AAP

Association for the
Advancement of Psychosynthesis

What is Psychosynthesis?

The "Egg" Diagram: Picturing Your Psyche

Assagioli's original "oval" or "egg" diagram offers a view of the human psyche in its many aspects. We can imagine our minds and knowledge as having several levels:

• The lower unconscious – the arena of repressed and traumatic memories, fundamental drives and impulses, and elementary psychological functions.
• The middle unconscious – similar to our ordinary waking consciousness and easily accessible.
• The higher unconscious – the elements of "transpersonal" experience that connect us to others, to the larger universe and the world of spirit.
• The collective unconscious – defined primarily by Jung as the unconscious that carries archetypal experiences, the communal knowledge humans share with other humans all over the globe and through the ages.

Assagioli indicated the varying levels of unconscious with dotted lines, illustrating that these states are not rigid: they blend into each other. The same is true for the field of consciousness at the center: we can refocus our awareness from moment to moment.

The Self, in this map, describes both the "I," (a center of awareness and choice operating at the ordinary personality level) and the Higher Self (the center of awareness and choice in touch with the transpersonal dimension – our larger experiencing of others, the universe, and spirit).

People have created variations on Assagioli's original model of the "egg" diagram. Some have removed the Higher Self star; others have drawn it surrounding the egg, or with an equivalent "star" located opposite the Higher Self in the lower-unconscious sphere. These versions emphasize an important awareness pointed out by Assagioli: the Self is alive in all areas of the psyche – not only in "higher" experiences but also in everyday life (middle unconscious) and in the depths of the experience of darkness (the lower unconscious).