Chapter 6: Technique of Imaginative Evocation of Interpersonal Relationships

In this chapter Roberto Assagioli discusses how a therapist can help a patient/client "achieve the right inner attitude towards other people and to successfully perform intended actions involving others." He sees this happening in two stages. The first stage involves eliminating that which hinders the patient from holding that right attitude, and the second stage "is a gradual training in developing facility in outer interpersonal relations." The first stage involves catharsis of emotional blocks and increased understanding of negative emotions. The second stage involves imagining the right attitude in a specific relationship and creating a kind of internal model of how that relationship can be warm, loving and harmonious.

In another section of this chapter, Assagioli addresses the attitude of the therapist, stating that interpersonal relationships can be facilitated by the way in which the therapist regards the patient. Referencing the work of Henri Baruk, he says his own approach "consists in the attitude of addressing oneself to the better part of the patient, together with (a)  spirit of confidence, of trust in and appreciation of the patient." In a further explication, Assagioli states that one needs to view the patient not only as  having the "unaffected" aspect of moral conscience, but also the Self. He emphasizes that the role of the Self is not only moral, but also spiritual. He further explains that the conscience "that issues from the spiritual Self is quite different (than the harsh super-ego that Freud identified). It is a wise, loving type of moral conscience; it is not harsh, and follows to some extent the principle so well expressed in the words of the Christ: "Love thy neighbor as thyself.""

In the very last section of the chapter there is a general commentary on all the techniques discussed in this and earlier chapters. Assagioli points out that techniques should be used with patients in a way that takes their particular situation into consideration, and each patient should be regarded as uniquely themselves, rather than "as a member of a class." Finally, he gives some thoughts about research, stating that he feels "that research can be more profitably directed towards the intensive study and treatment of a comparatively small number of cases - resulting in detailed and thoroughly discussed case histories - than towards a more general treatment of the large number of cases needed for statistical purposes."