The psychologist, Roberto Assagioli, founder of the school of psychology known as Psychosynthesis, described the core self, or "I," as a “pure center of awareness and will.” His reason for doing this was to set the stage for creating a total psychology of The Person; one that could take into account not only the core self - which each of us possess by virtue of birthright - but also the many roles, identities or, as he called them, “sub-personalities” that develop as we move through the life cycle.
The purpose of the Sub-personality Worksheet and the Master Sub-personality Diagram is to help users gain greater clarity and awareness about the various aspects of their personality structure - or sub-personalities. The need for this kind of clarity is basic: the more we know about the way in which our sub-personalities function, the more will power or “say” we have in who gets to be in charge. Who gets to run our lives, guide our desires and build our dreams?
Ideally we want to be living our lives from self, from the center or "I", because that's where the juice is. In other words, it is from the "I" position that we can best harmonize and direct the various aspects of our personality in accordance with our own self-interest. Ironically, the basic problem of sub-personalities lies in precisely this fact; namely that each sub-personality wants to take over and be in charge. In othe words: Every sub-personality wants to usurp the "I" and run the show. And unless we create awareness around this fact by becoming more conscious of the various features, functions and activities of our sub-personalities, that is exactly what will happen: we will lose our "I" to them. The results are often disatrous.
For example, I once worked with a woman who had been the victim of a divorce. After eighteen years of marriage her husband just came home one day and said, flat out, “I don’t want to be married to you anymore.” She was devastated. But now, more than twenty-five years later, she is still alone, all but completely embittered, and depressed. Why? Well of course there are many ways to view the situation, but according to the sub-personality approach we would say that, for whatever complex psychological reasons, this woman developed an identification with herself as a victim of rejection, and lived the remainder of her life through that identification.
Identification is a powerful psychological act. For instance, a Great Dane who is raised around smaller dogs, say a group if miniature pugs, will be puzzled when he bangs his head following one of the other dogs under a low table. The reason for this is that he has identified himself with the pugs – he has developed an image of himself as a pug.
This is the power of identification, and it takes place all the time in our own lives. We identify in ways we are not often conscious of with any number of sub-personality aspects. Often, for instance, I work with people who have strong emotional identifications with the Child Self. This can be extremely problematic, especially in relationships when a person is looking – without being conscious of it – to fulfill certain needs that are related to their Child Self; that is, needs that went unmet in childhood, but that still call out for attention. The problem is, no one can meet those needs now; the time has come and gone for them, and all one can do is learn to identify the loss that those unmet needs represent, and grieve that loss. But it can be a tricky process, when we are not aware that we have made these identifications, to tease apart what our legitimate current feelings needs are, from those that belong to the past.
Another common identification occurs around the self-judgments we all make about ourselves all the time. The Inner Critic - another sub-personality - can often take over and make our lives miserable with his or her judgments; and furthermore, these judgments may not even be accurate, true or even “ours.” In other words, because The Critic is an amalgam of parental, peer and societal messages that we collect throughout our lifetime, gaining clarity about what values and judgments are truly ours, and what belongs to our mother, father, the culture, or friends, can be difficult.The value of identifying and naming the various aspects of our personality – our sub-personalities - helps with this difficulty because it clears the way for us to see more vivdly how our core self - our "I" - is influenced, shaped and sometimes altogether taken over by The Critic, The Child, The Victim, The Rebel, and so on.
The goal of using the Sub-personality Worksheet is to enable users to map out aspects of their personality structure, target certain changes they want to make (say, for instance, a desire to diminish The Critic’s role in one’s life, or to disallow the needs of The Child from interfering in certain interpersonal relationships), and to follow those changes as they progress.
The Master Sub-personality Diagram, which represents the core self or "I" in constellation with its various sub-personalities, takes the process one step further by allowing users to map out their entire personality structure. The utility of this exercise is that the user will begin to see changes in the Master Sub-personality Diagram over time; so that, say, the picture of your personality drawn up in March will show significant, posiitive differences next to the picture drawn up six months later, in August.
HOW TO USE THE SUB-PERSONALITY WORKSHEET
The first step in the process of using the Sub-personality Worksheet is to identify which sub-personality you want to work on. There are several common sub-personalities that nearly everyone has, and we have provided a selection of those from which you may choose. Here are some common ones: The Child, The Critic, The Rebel, The Victim, The Husband, The Wife, The Professional. You may also begin by naming your own sub-personality as a starting point - for instance: The Artist, The Parent, etc.
Once you have made a selection, you will print out the Sub-personality Worksheet Questionnaire (located at the bottom of this page), which is comprised of a short list of questions you will answer. These questions are designed to help you clarify the features, function and relative dominance of the particular sub-personality you have selected. (You may find it useful at this stage to view the two Sub-Personality Worksheet Samples).
After you have completed the Questionnaire for a given sub-personality, you will print out the Master Sub-personality Diagram (also located at the bottom of this page) on which you will write down the name of that sub-personality. Subsequently, on the Master Sub-personality Diagram, you will continue to write down the names of all the sub-personalities for which you have completed Questionnaires (it is also a good idea to include a couple of key words that define the important qualities of each sub-personality - for example: frightened, angry; or ambitious, critical, and so forth).
As you populate the Master Diagram with your sub-personalities, we recomend that you keep in mind the “new mission” section of the Questionnaire, and even make some notations relevant to the "new mission." This is important and useful because the “new mission” section of the Questionnaire represents where you would like to be relative to each sub-personality; so the more information you include as you explore your sub-personalities in this format, the more you build an affirmative force toward changing in that direction.
After you have completed several Questionnaires (for most people there are approximately four to six major sub-personalities), and have written down their names, along with your notations, on the Master Sub-personality Diagram, you will have a more or less complete picture of your personality structure on a single page!
WORKING TO CHANGE SUB-PERSONALITIES
Naming sub-personalities can be a very empowering act, because once we have named a sub-personality, we have cleared that much more psychological space around our center – our core self or "I" – which then makes it possible for us to live with more awareness. As you go through the process of completing the Sub-personality Worksheets, you will gain more information about the role this or that sub-personality plays in your life.
Eventually you will come to a deeper understanding of how your personal history has engendered and shaped your personality structure. As a result of this understanding you will learn how to work more consciously in the future to alter the influence these sub-personalities have on your core self; making conscious decisions about how to diminish, increase or otherwise modify their role in your life.
Meditation, psychotherapy, and simply spending more time reflecting on the nature of one’s personality structure are three of many ways to go about affecting change in this area of your life. The Feeling Forum is also useful here. Indeed, the Feeling Forum is a meeting place for users who all share a common interest in becoming more acquainted with their feeling life. It is a safe place to talk about your process, share your reflections and discoveries with other members and find inspiration to change!
Before I conclude this introduction I want to make a final suggestion. There is a Feeling Link called, Distinguishing Personality from Self, that I encourage you to read at some point. It is a further embellishment on this way of thinking about personality change, and it contains a link which will take you to that portion of my book, “The Feeling Life: Reclaiming Your Emotional Vitality and Purpose,” in which I discuss these ideas at greater length and in much more detail.
That being said, I now invite you to begin the process of exploring yourself in this new way, with the confidence that by so doing you will make fresh discoveries about who you are and how you can change for the better.
Remember - it's easy to start:
1. Begin by selecting the sub-personality you want to work on and print out the Sub-personality Questionnaire.
2. Once you have completed the Questionnaire, print out a Master Sub-personality Diagram and add to it the name of that sub-personality, along with any relevant notations that help characterize the specific nature of the sub-personality you are describing.
By the time you are this far into the process it will become self-evident how using the Sub-personality Worksheet to further explore your personality can be both enlightening and transformational.
The more open you are to making discoveries about yourself, the more surely they will present themselves.
All the tools are here.
Good luck exploring!
Sub-Personality Questionnaire
Sub-Personality Worksheet Samples
Master Sub-Personality Diagram