The school of a Leader

Undoubtely, being a leader today is one of the main characteristics of individuality, and that is also a huge goal. The word leader has many meanings, and it often implies a lack of correspondence between the meaning and the subject who represents it.
After being a successful therapist for years, at the beginning of the 80s Meneghetti decided to develop the field of leadership according to the ontopsychological school (see the book “The psychology of a leader”).
According to Antonio Meneghetti, “whatever his field of action may be – financial, economical, political, entrepreneurial, medical, etc., a leader is a providence of the spirit in the world, and as such he can help people. He is the one who, through his own successful egoism, achieves social good for everybody. In so doing, he creates wealth and helps thousands of people, being a stimulus for society and helping progress”.
These are the bases on which Professor Antonio Meneghetti created a school for the training of leaders who operate in many social fields (politics, economics, art, etc) through the authentication of the intellectual and creative potential.
The best way of training is the Residence, i.e. a residential stage which lasts a few days, with theoretical and practical lessons, on contact with a clean nature.
Of course, Lizori is the perfect habitat to host people coming from all over the world.
Together with a natural and hospitable landscape, the halls and rooms of Lizori retain an atmosphere of sand and stone, making them ideal venues for hosting post degree courses and other activities.

Antonio Meneghetti interview

Professor Antonio Meneghetti, why have you chosen Lizori?

“If the architecture of a place is such because it‘s mental order, then it is clear that I found it rewarding to rebuild this wonderful place belonging to the past for the human being of the third millennium. In Lizori, everyone can discover himself as part of life”.

Have you ever been in Lizori?

Lizori is a small village in the Italian region called Umbria, layed on a green hill that faces Spoleto's valley.

Walking by the streets of Lizori, several sculptures can be observed. These handmade objects have been realized by the components of OntoArte, the artistic expression of Ontopsicologia (Ontopsychology). Lizori itself can be considered the main masterpiece of OntoArte of Professor Antonio Meneghetti.

LET’S BUILD CIVILIZATION

“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.”

Ontopsychology
Ontopsicologica Editrice
Antonio Meneghetti

THE ONTOLOGY OF ARCHITECTURE

The “Ontology of Architecture” event, promoted by the International OntoArte School Association at the art gallery of Torre Matigge of Trevi and sponsored by the Region of Umbria, the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities, the Order of Architects, Planners, Landscape Architects and Conservationists of the Province of Perugia, and the Lizori Civic Committee, ended on 15 July 2007 and was an enormous success. The event was held during two full-immersion weekends, in which a series of educational experiences allowed participants to examine the dynamic architecture of Prof. Antonio Meneghetti, who has been in the international scientific limelight for many years. The event included conferences, live planning sessions assisted by technicians open to dialogue, historic/architectural documentaries of projects ranging from individual design objects to architecture and urban planning, critical reports on the Bauhaus and the issues that the great names in architecture have always investigated, and slides about Antonio Meneghetti’s international production, culminating in the author’s closing conference examining the basic rules on which architecture is based. During the conference, Meneghetti noted, “I would like to form a worldwide group of architects based on the concept of OntoArte,1 i.e. capable of bringing the technique of draughtsmanship and formalization into the heart of truth, life and everything that has to do with health: in other words, a group capable of bringing rationality within man’s ontic In-itself.” He went on to explain that “the ontic In-itself is the genome. It is like the intelligent universe that plans human beings, the being as a person, society and cosmos. One cannot build a civilization for mankind if one is not first aware of the criterion, the element and the basic plan of what man is.” In fact, humans are not born from chaos but from causality and will, and if they form part of this ‘insight design’ of how the eternal nature of things has planned them and loves, protects, maintains and develops them, then – as scholars, technical experts and thus architects – they can become collaborators of civilization, beauty, order, ethics and everything that is encompassed by the human existence. In essence, if one does not know nature’s plan, by the same token one cannot design architectural beauty. Indeed, the term “architecture” refers to the principle that projects form. As a result, it is even more important that architects be made aware of the ontological aspect of their work. “Therefore, anything that is done must always have an ontological connection, in other words a connection with the being that man is according to nature’s plan. A house, a garden, a staircase, a studio or a terrace must be enhanced senses, developed perceptions. In other words, the house must be our second body or even an expansion of the small body of the human being, from which we must be able to achieve the progressive amplitude of an ever-larger space in which to experience our own territorial psychology.” A highly stimulating intellectual atmosphere allowed participants to re-experience the spirit of the creative workshop of the Renaissance encouraged by the Bauhaus and Renzo Piano alike. This powerful meaning, so simple that it seemed impossible to understand because it was forgotten by the great perennial culture, that of Aristotle and Leonardo, became topical once more: manna for those who were willing to accept it. The pedagogy of a Maestro who, with his works, fully demonstrates the underpinnings of the ontopsychological culture and finally recognizes an operating criterion for design, one that has vanished from the media because of rampant consumerism, can still be found in all the geniuses who – on a transhistorical level – bear witness to the value of the human being. It is a shame that these values, which would restore to young people the operative scope of a profession, have vanished from the media due to widespread political indifference. By the same token, it is important that this kind of cultural and scientific testimony be available to attentive minds capable of grasping the vital challenge of responsibly playing a leading role in their eras. “This ontological architecture or, in other words, working according to the ontic project of each individual, must be provided above all when people join together as a society and create monuments, parliaments, churches, gyms, football pitches, theatres and so on.” This event led to a proposal for the critical interpretation of a current work, a monument that is representative of Italy’s architectural heritage: the Ara Pacis in Rome. No one likes the current renovation, particularly Italians, and Antonio Meneghetti’s solution would be a glass pyramid, a symbol that has always testified to the eternal value of human knowledge. Public attendance at the event continued to grow, culminating with 150 paying participants during the last weekend. Despite the fact that the event mainly targeted an Italian audience of students, graduates and professionals working in this field, it was rewarding to note that it was also attended by architects, interior designers, gallery owners and important businesspeople from Brazil, Russia, Latvia, England and other countries. One cannot help but wonder if this foreign turnout was due to the cultural novelty of the event or the publicity it gained as a result of the interest shown by the UN in Geneva in early July of this year regarding the Annual Ministerial Review. The AMR presented the results of two urban settlements created with scientific, artistic and cultural objectives in mind, respectively in Latvia and Brazil, and designed by this great mind ahead of his time. The main interest focused on the innovation that this business angel can create, i.e. economic cooperation between private and public organizations in order to restore or create new urban settlements, above all due to the enormous difficulty involved in establishing an economy that can endure during the time it is carried out, that avoids creating a cathedral in the desert and is capable of guaranteeing complete insertion and the revitalization of the local population involved. Fascinating, innovative and full of operating solutions with a broad range of applications in the social arena, this event marks an important step in Italy’s cultural life.

Ontopsychology
Ontopsicologia Editrice
Antonio Meneghetti

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.”

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 INTEGRATION OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE AND ONTOPSYCHOLOGY

By Albert A. Krylov

It is important to underline that the problem of individuality is not underestimated in Ontopsychology, but it is brought to the fore as the most important aspect for contemporary and future psychology.

Academician Professor Albert A. Krylov, born in 1935, is doctor of Psychological Sciences, professor and is medical training. Between 1967 and 1969 he was the Chairman of the Engineering Psychology Department of Leningrad University. Since 1976 he has been Dean of the Faculty of Psychology and holds the Chair of General Psychology. He has authored more than 100 scientific papers, and has a very large number of students both in Russia and abroad. He was awarded the honorary title of “Distinguished personality of Russian sciences”.

“One of the fundamental paradigms of our time is the systemic approach in the human being’s knowledge and activity. To understand such principles, we have to refer to Smuts (holism), Bogdanov (tectology), L. Von Bertalanffy (general theory of systems) and other researchers.
The process of integration of scientific knowledge can be considered a concrete phenomenon of the systemic approach. The integration of scientific knowledge is necessary to formulate complex laws and find profound connections in the universe, so as to understand the latter as a unitary system. Of course, such a path also presupposes a permanent passage towards new and higher levels of analysis of the data taken from every single science. From such point of view, psychology has an important characteristic inside the manifold existing sciences: the human being is surveyed both as the subject and the object of knowledge. Together with sociality and work, cognitive capacity is one of the fundamental expressions of the human being’s essence.
Mankind’s development, the comprehension of the world, the comprehension of man’s ego, the creation of sciences as forms of general consciousness and all the socio-cultural and spiritual richness of mankind are connected to this. Starting from what stated above, there are reasons to presuppose that the integrative processes in psychology have a deep specificity.
According to our opinions, it is possible to underline three general movements of psychological integration. Of course, the criteria that we have used to analyse the integrative psychological processes cannot be considered the only possible ones. Nevertheless, the model that we have proposed has a high degree of generalisation.
The first movement is connected with psychology itself, with factors of development of psychological knowledge. If we use Wundt’s conception as the starting point in the process of formation of psychology, we can see that this theory involved a change of conception of the same object of psychology. We can consider what follows: the pure elements of consciousness (structuralism); consciousness as a mechanism of adaptation, internal and external conditions (functionalism); personality and psycho-energetic equilibrium (psychoanalysis); behaviour (behaviourism); psychic reflection and psyche as the propriety of the physiological substratum of the brain (one of the most diffused conceptions to our days).
Cognitive psychology has also been acknowledged as scientific movement of contemporary psychology. So, we can conclude that the first movement of the integrative processes of psychology connected to the immanent properties of psychological knowledge has had, and still has, an important meaning for both a general and an applied knowledge in a concrete sector.
The second movement of integration in psychology is connected to the fact that psychological knowledge is always widely used by other sciences. The process of development of many sciences and their practical applications is directly connected to theoretical and applied psychology. The result given is the change of the social role and the importance of psychology.
The first Russian scientist who clearly showed this phenomenon is G. Ananiev.
In his main work, Man as object of knowledge, B.G. Ananiev has proved that, among all sciences somehow connected to the study of the human being, only psychology can be considered a general methodological and scientific centre. So, psychology acquires the properties of a systemic factor, which underlines the general practical and scientific sector of man’s knowledge (system). Thus, psychology actively assimilates the data belonging to other sciences with the primary aim of their psychological comprehension and the future “psychologisation” of the spheres of practical application.
One of the first successful attempts to apply Ananiev’s ideas (dealt in the book above mentioned) is the foundation of the first laboratory of Engineering Psychology in Russia, in 1959. Created by Ananiev’s student B.F. Lomov, this laboratory has had in Russia the same importance as V. Wundt’s laboratory in the worldly psychological panorama. The activity of the laboratory proved how successful the integration of psychological knowledge can be with the technical sciences in the field of design, as well as the richness of the methodological and scientific arsenal of psychology. All that we have said about engineering psychology can generally be applied to all the branches of psychology (social, legal, political, clinical etc.). We have enough elements to affirm the importance of the psychological integration for the real knowledge of the world and for the human being’s practical activity.
The third branch of the psychological integration can be considered as a unity, with the meaning above mentioned. According to our opinion, this branch of integration has two levels. The first is a compiling level, which we describe in general terms as a certain psychological phenomenon used by some science to construct new theoretical concepts. Going back to psychology, these concepts widen the knowledge of the human being’s substance and nature. Nevertheless they remain independent and do not form another level of integrity in psychological concepts.
That is how, for example, the Russian scientist V.I. Vernadskij elaborated the concept of noosphere as part of the biosphere, organised by the biochemical energy of man’s creative process. Another Russian scientist, the ethnographer L.N. Gumilev, proposed the original idea of ethno-genesis, with the basic concept of the change of the behavioural stereotype in people, as a result of some cosmic (solar) influences. In psychology, such elaborations allow us to draw the conclusion that a person’s development is not caused by nature alone but by biosphere as well. It is not caused solely by society but also by the noosphere. Not only by mankind, but by ethno-sphere as well.
It is natural to presuppose that the integrator can be the psycho-sphere which includes the bound psychic energy (people who live in a given period of time) and free psychic energy, which can originate from some famous people who lived in the past. The psycho-sphere is open to the Cosmos. With such an approach it is unlikely that we would be satisfied with a concept of psychology as a science that studies the function of reflex of the brain. Probably, a conception of psychology as science of the human being’s spiritual essence and variety of forms of psychic reflection is closer to the truth. The basis of such model is Ananiev’s elaboration, published in the book Man as object of knowledge, from which we differ in some points.
The third level of psychological integration can be called constructive or creative. First of all, its result leads to the construction of a unique and new theory, based on the theoretical conceptions of sciences which do not seem to have anything in common. Secondly, it leads to an adequate method and an instrument which guarantee the success of practical activity. All of this undoubtedly allows us to consider the historical and current experience of all the psychological movements in the world.
This means that we are talking of a level of integration which corresponds to a new movement of psychology, a new psychological school. The school that most of all responds to our needs is surely Ontopsychology, founded and developed by the Italian scientist Antonio Meneghetti. In the figure on the side (according to P. and D. Schultz’s chronological model which shows the development of psychological schools in the world) we have a scheme of the integrative process up to the third millennium. It is dearly necessary to give a brief explanation of the positions that we have used in analysing A. Meneghetti’s Ontopsychology. First of all, we start saying that the word “Ontopsychology” was coined a long time ago. In Ananiev’s conception, for example, it is explained like a branch of psychology that studies ontogenesis, i.e., the development of the individual as a totality of organic properties (regarding the organism only). In Meneghetti’s theory, the term “Ontopsychology” has a new meaning: it is the development of individuality as a whole, it is the psychology of the being in the human being.
Ontopsychology is based on some fundamental concepts, like “semantic field” and “In-itself”. As a concept, the semantic field is different from the term used in philology. It is the basic information that life uses within its individualizations (the Ego as agent individual and personality).
The “In-itself” is the haecceity of Being. In its principal form, the ontic In-itself is what regulates the human being in the form specified by the intentionality of Being. Based on the common being, the ontic In-itself is in relation with the cosmos, the universe and life. Based on the individual being, the ontic In-itself is in relation with the human being as historical haecceity.
The main result of the ontopsychological practice is to individuate the ontic In-itself. In explaining some basic concepts of Ontopsychology, we did not mean to give a complete treatise on the subject. Clearly, we have a new deep knowledge, that allows for the integration of psychological sciences as well as the integration of psychological knowledge with other sciences. In conclusion, there is still one thing to consider. All over the world, Wundt’s laboratory is considered of great importance for the birth of psychology as an independent science. This was surely helped by some external factor connected to the need to develop knowledge of man, a need that neither biology nor physiology could fulfil. We must also say that internal factors played an important role. A new theoretical concept was proposed, together with a method and instruments of research.
The laboratory became an international centre of training for professional psychologists. Specific monographs and an issue have been published; international congresses of psychology are regularly organised. We cannot forget Wundt’s work and personality.
If we look at Prof. Meneghetti’s work at the International Ontopsychology Association, we cannot help finding a substantial resemblance with Wundt’s laboratory, considering that Ontopsychology has a new important element, as it is successfully confirmed in practical activity. With this, we can be sure that Ontopsychology will have an important role in the integration of sciences.”

(Article published in the journal New Ontopsychology, no. 1/2001, Psicologica Ed., Rome)

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

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

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.

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”.

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.

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.

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.

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.

THE THREE DISCOVERIES: THE ONTIC IN-ITSELF

The unsolved problem: the existence of the soul

Soul or spirit means “vital breath”. By “breath” the ancients meant something that was invisible but had visible effects. For all great religions the soul was a natural concept of man and represented his point of contact with the divine.
The ancient Greeks made the soul a philosophical concept, to be analysed through rational techniques. All those before Socrates discussed the soul and particularly the link between body and soul, the two fundamental dimensions of man’s existence. According to Plato body and soul are separate while for Aristotle they are closely connected. “The soul is the act before the natural body and has the potentiality of life. Therefore it is manifest that the soul is not separable from the body since some of its actions are the corresponding action of parts of the body”, wrote Aristotle, thus “natural bodies are tools (organs) of the soul”. With Christianity the discussions on the soul went from philosophical to religious and the studies made regarded the attempt to make the concept of “soul” coherent in a catholic sense to western rationality. With the enlightenment and the subsequent industrial revolution the scholar’s interest turned to reason and soul was often seen as a religious concept and thus not scientific. Philosophical interest in the soul continued however, shown by Schopenhauer, Kant and Hegel. In the nineteen hundreds there was the tendency to consider the soul as a mystic concept, even if some scholars such as Brentano, Freud with his Id, Jung, Jaspers and Gabriel Marcel highlighted that within the human being there were vital and creative impulses and intentionality that were not strictly pertinent to reason.
In the twentieth century there was still no answer to the question: does the soul exist? If it does exist can it be described and studied in a rational or even scientific manner?

The discovery of the ontic In-itself

“On beginning to cure the human being, I was looking for a principle for curing, the criterion that could give the direction to life, when I discovered that in the background of the unconscious there was not life or death, because these are consequences, rather there was a principle, a living transcendent criteria. Transcendent in that it was in that subject, but at the same time it was not there.
This principle was the ontic In-itself.
This principle worked from the phenomenology and operative results of the person, thus a subject was neurotic or a failure because he went against the specific properties of this elementary criterion, while everything that conformed to it would give the subject life, well-being, satisfaction, this was the criteria that meant being or not being, to be ill or healthy, successful or frustrated etc.”.
“The ontic In-itself is the foundation or criterion of Ontopsychology” writes the Professor. Therefore the ontic In-itself is the criterion that in ontopsychological analysis allows us to distinguish “what is good from what is bad”. It is an intelligent principle: “In our body there is a mind that organizes the existence of the whole and the single parts”. “This basic criterion is the same for everyone”, it takes the name of the human being’s In-itself or constant H, and it is the form of intelligence that differentiates man from other life forms. “But it specifies itself differently in each person”.
The definition of the In-itself is: “intelligent form principle that makes historical autoctisis”. For Meneghetti the soul has a metaphysical nature but is concretely embodied in the history of the human being. It is noumenon that becomes phenomenon.
Meneghetti wrote a fundamental text to formalize the ontic In-itself, The In-itself of the human being, and a section found in the Ontopsychology Handbook. More generally the ontic In-itself constitutes the criterion for Ontopsychology and therefore represents the founding principle for all the texts written by Antonio Meneghetti.
For many of today’s schools of thought the soul is not a scientific concept. What then is the novelty of the ontic In-itself compared to the concept of soul?
Meneghetti is two steps ahead of the religious and scientific-philosophic world; he describes and demonstrates the soul. He clinically demonstrates its existence through his results and he describes it through the fifteen characteristics.
Antonio Meneghetti’s innovation is that he has “individuated” (he has recognized it), “isolated” (he has distinguished it from other existing questions) and “specified” (he has described how it is manifested, what it does and why it does it) this first principle. “All ontopsychological practice consists in the individuation and application of the In-itself”, in teaching how to individuate it and make it work in every day life.
The ontic In-itself is coherent with humanity’s great books, Meneghetti himself affirms it. He realizes that the historical importance of his thought is not that he discovered something that nobody knew existed, the In-itself is, as Antonio Meneghetti identified it, what so many had searched for and hypothesized.
Meneghetti’s point of departure is the point of arrival for others. The innovation lies in giving this discovery scientific dignity. For Meneghetti the ontic In-itself is not a mystic idea but something concrete and real within every man, which when individuated and put into action allows success in every concrete aspect of man’s existence. It determines health, well-being, pleasure and economic and social success.
Instead of representing it with dogma or fideism, Antonio Meneghetti describes it almost automatically; he illustrates all the phenomenology with the precision of a careful researcher and makes understanding and personal application possible for every human being.
How did Meneghetti manage to give a scientific answer to the ancient question regarding the existence of the human soul?
“I used this criterion observing it, reading it and decoding it with all the arts and studies that I had behind me. I did not get there by chance; I possessed all the tools for reading it: the tools of mysticism, rationality, mathematics, evidence, physics, theory and many other things. The luck was that when I started the analysis of this process I had superior training, which Jung, Freud, St. Thomas Aquinas etc could not have had. I had more skills which allowed a more complete analysis”. “So at first I discovered that this criterion – which was observable, readable – manifested itself and following its indications always led to precise results: health, well-being, success. If this principle was forgotten, contradicted or altered it was always followed by illness, disorder, confusion etc.”.
But why would we contradict this principle? The answer can be found in the second fundamental discovery: the deflection monitor.