Play-Persona: Modeling Player Behaviour in Computer Games

4.2 PSYCHOSYNTHESIS
Psychosynthesis, listed by Maslow under the fourth force of psychology, is an approach based on a
dynamic understanding of psychic life. Psychic life is seen as a struggle, within man, among several
contrasting and opposing forces. In the middle of this psychic battlefield there is a unifying centre
that tries to integrate the forces harmonically and use them for useful and creative purposes. In
psychosynthesis these struggling forces, or “multiplied souls” [7], are called subpersonalities.
According to Roberto Assagioli, the founder of psychosynthesis, personality is not unified, defined,
stable and integrated, but it is more like a compound of subpersonalities which, from time to time,
gain dominance over each other and negotiate the definition of the self and the
motivational/operational aspects of behaviour. An example fitting to describe this situation could be
looking at the relation between a male teenager and his Tamagotchi: it is surprising to find in this
subject extremely accentuated maternal behavioural patterns, yet the care and responsibility
devoted to the virtual pet hint at the presence of a prototypical “mother” subpersonality. If asked,
the subject would deny such an occurrence and even feel embarrassed; pointing us towards the
fact that the existence and operation of subpersonalities might be an unconscious process.
Psychosynthesis’ ultimate goal is to integrate the potential richness of these multiple
subpersonalities in a superior unity. This synthetic process happens through a series of
disidentifications of the self from the subpersonalities (false or partial images of the self) and
identifications with a higher, more central unity, a unity that does not negate our inner fauna but
integrates it. Psychosynthesis does not claim to wipe the slate clean and start from scratch with a
completely original definition of personality; instead it draws on previous accepted contributions.
Giovanni Bollea [7] defines personality as “dialectic synthesis of the relationship between the self
and the world, between the self and family, society and physical environment”; he implies that
personality is our way to be in the world in a given moment. From this definition Assagioli derives
that too often the self is confused with conscious personality. The ever-changing contents of our
conscience (thoughts, feelings, etc.) are different from the self, the auto-consciousness, which
contains and perceives them. ”It is the same difference between the screen in a cinema and the
images projected on it” [1]. This thought is the foundation of the whole theory of subpersonalities.
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