About Psychosynthesis Avalon
“… a billion stars go spinning through the night,
blazing high above your head.
But in you is the presence that
will be, when all the stars are dead.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
Psychosynthesis Avalon was founded on May 1st, 1996 by Will Parfitt and Patti Howe with the byline ‘the quality we choose for ourselves’. At that time in England there was much concern over proposed regulation of the healing therapies and our purpose was to secure an outlet for Psychosynthesis: which was not just aimed at getting students through the hoops required (or imagined to be required) for accreditation; which offered psychosynthesis as a way of personal and spiritual development for everyone; and which aims to follow the vision and values of its founder, Roberto Assagioli.
Of course it is really important to have safeguards in place regarding the practice of counsellors and psychotherapists and both Will and Patti are registered psychotherapists. At the same time, however, we hold a concern that too much standardization and regulation-meeting training can stifle or even annul the intuitive, instinctive and naturally wise aspects of each individual that an open, truly person-centred, psycho-spiritual training can provide.
PS Avalon Publishing was set up in 2003 to publish quality books in the field of personal and spiritual development and psycho-spiritual poetry and to date has produced twenty-two titles.
Life-Long Learning
Whilst we offer occasional group courses on various aspects of psychosynthesis, our primary focus is life-long learning, and to this end the distance learning programme run by Will Parfitt is central to our work. We do not train therapists and all our students and graduates expressly know that the Diploma we issue is in Psychosynthesis for Personal and Spiritual Development, and is in no way a qualification for working with others in a professional situation. Receiving the Diploma does, however, show that the recipient has successfully completed an advanced, thorough and relatively hard programme of theoretical and practical learning of the visions, values and application of Psychosynthesis.
For graduates who have undertaken a complementary and appropriate training in therapeutic or coaching practice in an individual or group setting, the intensive work during the Diploma course enables them to apply Psychosynthesis in their chosen field. This is not a formal qualification but a recognition of the depth of understanding that such a deep study of Psychosynthesis inevitably engenders.
The hours undertaken on the courses are also fully countable for Continuing Professional Development (CPD) purposes. Both the distance programme and our occasional group-based courses are ideal for this purpose.
A Dynamic Process
Whist Psychosynthesis Avalon aims to bring psychosynthesis up-to-date, including insights from modern research and practice, we also honour the deeper vision of psychosynthesis, restoring soul as the central focus, recognizing that the dark side of our nature is equally part of the soul's journey as is the light. From this viewpoint, meaning and value return to life, helping us make decisions about who we are and what we want in life, not selfishly but in relation to the greater whole. The practice of psychosynthesis brings a dynamic sense of self to the present moment, and a sense of meaning to ourselves and to our future, individually and collectively.
The work of Psychosynthesis requires looking deeply into the here and now relational situation of one’s life and the issues such a focus brings, uncovering past events that carry meaning, watching the messages of the unconscious through dreams, the use of language, and therapeutic procedures. We learn to be mindful, listening to and carefully watching the body and external world as prime sources of unconscious relating. We hold the belief that every individual has the potential to heal, and that the best healing happens through the body and in everyday life experience.
An Integrative Approach
Despite the fancy definitions sometimes given to the word, to integrate something simply means to combine its parts into a whole, usually in co-operation with someone or something else. The process of putting these parts together is a definition of the work of psychosynthesis, always with the aim to co-operate with the process as it naturally happens, not imagining or expecting it to be complete, to accept that evolution implies devolution and the process of integration includes dis-integration, to recognize we are part of the process not its goal.
Everything we do is integrative. We live with: that is, not in isolation but with someone or something else - with ourselves, with family, partners, objects, people, the world. This process of living with involves a continual integration - putting together the pieces of ourselves, our relationships to other people, and between ourselves and the world.
Roberto Assagioli described Psychosynthesis as being essentially about ‘...the genuine living experience of interpersonal and inter-individual communications, relationships, interplay; by cooperation between individuals, and among groups - and even by a blending (italics his), through intuition, empathy, understanding and identification.’
