A Journey in our Star:
Bridges for a new education.
In this book Enrica Piccapietra describes some of her experiences as a teacher. In the first years her students were children with problematic families, often having painful backgrounds. From her descriptions it’s immediately clear that she’s an empathetic teacher, with educational skills and an ability to communicate. At the base of her job, as described in this book, there’s the star diagram, created by Roberto Assagioli, the founder of psychosynthesis. To better understand the meaning of this diagram it’s important to say a few words about symbols in general: a subject often forgotten but one that’s important to keep into consideration any time it comes to education and training, as well as our social life. Symbols are an intuitive, effective, deep and immediate way to communicate; symbols represent subjective realities that would be harder, if not impossible, to describe with words. For example, sun is a symbol of light and warmth, sometimes also in the spiritual world. But the use of words to communicate that set of experiences represented by the sun for each of us isn’t necessarily recommended. Other examples: the vase or the cup can represent the containment of something precious and delicate to be protected and preserved. And it can also be a spiritual treasure. The font represents the purity of roots. The climb to the mountain, the ascent to the highest level of conscious. The sea, with all its secrets and mysteries, can represent the unconscious. Being familiar with symbols language is really helpful, because they’re the language used by the unconscious. Symbols help to evoke intuitions and direct psyche’s energies; so to set up our life, they indicate a direction and describing a way of being. Advertisement uses them a lot: but for its own purpose, at the service of profits and not always of human beings. Icons and logos strike everybody, especially children, and they represent a commercial use of symbols due to their capacity to influence human behaviors.For example, the big yellow ‘M’ of a famous fast food multinational is the first letter of the alphabet that American children learn to recognize. Luckily symbols can be used not only to sell, but also to educate and inspire. The structure of this book is based on a symbol: the star symbol that is also the base of a famous diagram created by Assagioli. Jung, his colleague and friend, talked about four psychic functions: sensation, emotion, thought, and intuition. To these, Assagioli decided to add, to complete the map of what we are, three other functions not included in Jung’s four: imagination, desire-impulse, and will. He represented them as a six-point star’s rays: each ray of the star is one of the first six functions. The seventh function, the will, directs them (or should) from the center. Will is the direct expression of the Self that, in turn, is represented in the center of the star. The star is a symbol of light, which shines in the darkness, that guides (like the Pole star) and also of completeness because its rays go in all directions. In human history various schools of thought, philosophical and religious leanings have stressed more this or that psychic function, sometimes also expressing perplexity and worries regarding the others.For example, desire/impulse has often been seen as dangerous or misleading; the imagination as source of unreality; sensations, that’s the body, like something heavy and obtuse; mind as arid and cold; emotions as deceptive.Assagioli’s perspective is different: for him, every function must and can be recognized and understood and then developed and regulated. This is an essential didactic and educational task that can last all lifelong. Instead, if some of the functions are not developed or are wrongly expressed, all our being is affected by it.
