Recently I was fortunate enough to go to Florence. I turned this into a mini vacation, in Tuscany first (Pisa, Lucca and Montecatini Terme) and then Florence itself. Whilst the vacation was good, despite the crazy driving of the Italians (truly scary in their capacity to pull out of junctions and parking spaces at the side of the road with no indication) the real focus of the trip had come about through an opportunity created by a great friend who I trained in Psychosynthesis with from 1999-2002.
Already friends, training together, as the babies of the course (by age and therapeutic experience at least) far from wiping out the friendship as some on the training thought would happen - including the course director at times, mind you her comment when we turned up for the start of the second year was a surprised “Oh I didn’t expect you two to come back”! - Training together, alongside shared journeys into Kabbalistic magic, the Findhorn community in Scotland, Buddhism and writing (amongst other things…) cemented a shared creative drive. When as a student, I was struggling to complete my first homework in Evolutionary Astrology it was Keith that I turned too to help me think through the psychology of the birth chart on that depth level.
Keith, a Psychosynthesis Therapist working in a university and private practice, had the university support a trip to the Psychosynthesis conference in Rome in which he presented an excellent paper, Paradise Sustained, which can be read here - http://keithhackwood.com/paradise-sustained/
A paper that rather ruffled some of the expensive older Italian feathers: a Psychosynthesis community in Italy somewhat notorious for closed ranks. Will Parfitt (http://www.willparfitt.com/) who gave a keynote address at the end of the conference singled out Keith’s approach as representative of a future potential for the Psychosynthesis community. For those who wanted to there was a trip to Florence to the Psychosynthesis Institute, basically the old home and workplace of Roberto Assagioli. Keith had written to the conference organisers previously about his friend, an author and international speaker who could not make the conference but would love to see the homestead of Psychosynthesis (no actual lie…) and I have this good friend to thank for what turned into a profound encounter for both of us with the private papers of a renaissance man some of whose work has been wilfully concealed from the world. Even it appeared the very people who had trained us!
After an introduction and brief tour of the house by the group of women visiting and, it was revealed, organising a recently discovered batch of material from Assagioli’s private archive that had only been opened up because the attic room it was stored in had come in danger of water damage from a leak. These boxes were literally ordered into the basement to be stored away (the symbolism of the layers of the unconscious and the attempted repression is almost comical) and yet one writer in residence who was assisting could not help herself but have a look in the box. Thank you, Pandora.