Now in N.C., founder "Hedi" still actively guides The Psychosynthesis Center of Wisconsin

Carla Peterson of PCW offers this profile of the Center's founder with help from fellow members Sue Clapp, Kathleen Lacey, Abbie Loomis, Jean McIlheny, Sharon Norton Bauman, and Trish O'Neil.

Twenty years after studying psychosynthesis with some of the first teachers Assagioli trained, and after 15 years of teaching psychosynthesis herself, Hedwig Weiler is a senior teacher in her own right. Hedi founded the Psychosynthesis Center of Wisconsin in 1990 and has established a flourishing psychosynthesis community in Wisconsin, where she has inspired many students. She has just moved to North Carolina, but continues to be active in guiding psychosynthesis in Wisconsin.

Hedi came to Chicago, Ill., at the age of 12 from Hungary/Yugoslavia after World War II. Since then, Hedi has had occasion to find herself in a new place a number of times. Most recently, following the guidance of her soul and a long-held desire to share life more closely with her sister Hildie, Hedi has moved to North Carolina. This seems a good time to review her psychosynthesis journey, as well.

Hedi first came to Psychosynthesis through interest in the interaction of body and mind she observed early in her nursing career. In the 1970's she did independent study into research on how people's attitudes affect what happens in their bodies. Over time Hedi's interests followed a trajectory of first body, then emotions, then the conventional mind, and then the nonlocal mind. Hedi says, "Over the years I became aware experientially of other levels of myself. Whenever I get to the boundary, I recognize there is another step."

As a psychiatric/mental health clinical nurse specialist working on a psychiatric unit, Hedi supervised other staff, and did in-service training for them. Trish O'Neil and her husband became students in Hedi's very first psychosynthesis class. Trish writes, "She did in-services for nursing staff throughout the hospital and I was fortunate enough to be part of that. She always exuded this very calm and soothing demeanor and I admired her." Trish added, "Hedi's ability to know just what is needed at the moment and her flexibility to adapt to whatever comes up and then to respond in a way that comes right from the transpersonal self is a reflection of the kind of personal work she has obviously done over many years."

After doing that hospital-based psychiatric work, Hedi took about two years off. She traveled to India for part of this time, and also lived in California near Mount Shasta for about a year. After she returned to Madison, Wis., Hedi began private practice in a private mental health clinic and incorporated psychosynthesis into her counseling practice. She made many presentations about psychosynthesis in the Madison area, and began to formally teach psychosynthesis in 1990.

Hedi began her psychosynthesis journey as an outgrowth of her study of the ancient wisdom teachings. Along the way she had made a visit to Meditation Mount and met Florence Garrigue. It was she who told Hedi about psychosynthesis and encouraged her to attend an upcoming psychosynthesis conference in Canada at which she should get in touch with Piero Ferrucci. Hedi, recognizing another of her soul's directions, did just that. She met both Piero Ferrucci and Tom Yeomans at that conference. She remembers thinking, "This is a good thing to teach a broad population."

This began an odyssey during which Hedi went to learn from "everybody I could think of." She went to Italy and had a couple of individual sessions with Piero Ferrucci. She attended two summer courses in England, one with the Psychosynthesis Institute and another at the Psychosynthesis Trust. She studied with Robert Gerard who had helped Roberto Assagioli edit his book, Psychosynthesis. She also wanted to study with someone in the United States, and studied with Tom Yeomans at some of his summer institutes and in the teacher training he offered four times a year. Later, when Hedi was ready to teach her own classes, she asked Tom to help her evaluate what she had put together.

Another student from that first psychosynthesis class, Sharon Norton Bauman writes, "I learned how to be a part of a group process with the help of Hedi, the psychosynthesis teachings, and the other members; how to trust my own instincts and intuition, and to trust others too. . . . My goal became to be able to hold it all, all at the same time, and not be too excited or upset by any of it. Hedi's presence and knowledge, her ability to guide a group in the most caring yet direct ways, was a treasure for me."

Sue Clapp, a later student, said, "I found Hedi's open-mindedness to be welcoming. I appreciated her accepting presence. She was equally attentive to each person, regardless of who they were, what their walk of life. The psychosynthesis exercises were interesting tools. They helped me be able to hold things I noticed for longer, take them in more fully, and appreciate them more. This is important to me as an artist."

Another student, Kathleen Lacey emphasized, "Through Hedi I learned the map is not the territory. She actually made a map around her house and asked us to find things in a kind of treasure hunt." Kathleen said this activity really illustrated that principle for her. Kathleen also stated that subpersonality work had changed her life and through her incorporation of subpersonality work in her psychotherapy practice, the lives of many of her clients. Jean McIlheny added that it was very important to her to follow the advice that Hedi gave to her students, "to notice what makes your energy go up, what makes it go down, and do more of what makes it go up! Simple, clear, seemingly obvious, but so often we get caught up in our minds and don't listen to the energy. I have used this in my life and also shared it with clients."

Abbie Loomis, another student, pointed out, "As a teacher, Hedi has the gift of listening to her inner voice and letting that guide her. In classes she would create moments of silence to listen for her inner guidance. Even though she had a syllabus already prepared, if her guidance suggested otherwise, she would change what happened in the class. I have also learned from her willingness to trust, that the learning process included the class participants' direction as well as her own. I learned from her gentle insistence that we were not there to fix each other. It was more important to let each person's own process unfold rather than have someone fix it for them. We have to let them do it however they need to do it. The soul will figure it out in a supportive environment."

Similarly, Jean McIlheny wrote, "I just keep thinking of Hedi smiling at us in the psychosynthesis group, encouraging us along, taking us from wherever we were at and holding the vision of what more we could be. I remember her reminding us that we can't go to graduate school until we complete grade school, or something to that effect, with the message being that there is no judgment of where one is. You start where you are and take it from there. I have always appreciated that and use that metaphor with clients. I have found Hedi to be a constant source of support; her belief in me has made a huge impact on my life, and I will always be grateful for that.

Different students have focused on different aspects of Hedi's teaching, but all agree that it is she herself, her presence, her kind and loving way of teaching and being with students, that is the "difference that makes the difference". In many ways, the teacher is the lesson. Kathleen Lacey summed it up, "My experience of Hedi is one of receiving unconditional love and acceptance."

Over the years of her own study and participation in the national and international psychosynthesis communities, Hedi has seen many different approaches to psychosynthesis. She has seen theoretical differences and disagreements among the various teachers and practitioners. She says, "Some of this is arguing about maps, versus exploring the territory." But, she also notes that "different ones of us are maybe called to work on different parts of that territory. We have accepted different assignments which need tending to."

In her own teaching, Hedi has always invited others to teach with her and has been assisted by several people since the earliest days of the Psychosynthesis Center of Wisconsin. All together, she has taught about 100 students, and mentored 15 to 20 professionals who either use psychosynthesis in mental health fields or in teaching and consulting.

What happens now that the founder of the Psychosynthesis Center of Wisconsin resides in North Carolina? Has the "center" left the state of Wisconsin? Hedi says, "The people in this Psychosynthesis Center are looking for evolving ways of being a center. We are aiming towards helping people experience a change of consciousness versus resolution of problems. What we're doing is giving birth to an evolving model, which we are still creating. We are teaching people to use psychosynthesis in everyday life; we are incorporating psychosynthesis in the arts and developing a model for psychosynthesis research." Much of this is still in the bare beginnings, but we are excited about this evolving network model. We are also clear that whatever comes in under the umbrella of the Psychosynthesis Center of Wisconsin has to be explicitly psychosynthesis.

Hedi insists, "This is the time for psychosynthesis. I don't believe psychosynthesis is past its time. I believe this is its flowering time. It's the time for a diversity of gifts, interests, skill sets, and work experiences. We want as diverse a group as one can imagine, that works together. This includes geographic diversity—spread throughout Wisconsin."

Long-term, Hedi envisions possibly having a summer school with week- and month-long class sessions, that also offers individual guidance or mentoring sessions. She says her move has jump-started more creative ways of thinking. "Getting out of the familiar starts a different way of thinking. I had to make a decision: do I want to continue to do psychosynthesis in Wisconsin? Or, do I just change the name? It prompted a new way of thinking in others as well. There is a ripple effect. Other people are deciding that they want to do something too. Now the center itself is a big space – when we look at where we are all located. Although the Center has become very large, it is held together by the 'group soul', which is a magnetic force of some kind that yet allows considerable freedom."

At this point Hedi says she is open to and awaiting further inner direction. She plans to continue to offer an annual psychosynthesis retreat in Wisconsin, to guide the evolution of the Psychosynthesis Center of Wisconsin, and to mentor several of the new teachers emerging in Wisconsin. Her work with the Center for Awakening, a nonprofit group she and others established, remains important to her, and she will continue to be on its board of directors. At the national and international levels, Hedi serves on the AAP Steering Committee and helps guide the course of psychosynthesis development in an even broader scope.

September 25, 2005