“The Ontology of Architecture.” What does this mean? We are at the OntoArte gallery in Trevi, where the seminar is being held, and the immediacy of the artwork on display – the functional aspect of the white panel painted black and red – conceals true poetics: a mental architecture called Ontopsychology. During the conference, the words of Prof. Meneghetti, the leader of the OntoArte movement, expressed another important theme that was revealed by his works. The serene critique of denunciatory art in favour of art that praises beauty is backed by philosophical and sociological explanations. It is a perspective of creative intuition that sees, recognizes and elevates the local criterion of formal beauty. “Consumerism places us in a culturally impossible situation,” he explains. “Banks, local capitalists and politicians try to give work to everyone in order to avoid social tension. Mass democracy has replaced the patronage of the ancients. We are in the throes of serial production and consumerism is ruining consumers.” Lizori comes to mind, a place where, along the streets and alleys, in place of house numbers we find the homeowners’ names painted on ceramic tiles. It is a hamlet in which one can easily see paintings and sculptures, and observe how nature and construction have emerged to nourish the particular presence that is evident in the air, a presence known as genius loci. He notes, “It is a place where nature formalizes its way of being and encountering in order to become the contemporaneity of the universal spirit and the historical function that has been identified.” The seminar brochure notes: “One cannot be a collaborator of civilization without knowing the ontological criterion.” In short, it is a true modus operandi. It will be interesting to use the ontology of architecture as a starting point for building civilization. Along these lines, one of the comments at the conference is inspiring. “Within OntoArte we find the restoration of simplicity, spontaneity and aesthetic sensitivity. If we were to base things on the criterion of beauty rather than that of conformity (right or wrong, good or bad), the world would be a better place.”
Visualizzazione post con etichetta associazione internazionale ontopsicologia. Mostra tutti i post
Visualizzazione post con etichetta associazione internazionale ontopsicologia. Mostra tutti i post
giovedì 25 ottobre 2012
domenica 14 ottobre 2012
Concert of Antonio Meneghetti at the National Opera House in Riga
CONCERT BY MAESTRO ANTONIO MENEGHETTI
Riga – Maestro Antonio Meneghetti performed in Riga for the first time, with a concert for piano and synthesizers held at the prestigious venue of the National Opera House, a treasure of Latvian architecture inaugurated in 1863. The Maestro’s previous performance was held exactly four months ago, on 8 December 2006, in the Sala Petrassi at Rome’s Parco della Musica, the largest auditorium in Europe and recently declared the most important auditorium in the world. The Rome concert was held under the patronage of the National Academy of Santa Cecilia, one of the world’s oldest musical institutions (founded in 1585), which thus recognizes the Maestro’s musical and artistic validity on an international level. On the stage of the Main Hall of the Latvian National Opera House, Maestro Meneghetti performed on piano and electronic keyboards, interpreting his profound knowledge of classical music in modern tonalities. Meneghetti has received the Italian government’s Prize for Culture three times and is a member of the academic senate of the International Academy of Modern Art. His artistic approach stems from the consummation of the teachings of the most highly regarded academies. As Meneghetti himself affirms, “In music one must decide whether to live in spaces of advancement, without destroying what came before, or create a new universe.” Indeed, his music, which has made him a famous concert artist who is in demand around the world, rigorously takes all musical backgrounds into account, from percussion techniques to the spirituality of Gregorian music and from the metaphysics of Indian music to polyphonic choral music, without overlooking classical orchestration and its composition and decomposition. Based on these conditions, Meneghetti has developed his own musical art that respects classical academic precepts yet is also connected to seeming improvisation. The latter is a divergence that, according to the artist, is the quintessential “instrument” with which one can go beyond the “two horizons” that Bach considered insurmountable and with which musical pathos can be grasped, moment by moment. According to Meneghetti, “With the movement in the ‘third horizon’ music is not invented but rediscovered with the person who is capable of listening to it. Music is the action of the soul; it is an order of life that lyrically courts our sentiments.” Meneghetti’s concert attracted music lovers from around the world – Italy, Brazil, Russia, Germany, England and the Baltic countries – as well as ministers, politicians and important social figures in Latvia. For all enthusiasts who are constantly in search of innovative musical experiences, this concert in Riga was unquestionably a unique experience not to be missed in order to gain first-hand knowledge of the music of this eclectic artist.
sabato 13 ottobre 2012
European knowledge ...
European knowledge is like the oil in Arabic countries: one has to know how to extract and refine it. However, the issue is the following: does reversibility exist between what is taught at university and what the professional world demands? Can professors really teach the practical meaning of work? The answer offered by the ontopsychological viewpoint: FOIL Management.
The Convention, held at the office of the European Parliament in Italy last May19th, has been Supported by the Office of the European Parliament in Italy, the Ministry of Education, of University and Research, Rome University “La Sapienza”, Faculty of Sociology, the Region of Lazio, the Province of Rome and the local Government of Rome, in addition to the Consent of the Presidency of the Italian Republic. It represents the nth leaf of the profitable collaboration between the European Ontopsychology Association and Rome University “La Sapienza” I Chair of Sociology, as the chairperson of the debate, Prof. Paolo De Nardis, director of the I Chair of Sociology and president CATTID, Rome University “La Sapienza”, pointed out1. It is a very topical and impelling subject for the future of our old continent: the European harmonization of the regulation of professions and respective courses of study. The main theme is the need to have an extremely concrete relationship between instruction and working experience, a stronger need in Italy than in the other European countries. It is an important possibility for comparison and the proposal of the ontopsychological view regarding culture, work, and making the young responsible for their own life2.
“The institutional” interventions have emphasized a series of successes, reforms, innovations (also with some disagreement), but everybody has come to a standstill before the evidence that university, studies and formative courses can give something, but not all. Although several efforts have been made, we have felt the sense of an incomplete, vain answer.
Let us try to understand why.
Although the Italian didactics Reform of the “3+2”, has increased the formative profiles – offering “slimmer” courses which are more easily put into practice in the work market – it has obtained a favourable opinion, but a lot of problems have arisen for which several solutions have been suggested. For example, it has been said that a lot of formative profiles risk being dispersive for young people if not based on a precise cultural design. They have also said that the “3+2” has reduced the distances from the work market and professions, but Italy is still suffering from a University which is not a top priority in the government political programs and that only by investing in education, the real structural heart of the problem, will we be able to define an accurate and European profile of professions. Moreover, several disciplines from the five year bachelor’s degree are in the three year courses, and in this way, the student is “bombarded” with information and has no time to synthesise what he is learning.
Actually, if we look at the problem from the ontopsychological viewpoint we can identify where the difficulty is: the institutions keep on encouraging individual welfarism, which causes the mitigation of responsibility in the young. Nevertheless, today, what are the choices and the opportunities for a young person? It is the development that creates the professions, and not vice versa, i.e. there is no course at the end of which our life can be settled. To nurse the infantile idea that there is a prearranged road made of guaranteed stages in our life, which soon become demands – such as degree, open-end contract, and retirement – for the young is equivalent to digging a grave that, before being professional, is psychological. Therefore, the truth is that institutions are not able to keep pace with what instead the individual by himself is able to produce.
Posing the question correctly, the ontopsychological education gives a suitable answer too. The time of education needs a culture of value, a specific forma mentis that goes beyond learning seen as a deposit of knowledge and technical abilities, these are certainly necessary, but are not sufficient unless the individual also has a foundation of conscience, health and functionality. Without these requirements, the world of work is probably only a pipe dream or a place people reach through cooptation and nepotism. Education is a setting up of personality: there is a similitude between to be able to do and to be able to be. It is therefore essential to include a space dedicated to the study and development of personality in any instruction. It is indispensable to promote knowledge, which is the mainstay of the person’s functional evolution to the elaboration of construction and social responsibility. At this point, the question comes up: What is the personality? In addition, how can we speak of personality without facing the topics of what are the psyche and the unconscious too? Could this gap actually be the determining factor that often causes young people to confuse illusions with motivations? Their own emotional deficiencies with concrete existential prospects?
Besides, we must not forget Europe. Italy has adopted with the 2005 communitarian law (carried out from 25 January 2006) the directive on the professional qualifications. Today, where working in France or Germany is like working near home, we speak about the necessity of harmonization, i.e. to create some legislative systems regulating education and work in a compatible way between one State member and another. In this sense, the establishment of the triennial bachelor in Italy could be in contrast with a few movements of the professions reorganization on a European scale. The institutional architecture of “3+2” has only a superficial homogeneity that, not only in Italy but also in other countries, has actually led to different solutions.3 However, here there is another problem: other foreign university structures, even though prestigious or connected to valid business stages, are looking for answers too. As if it were not enough, the problem related to the professional orders is still open. The comparison between the Mediterranean systems (supporters of orders and colleges) and the Anglo-Saxon one (where associations carry out this role) attests that now the difference is no longer so distinct and consequently it is necessary to rewrite the common rules here too. We go back to the bureaucratic solution.
The ontopsychological viewpoint shows an answer “dramatically” concrete and true on this point too: to teach the young that there is another world beyond the one they see “from the keyhole” of their home which claims them, that there are countries (for example, the Baltic ones) full of practical possibilities, resources, availability for realizing an entrepreneurial project in a few days. The solution is to give the young a universal humanistic culture (in which Europe is immensely rich) which shows them an overview of truth without illusion? and that, in last analysis, makes them responsible as builders of their own existence. So the culture must recover an ontological dimension that enables everyone to control the logical reason of truth, i.e. to know the way of doing, to know the logic. The institutions should help in this sense, putting some instruments at our disposal, giving a general survey of truth. Anyway, the individual has the greatest responsibility regarding his own existence.
We can agree that it is necessary to have a minimum of common European cultural base on which every State may prepare itself as it likes, and that the continuous learning and the adaptation to the various social systems of reference is very important too, since technology advances very fast on all the professional levels and the professional categories. However, we do not agree on the excessive bureaucratization of knowledge and on the fact that people think of waiting for the final solution always coming down (Italy or Europe indifferently). We are all waiting for answers, but what is the question?
The ontopsychological education catches the end of a skein again: does reversibility exist between the contents taught at university and what the professional world demands?
Can professors really teach the practical meaning of work?
Once again, there is a realistic, tangible, and accomplishable answer: FOIL management. There are twelve modules, entrepreneurs from every field and “apprentices leader” together in the same classroom, everyone with his own wealth and problems. Up front, an educator whose role is “to watch over” this circularity of osmosis, in a continuous feedback of people who are already in the world of work, that allows hic et nunc to verify the realistic advantage (what is not useful is modified) and the reversibility of the subjects dealt with. This allows measuring carefully which contents to deal with and to which depth. However, there is a further ingredient: there where one can discover a specific attitude, the entrepreneur himself becomes the object of formation and put himself in the teacher’s shoes. Therefore, not only a continuous adjustment and updating of the programs content, but also a direct transmission from those who are out there every day, risking, investing with responsibility and sacrifice their own time and money. And the effects are evident and speak for themselves: the project not only suits any profession, but it is also “exported”, with a certain flexibility (the program is three-quarters mutual and for a quarter changes in accordance with the country where it occurs), in other countries (Baltic Republics, Brazil, Germany), in a formative process of a really international and interdisciplinary nature. The purpose is to create a sort of European university, maintaining the aspect related to the subject of psychology unchanged. The method used by FOIL is the ontopsychological one, an interdisciplinary methodology suited to any profession, in whichever nation. Once the research is finished, maybe the FOIL Management course will result in a diploma. This didactic experimentation could replace a lot of American MBAs and give a European connotation.4
European knowledge is like the oil in Arabic countries: one has to know how to extract and refine it because the world of work includes some operators that allow for individual accomplishment to a purpose that is greatly social for everybody. The fact that the FOIL Management project, originating from a private initiative, is also able to open the way to the public institutions can depend on everyone who is reading too. In fact, one thing is sure: the answers are there, it is enough to want them and start working on them.
1 An important Convention on ‘Cinelogy: Cinema and the Unconscious’ has held at the Conference Room of the Rome University “La Sapienza”, Faculty of Sciences of Communication on 26th May 2005, in which cinema has been analyzed by the ontopsychological point of view. Cf. New Ontopsychology Review, n.1/2-2005, Psicologica Ed., Rome, pp. 38-45.
2 Next to the exponents of the Italian university world – such as Prof. Renato Guarini, Chancellor of the Rome University “La Sapienza”, Prof. Mario Morcellini and Prof. Luciano Benadusi, Deans respectively of the Faculty of Sciences of Communication and the Faculty of Sociology of the Rome University “La Sapienza” – have also intervened at the debate, after the thanks by the Officer of the European Parliament Dr. Orazio Parisotto, MP Stefano Zappalà, a member of the European Parliament and reporter both of the Directive for the Acknowledgment of Professional Qualifications and the Directive on the Public Contracts, and FOIL, in the persons of Dr. Pamela Bernabei (Consultant Coordinator FOIL and A.I.O. - International Ontopsychology Association) and Dr. Luca Morotti (FOIL Consultant), with the contribution of Andrea Pezzi, a famous television presenter, as an expert in communication and mass media, as well as operator of Ontopsychology.
3 For example, it is enough to say that “3+2” is the Bachelor Master (BM) in Europe, because it is the English model of Bachelor and Master, but in England, the Bachelor is not so professional a level as the triennial degree is seen to be in Italy.
4 Concerning this, the myths of the American universities and the English ones of Oxford and Cambridge ought to be exploded. Some research has underlined that the latter are the universities with the lowest level of knowledge. On the contrary, in the German school, – for example - theory is side by side with practice by work experience in a company, and a young person has to demonstrate having carried it out in order to find a job at the end of his studies. This is interesting, because a young person gets into the habit of a condition of sacrifice and responsibility. Acting, instead, like the French young people with their protest against the Contract of First Employment means not caring for risk and living on the illusion that the enterprise is obliged to give one a job.
The telegram sent to the European Ontopsychology Association
The telegram sent to the European
Ontopsychology Association by the President of the Italian Republic, Giorgio
Napolitano
“The Convention entitled ‘University Instruction and Professions: Towards a Europe of Knowledge’', promoted by your Association, is an occasion of reflection and comparison on a topic of cultural and social significance. Innovation, search, and education are determining factors of growth, cohesion, and integration for coping with the challenges of an open and globalized society in continuous evolution. With this awareness the President of the Republic gives the organizers and all the participants in the meeting a cordial salute and wishes everybody good work.”
“The Convention entitled ‘University Instruction and Professions: Towards a Europe of Knowledge’', promoted by your Association, is an occasion of reflection and comparison on a topic of cultural and social significance. Innovation, search, and education are determining factors of growth, cohesion, and integration for coping with the challenges of an open and globalized society in continuous evolution. With this awareness the President of the Republic gives the organizers and all the participants in the meeting a cordial salute and wishes everybody good work.”
mercoledì 15 aprile 2009
ONTOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE AND CONSCIOUSNESS
“All my scientific work can be viewed as an exploration and demonstration of the capacity to know what is real in a true and reversible manner (from the concept to the object and vice versa). In addition to my philosophical and theological competence, I have tested each of my positions through the clinical experience of individual and group psychotherapy. On the strength of decades of work and consistent results, I feel safe in asserting that I have the authority needed to demonstrate the capacity to know and judge of our intelligence. The error that mires our critical consciousness is not found in the nature of our intellectual faculties or those of our will. The error resides in the process of reflection, in the formulation and determination of the consciousness. Once this has been revised, philosophy and science are rendered authentic points of reference in the evolution of true existence.”
The style and the lines of arguments are not easy. But even Aristotle or Kant might envy the simplicity of the explanation. All of Ontopsychology, from clinical practice to art, is put to use on addressing the critical problem of awareness. The familiarity of the world, between intellect and ontology, allows Meneghetti to manoeuvre his intellectual attitudes in masterful fashion, without ever losing sight of Parmenides’ rule: being is, not being is not. Existence, to the extent that it constitutes awareness, either coincides with the principle or has never existed. Today philosophy no longer exists: all that remains is thought based on fragmentation and failure, and thus approximation and nihilism. Meneghetti opens the argument.
The style and the lines of arguments are not easy. But even Aristotle or Kant might envy the simplicity of the explanation. All of Ontopsychology, from clinical practice to art, is put to use on addressing the critical problem of awareness. The familiarity of the world, between intellect and ontology, allows Meneghetti to manoeuvre his intellectual attitudes in masterful fashion, without ever losing sight of Parmenides’ rule: being is, not being is not. Existence, to the extent that it constitutes awareness, either coincides with the principle or has never existed. Today philosophy no longer exists: all that remains is thought based on fragmentation and failure, and thus approximation and nihilism. Meneghetti opens the argument.
lunedì 16 febbraio 2009
The telegram sent to the European Ontopsychology Association by the President of the Italian Republic, Giorgio Napolitano
“The Convention entitled ‘University Instruction and Professions: Towards a Europe of Knowledge’', promoted by your Association, is an occasion of reflection and comparison on a topic of cultural and social significance. Innovation, search, and education are determining factors of growth, cohesion, and integration for coping with the challenges of an open and globalized society in continuous evolution. With this awareness the President of the Republic gives the organizers and all the participants in the meeting a cordial salute and wishes everybody good work.”
Giorgio Napolitano
Giorgio Napolitano
lunedì 19 gennaio 2009
PARIS 31 MAY 2006
The day after the conference at the UNESCO, the Italian, Brazilian and Russian OntoArte Associations organized an event on art, in which some works of the Louvre were commented on.
“Conference” means being together, bringing something together. It is educational to meet in those places, which as far as a higher humanistic civility is concerned are the most important on the planet.
To meet Paris’s intimacy – as it is a lady of centuries of good taste – can help us to better enter some meanings that create a higher life.
When observing all the classical works, the first aspect to be considered is that they communicate a form of super-Ego to us. In fact, these works were chosen by the system of that time, which wished to exalt itself for itself and for posterity. Therefore, through education to art, the super-Ego is introduced with all its facets. Although the artist’s inner truth is not guaranteed, there are some works in which the artist communicates his/her rebellion towards the system. For example, in some works by Veronese, by the Perugia school and by Masaccio, the artist was free to express him/herself.
When we observe the Russian icons – which continue the Byzantine iconography school and, then, the schools of the Italian, Germanic and French Middle Ages – we should remember that, in the 8th century A.D., there were profound wars and controversies between the Ottoman and Christian civilizations. This led to the political intervention of the Emperor of Constantinople and to the outbreak of the Iconoclast war.
It was forbidden to create images concerning the sacred; only images lacking in carnality connected with the earthly sense would be accepted. It was only the great empress Irene that succeeded in bringing some calm in the 8th century A.D. The Western world is still arranged according to her laws.
Therefore, behind images that we consider innocent, a lot of wars, struggles and conflicts occurred, and a great deal of blood was shed.
The International OntoArte School Association’s logo is a face, which arises from a signature, which aims to show the passage from the animal principle to the spiritual evolution. The Brazilian OntoArte Association’s logo is made of a circle protected by a pyramidal hut, which Being’s eye observes. These are free symbols, which do not create any form of super-Ego, but rather are pleasant or indifferent.
We should be careful with art, because through it we are psychologically marked – even as people. Any kind of sacralization, restoration, conservation or fixity to the past is always castrating our present reality. A thousand years ago, the spirit of life used to phenomenalize itself in a certain way; today, it does it in a different way. We are the active expression of it: the more each one of us reaches a perfect realization, the more she writes the spirit of life’s intention.
Ontopsychology
Editrice psicologica
Antonio Meneghetti
News from the Association
“Conference” means being together, bringing something together. It is educational to meet in those places, which as far as a higher humanistic civility is concerned are the most important on the planet.
To meet Paris’s intimacy – as it is a lady of centuries of good taste – can help us to better enter some meanings that create a higher life.
When observing all the classical works, the first aspect to be considered is that they communicate a form of super-Ego to us. In fact, these works were chosen by the system of that time, which wished to exalt itself for itself and for posterity. Therefore, through education to art, the super-Ego is introduced with all its facets. Although the artist’s inner truth is not guaranteed, there are some works in which the artist communicates his/her rebellion towards the system. For example, in some works by Veronese, by the Perugia school and by Masaccio, the artist was free to express him/herself.
When we observe the Russian icons – which continue the Byzantine iconography school and, then, the schools of the Italian, Germanic and French Middle Ages – we should remember that, in the 8th century A.D., there were profound wars and controversies between the Ottoman and Christian civilizations. This led to the political intervention of the Emperor of Constantinople and to the outbreak of the Iconoclast war.
It was forbidden to create images concerning the sacred; only images lacking in carnality connected with the earthly sense would be accepted. It was only the great empress Irene that succeeded in bringing some calm in the 8th century A.D. The Western world is still arranged according to her laws.
Therefore, behind images that we consider innocent, a lot of wars, struggles and conflicts occurred, and a great deal of blood was shed.
The International OntoArte School Association’s logo is a face, which arises from a signature, which aims to show the passage from the animal principle to the spiritual evolution. The Brazilian OntoArte Association’s logo is made of a circle protected by a pyramidal hut, which Being’s eye observes. These are free symbols, which do not create any form of super-Ego, but rather are pleasant or indifferent.
We should be careful with art, because through it we are psychologically marked – even as people. Any kind of sacralization, restoration, conservation or fixity to the past is always castrating our present reality. A thousand years ago, the spirit of life used to phenomenalize itself in a certain way; today, it does it in a different way. We are the active expression of it: the more each one of us reaches a perfect realization, the more she writes the spirit of life’s intention.
Ontopsychology
Editrice psicologica
Antonio Meneghetti
News from the Association
giovedì 15 gennaio 2009
TWENTY YEARS IN BRAZIL
9 February 2008 was a holiday in Brazil. On the beaches and in the hot summer streets the Carnival was celebrated. But it was a day when we celebrated something which has a very different value to Carnival. On this day twenty years ago the great humanistic project at Recanto Maestro began. Twenty years ago Prof. Antonio Meneghetti held a conference where he illustrated projects and concepts that have all been realized and that are still considered modern today. That was the day that Meneghetti chose the place where his project would take shape.
Three years earlier in 1985 the A.B.O. (Brazilian Ontopsychology Association) was founded, which autonomously held congresses and conferences under the direction of Dr. Alécio Vidor, who graduated at the beginning of the seventies together with Prof. Meneghetti at the PUST in Italy.
The Professor arrived in Brazil in 1988 as an honorary member of the A.B.O. He appreciated the progress the association had made and found fertile ground for the first seeds of this great humanistic thought in Brazil. As a scientist the 9 February, Meneghetti held his first conference in Brazil called “The scientific structure of Ontopsychology” at Santa Maria in the Rio Grande do Sul, before an audience of scholars and scientists and members of the A.B.O. As an artist Meneghetti held his first OntoArte exhibition in Brazil. As an entrepreneur he chose the most suitable place to host his activities, and as a maestro he began to manage all these factors with his Brazilian collaborators. After the conference Meneghetti identified a virtual and positive presence in a place thirty kilometres from Santa Maria, and at the time it was impossible to imagine what it would become. That was the day Recanto Maestro was born.
9 February 1988: that abandoned place dominated by the wilderness of nature had taken on a whole new image in the Professor’s mind. An image that took concrete form in twenty years of hard work, love and the geniality of a man who was able to bring the implicit project of the place to light.
9 February 2008: that inhospitable place is now an International Centre for Humanist Art and Culture, admired by people and institutes all over the world, a training centre for intelligent minds that continue the ontopsychological culture based on the principle that realizing one’s own individual project guarantees social development. [See the article in the journal attached to the dossier].
Recanto Maestro which is still based on its core business, the training and forming of human intelligence, is in constant growth, year after year, becoming a centre for business, residence, ecology, art and architecture, which inserted in society becomes the practical and actual exposition of the model of civilization proposed by Ontopsychology: a model centred on man who is a responsible protagonist based on a virtuality capable of self-fulfilment in the Being.
As it is the heart of the scientific, artistic and business activity in Brazil, Recanto Maestro has found its growth strengthened through the expansion of Ontopsychology over the national territory, above all in Sao Paulo, Santo Angelo and Bombinhas.
F.O.I.L. (Fostering Ontopsychological Interdisciplinary Leadership skills) is based in Sao Paulo, the economic and financial centre of Brazil, and offers congresses, conferences and seminars, publications, business consultation and higher training courses. The new FOIL offices in Sao Paulo, opened in 2007, are in one of the busiest commercial streets in the city and this has given structure and new strength to the business.
In reality business and political training based on Ontopsychological knowledge began long before FOIL was established, with Residence for businesspeople and politicians, conferences at the F.I.E.R.G.S. (Federation of Industries in the State of Rio Grande do Sul), meetings in 1995 with the President of the republic Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and with the Vice-president, Marco Maciel, besides those with senators, deputies, and governors. The twenty years of Ontopsychology in Brazil have always been characterized by the contributions that this science can give to public and private initiatives, and as a consequence to the development of the country.
Sao Paulo also hosts the most important OntoArte gallery in Brazil. It is situated in one of the most privileged areas, where the most important art galleries in the city can be found, and it hosts every artistic expression of OntoArte: paintings, drawings, design objects, carpets, crystals, ceramics, fashion, all with Antonio Meneghetti’s music playing in the background. On entering the gallery you leave daily life to enter the pure aesthetics of life. The OntoArte Association, which represents and promotes the OntoArte artistic current, besides Recanto Maestro also has offices in Santo Angelo, immersed in Gaucho territory, which host days of pleasure, relaxation and study surrounded by the strong red earth, the countryside and a lake of over six hectares.
The OntoArte artistic movement began through art exhibitions in the principle cities of the country – Brasilia, Salvador, Porto Alegre and Sao Paulo. The exhibition at MASP (Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo), the biggest museum in Latin America deserves a special mention. Concerts in important theatres have also been held, as well as those realized in the natural amphitheatre “Genius Loci” in Recanto Maestro and on the lake at Santo Angelo. And again, fashion shows and the inauguration of architectural works. In 1993, as President of the International school for OntoArte, Antonio Meneghetti personally conferred the honorary diploma of OntoArte on Oscar Niemeyer.
Another example of OntoArte in architecture is in Bombinhas, on Quatro Ilhas beach, called Calipso, this splendid building realized by the Professor was publicly exhibited as a work of international value at the World congress for Architecture in Istanbul, Turkey in 2005.
These twenty years in Brazil have also seen the establishment of companies and organizations that represent and perform their activities in accordance with the principles of Ontopsychology. Beside FOIL, the A.B.O. and the OntoArte Association, the institutional and entrepreneurial picture is completed by the E.L.O. (Escola Latino-americana de Ontopsicologia), which promotes the study of Ontopsychological science, Ontopsicologia Editrice which deals with the publishing of books of Ontopsychological thought, AM Style which deals with fashion and unites Brazilian production with Italian skill in haute couture and the Capo Zorial hotel which hosts the events held at Recanto Maestro.
The recently opened Antonio Meneghetti Faculty is the new pearl of higher education in Brazil, where youths and adults are trained in the idea of social and existential responsibility, using Ontopsychology together with modern business and administration theories integrated with practical application.
Besides the creation of the Management Faculty, it is worth highlighting the collaboration between the Russian academic world, represented by the St. Petersburg State University which hosts the Ontopsychology Chair in the Psychology Faculty, and the Brazilian students. It is an important and prestigious collaboration, especially considering that for the love of science the Russian professors travel thousands of miles to give lessons on Brazilian territory.
This article summarizes twenty years of history and unfortunately there was not sufficient space to include many of the initiatives. The point of this summary of the last twenty years is to show that no great project happens by chance. The seeds conceived by a far-reaching mind, were thrown on fertile soil by a knowing hand, and with the willpower and the loving care of many they became history, giving life to new branches which continue towards the development of a world humanism, available to all those who wish to enjoy it in the fullness of their life. In 2008 the A.B.O. will publish the book “20 years of Ontopsychology in Brazil”, over 100 pages that gather the history of this science in Brazil.
Three years earlier in 1985 the A.B.O. (Brazilian Ontopsychology Association) was founded, which autonomously held congresses and conferences under the direction of Dr. Alécio Vidor, who graduated at the beginning of the seventies together with Prof. Meneghetti at the PUST in Italy.
The Professor arrived in Brazil in 1988 as an honorary member of the A.B.O. He appreciated the progress the association had made and found fertile ground for the first seeds of this great humanistic thought in Brazil. As a scientist the 9 February, Meneghetti held his first conference in Brazil called “The scientific structure of Ontopsychology” at Santa Maria in the Rio Grande do Sul, before an audience of scholars and scientists and members of the A.B.O. As an artist Meneghetti held his first OntoArte exhibition in Brazil. As an entrepreneur he chose the most suitable place to host his activities, and as a maestro he began to manage all these factors with his Brazilian collaborators. After the conference Meneghetti identified a virtual and positive presence in a place thirty kilometres from Santa Maria, and at the time it was impossible to imagine what it would become. That was the day Recanto Maestro was born.
9 February 1988: that abandoned place dominated by the wilderness of nature had taken on a whole new image in the Professor’s mind. An image that took concrete form in twenty years of hard work, love and the geniality of a man who was able to bring the implicit project of the place to light.
9 February 2008: that inhospitable place is now an International Centre for Humanist Art and Culture, admired by people and institutes all over the world, a training centre for intelligent minds that continue the ontopsychological culture based on the principle that realizing one’s own individual project guarantees social development. [See the article in the journal attached to the dossier].
Recanto Maestro which is still based on its core business, the training and forming of human intelligence, is in constant growth, year after year, becoming a centre for business, residence, ecology, art and architecture, which inserted in society becomes the practical and actual exposition of the model of civilization proposed by Ontopsychology: a model centred on man who is a responsible protagonist based on a virtuality capable of self-fulfilment in the Being.
As it is the heart of the scientific, artistic and business activity in Brazil, Recanto Maestro has found its growth strengthened through the expansion of Ontopsychology over the national territory, above all in Sao Paulo, Santo Angelo and Bombinhas.
F.O.I.L. (Fostering Ontopsychological Interdisciplinary Leadership skills) is based in Sao Paulo, the economic and financial centre of Brazil, and offers congresses, conferences and seminars, publications, business consultation and higher training courses. The new FOIL offices in Sao Paulo, opened in 2007, are in one of the busiest commercial streets in the city and this has given structure and new strength to the business.
In reality business and political training based on Ontopsychological knowledge began long before FOIL was established, with Residence for businesspeople and politicians, conferences at the F.I.E.R.G.S. (Federation of Industries in the State of Rio Grande do Sul), meetings in 1995 with the President of the republic Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and with the Vice-president, Marco Maciel, besides those with senators, deputies, and governors. The twenty years of Ontopsychology in Brazil have always been characterized by the contributions that this science can give to public and private initiatives, and as a consequence to the development of the country.
Sao Paulo also hosts the most important OntoArte gallery in Brazil. It is situated in one of the most privileged areas, where the most important art galleries in the city can be found, and it hosts every artistic expression of OntoArte: paintings, drawings, design objects, carpets, crystals, ceramics, fashion, all with Antonio Meneghetti’s music playing in the background. On entering the gallery you leave daily life to enter the pure aesthetics of life. The OntoArte Association, which represents and promotes the OntoArte artistic current, besides Recanto Maestro also has offices in Santo Angelo, immersed in Gaucho territory, which host days of pleasure, relaxation and study surrounded by the strong red earth, the countryside and a lake of over six hectares.
The OntoArte artistic movement began through art exhibitions in the principle cities of the country – Brasilia, Salvador, Porto Alegre and Sao Paulo. The exhibition at MASP (Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo), the biggest museum in Latin America deserves a special mention. Concerts in important theatres have also been held, as well as those realized in the natural amphitheatre “Genius Loci” in Recanto Maestro and on the lake at Santo Angelo. And again, fashion shows and the inauguration of architectural works. In 1993, as President of the International school for OntoArte, Antonio Meneghetti personally conferred the honorary diploma of OntoArte on Oscar Niemeyer.
Another example of OntoArte in architecture is in Bombinhas, on Quatro Ilhas beach, called Calipso, this splendid building realized by the Professor was publicly exhibited as a work of international value at the World congress for Architecture in Istanbul, Turkey in 2005.
These twenty years in Brazil have also seen the establishment of companies and organizations that represent and perform their activities in accordance with the principles of Ontopsychology. Beside FOIL, the A.B.O. and the OntoArte Association, the institutional and entrepreneurial picture is completed by the E.L.O. (Escola Latino-americana de Ontopsicologia), which promotes the study of Ontopsychological science, Ontopsicologia Editrice which deals with the publishing of books of Ontopsychological thought, AM Style which deals with fashion and unites Brazilian production with Italian skill in haute couture and the Capo Zorial hotel which hosts the events held at Recanto Maestro.
The recently opened Antonio Meneghetti Faculty is the new pearl of higher education in Brazil, where youths and adults are trained in the idea of social and existential responsibility, using Ontopsychology together with modern business and administration theories integrated with practical application.
Besides the creation of the Management Faculty, it is worth highlighting the collaboration between the Russian academic world, represented by the St. Petersburg State University which hosts the Ontopsychology Chair in the Psychology Faculty, and the Brazilian students. It is an important and prestigious collaboration, especially considering that for the love of science the Russian professors travel thousands of miles to give lessons on Brazilian territory.
This article summarizes twenty years of history and unfortunately there was not sufficient space to include many of the initiatives. The point of this summary of the last twenty years is to show that no great project happens by chance. The seeds conceived by a far-reaching mind, were thrown on fertile soil by a knowing hand, and with the willpower and the loving care of many they became history, giving life to new branches which continue towards the development of a world humanism, available to all those who wish to enjoy it in the fullness of their life. In 2008 the A.B.O. will publish the book “20 years of Ontopsychology in Brazil”, over 100 pages that gather the history of this science in Brazil.
The nineties: Institutional recognition
The world enters the nineties and discovers globalisation. In Russia Prof. Meneghetti sees what others can only imagine. Russia in the early nineties was portrayed as a country on the edge of the abyss. But while others saw a real or presumed coup d’état, queues outside shops and people dying of hunger, the Professor saw a great future for that proud people, who had always been capable of overcoming the most difficult privations. In 1992 Gorbachev had just resisted a state coup organized by the old communist hierarchy. Shootings occurred in the streets of Moscow, but the door to communism had closed once and for all.
Having organized authentication residences in Uzbekistan and Ukraine, some seminars held in Russia inspired two of Meneghetti’s fundamental books. Image and the unconsciousness came from a five-day seminar held in Moscow in March 1994. In the meantime, after years of scientific collaboration, on 20 December 1994 the International Informatization Academy, a scientific body formed by the Russian Parliament and recognized by the UN, conferred the title of “Academician” on Meneghetti for his “original and unceasing activities in the research and development of Science” and in particular for the “discovery of the semantic field”.
In February 1995 he received his honorary degree in psychology from the Psychology Institute of the Academy of Science in Moscow. In June 1997, Ivan Yuzvishin, founder of Informatiology and candidate for the Nobel Prize in Physics, met with Meneghetti in Rome and said: “In 1973 Prof. Meneghetti founded his science and discovered the truth by using his abilities in psychology, sociology, philosophy and art. Due to my preparation I mainly used other sciences like mathematics, astronomy, physics and biology. But we came to the same conclusion, that there is information within every thing: in the depths of human nature there is information, it doesn’t matter which road you take to get there. I am happy to have read and understood that Antonio Meneghetti is a great scientist and above all to have understood that I have taken the right road. I can therefore confirm Antonio Meneghetti’s discoveries with my scientific research: the principles of Informatiology are in accordance with the principles of Ontopsychology”.
In October 1997 the first Ontopsychology Congress in Russia was organized: it was the first world congress, and was held in Moscow at the Russian Academy of Sciences building. It was defined a world congress to acknowledge the globalization in progress, which means that problems and solutions should be dealt with on a world level. The numerous speakers at the congress gave over 150 speeches after the opening messages sent by Kofi Annan and Boris Yeltsin. In 1998 the Professor received the title of Grand Doctor Nauk in psychological science from the government of the Russian Federation.
OntoArte also entered the Russian scene in this period. After an exhibition dedicated to his works at the Artists Palace in St. Petersburg in 1995, in the spring of 1998 Antonio Meneghetti exhibited at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg.
Meanwhile Russian academics continued to study Ontopsychology and participated in the summer programmes in increasing numbers. Year after year the didactic methodology of Ontopsychology seemed to have an increasingly coherent design with the programmes of university study. These were signs that something important was about to happen, and it did. Russia’s great merit in the story of Ontopsychology is that it was the first country to institutionalize Ontopsychology. After two decades of increasingly close talks, at the end of the nineties Russia symbolically reciprocated the Professor’s efforts during the cold war and it was Russia that proffered its hand by taking his science into a prestigious University. In 1999, after a long gestation period the collaboration was made formal: they agreed to organize courses of study aimed at the training of professional Ontopsychologists in the Psychology Faculty of St. Petersburg State University. Two courses of study were organized: A four-year degree course and a two-year post graduate specialization. In 2001 at the Protomoteca in Rome’s Campidoglio (Capitol) the first eight diplomas for the Two year post graduate specialization were awarded. “History” – affirmed Meneghetti – “has always produced solutions from men who unexpectedly appear and offer their creativity to make an impact”. On 27 May 2004 in the Public Hall of the “Twelve colleges building” at the St. Petersburg State University, the official opening of the Ontopsychology Chair was celebrated. The University Rector, Ac. Prof. Ludmila Verbitskaja, made an opening speech of great impact: “In opening the Ontopsychology Chair a new scientific school is created. The most important thing for me is that the head of the world Ontopsychology movement is an extraordinary man. Who is Professor Meneghetti?” – Asked the Rector, affirming that it is a difficult question to answer – “because he is an incredible artist, an exceptional composer, an incredible philosopher, a man who is extremely competent in all themes that concern the politics and economics of our time. But today Prof. Meneghetti’s greatest talent is celebrated: he is a psychologist and the founder of Ontopsychology and I believe that Ontopsychology will become an exceptional part of the training that St. Petersburg University offers, because within the university we try to represent the best sciences and above all to insert those that provide the opportunity to study the most complex object: man. I am sure that Ontopsychology is very important because in studying man in the different moments of his life it gives the possibility to enter in the depths of man’s inner self, in what could be defined in simple terms as the soul of man. Russia believes that the soul is man’s most important reality”.
Having organized authentication residences in Uzbekistan and Ukraine, some seminars held in Russia inspired two of Meneghetti’s fundamental books. Image and the unconsciousness came from a five-day seminar held in Moscow in March 1994. In the meantime, after years of scientific collaboration, on 20 December 1994 the International Informatization Academy, a scientific body formed by the Russian Parliament and recognized by the UN, conferred the title of “Academician” on Meneghetti for his “original and unceasing activities in the research and development of Science” and in particular for the “discovery of the semantic field”.
In February 1995 he received his honorary degree in psychology from the Psychology Institute of the Academy of Science in Moscow. In June 1997, Ivan Yuzvishin, founder of Informatiology and candidate for the Nobel Prize in Physics, met with Meneghetti in Rome and said: “In 1973 Prof. Meneghetti founded his science and discovered the truth by using his abilities in psychology, sociology, philosophy and art. Due to my preparation I mainly used other sciences like mathematics, astronomy, physics and biology. But we came to the same conclusion, that there is information within every thing: in the depths of human nature there is information, it doesn’t matter which road you take to get there. I am happy to have read and understood that Antonio Meneghetti is a great scientist and above all to have understood that I have taken the right road. I can therefore confirm Antonio Meneghetti’s discoveries with my scientific research: the principles of Informatiology are in accordance with the principles of Ontopsychology”.
In October 1997 the first Ontopsychology Congress in Russia was organized: it was the first world congress, and was held in Moscow at the Russian Academy of Sciences building. It was defined a world congress to acknowledge the globalization in progress, which means that problems and solutions should be dealt with on a world level. The numerous speakers at the congress gave over 150 speeches after the opening messages sent by Kofi Annan and Boris Yeltsin. In 1998 the Professor received the title of Grand Doctor Nauk in psychological science from the government of the Russian Federation.
OntoArte also entered the Russian scene in this period. After an exhibition dedicated to his works at the Artists Palace in St. Petersburg in 1995, in the spring of 1998 Antonio Meneghetti exhibited at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg.
Meanwhile Russian academics continued to study Ontopsychology and participated in the summer programmes in increasing numbers. Year after year the didactic methodology of Ontopsychology seemed to have an increasingly coherent design with the programmes of university study. These were signs that something important was about to happen, and it did. Russia’s great merit in the story of Ontopsychology is that it was the first country to institutionalize Ontopsychology. After two decades of increasingly close talks, at the end of the nineties Russia symbolically reciprocated the Professor’s efforts during the cold war and it was Russia that proffered its hand by taking his science into a prestigious University. In 1999, after a long gestation period the collaboration was made formal: they agreed to organize courses of study aimed at the training of professional Ontopsychologists in the Psychology Faculty of St. Petersburg State University. Two courses of study were organized: A four-year degree course and a two-year post graduate specialization. In 2001 at the Protomoteca in Rome’s Campidoglio (Capitol) the first eight diplomas for the Two year post graduate specialization were awarded. “History” – affirmed Meneghetti – “has always produced solutions from men who unexpectedly appear and offer their creativity to make an impact”. On 27 May 2004 in the Public Hall of the “Twelve colleges building” at the St. Petersburg State University, the official opening of the Ontopsychology Chair was celebrated. The University Rector, Ac. Prof. Ludmila Verbitskaja, made an opening speech of great impact: “In opening the Ontopsychology Chair a new scientific school is created. The most important thing for me is that the head of the world Ontopsychology movement is an extraordinary man. Who is Professor Meneghetti?” – Asked the Rector, affirming that it is a difficult question to answer – “because he is an incredible artist, an exceptional composer, an incredible philosopher, a man who is extremely competent in all themes that concern the politics and economics of our time. But today Prof. Meneghetti’s greatest talent is celebrated: he is a psychologist and the founder of Ontopsychology and I believe that Ontopsychology will become an exceptional part of the training that St. Petersburg University offers, because within the university we try to represent the best sciences and above all to insert those that provide the opportunity to study the most complex object: man. I am sure that Ontopsychology is very important because in studying man in the different moments of his life it gives the possibility to enter in the depths of man’s inner self, in what could be defined in simple terms as the soul of man. Russia believes that the soul is man’s most important reality”.
DIALOGUE WITH THE RUSSIAN SOUL
The origins of the dialogue
The world was divided in blocks that regarded one another with hostility. Two blocks that interrupted every form of dialogue and even boycotted each other’s Olympic Games. Where others saw the “evil empire” one man saw a land rich with culture and interest in scientific development, a man who had studied Russian psychoanalysis with great passion and appreciated Russia’s independence from the Anglo-American currents, which were in vogue in the western world from the post war period onwards. In the early 1980’s Prof. Meneghetti proffered his hand beyond the iron curtain.
The Professor’s dialogue with the Russian world began at the end of 1983. His words and his books made an immediate impression in a culture avid for novelty. His book Clinical Ontopsychology was presented at the IV Book Fair in Moscow in September 1983, and caught the interest of Prof. Lomov, a scientist who studies the relationship between images and dynamics and the first Dean of the Psychology Faculty in Leningrad University (now St. Petersburg State University). The intuition that a new road had been touched upon in understanding man led Lomov to a personal meeting with the author of the book in Amsterdam in 1989. Meanwhile Meneghetti’s journey in Russia continued with a science meeting organized at the Psychology Institute of the Science Academy in Moscow, where some Russian scientists, including Yuri Zabrodin (Vice-director of the institute) and the researcher Alexandr Kharitonov, showed particular interest in the discovery of the semantic field.
Viktor Malinin, Vice-president of the Philosophy Association of the Soviet Union, participated in the tenth international Ontopsychology congress, “pedagogy and politics”, which took place in Rome in May 1984. Prof. Malinin then wrote an article for the journal Ontopsychology, where he noted how this new science could constitute a useful integration to the theory of man as a “social animal”, in the Marxist tradition in use in his country.
In the middle of the eighties a new young leader came on the scene in the Soviet Union, whom the entire world watched with close attention and a pinch of hope. The beginning was not encouraging, after the drama of Chernobyl which sank the world into terror of a nuclear catastrophe, Reagan’s America flexed its muscles, with the Star Wars project, which heightened the fears of a new world war. But Gorbachev answered this display of power with dialogue and opened the era of improved relations between East and West. Prof. Meneghetti’s relationships with the Soviet scientific world were also increasingly warm. In particular with Alexei Matiushkin, Director of the Soviet Academy of Science and President of the Psychology Association of the USSR, who introduced the humanistic vision of psychology and pedagogy in his country. Matiushkin participated in a meeting in Lizori, where he confirmed: “In Ontopsychology I find concrete steps for creating an alternative psychology for the development of global intelligence”.
The following year Matiushkin participated in the twelfth International Ontopsychology Congress, which took place at the Ergife Hotel in Rome, from 4 to 8 August 1988. On that occasion the Russian scientist highlighted that “in ontopsychology, a constructive relationship has been achieved between psychologists, doctors, psychotherapists, architects, pedagogues, writers and other creative figures”, he particularly appreciated its multidisciplinary character, which increasingly developed over the following decade. Matiushkin promoted a series of conferences which Antonio Meneghetti held in Russia in October 1989. In the same days that the Berlin wall began to fall, Meneghetti was already on the other side, having a series of meetings which were paramount for the diffusion of his thought in Russia. During that trip the Professor also met other prominent members of the Soviet scientific world, including Luria, Tsarov and Pankin. With these scientists and others that he had previously met, like Zabrodin, Lomov and Matiushkin, the Professor dealt with the theme of the development of psychology throughout the world, to provide a practical solution to human problems. In the following days Meneghetti held a conference in Moscow at the Psychopedagogy Institute of Psychological sciences and in Leningrad he met the director of the Academy for Pedagogic sciences, Viktor Onuskin, with whom he discussed the possibility of increasing the use of ontopsychological psychotherapy.
At the human Neurophysiology Institute in Leningrad, Meneghetti clarified to the public how he managed to cure schizophrenia by entering the patient’s mental images. On 26 October 1989, seven hundred people attended a seminar held in Leningrad University. Finally, at the same time he also met Prof. Albert Krylov, Dean of the Psychology Faculty at Leningrad University.
The world was divided in blocks that regarded one another with hostility. Two blocks that interrupted every form of dialogue and even boycotted each other’s Olympic Games. Where others saw the “evil empire” one man saw a land rich with culture and interest in scientific development, a man who had studied Russian psychoanalysis with great passion and appreciated Russia’s independence from the Anglo-American currents, which were in vogue in the western world from the post war period onwards. In the early 1980’s Prof. Meneghetti proffered his hand beyond the iron curtain.
The Professor’s dialogue with the Russian world began at the end of 1983. His words and his books made an immediate impression in a culture avid for novelty. His book Clinical Ontopsychology was presented at the IV Book Fair in Moscow in September 1983, and caught the interest of Prof. Lomov, a scientist who studies the relationship between images and dynamics and the first Dean of the Psychology Faculty in Leningrad University (now St. Petersburg State University). The intuition that a new road had been touched upon in understanding man led Lomov to a personal meeting with the author of the book in Amsterdam in 1989. Meanwhile Meneghetti’s journey in Russia continued with a science meeting organized at the Psychology Institute of the Science Academy in Moscow, where some Russian scientists, including Yuri Zabrodin (Vice-director of the institute) and the researcher Alexandr Kharitonov, showed particular interest in the discovery of the semantic field.
Viktor Malinin, Vice-president of the Philosophy Association of the Soviet Union, participated in the tenth international Ontopsychology congress, “pedagogy and politics”, which took place in Rome in May 1984. Prof. Malinin then wrote an article for the journal Ontopsychology, where he noted how this new science could constitute a useful integration to the theory of man as a “social animal”, in the Marxist tradition in use in his country.
In the middle of the eighties a new young leader came on the scene in the Soviet Union, whom the entire world watched with close attention and a pinch of hope. The beginning was not encouraging, after the drama of Chernobyl which sank the world into terror of a nuclear catastrophe, Reagan’s America flexed its muscles, with the Star Wars project, which heightened the fears of a new world war. But Gorbachev answered this display of power with dialogue and opened the era of improved relations between East and West. Prof. Meneghetti’s relationships with the Soviet scientific world were also increasingly warm. In particular with Alexei Matiushkin, Director of the Soviet Academy of Science and President of the Psychology Association of the USSR, who introduced the humanistic vision of psychology and pedagogy in his country. Matiushkin participated in a meeting in Lizori, where he confirmed: “In Ontopsychology I find concrete steps for creating an alternative psychology for the development of global intelligence”.
The following year Matiushkin participated in the twelfth International Ontopsychology Congress, which took place at the Ergife Hotel in Rome, from 4 to 8 August 1988. On that occasion the Russian scientist highlighted that “in ontopsychology, a constructive relationship has been achieved between psychologists, doctors, psychotherapists, architects, pedagogues, writers and other creative figures”, he particularly appreciated its multidisciplinary character, which increasingly developed over the following decade. Matiushkin promoted a series of conferences which Antonio Meneghetti held in Russia in October 1989. In the same days that the Berlin wall began to fall, Meneghetti was already on the other side, having a series of meetings which were paramount for the diffusion of his thought in Russia. During that trip the Professor also met other prominent members of the Soviet scientific world, including Luria, Tsarov and Pankin. With these scientists and others that he had previously met, like Zabrodin, Lomov and Matiushkin, the Professor dealt with the theme of the development of psychology throughout the world, to provide a practical solution to human problems. In the following days Meneghetti held a conference in Moscow at the Psychopedagogy Institute of Psychological sciences and in Leningrad he met the director of the Academy for Pedagogic sciences, Viktor Onuskin, with whom he discussed the possibility of increasing the use of ontopsychological psychotherapy.
At the human Neurophysiology Institute in Leningrad, Meneghetti clarified to the public how he managed to cure schizophrenia by entering the patient’s mental images. On 26 October 1989, seven hundred people attended a seminar held in Leningrad University. Finally, at the same time he also met Prof. Albert Krylov, Dean of the Psychology Faculty at Leningrad University.
mercoledì 14 gennaio 2009
How to use the dictionary searching psychology
Every existing dictionary gives an explanation of the conventional meaning of a specific term. The convention is usually determined by:
1) current use;
2) the decision of a group, of a fact, of a people, of an initiator;
3) the historical-linguistic origin of one’s own or another’s linguistics.
Though I consider this procedure valid and define it as the culture of the linguistic etymon, I do not feel it is sufficient when one investigates to carry out science on the existential processes that cause human reality.
In particular, from the time that analytical introspection on the mental processes in the great science of present-day psychology started, a large inadequacy between sign and fact, between image and content, between word and intention, can be seen. By ‘great psychology’ I mean the analytical- synthetic aptitude searching into the basic processes of intelligence when it structures its own humanistic universe: man as protagonist in the world where it occurs.
Today, in fact, current psychology does not have a dictionary that represents the basic episteme of sense. My culture, and in particular my ontopsychological experience, have given me evidence between linguistic use and the meaning of the intentionality of nature. A person speaks and uses images, which, though they are codified by traditions and historical structures, do not coincide with the socio-biological interactions of existence.
While the known logical-linguistic system can work for several patterns of behaviour such as thejuridical, the political, economic, historical, mathematical one, etc., it is seen to be entirely unsuitable when psychological science is formed: it lacks the ontic relation, thus the functional rationality.
Psychology, which is science on the logos or topics of the psyche, cannot exist if it lacks the meanings objectifying its research. So long as psychology investigates with systems founded on apparent consciousness or on stereotypes of common linguistics, it will be able to dialogue, but it will not be able to observe the intentioning res in the phenomenology.
The interpretation of dreams, not yet exact when facts and symptoms in the different psychological (or psychoanalytical) schools are compared, is the demonstration of the linguistic dichotomy between nature and culture, between organismic intention and conscious rational image. Not to mention the unfailing persistence of symptoms that therefore go against many psychological theories.
In Ontopsychology a congruous correlation between organismic and conscious reflection is known. This is due to the fact that Ontopsychology has understood the order of meaning that forms the codes of existential interaction.
Science is such if the word conveys a form of quantum of action.
The task of my work hypothesis on the hundred or more epistemological words of psychology, is the recovery or re-organization of the quantum of sense and of action that presents itself within the conveyer (word, or gesture or sign of the living operator).
I will set this task through two criteria.
1) The linguistic etymon of a root common to the two mother tongues of the Italian language.
This language has a good history and possesses sufficiently superior and rationally evolved syncretistic orders. The Italian language springs from two great mothers of the civilisation of the sign: the Greek and the Roman civilisation. So I will trace the root of every word I define with an essential reference, which begins the specification of a mode of existential action.
Since the fathers of our language (Greek-Latin) fashioned the sign on ontic emotion, I consider that
creating this dictionary also on the linguistic etymon is the same thing as authenticating the sign on the living act.
2) The experience of the mediation between the existential ontic and verbal consciousness.
By ‘verbal consciousness’ I mean the entire complex process of configuration and identification which we experience as definite images: form, image, word, thought, fantasy.
By ‘existential ontic’ or reflection I mean the entire process that is formed in the individual in the interaction between being and time in worldly space, between individuation and environment, between personal organism and one’s surroundings.
The processes of this interaction between the Self and others, constitute the infinite variable of energy interaction through which the subject, in accordance with his individual thematic selection, lives, becomes and changes either wholly or in a single part as far as his entire psychic field is concerned.
Psychic, in man, is everything that acts and changes form while remaining distinct and different from its own effects or precipitates (chemical, physical, electric, thermic, magnetic). The soul or the In Sé, or the intellect, or the mind, is unity of action in a universe of pure causality, which in advance of all its precipitates is specified as intentional energy: it gives the drive that makes things happen. It can not bedepicted in any way, and yet it is known through a haecceity of presence. It is evidence without image.
Through the observation and the understanding of the semantic field I have been able to measure and identify many of the metabolisms that alter the organismic constant (the entire psycho-organics) of the subject. Thus, one has the rational possibility ofrecognising, distinguishing and measuring in reality all those innovative drives of the nucleus (or unconscious) of the subject being examined. Hence a particular emotion, an instinctive or environmental drive, can be recognised and foreseen in its subsequent development (in what time and in what place) long before its externalised expression in gesture or behaviour, in word and in way of thinking. It is objective consciousness open to anyone who can bring his own Iso and subsequent variants to consciousness.
With this knowledge of the semantic field – conditio sine qua non for Ontopsychology - the entire journey from the sign to the cause and vice versa can be travelled. Hence this knowledge is certain and is entitled in that it highlights the reversibility between sign and reality. The continuous clinical experience by operators working with the ontopsychological method and my personal clinical experience prove the causal connection of reversibility: that sign bears reality and the reality bears that sign.
The method of my interpretation is a continuous paraphrasing of the action in all its modes and
relations. The constant is always action, in which man and object, in their intrinsic and reciprocal modes, are the elementary phenomenology. Who acts, how it acts, what it produces, is the ultimatestructure of any existential logos, and, consequently, of any form of sign.
All of this becomes clear in that Ontopsychology has specified the prime and elementary criterion of one’s own autoctisis: the ontic In Sé.
1) current use;
2) the decision of a group, of a fact, of a people, of an initiator;
3) the historical-linguistic origin of one’s own or another’s linguistics.
Though I consider this procedure valid and define it as the culture of the linguistic etymon, I do not feel it is sufficient when one investigates to carry out science on the existential processes that cause human reality.
In particular, from the time that analytical introspection on the mental processes in the great science of present-day psychology started, a large inadequacy between sign and fact, between image and content, between word and intention, can be seen. By ‘great psychology’ I mean the analytical- synthetic aptitude searching into the basic processes of intelligence when it structures its own humanistic universe: man as protagonist in the world where it occurs.
Today, in fact, current psychology does not have a dictionary that represents the basic episteme of sense. My culture, and in particular my ontopsychological experience, have given me evidence between linguistic use and the meaning of the intentionality of nature. A person speaks and uses images, which, though they are codified by traditions and historical structures, do not coincide with the socio-biological interactions of existence.
While the known logical-linguistic system can work for several patterns of behaviour such as thejuridical, the political, economic, historical, mathematical one, etc., it is seen to be entirely unsuitable when psychological science is formed: it lacks the ontic relation, thus the functional rationality.
Psychology, which is science on the logos or topics of the psyche, cannot exist if it lacks the meanings objectifying its research. So long as psychology investigates with systems founded on apparent consciousness or on stereotypes of common linguistics, it will be able to dialogue, but it will not be able to observe the intentioning res in the phenomenology.
The interpretation of dreams, not yet exact when facts and symptoms in the different psychological (or psychoanalytical) schools are compared, is the demonstration of the linguistic dichotomy between nature and culture, between organismic intention and conscious rational image. Not to mention the unfailing persistence of symptoms that therefore go against many psychological theories.
In Ontopsychology a congruous correlation between organismic and conscious reflection is known. This is due to the fact that Ontopsychology has understood the order of meaning that forms the codes of existential interaction.
Science is such if the word conveys a form of quantum of action.
The task of my work hypothesis on the hundred or more epistemological words of psychology, is the recovery or re-organization of the quantum of sense and of action that presents itself within the conveyer (word, or gesture or sign of the living operator).
I will set this task through two criteria.
1) The linguistic etymon of a root common to the two mother tongues of the Italian language.
This language has a good history and possesses sufficiently superior and rationally evolved syncretistic orders. The Italian language springs from two great mothers of the civilisation of the sign: the Greek and the Roman civilisation. So I will trace the root of every word I define with an essential reference, which begins the specification of a mode of existential action.
Since the fathers of our language (Greek-Latin) fashioned the sign on ontic emotion, I consider that
creating this dictionary also on the linguistic etymon is the same thing as authenticating the sign on the living act.
2) The experience of the mediation between the existential ontic and verbal consciousness.
By ‘verbal consciousness’ I mean the entire complex process of configuration and identification which we experience as definite images: form, image, word, thought, fantasy.
By ‘existential ontic’ or reflection I mean the entire process that is formed in the individual in the interaction between being and time in worldly space, between individuation and environment, between personal organism and one’s surroundings.
The processes of this interaction between the Self and others, constitute the infinite variable of energy interaction through which the subject, in accordance with his individual thematic selection, lives, becomes and changes either wholly or in a single part as far as his entire psychic field is concerned.
Psychic, in man, is everything that acts and changes form while remaining distinct and different from its own effects or precipitates (chemical, physical, electric, thermic, magnetic). The soul or the In Sé, or the intellect, or the mind, is unity of action in a universe of pure causality, which in advance of all its precipitates is specified as intentional energy: it gives the drive that makes things happen. It can not bedepicted in any way, and yet it is known through a haecceity of presence. It is evidence without image.
Through the observation and the understanding of the semantic field I have been able to measure and identify many of the metabolisms that alter the organismic constant (the entire psycho-organics) of the subject. Thus, one has the rational possibility ofrecognising, distinguishing and measuring in reality all those innovative drives of the nucleus (or unconscious) of the subject being examined. Hence a particular emotion, an instinctive or environmental drive, can be recognised and foreseen in its subsequent development (in what time and in what place) long before its externalised expression in gesture or behaviour, in word and in way of thinking. It is objective consciousness open to anyone who can bring his own Iso and subsequent variants to consciousness.
With this knowledge of the semantic field – conditio sine qua non for Ontopsychology - the entire journey from the sign to the cause and vice versa can be travelled. Hence this knowledge is certain and is entitled in that it highlights the reversibility between sign and reality. The continuous clinical experience by operators working with the ontopsychological method and my personal clinical experience prove the causal connection of reversibility: that sign bears reality and the reality bears that sign.
The method of my interpretation is a continuous paraphrasing of the action in all its modes and
relations. The constant is always action, in which man and object, in their intrinsic and reciprocal modes, are the elementary phenomenology. Who acts, how it acts, what it produces, is the ultimatestructure of any existential logos, and, consequently, of any form of sign.
All of this becomes clear in that Ontopsychology has specified the prime and elementary criterion of one’s own autoctisis: the ontic In Sé.
The term Psychology in dictionaries
With all respect to those who have thought and written about psychology, there are some meanings It is not a question of principle, ideology or opinion. Many terms are like road signs that do not correspond to what they indicate.
I have seen places and passages in an exact and precise manner. Ten years of successful clinical activity have allowed me to understand all masks and to identify and isolate the causes and the connections of what is defined as complex, symptom, psychosomatic, schizophrenia. I have been able to construct a simple method which precisely intercepts the aetiology, upon which one.
In living this experience it was great to consequently individuate the key element that makes the constant criterion for health, evolution and realisation (historical and metaphysical).
In substance, when one knows where to find strawberries, one goes to pick them. If one is carrying out research in strawberries, than all the hypotheses are good until the contrary has been demonstrated.
These few words are the direct exposition of precise instruments that give the point to the research and intervention. Any missing terms are sufficiently clarified in any current dictionary on sociology, psychology, philosophy, etc.
I have seen places and passages in an exact and precise manner. Ten years of successful clinical activity have allowed me to understand all masks and to identify and isolate the causes and the connections of what is defined as complex, symptom, psychosomatic, schizophrenia. I have been able to construct a simple method which precisely intercepts the aetiology, upon which one.
In living this experience it was great to consequently individuate the key element that makes the constant criterion for health, evolution and realisation (historical and metaphysical).
In substance, when one knows where to find strawberries, one goes to pick them. If one is carrying out research in strawberries, than all the hypotheses are good until the contrary has been demonstrated.
These few words are the direct exposition of precise instruments that give the point to the research and intervention. Any missing terms are sufficiently clarified in any current dictionary on sociology, psychology, philosophy, etc.
martedì 13 gennaio 2009
THE THREE DISCOVERIES: THE SEMANTIC FIELD
The unsolved problem: how nature speaks
“I am being attacked by two opposing sects – scientists and the ignorant. They both laugh at me calling me “master of frog dance”. And yet I know I have discovered one of the greatest forces of nature”.
Galvani, who discovered electricity.
Man has searched for energy since ancient times. Recent history has been marked by the discovery of two important types of energy that have changed the world: electric and nuclear energy, yet many maintain that another type of energy exists, which is present in the universe and affects every life form.
Even Descartes spoke of this universal energy, defined “virtual hyperfield” by Tom Bearden, “morphogenetic field” by Sheldrake, “orgon” by William Reich, “Spiritus Universalis” by alchemists, CHI by the Chinese and KI by the Japanese.
Many speak of this basic form of universal energy that is present everywhere. Many scholars have identified a similar form of energy in man. Two fifteenth century philosophers, Agrippa and Ficino, individuated a force in man that derives from the soul or the spirit and is capable of acting “not only on one’s body but also on those nearby”.
In the eighteen hundreds William Crookes defined this force as “psychic force”. The English scientist noted that this force or power was extremely variable and at times completely absent; it required patient and conscientious research. The Freudian revolution involved overthrowing the Ego and recognizing the true voice of the individual in the unconscious: the voice within the individual is not his ego but his unconscious. Lacan also maintained that the unconscious was structured like a language, a language which we should learn to read. Some analysts, such as Jaspers, Stein and Binswanger felt that empathy with the patient was necessary in order to understand it. Even though they speak of the language of the unconscious no-one is able to codify it in a “dictionary” that is valid for everyone. There is a universal energy and psychic force which even if it cannot be measured by physics, produces concrete effects, as revealed by the scholars cited above. Are they two independent forces or are they related in some way?
Several theories affirm that psychic forces, like physical forces, are different moments of the same universally acting energy. This is a thesis which forms the basis of many oriental schools of thought. Advaita philosophy and other yoga traditions speak of “Kundalini”. By “Kundalini” they mean an energy which resides in the human body, as a manifestation of the universal energy called sakti. The “Kundalini” is used by Schopenhauer to indicate the will, inherent in the soul, which when exercised allows one to reach higher states of consciousness. Freud’s Id also reminds us of the oriental Kundalini. So, there is a universal energy and psychic forces are a part of it.
Some speak of energy, others speak of existing but immeasurable forms of communication. Is there a link between energy and communication? If there is a universal intelligence at the basis of this energy or communication, would it be possible to understand its language? The Professor has found a scientific answer to these questions.
The discovery of the semantic field
It cannot be measured because “it is not energy but it is with the energy”. It is information that varies the energy of the receiver. For this reason it is more correctly defined as a language, the language that nature uses through her individuations. Antonio Meneghetti defines this language as “semantic field” and it was his earliest discovery.
“The semantic field is the proportion that nature arranges within its individuations. (…) Everything in life moves forward through relationships, force fields: plants, insects, birds, eagles all have preferential rapports and they are attracted. This is the game through which nature maintains her unity of discourse, aim, project; in creating her forms she also maintains their possibility to communicate”.
The ontic In-itself and the deflection monitor can neither see nor touch the five senses. And yet they represent the fundamental discoveries in Ontopsychology. The medium that made these discoveries possible was the semantic field. The semantic field represents Meneghetti’s earliest discovery. During his years as a therapist he noticed that while his patients talked he averted sensations, saw images in his mind that did not have a logic that could be directly connected to what the patient was saying. Yet Meneghetti perceived that this too was transmitted by the client. Transmitted but at an unconscious level: the client did not realize what he/she was transmitting but it was a much higher level of information compared to what the patient was saying. This was how Meneghetti realized that there was an unconscious communication that transmitted information without considering the conscious will of the subject. Meneghetti noticed that this language transmitted all the elements of the unconscious, in particular the ontic In-itself and the deflection monitor. In short he managed to distinguish between these two pulsions and the images originating from each. Putting the information he received into practice during therapy he was able to verify in the effects that if the client acted on the intentionality of the ontic In-itself they obtained the solution of the problem and became healthy. If instead they followed what was expressed by the deflection monitor the result was that the illness continued. Meneghetti also noticed that while what the deflection monitor communicated was consistent with social values, the super Ego, the “norm”, the ontic In-itself was instead much more creative, acquiring an originality in each individual and changing on the basis of the situation. He noticed that following the In-itself always meant success for the subject.
All this communication occurred through a language that Meneghetti could not find in any of the texts he had studied. The only affinity he found was in some research which spoke of the child as outside of the adult, Meneghetti more properly defined this as “phenomenology of the psychic causality of the adult of reference”, all this occurred through the unconscious communication of the semantic field.
Starting from clinical research, Antonio Meneghetti realized that this type of unconscious communication occurring between human beings is a widespread reality, or rather it is reality, and it is the basic communication that occurs in nature. This is where Meneghetti’s path coincides with humanity’s great writings which speak of the existence of a way of communication in nature that leads the insect to find the flower, the migratory bird to find its way; there is continual interaction between every creature, between plants, animals and every element of nature. Meneghetti called each space of interaction “semantic field”, seen as an interaction that has meaning, from the Greek term sema that means sign. “There is therefore a constant symbiosis, men are also connected, they continually breathe, and they are continually in and out, in osmosis. The semantic field transports something, both the deflection monitor and the ontic In-itself, which can be distinguished through the results. Semantic field is negative when it reduces man’s work, his potential, his activity, his intelligence”. Antonio Meneghetti also dedicated a text to the Semantic Field, which thoroughly describes its characteristics and effects. As a language Meneghetti codifies it in his writings and through his explanations it becomes a potential tool for knowledge of human beings.
“I am being attacked by two opposing sects – scientists and the ignorant. They both laugh at me calling me “master of frog dance”. And yet I know I have discovered one of the greatest forces of nature”.
Galvani, who discovered electricity.
Man has searched for energy since ancient times. Recent history has been marked by the discovery of two important types of energy that have changed the world: electric and nuclear energy, yet many maintain that another type of energy exists, which is present in the universe and affects every life form.
Even Descartes spoke of this universal energy, defined “virtual hyperfield” by Tom Bearden, “morphogenetic field” by Sheldrake, “orgon” by William Reich, “Spiritus Universalis” by alchemists, CHI by the Chinese and KI by the Japanese.
Many speak of this basic form of universal energy that is present everywhere. Many scholars have identified a similar form of energy in man. Two fifteenth century philosophers, Agrippa and Ficino, individuated a force in man that derives from the soul or the spirit and is capable of acting “not only on one’s body but also on those nearby”.
In the eighteen hundreds William Crookes defined this force as “psychic force”. The English scientist noted that this force or power was extremely variable and at times completely absent; it required patient and conscientious research. The Freudian revolution involved overthrowing the Ego and recognizing the true voice of the individual in the unconscious: the voice within the individual is not his ego but his unconscious. Lacan also maintained that the unconscious was structured like a language, a language which we should learn to read. Some analysts, such as Jaspers, Stein and Binswanger felt that empathy with the patient was necessary in order to understand it. Even though they speak of the language of the unconscious no-one is able to codify it in a “dictionary” that is valid for everyone. There is a universal energy and psychic force which even if it cannot be measured by physics, produces concrete effects, as revealed by the scholars cited above. Are they two independent forces or are they related in some way?
Several theories affirm that psychic forces, like physical forces, are different moments of the same universally acting energy. This is a thesis which forms the basis of many oriental schools of thought. Advaita philosophy and other yoga traditions speak of “Kundalini”. By “Kundalini” they mean an energy which resides in the human body, as a manifestation of the universal energy called sakti. The “Kundalini” is used by Schopenhauer to indicate the will, inherent in the soul, which when exercised allows one to reach higher states of consciousness. Freud’s Id also reminds us of the oriental Kundalini. So, there is a universal energy and psychic forces are a part of it.
Some speak of energy, others speak of existing but immeasurable forms of communication. Is there a link between energy and communication? If there is a universal intelligence at the basis of this energy or communication, would it be possible to understand its language? The Professor has found a scientific answer to these questions.
The discovery of the semantic field
It cannot be measured because “it is not energy but it is with the energy”. It is information that varies the energy of the receiver. For this reason it is more correctly defined as a language, the language that nature uses through her individuations. Antonio Meneghetti defines this language as “semantic field” and it was his earliest discovery.
“The semantic field is the proportion that nature arranges within its individuations. (…) Everything in life moves forward through relationships, force fields: plants, insects, birds, eagles all have preferential rapports and they are attracted. This is the game through which nature maintains her unity of discourse, aim, project; in creating her forms she also maintains their possibility to communicate”.
The ontic In-itself and the deflection monitor can neither see nor touch the five senses. And yet they represent the fundamental discoveries in Ontopsychology. The medium that made these discoveries possible was the semantic field. The semantic field represents Meneghetti’s earliest discovery. During his years as a therapist he noticed that while his patients talked he averted sensations, saw images in his mind that did not have a logic that could be directly connected to what the patient was saying. Yet Meneghetti perceived that this too was transmitted by the client. Transmitted but at an unconscious level: the client did not realize what he/she was transmitting but it was a much higher level of information compared to what the patient was saying. This was how Meneghetti realized that there was an unconscious communication that transmitted information without considering the conscious will of the subject. Meneghetti noticed that this language transmitted all the elements of the unconscious, in particular the ontic In-itself and the deflection monitor. In short he managed to distinguish between these two pulsions and the images originating from each. Putting the information he received into practice during therapy he was able to verify in the effects that if the client acted on the intentionality of the ontic In-itself they obtained the solution of the problem and became healthy. If instead they followed what was expressed by the deflection monitor the result was that the illness continued. Meneghetti also noticed that while what the deflection monitor communicated was consistent with social values, the super Ego, the “norm”, the ontic In-itself was instead much more creative, acquiring an originality in each individual and changing on the basis of the situation. He noticed that following the In-itself always meant success for the subject.
All this communication occurred through a language that Meneghetti could not find in any of the texts he had studied. The only affinity he found was in some research which spoke of the child as outside of the adult, Meneghetti more properly defined this as “phenomenology of the psychic causality of the adult of reference”, all this occurred through the unconscious communication of the semantic field.
Starting from clinical research, Antonio Meneghetti realized that this type of unconscious communication occurring between human beings is a widespread reality, or rather it is reality, and it is the basic communication that occurs in nature. This is where Meneghetti’s path coincides with humanity’s great writings which speak of the existence of a way of communication in nature that leads the insect to find the flower, the migratory bird to find its way; there is continual interaction between every creature, between plants, animals and every element of nature. Meneghetti called each space of interaction “semantic field”, seen as an interaction that has meaning, from the Greek term sema that means sign. “There is therefore a constant symbiosis, men are also connected, they continually breathe, and they are continually in and out, in osmosis. The semantic field transports something, both the deflection monitor and the ontic In-itself, which can be distinguished through the results. Semantic field is negative when it reduces man’s work, his potential, his activity, his intelligence”. Antonio Meneghetti also dedicated a text to the Semantic Field, which thoroughly describes its characteristics and effects. As a language Meneghetti codifies it in his writings and through his explanations it becomes a potential tool for knowledge of human beings.
THE THREE DISCOVERIES: THE DEFLECTION MONITOR
The unsolved problem: man’s incapacity to know reality and know himself
Something cut man off from his knowledge of reality. This is the greatest human problem expressed by religion and philosophy. Many thinkers and religious schools throughout history have highlighted the incapacity of consciousness to understand the real for what it is and they describe the serious effects that result from this. This is a drama to which a rational and scientific solution could not be found.
Plato insisted that man is kept in the dark from the truth. According to Plato there are vital forces within the soul, symbolized by the white horse that takes us higher, but there are also destructive forces, which according to him are essentially the basest and lowest passions. But why do they pull us down? Where do they come from? Why does every man have this black horse?
For Plato not knowing the truth is the human being’s great existential drama, symbolized by the myth of the cave which leaves little room for the individual’s capacity to manage alone.
Many others follow Plato in speaking of limited knowledge of reason. Plotinus wrote in the Enneads, that rationality has a limited and distorted vision of reality. Besides not knowing the external reality man’s drama is that he does not know himself. Like Socrates and Plato, Leibniz also underlines this concept: writing about “small perceptions” and “virtual nativism”. The German philosopher maintained that in man’s head there were notions which he had no consciousness of, hypothesizing that our mind contains something that goes beyond consciousness.
For Kant the phenomenon is reality, the only reality conceivable and accessible by the human mind. Reason cannot know the noumenon: man cannot achieve comprehension of the causes but must limit himself to understanding the effects. It is an acceptance: man is destined for ignorance, and there is no cure.
Nietzsche also confirms the limits of the knowledge of reason: “there is more reason in your body than in the height of your wisdom”.
The presence of something which impedes man from understanding reality is an important point in Schopenhauer’s thought. Contrary to Kant he believed that phenomenon was an illusion, dream and appearance, what in Indian philosophy is called the “Veil of Maya”, the illusion that veils the reality of things in their authentic essence.
How can we pierce the veil? According to Schopenhauer it can be done through the will. Where does the Veil of Maya come from? Why is it there? And why does every human being have it in his consciousness?
All great religions confirm the problem that the highest philosophers complained of, even if they maintain that it can only be solved with the help of God or after death. According to the great religions and ancient myths man originally lived in an Eden-like space with a god or some gods. But at a certain point something happened that cut man out of this seemingly divine condition and threw him into the drama of existence. Each religious school has its own formula on how to return to the original condition, they all agree however that all human suffering derived from this cut.
In the modern age Sigmund Freud symbolizes the acceptance of man’s “non-knowledge”. The Austrian scientist discovered that the conscious ego is only a small part of the mind, which is mostly formed by the unconscious: Freud believed that man does not know himself and is at the mercy of ungovernable forces of which he is unconscious. Freud’s unconscious, like Pandora’s Box, contains everything. In particular Freud revealed from his study of the sick that the psyche was governed by impulses for pleasure (Eros) and destructive impulses (Thanatos). The two impulses are simultaneously present in every person, in dialectic opposition. Freud in some ways recalls Plato’s myth of the chariot, but treats it as a doctor would. Moreover he added the concept of the super Ego, which represents the social norms interiorized by the Ego and superimposed on the consciousness. Freud’s Ego should resolve the pathology by bringing repressed material to the light of consciousness, finding a balance between vital impulses and the needs of the super Ego.
Freud’s greatest discovery was the identification of the unconscious, but he concentrated on analysing the effects, with the aim of solving the pathology, renouncing a deeper investigation into the unconscious dynamics and without making general rules for every human being. According to Freud the solution should be sought case by case, through the methods he indicated: especially through association and oneiric analysis.
Freud was the first, from then on psychoanalysts and philosophers accepted the scientific discovery of the unconscious. Nearly all of them confirm the existence of a grey area in the human mind where vital forces are linked to the destructive ones. Furthermore many schools of thought place the accent on how environment warps consciousness.
In some clinical cases, Binswanger’s are an example of these, the existence of a mechanism is noted that alters the conscious in the seriously mentally ill. However these scholars avoid explaining paranoid schizophrenia, even in psychological terms, and limit themselves to describing the effects.
No-one tries to isolate this altering mechanism or to understand what it is and how it acts within the human mind.
The effects of the fact that man does not know himself are: existential suffering which may cross over into more or less serious pathologies such as neurosis and schizophrenia. This incapacity for knowledge, or rather the presence of the unconscious is for everyone a “given fact” of the human being: even if it has serious effects no-one manages to find the cause or a definitive solution to the problem of man’s incapacity to know himself and his surrounding reality. What darkens consciousness and prevents man from knowing reality and from knowing himself?
After three thousand years no-one has yet understood what the “Veil of Maya”, active in men’s minds, is. This is the question mark which Antonio Meneghetti is the first to answer in a scientific way by isolating, describing and resolving the warping mechanism inserted in the human mind.
The discovery of the deflection monitor
Meneghetti asked whether the human being can achieve knowledge of reality, and if this doesn’t happen is it nature that made a mistake in man or has something been added that alters consciousness?
“Having discovered this principle (the ontic In-itself. Editor’s note), it was easy to discover the “deflection monitor”. I saw this other principle that spoke, made laws. The ontic In-itself does not give laws, it has no middle ground, it simply says: “It is, it isn’t, it’s for me, it’s not for me”. This other principle instead spoke and said: some things you can do, some things you can’t, for a series of reasons, etc. and it had its own language and laws. It possessed its own category (and its own set of commandments) which at first seemed to me to be an archetype of morals, and therefore positive, but in following its directives it did not bear the same fruit as the first criterion. In fact when I analysed people by listening to the dictates of the deflection monitor – so through respect for and implementation of current moral laws – they physically died. I slowly began to realize that the deflection monitor had nothing to do with the simple principle of life because it did not bring positive results to the subject”. Antonio Meneghetti identified a mechanism that acts in the human psyche deflecting the reflection of his perceptions and altering his knowledge of reality and therefore his consciousness. In his texts he describes its nature, how it acts and the effects its activity produces on human beings, both individually and in the social group. He also describes how we can successfully neutralize its action thus guaranteeing development for the subject.
Meneghetti was very prudent in revealing his discovery. In 1975 he first spoke of the presence of a “deforming grid” that alters our perception of reality. Four years later he began to speak of the deflection monitor until finally in 1985 he decided to publish the book The deflection monitor in the human psyche, where he described the nature and effects of the monitor in a very original way, showing how it acts through examples taken from society and the theories of other scholars.
The two discoveries, the ontic In-itself and the deflection monitor, were obtained thanks to a particular tool that represents the solution of another problem which remained unsolved for thousands of years. The semantic field.
Something cut man off from his knowledge of reality. This is the greatest human problem expressed by religion and philosophy. Many thinkers and religious schools throughout history have highlighted the incapacity of consciousness to understand the real for what it is and they describe the serious effects that result from this. This is a drama to which a rational and scientific solution could not be found.
Plato insisted that man is kept in the dark from the truth. According to Plato there are vital forces within the soul, symbolized by the white horse that takes us higher, but there are also destructive forces, which according to him are essentially the basest and lowest passions. But why do they pull us down? Where do they come from? Why does every man have this black horse?
For Plato not knowing the truth is the human being’s great existential drama, symbolized by the myth of the cave which leaves little room for the individual’s capacity to manage alone.
Many others follow Plato in speaking of limited knowledge of reason. Plotinus wrote in the Enneads, that rationality has a limited and distorted vision of reality. Besides not knowing the external reality man’s drama is that he does not know himself. Like Socrates and Plato, Leibniz also underlines this concept: writing about “small perceptions” and “virtual nativism”. The German philosopher maintained that in man’s head there were notions which he had no consciousness of, hypothesizing that our mind contains something that goes beyond consciousness.
For Kant the phenomenon is reality, the only reality conceivable and accessible by the human mind. Reason cannot know the noumenon: man cannot achieve comprehension of the causes but must limit himself to understanding the effects. It is an acceptance: man is destined for ignorance, and there is no cure.
Nietzsche also confirms the limits of the knowledge of reason: “there is more reason in your body than in the height of your wisdom”.
The presence of something which impedes man from understanding reality is an important point in Schopenhauer’s thought. Contrary to Kant he believed that phenomenon was an illusion, dream and appearance, what in Indian philosophy is called the “Veil of Maya”, the illusion that veils the reality of things in their authentic essence.
How can we pierce the veil? According to Schopenhauer it can be done through the will. Where does the Veil of Maya come from? Why is it there? And why does every human being have it in his consciousness?
All great religions confirm the problem that the highest philosophers complained of, even if they maintain that it can only be solved with the help of God or after death. According to the great religions and ancient myths man originally lived in an Eden-like space with a god or some gods. But at a certain point something happened that cut man out of this seemingly divine condition and threw him into the drama of existence. Each religious school has its own formula on how to return to the original condition, they all agree however that all human suffering derived from this cut.
In the modern age Sigmund Freud symbolizes the acceptance of man’s “non-knowledge”. The Austrian scientist discovered that the conscious ego is only a small part of the mind, which is mostly formed by the unconscious: Freud believed that man does not know himself and is at the mercy of ungovernable forces of which he is unconscious. Freud’s unconscious, like Pandora’s Box, contains everything. In particular Freud revealed from his study of the sick that the psyche was governed by impulses for pleasure (Eros) and destructive impulses (Thanatos). The two impulses are simultaneously present in every person, in dialectic opposition. Freud in some ways recalls Plato’s myth of the chariot, but treats it as a doctor would. Moreover he added the concept of the super Ego, which represents the social norms interiorized by the Ego and superimposed on the consciousness. Freud’s Ego should resolve the pathology by bringing repressed material to the light of consciousness, finding a balance between vital impulses and the needs of the super Ego.
Freud’s greatest discovery was the identification of the unconscious, but he concentrated on analysing the effects, with the aim of solving the pathology, renouncing a deeper investigation into the unconscious dynamics and without making general rules for every human being. According to Freud the solution should be sought case by case, through the methods he indicated: especially through association and oneiric analysis.
Freud was the first, from then on psychoanalysts and philosophers accepted the scientific discovery of the unconscious. Nearly all of them confirm the existence of a grey area in the human mind where vital forces are linked to the destructive ones. Furthermore many schools of thought place the accent on how environment warps consciousness.
In some clinical cases, Binswanger’s are an example of these, the existence of a mechanism is noted that alters the conscious in the seriously mentally ill. However these scholars avoid explaining paranoid schizophrenia, even in psychological terms, and limit themselves to describing the effects.
No-one tries to isolate this altering mechanism or to understand what it is and how it acts within the human mind.
The effects of the fact that man does not know himself are: existential suffering which may cross over into more or less serious pathologies such as neurosis and schizophrenia. This incapacity for knowledge, or rather the presence of the unconscious is for everyone a “given fact” of the human being: even if it has serious effects no-one manages to find the cause or a definitive solution to the problem of man’s incapacity to know himself and his surrounding reality. What darkens consciousness and prevents man from knowing reality and from knowing himself?
After three thousand years no-one has yet understood what the “Veil of Maya”, active in men’s minds, is. This is the question mark which Antonio Meneghetti is the first to answer in a scientific way by isolating, describing and resolving the warping mechanism inserted in the human mind.
The discovery of the deflection monitor
Meneghetti asked whether the human being can achieve knowledge of reality, and if this doesn’t happen is it nature that made a mistake in man or has something been added that alters consciousness?
“Having discovered this principle (the ontic In-itself. Editor’s note), it was easy to discover the “deflection monitor”. I saw this other principle that spoke, made laws. The ontic In-itself does not give laws, it has no middle ground, it simply says: “It is, it isn’t, it’s for me, it’s not for me”. This other principle instead spoke and said: some things you can do, some things you can’t, for a series of reasons, etc. and it had its own language and laws. It possessed its own category (and its own set of commandments) which at first seemed to me to be an archetype of morals, and therefore positive, but in following its directives it did not bear the same fruit as the first criterion. In fact when I analysed people by listening to the dictates of the deflection monitor – so through respect for and implementation of current moral laws – they physically died. I slowly began to realize that the deflection monitor had nothing to do with the simple principle of life because it did not bring positive results to the subject”. Antonio Meneghetti identified a mechanism that acts in the human psyche deflecting the reflection of his perceptions and altering his knowledge of reality and therefore his consciousness. In his texts he describes its nature, how it acts and the effects its activity produces on human beings, both individually and in the social group. He also describes how we can successfully neutralize its action thus guaranteeing development for the subject.
Meneghetti was very prudent in revealing his discovery. In 1975 he first spoke of the presence of a “deforming grid” that alters our perception of reality. Four years later he began to speak of the deflection monitor until finally in 1985 he decided to publish the book The deflection monitor in the human psyche, where he described the nature and effects of the monitor in a very original way, showing how it acts through examples taken from society and the theories of other scholars.
The two discoveries, the ontic In-itself and the deflection monitor, were obtained thanks to a particular tool that represents the solution of another problem which remained unsolved for thousands of years. The semantic field.
WHAT IS ONTOPSYCHOLOGY?
Ontopsychology originated and was theoretically formalized in 1971 with Antonio Meneghetti’s book The Ontopsychology of the human being. His thoughts and above all his discoveries, permit a complete understanding of what pertains to elementary psychology, and are made official by the Ontopsychology Chair at the St. Petersburg State University Psychology Faculty (http://www.spbu.ru/e/Education/Faculties/Psychology/departments.html; http://www.psy.pu.ru/index.php?n=44; http://www.psy.pu.ru/index.php?n=30&m=2&#q1; for information: onto@onto.ru). This science was essentially motivated and developed through the experience of the crisis in science (Husserl) and above all from the intuition that existence has its own foundation. In ten years of clinical practice Meneghetti received complete confirmation of his theories from the laws of nature (disappearance of the symptom in every case study in his clinical psychotherapy research, from neoplasm to various psychosomatics, from neurosis to asocial dystonia.) and he isolated the basic communications of the ontic In-itself (the ontic criterion that shapes man) on a natural existential basis (with a biological parallel), establishing the principle that every piece of knowledge is true if it is capable of reversibility within the real of life. From this we can see that Ontopsychology is a general episteme for any scientific or intellectual procedure. The ontologic connection guarantees the reciprocal causality. “Any theory is true if it possesses that ontologic connection that produces the evidence of the causality for that object”. The solution of psychotherapy applied to a symptom is only a tool of Ontopsychology; its real aim is to form leaders, who will have active intuition for solutions for the collective.
From the beginning of the nineties the direction has been sociological, underlining the important relationship between man and society and privileging – in conformity with its original intention – the psychology of self fulfilment and creativity, the leader who actuates his leadership through attentive service to human needs and to those of society. On this basis it can be applied to art, politics, and economics. The time and methodology of study are rapid and incisive, and allow the operative leader to completely separate himself from a consciousness formed by cultural stereotypes, and to achieve an ontic consciousness resulting in integral-historical realization.
In thirty five years of didactic and above all demonstrative activity carried out in Europe, Russia, Africa, China and the Americas over sixteen international congresses have been held; over thirty books have been written in Italian and then translated into Russian, English, Portuguese, French, Spanish, German and Chinese; protocols of understanding have been established with many universities throughout the world and chairs for post-graduate specialization have been opened in recognized State universities with the aim of forming specialized workers in Ontopsychology throughout the world.
Today Ontopsychology is seen above all as a term for interdisciplinary knowledge, as it is aimed towards people who work in a global context, from epistemic research to “internet” technique.
From the beginning of the nineties the direction has been sociological, underlining the important relationship between man and society and privileging – in conformity with its original intention – the psychology of self fulfilment and creativity, the leader who actuates his leadership through attentive service to human needs and to those of society. On this basis it can be applied to art, politics, and economics. The time and methodology of study are rapid and incisive, and allow the operative leader to completely separate himself from a consciousness formed by cultural stereotypes, and to achieve an ontic consciousness resulting in integral-historical realization.
In thirty five years of didactic and above all demonstrative activity carried out in Europe, Russia, Africa, China and the Americas over sixteen international congresses have been held; over thirty books have been written in Italian and then translated into Russian, English, Portuguese, French, Spanish, German and Chinese; protocols of understanding have been established with many universities throughout the world and chairs for post-graduate specialization have been opened in recognized State universities with the aim of forming specialized workers in Ontopsychology throughout the world.
Today Ontopsychology is seen above all as a term for interdisciplinary knowledge, as it is aimed towards people who work in a global context, from epistemic research to “internet” technique.
lunedì 12 gennaio 2009
Dean Larisa Tsvetkova Aleksandrova’s opening speech
It is my great pleasure to welcome you to the Aktovy hall of St. Petersburg State University to celebrate the opening of the chair of Ontopsychology in this University’s Department of Psychology, with this official ceremony.
I am delighted to see the presence of all our students, Italian, Brazilian, from the Baltic Republics and from Moscow; teachers from the Department of Psychology; representatives of the administration of the Department and the University; the Chancellor of our University and the leader of Ontopsychology, Prof. Antonio Meneghetti.
The event that we are celebrating today embodies a long history and is the result of the work of many.
In the middle of the last century, the first Dean of the Department of Psychology of the University of St. Petersburg (who would later become the Director of the Institute of Psychology) and representative of Russian psychology in Europe, Professor Lomov Boris Fedorovich met Professor Meneghetti.
They were already contemplating the future of all of psychology. Later, the Dean of the Department of Psychology, who also founded the entire school of Psychology in Leningrad, Ananjev, wrote about “how the science of Ontopsychology is able to approach people in a holistic way within their lives, from their existential growth and everything that the person can somehow ask of the future”.
At the end of the last century, all the professors in the Department had the chance to start studying Ontopsychology and to therefore understand, through the seminars held by Prof. Antonio Meneghetti, how Ontopsychology addresses the person and his creative potential. I would like to give a hearty thanks to the then Dean of the Department of Psychology: Albert Aleksandrovich Krylov.
Decades passed and by organizing this educational process, the preparation of psychologists specialized in Ontopsychology began. Now more than a hundred students are involved.
Of course, many of you will still remember the grand event of the conferment of the first degrees specialized in Ontopsychology at the Capitoline in Rome on September 3, 2001, given directly by the Chancellor of the University and which of course gave the opportunity for our students to receive recognition of their talent.
A second ceremony for conferring Ontopsychology degrees was organized on November 8, 2003 and was international in its scope. Italian, Russian and Brazilian students received their degree again directly from the hands of Chancellor Liudmila Verbitskaja.
In this hall, on the day of the discussion about opening the chair of Ontopsychology, all of the Deans of all of the University departments were present.
In this same hall, the study “Contemporary direction on the soul” was started and also here, right now, we are focusing on human existence in its everyday flow, in the realm of pedagogy, politics and economy.
This entire approach is realized within Ontopsychology, becoming the basis for dialogue between scientists of various nations. Again in this place the union is made between classic psychology and contemporary trends in European psychology.
This enables dialogue throughout the University’s administrations through the important figure of Chancellor Liudmila Alekseevna Verbitskaja.
Furthermore, this day of celebration is dedicated to the founding of the city of St. Petersburg, a city conceived, designed and built by Peter the Great as a center of development of the entire culture.
Hearty thanks is given to the Chancellor, who on April 5, 2004 signed the edict, which on the basis of the instructions of the records from the Scientific Board of the University on March 29, 2004 ordered the founding of the chair of Ontopsychology at the Department of Psychology of St. Petersburg State University.
I am delighted to see the presence of all our students, Italian, Brazilian, from the Baltic Republics and from Moscow; teachers from the Department of Psychology; representatives of the administration of the Department and the University; the Chancellor of our University and the leader of Ontopsychology, Prof. Antonio Meneghetti.
The event that we are celebrating today embodies a long history and is the result of the work of many.
In the middle of the last century, the first Dean of the Department of Psychology of the University of St. Petersburg (who would later become the Director of the Institute of Psychology) and representative of Russian psychology in Europe, Professor Lomov Boris Fedorovich met Professor Meneghetti.
They were already contemplating the future of all of psychology. Later, the Dean of the Department of Psychology, who also founded the entire school of Psychology in Leningrad, Ananjev, wrote about “how the science of Ontopsychology is able to approach people in a holistic way within their lives, from their existential growth and everything that the person can somehow ask of the future”.
At the end of the last century, all the professors in the Department had the chance to start studying Ontopsychology and to therefore understand, through the seminars held by Prof. Antonio Meneghetti, how Ontopsychology addresses the person and his creative potential. I would like to give a hearty thanks to the then Dean of the Department of Psychology: Albert Aleksandrovich Krylov.
Decades passed and by organizing this educational process, the preparation of psychologists specialized in Ontopsychology began. Now more than a hundred students are involved.
Of course, many of you will still remember the grand event of the conferment of the first degrees specialized in Ontopsychology at the Capitoline in Rome on September 3, 2001, given directly by the Chancellor of the University and which of course gave the opportunity for our students to receive recognition of their talent.
A second ceremony for conferring Ontopsychology degrees was organized on November 8, 2003 and was international in its scope. Italian, Russian and Brazilian students received their degree again directly from the hands of Chancellor Liudmila Verbitskaja.
In this hall, on the day of the discussion about opening the chair of Ontopsychology, all of the Deans of all of the University departments were present.
In this same hall, the study “Contemporary direction on the soul” was started and also here, right now, we are focusing on human existence in its everyday flow, in the realm of pedagogy, politics and economy.
This entire approach is realized within Ontopsychology, becoming the basis for dialogue between scientists of various nations. Again in this place the union is made between classic psychology and contemporary trends in European psychology.
This enables dialogue throughout the University’s administrations through the important figure of Chancellor Liudmila Alekseevna Verbitskaja.
Furthermore, this day of celebration is dedicated to the founding of the city of St. Petersburg, a city conceived, designed and built by Peter the Great as a center of development of the entire culture.
Hearty thanks is given to the Chancellor, who on April 5, 2004 signed the edict, which on the basis of the instructions of the records from the Scientific Board of the University on March 29, 2004 ordered the founding of the chair of Ontopsychology at the Department of Psychology of St. Petersburg State University.
Chair of Ontopsychology in Russia
The high vaults of one of St. Petersburg’s oldest buildings seemed to have grown in their proportions. Outside the windows, the life of the large city flows gently by, but here in the silence of the University corridors, everything was ready for the important event.
On May 27, 2004, in the great hall of Twelve Colleges building – the main administrative building of the St. Petersburg State University– in the presence of Prof. Antonio Meneghetti, the University Chancellor, L. Verbitskaja and the Dean of the Department of Psychology, L. Tsvetkova, in addition to several hundred others, including the teachers at the University and students from Russia, Italy, Europe, and Latin America, the official inauguration of the chair of Ontopsychology took place.
Everything that happened that day, the speeches, the special atmosphere and at the finale the entrance of a young woman wearing a dress that symbolized the Russian flag while the national anthem played, emphasized the importance and worldwide significance of the event.
This was the result of over ten years’ analysis and review of Ontopsychology in the Russian Federation and in the Psychology Department of St. Petersburg State University.
In 1989, Prof. A. Meneghetti met luminaries of the psychology school of St. Petersburg including B. Lomov, A. Krylov, and J. Zabrodin. This was the beginning of a great task. In 1998, the collaboration led to the opening of a course of study specialized in Ontopsychology in the department of psychology at the State University of St. Petersburg; in the same year, the first group of eighteen Russian students started their studies.
In 1999, this project of collaboration in the Russian Federation and the countries of the former Soviet Union took on an international status. A contract between the International Association of Ontopsychology and St. Petersburg State University was signed. This opened a new stage in the collaboration and the Russian students were joined by the first group of fifty Italian students. Later, in January 2000, a group of thirty Brazilian students joined. A baccalaureate program and an Ontopsychology workshop were also started.
In 2003, the Department of Psychology opened a separate seat at the AIO headquarters in Scandriglia (Italy); in the same year, the master program in Ontopsychology was opened under the leadership of Professor N. Grishina. The objective of this master program is to prepare highly qualified specialists in Ontopsychology. With the support of a government budget, the start of this program was an essential step for opening the chair. The Russian Ministry of Education recognized Ontopsychology as a “new scientific/practical approach within modern psychology which represents the synthesis of developing approaches and individual differences and aims at an integral description of human life and the development of human individuality.”
The basic theory of Ontopsychology is included in the new edition of the “General Psychology Manual” approved by the commission for methodical review of the Russian Ministry of Education and suggested by the Ministry of Education for all university departments in which psychology courses are taught and for all higher education institutes in the Russian Federation.
In February 2004, the Scientific Board of the Department of Psychology decided to open the chair of Ontopsychology. In March 2004, the Major Scientific Board of the University (the main organ of power in St. Petersburg State University) supported the decision of the Department of Psychology following the presentation made by Dean Larisa Tsvetkova. On March 29, 2004, the Chancellor’s decree to open the chair of Ontopsychology was officially published.
The chair is the structural cell on which the Department is based. Essentially, the chair is the mediator between the educational process (typically of a university) and the process of scientific research (conducted by the Academies).
The chair is only opened if the scientific orientation that it represents is considered important for opening new horizons in science. The chair ensures the legality and seriousness of the scientific research, assuming a function of overseeing and advancing scientific knowledge.
The chair of Ontopsychology has the following functions: first, to ensure the scientific nature of the teaching of Ontopsychology and organize it professionally (the program of ontopsychological studies was formally accepted by the Method Committee of the Department of Psychology of St. Petersburg State University in November 2001); second, to organize the methodical work of the study disciplines, scientific research, preparing scientific and pedagogical frameworks and improving their specialization. An important point is that the chair becomes the scientific core for other departments and institutes, representing Ontopsychology in the scientific sphere.
Therefore, the chair has a twofold duty, on the one hand it organizes and oversees the study process (confirming study plans, choosing basic and specialized scientific programs; training teachers, etc); on the other hand, it organizes and oversees the legal process of scientific research considered of real value for the overall advancement of human society.
The teaching staff will include major specialists from the Department of Psychology at St. Petersburg State University and excellent representatives from the psychology school of St. Petersburg, including: N. Grishina (instructor and head of chair scientific programs), L. Tsvetkova (instructor and dean of the Department of Psychology), S. Manicev (instructor and head of the chair of organizational consulting), J. Filimonenko (instructor of the chair of Ontopsychology), V. Dmitrieva (instructor and director of the chair of Ontopsychology). Teachers and Ontopsychology consultants graduated in Russia and Italy participate in the organization and teaching process.
Over 200 students (from the Russian Federation, Italy, Brazil, the three Baltic Republics and Ukraine) have studied in the programs so far.
We can identify a few main issues for the chair’s future.
The first is training specialists in this field to solve the major questions of contemporary psychology through an interdisciplinary approach, particularly the relationship between the existential development of the individual and his effective inclusion in society.
The second theme is the development of all scientific activity, both through experiments and through analysis of results garnered from graduates theses, some of which, in the opinion of the committee of state certification, are worthy of a doctorate.
The subjects studied pertain to complete research on the human personality over the course of our lives: psychological and professional growth, the development of creative potential, leadership capacities, how Ontopsychology can ensure depth in scientific research and so forth.
The third important issue is the growth of scientific and cultural projects with the universities in the Russian Federation and Europe which have appreciated the project and are ready to work together, while ensuring the scientific nature and high organizational quality of the work.
On May 27, 2004, in the great hall of Twelve Colleges building – the main administrative building of the St. Petersburg State University– in the presence of Prof. Antonio Meneghetti, the University Chancellor, L. Verbitskaja and the Dean of the Department of Psychology, L. Tsvetkova, in addition to several hundred others, including the teachers at the University and students from Russia, Italy, Europe, and Latin America, the official inauguration of the chair of Ontopsychology took place.
Everything that happened that day, the speeches, the special atmosphere and at the finale the entrance of a young woman wearing a dress that symbolized the Russian flag while the national anthem played, emphasized the importance and worldwide significance of the event.
This was the result of over ten years’ analysis and review of Ontopsychology in the Russian Federation and in the Psychology Department of St. Petersburg State University.
In 1989, Prof. A. Meneghetti met luminaries of the psychology school of St. Petersburg including B. Lomov, A. Krylov, and J. Zabrodin. This was the beginning of a great task. In 1998, the collaboration led to the opening of a course of study specialized in Ontopsychology in the department of psychology at the State University of St. Petersburg; in the same year, the first group of eighteen Russian students started their studies.
In 1999, this project of collaboration in the Russian Federation and the countries of the former Soviet Union took on an international status. A contract between the International Association of Ontopsychology and St. Petersburg State University was signed. This opened a new stage in the collaboration and the Russian students were joined by the first group of fifty Italian students. Later, in January 2000, a group of thirty Brazilian students joined. A baccalaureate program and an Ontopsychology workshop were also started.
In 2003, the Department of Psychology opened a separate seat at the AIO headquarters in Scandriglia (Italy); in the same year, the master program in Ontopsychology was opened under the leadership of Professor N. Grishina. The objective of this master program is to prepare highly qualified specialists in Ontopsychology. With the support of a government budget, the start of this program was an essential step for opening the chair. The Russian Ministry of Education recognized Ontopsychology as a “new scientific/practical approach within modern psychology which represents the synthesis of developing approaches and individual differences and aims at an integral description of human life and the development of human individuality.”
The basic theory of Ontopsychology is included in the new edition of the “General Psychology Manual” approved by the commission for methodical review of the Russian Ministry of Education and suggested by the Ministry of Education for all university departments in which psychology courses are taught and for all higher education institutes in the Russian Federation.
In February 2004, the Scientific Board of the Department of Psychology decided to open the chair of Ontopsychology. In March 2004, the Major Scientific Board of the University (the main organ of power in St. Petersburg State University) supported the decision of the Department of Psychology following the presentation made by Dean Larisa Tsvetkova. On March 29, 2004, the Chancellor’s decree to open the chair of Ontopsychology was officially published.
The chair is the structural cell on which the Department is based. Essentially, the chair is the mediator between the educational process (typically of a university) and the process of scientific research (conducted by the Academies).
The chair is only opened if the scientific orientation that it represents is considered important for opening new horizons in science. The chair ensures the legality and seriousness of the scientific research, assuming a function of overseeing and advancing scientific knowledge.
The chair of Ontopsychology has the following functions: first, to ensure the scientific nature of the teaching of Ontopsychology and organize it professionally (the program of ontopsychological studies was formally accepted by the Method Committee of the Department of Psychology of St. Petersburg State University in November 2001); second, to organize the methodical work of the study disciplines, scientific research, preparing scientific and pedagogical frameworks and improving their specialization. An important point is that the chair becomes the scientific core for other departments and institutes, representing Ontopsychology in the scientific sphere.
Therefore, the chair has a twofold duty, on the one hand it organizes and oversees the study process (confirming study plans, choosing basic and specialized scientific programs; training teachers, etc); on the other hand, it organizes and oversees the legal process of scientific research considered of real value for the overall advancement of human society.
The teaching staff will include major specialists from the Department of Psychology at St. Petersburg State University and excellent representatives from the psychology school of St. Petersburg, including: N. Grishina (instructor and head of chair scientific programs), L. Tsvetkova (instructor and dean of the Department of Psychology), S. Manicev (instructor and head of the chair of organizational consulting), J. Filimonenko (instructor of the chair of Ontopsychology), V. Dmitrieva (instructor and director of the chair of Ontopsychology). Teachers and Ontopsychology consultants graduated in Russia and Italy participate in the organization and teaching process.
Over 200 students (from the Russian Federation, Italy, Brazil, the three Baltic Republics and Ukraine) have studied in the programs so far.
We can identify a few main issues for the chair’s future.
The first is training specialists in this field to solve the major questions of contemporary psychology through an interdisciplinary approach, particularly the relationship between the existential development of the individual and his effective inclusion in society.
The second theme is the development of all scientific activity, both through experiments and through analysis of results garnered from graduates theses, some of which, in the opinion of the committee of state certification, are worthy of a doctorate.
The subjects studied pertain to complete research on the human personality over the course of our lives: psychological and professional growth, the development of creative potential, leadership capacities, how Ontopsychology can ensure depth in scientific research and so forth.
The third important issue is the growth of scientific and cultural projects with the universities in the Russian Federation and Europe which have appreciated the project and are ready to work together, while ensuring the scientific nature and high organizational quality of the work.
martedì 6 gennaio 2009
Ontopsychology
Ontopsychology was born
On the theoretical level, Ontopsychology appeared in 1971 with Antonio Meneghetti's book Ontopsicologia dell'uomo (Ontopsychology of Man). The motivation behind the movement comes from the experience of the crisis of humanistic values, and especially from the intuition that there is a foundation to existence.
Thirty years were to follow, marked by intense clinical, educational and demonstrative practice across Europe , China and America , with sixteen international congresses and one world congress. Over thirty books have been written in Italian and translated into Russian, English, Portuguese, French, Spanish and Chinese; while collaboration protocols have been set up with universities accross the world, some of which have established specific postgraduate courses focusing on Ontopsychology.
A.I.O International Ontopsychology Association official website
A.I.O. Associazione internazionale ontopsicologia sito ufficiale
On the theoretical level, Ontopsychology appeared in 1971 with Antonio Meneghetti's book Ontopsicologia dell'uomo (Ontopsychology of Man). The motivation behind the movement comes from the experience of the crisis of humanistic values, and especially from the intuition that there is a foundation to existence.
Thirty years were to follow, marked by intense clinical, educational and demonstrative practice across Europe , China and America , with sixteen international congresses and one world congress. Over thirty books have been written in Italian and translated into Russian, English, Portuguese, French, Spanish and Chinese; while collaboration protocols have been set up with universities accross the world, some of which have established specific postgraduate courses focusing on Ontopsychology.
A.I.O International Ontopsychology Association official website
A.I.O. Associazione internazionale ontopsicologia sito ufficiale
martedì 30 dicembre 2008
Exchange with other Institutions
The Association keeps contacts with international organisms, among which the O.N.U, the A.P.A. (American Psychological Association), I.I.A. (International Informatization Academy), W.F.M.H. (World Federation for Mental Health), I.A.A.P. (International Association of Applied Psychology), I.C.P. (International Council of Psychologists), S.I.P. (Sociedad Interamericana de Psicologia), W.F.M.T. (World Federation for Music Therapy), E.F.P.P.A. (European Federation of Professional Psychology Associations).
Beyond this, the A.I.O. keeps constant contacts with many other national and international institutions of research, and it has signed protocols of agreement with some of these.
Beyond this, the A.I.O. keeps constant contacts with many other national and international institutions of research, and it has signed protocols of agreement with some of these.
Iscriviti a:
Post (Atom)
