FINAL INTEGRATION IN THE ADULT PERSONALITY.

Abstract

C ONTRARY TO MOST psychologists w h o ' " study children, animals or the mentally ill in order to find principles which will contribute to the understanding of maturity or final integration, I believe that ~insight into the nature of fullyintegrated individuals can greatly increase our knowledge of the mature man who exists potentially within the child. It can make psychotherapy a more effective and meaningful technique and can guide the socially-adjusted person to his state of individuation. 2 This paper is an attempt to formulate a psychological theory for the study of final integration in the adult personality. I t is not a report of an experimental study~. Rather, it is based on personal visionary experience, objectivization of that experience, clinical study of cases of two cultures, and an analvsis of final integration in autonomous individuals. Several visionary experiences and a few experimental studies almost a decade ag O convinced me of the significance of final integration in the adult personality. After seeking an understanding of i t for the last few years~ I have been able to formulate its psychological theory, its laws and mechanisms and to propose it as a measure for man's progress, health and security, as well as a guide in training analysts, psychologists , leaders and educators. The first psychical vision occurred in 1955 when I wrote a book (in Persian) entitled The Process of Human Growth. 3 At that time I was deeply influenced by the works of Piaget, Erik Erikson and those in the Committee on Human Development at the University of Chicago. In a conscious way my book sought to interpret the stages of human grOWth according t o these Western concepts. Yet, when I came to discuss maturity, my thinking unconsciously led me away from Western thought; nor did I feel any sympathy for the pleasure principle and pragmatism, both of which seemed to me inadequate f o r interpreting human behavior in the state of maturity, even though they might be considered the foundation of growth. Moreover, I felt that not even social realism was sufficiently explanatory. Finally, I concluded my book with a poem from Rumi, the fully: integrated man of thirteenth-century Persia: