurs when a person is not accepted as who that person truly is. Primal wounding causes repression of the unaccepted subpersonality. For example in the case of pianist, the pianist will repress the love of music, the technical skill to play a piano, the natural ability, and the joy of performance. The pianist reppresses the subpersonality so that the pianist could reenter the environment. The repressed terrible experience is forgotten by the consciousness and kept safe in the lower unconsciousness. However, the love of music, the technical skill to play a piano, the natural ability, and the joy of performance are also repressed. They are forgotten and held in the higher unconsciousness. 2.2.2.5. Lower and Higher Consciousness The lower unconsciousness and the higher unconsciousness take care of the repressed expressions and experience. The repressed expressions and experience is called the repressed materials. Nevertheless, the repressed materials could resurface to the consciousness. The only factor that could bring the repressed materials to the consciousness is feeling. A person may feel a familiar pain as that which triggers primal wounding although that person could not remember how and when heshe experienced the pain. That person acknowledges the pain similar to the pain inside of the lower consciousness. This is called surprised by pain. As the familiar pain continues, that person becomes aware of the horrible past life that affects hisher feeling. However, healing the lower unconscious is not only 15 healing the past, but also the present life. The pain within the lower unconscious is related to the experience in the higher unconscious. By healing the pain in the lower unconscious, the experience in the higher unconscious is sent to the “I”. A person may need to adapt the experience from the past to hisher present life and situation. A person can also release the repressed materials in the higher unconscious when heshe is surprised by joy. The joy may come from the act of empathic love from others. The empathic love will inspire a person’s expression that leads to a feeling of wonder. Nevertheless, when a person is surprised by joy, the correlating pain in the lower unconsciousness is also brought to the surface of consciousness. Then, the original reason of repression can be accepted and the person can heal the pain. 2.2.2.6. The Stages of Psychosynthesis The stages of psychosynthesis consist of five stages. They are stage zero