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 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”.

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.

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.

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.

Acc. Professor Liudmila Alekseevna Verbitskaja’s opening speech

I am very pleased that most of the people in this room can be called students of St. Petersburg University. On this very day that is dedicated to the founding of the city of St. Petersburg (which it is important to emphasize), an event has taken place that is not only important for St. Petersburg State University, but for all Russian higher education institutions and very important for the entire worldwide education system.
Within a university it is always a major event when a chair is opened.
For this reason the University’s Scientific Board, which meets in this hall, has very seriously examined the Scientific Board of the Department of Psychology’s decision to open the chair of Ontopsychology in the Department of Psychology.
A new scientific school is born with the opening of the chair of Ontopsychology. What I consider most important is that the head of worldwide Ontopsychology is an extraordinary person.
It is often very difficult to answer the question: “In what scientific sector did Lomov pursue his studies?”.
He was chancellor of the first St. Petersburg University for seven years. Later, after thirty-one years, he opened the University with a location in Moscow.
How can Lomov be known within our science?
He was an extraordinary chemist, an extraordinary physicist, and philologists also claim him as one of their own because he was an incredible poet.
In the tradition of the University, he is a man who is well-known in a vast range of fields and sectors. I am very grateful to Professor Meneghetti because he planned and organized this project.
Now we are here today to continue what he began. Another question that is difficult to answer: “Who is Professor Meneghetti?” Because he is an incredible artist, an exceptional musical composer, an incredible philosopher, a man who has deep knowledge of all subjects that have to do with politics and economics of our time.
Today, it is Professor Meneghetti’s greatest talent that we are celebrating; he is a psychologist and founder of Ontopsychology.
I feel that Ontopsychology truly fits extraordinarily within the education that St. Petersburg University gives because at the university we try to represent the best scientists and especially include sciences that let us study the most complex subject, the human being. Everyone might agree with me on this.
I am sure that Ontopsychology is very important because in studying the person at different times of his life gives us the chance to go into the deep interiority of the person into that which can simply be called the human soul.
In Russia, we consider the soul the most important part of the person.
First of all, I am certainly very grateful to Prof. Meneghetti who gave me the chance to learn about Ontopsychology.
I remember the lessons I attended with immense pleasure.
I also thank Prof. Albert Aleksandrovich Krylov, who has supported this idea from the start, and of course for us, for Prof. Krylov and for Prof. Grishina it was a great honor when we conferred the first specialization diplomas in Rome.
My deep gratitude also goes to Dean Larisa Tsvetkova Aleksandrova who, even before becoming Dean had experienced the practical application of Ontopsychological science.
A big thanks to all of the teachers of the Department of Psychology who for many years have painstakingly prepared the event that we are celebrating today: the opening of the chair of Ontopsychology
And a special thanks to all of our students.
Without students, the chair, the structural unit of the entire University, could not exist and there could ultimately be no University.
The students are clearly what counts most in the University.
Thank you all very much.

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

ontopsychology

INTERNATIONAL ONTOPSYCHOLOGY ASSOCIATION

Constituted with its own statute in January 27, 1978.

The Association has a non-political nature and it doesn’t work for the sake of gain. As for the aims of the A.I.O., here follows a part of the article n° 2 of the Statute: " The aim of the Association is the scientific research on the psychic activity concerning the anthropological phenomenology both in the conscious and unconscious field, together with the perspective function of the being. The Association, other than describing the general aspect of the Ontopsychological praxis, individuates the process of observation of an attitude or complex for the psycho-social and psycho-biological authentication. According to the theoretical presuppositions of Ontopsychology, it organizes courses of psycho-pedagogy: explicitation of the human unconscious according to the intentionality of the individual and personologic a priori sense in environmental gestalt, explicitation of the birth and development of the Ego as an organismic and social function of the positive in-self of the being; it promotes and supports OntoArte, that is, each expression of art as aesthetical learning of that form which specifies the being in unique perspective for the perceptive individuation, even through its own school".