The Original Parts Model
Reclaiming and Updating Psychosynthesis Through a Trauma-Informed Lens
At the heart of my work is a deep passion for parts work and the understanding that the human psyche is inherently multiple. We are not one fixed identity, but a living system of different parts, voices, patterns, and subpersonalities shaped by our experiences, relationships, wounds, and attempts to survive. Yet Psychosynthesis also recognises a deeper ground of awareness and being — the Self — which holds the capacity for presence, integration, meaning, and relationship with these many parts.
My clinical work, teaching, and writing are grounded in Psychosynthesis, the psychological and transpersonal model developed by the Italian psychiatrist Roberto Assagioli. Long before parts work became widely recognised through contemporary modalities, Psychosynthesis offered one of the first coherent therapeutic frameworks for understanding and working with multiplicity through the concept of subpersonalities.
Today, parts-based approaches are increasingly central within psychotherapy. Models such as Internal Family Systems (IFS), Trauma-Informed Stabilisation Treatment (TIST), and many contemporary trauma therapies all recognise that the psyche naturally organises itself into parts in response to life experience. Yet the original contribution of Psychosynthesis is often overlooked.
Part of my work is about reclaiming that lineage.
Alongside the enormous richness and innovation contemporary models have brought to the field, I believe it is also important to honour the foundations upon which much of this work was built. Psychosynthesis recognised multiplicity, disidentification, inner observer consciousness, and the possibility of relating compassionately to parts many decades before these ideas entered the mainstream.
Writing in 1965, Assagioli described Psychosynthesis not as a finished system, but as an evolving model with many aspects still incomplete and full of potential for future growth. He invited others to continue developing the work through research, experimentation, and clinical application.
In that same spirit, I experience Psychosynthesis as a living tradition that continues to evolve. My work explores how its original understanding of subpersonalities can be deepened and expanded through dialogue with contemporary trauma theory, attachment research, and neuroscience.
Much of the original subpersonality model was developed before the emergence of contemporary trauma theory, attachment research, interpersonal neurobiology, and our deeper understanding of dissociation and nervous system survival responses. Trauma research has transformed psychotherapy, and I believe Psychosynthesis has the depth, flexibility, and philosophical breadth to evolve alongside these developments.
I am particularly interested in what becomes possible when Psychosynthesis is viewed through a trauma-informed lens.
Rather than seeing subpersonalities simply as conflicting aspects of the personality, I understand them as intelligent survival adaptations formed in response to overwhelming experiences, relational wounding, attachment disruption, shame, or unmet developmental needs. What we often describe as symptoms, defences, or “difficult behaviours” are frequently protective strategies created by the nervous system in service of survival.
This perspective brings greater compassion, nuance, and clinical precision to parts work.
Central to my thinking is the idea of the Survival Personality, or Adapted Child, as an umbrella structure made up of many different subpersonalities and survival strategies. These parts may organise around core evolutionary defence responses, including fight, flight, freeze, submit (also expressed as fawn, fix, please, or appease), attach, and collapse.
Each of these subpersonalities carries a distinct protective function: to preserve safety, maintain connection, or defend against overwhelming experiences such as abandonment, shame, or psychological annihilation. By working with these parts as differentiated yet interconnected aspects within the broader survival personality, clinicians are better able to recognise the intelligence of these adaptations and respond in ways that are both attuned and relationally grounded.
My approach integrates Psychosynthesis with contemporary trauma-informed and relational approaches, including:
I am particularly interested in how we help people move from identification and blending with survival parts toward greater awareness, regulation, compassion, integration, and connection to a deeper sense of Self.
This work has become a central passion in my professional life.
Alongside my clinical practice, I teach and develop workshops for therapists exploring what I describe as The Original Parts Model: an updated, trauma-informed approach to working with subpersonalities rooted in the lineage of Psychosynthesis while also informed by contemporary clinical understanding.
I experience Psychosynthesis as a living and evolving tradition, one that still has enormous depth and relevance to offer contemporary psychotherapy. Part of my work is contributing to that ongoing evolution through the integration of trauma-informed, relational, and contemporary clinical perspectives.
Not only in understanding trauma and the fragmented self, but in helping people reconnect with authenticity, meaning, relationship, wholeness, and the deeper possibilities of human growth.
If you are interested in this area of work, you can explore my workshops, writing, and training events, or get in touch to learn more.
Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: You don't give up.
