In the Preface to The Act of Will, Assagioli says he makes no metaphysical claim that the ‘will’ exists and that his approach is empirical and phenomenological:
“As for language, the reader will find the word ‘will’ used as a noun throughout. This has been done for the purpose of simplifying the text. However, it should be noted at the outset that no ‘metaphysical’ claim is being made either for or against the proposition that the ‘will’ exists. My approach, dealing as it does with ‘willers’ and ‘willed acts,’ is empirical and phenomenological. Its foundation is psychosynthesis, both personal and transpersonal: a process of growth based on the harmonious integration of all aspects of the personality around the self, the center of awareness and will.”
However, in the Introduction to The Act of Will, he says that the first stage of the experience of the will is the recognition that the will exists:
“The experience of the will constitutes both a firm foundation and a strong incentive for starting the exacting but most rewarding task of its training. It occurs in three phases: the first is the recognition that the will exists; the second concerns the realization of having a will. The third phase of the discovery, which renders it complete and effective, is that of being a will (this is different from “having” a will).”
This appears to be a major contradiction. If his stance is purely agnostic, and he doesn’t claim either way that the will exists, how then can one recognize that they “have a will.” To have something presupposes that it exists.
In the Preface, he also said that his approach is empirical and phenomenological, so let’s be generous and say that we can infer that by “exists” he means in and empirical or phenomenological sense, rather than metaphysical. To understand what different forms of claims about something “existing” look like, I’ll break down some examples of how they could be structured. Metaphysical claims fall into multiple types. Note: these are examples and not statements made by Assagioli.
Substance Claims:
- The will is a distinct faculty or power that exists as part of the soul/mind
- The will is a non-physical substance that can causally influence matter
- The will exists as a real entity, not merely as a way of describing behavior
Essence Claims:
- The will is the essential nature of the self
- Will is the fundamental category that defines personhood
Causal Power Claims:
- The will is an uncaused cause—it can initiate action without being fully determined by prior causes
- The will has libertarian free will (genuine metaphysical freedom)
- The will transcends physical causation
Universal/Cosmic Claims:
- There exists a Universal Will underlying all individual wills
- Individual wills participate in or derive from a cosmic will
- Will is a fundamental feature of reality itself, not just of minds
Irreducibility Claims:
- Will cannot be reduced to desire, motivation, brain states, or any combination thereof
- Will is ontologically primitive—not composed of or explainable by anything more basic
Empirical claims are based on observable, measurable phenomena, can be publicly verified (others can check), are testable and falsifiable, and are replicable. Examples, again not from Assagioli:
- People who report ‘willing’ show consistent activation patterns in prefrontal cortex regions associated with executive function.
- Training programs targeting volitional capacity produce measurable improvements on behavioral tasks (delayed gratification, impulse control, goal persistence) compared to control groups.
- There is a reliable neurological signature distinguishing self-reported ‘willed acts’ from self-reported ‘impulsive acts.’
- Subjects can be trained to discriminate between experiences of ‘willing’ and ‘desiring’ with inter-rater reliability above chance.
There is an important pattern to notice: no claim of existence of a ‘thing’ is made. They describe things such as ‘neurological signatures’ and ‘measurable improvements on behavioral tasks’.
Phenomenology describes experience as it presents itself to consciousness, brackets questions about whether what appears in experience exists independently, focuses on the structures of experience, treats appearances as the primary data. Examples would be:
- In experience, there appears a distinct quality of ‘willing’ that is phenomenologically distinguishable from ‘desiring,’ ‘being compelled,’ or ‘being driven.’
- The structure of volitional experience includes: a sense of agency, directedness toward an end, the quality of effort, and identification with the act.
- When I attend to experience carefully, I find a phenomenon that presents itself as ‘I am willing X’ rather than ‘X is happening to me.’
- There is an experiential difference between ‘I raise my arm’ and ‘my arm rises.’
The important point is that it describes how things appear, not whether they exist independently of appearing. A rigorous phenomenological claim would be “there is an experience that presents itself as ‘willing’” as opposed to “the will exists.”
Even if we accept that Assagioli is not claiming that there is an actual faculty that we can label as the ‘will,’ he is using language that can be interpreted as metaphysical claims of existence. In Chapter 2: The Existential Experience Of The Will, he states: “I and will are correlated terms; the I exists in so far as it has its own specific capacity for action which is the will; and the will exists only as a distinctive and autonomous activity of the I.”
The problem is that in a straightforward and literal reading, he is saying the “‘I’ exists” and the “will exists (as a distinctive and autonomous activity of the I)”. It is difficult to read this as a simplification of reported experience. Here again, it is “activity” – not an experience from performing an action.
Unfortunately, the claim in the preface or elsewhere about this being phenomenological or existential experience is likely to be lost on many readers. The surface grammar is ontological. Words like “exists only as”, “distinctive”, and “autonomous” sound like “this is the way things are,” not “this is a way to describe experience.” Additionally, “phenomenological” isn’t a commonly understood category for most readers. Even if they notice the term, they are unlikely to reliably map it to “describing lived experience without ontological commitments.”
The language throughout the book invites reification (the process of treating an abstract concept as if it were a concrete, tangible thing, giving it qualities it doesn’t inherently possess). “I,” “core of our being,” “transpersonal,” “universal will,” “merges,” etc., all direct the readers attention toward a metaphysical picture, regardless of the Preface’s disclaimer.
So, what did Assagioli actually mean? It seems difficult to reconcile how a wise, intelligent man could simply use language throughout the book that the reader is expected to translate from “exists” to “experience.” After all, his use of “the will” was for the “purpose of simplifying the text.” This leaves the reader with a large cognitive overhead of reinterpreting literal words into implied words, which seems to go against simplification. If we look at Assagioli’s language throughout the book, it is not consistent if you try to interpret it in a purely phenomenological experiential way. He does two different things:
- he gives a phenomenological definition of I / personal self / will (especially in Chapter 2), and
- he then extends the same vocabulary into transpersonal and universal claims that are at least metaphysical-leaning (even when he appeals to “experience” and avoids arguing literal existence).
I’ll leave you with a few questions to contemplate:
- How do you interpret terms like “the will exists”, “having a will”, and “being a will”?
- Is “the will” a convenient shorthand for “experience of willing”?
- Is Assagioli bringing in metaphysics with claims of a Transpersonal and Universal Will – or are these just experiences we have rather than things that exist?
- Is the will something that we experience, a thing that we can train, or both?
- How does this affect the way you think about ‘self’ and ‘agency’ (will)?
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