The Act of Will

The Act of Will develops the faculty Roberto Assagioli placed at the heart of Psychosynthesis: the will. Its central claim is that the will is not mere strain or repression but a trainable, multifaceted capacity—skillful, strong, and good—through which the self directs its own life and harmonizes the personality.

The method is a detailed anatomy of willing, tracing its stages from purpose and deliberation through decision to execution, and setting out exercises for cultivating it. Assagioli reframes will as the central instrument of self-direction and the agent that organizes the personality's many parts around a chosen center.

Extending the transpersonal vision of his earlier work, the book gives the experience of agency a structured developmental form. Its account of the will as a cultivable faculty became influential across humanistic therapy, coaching, and the broader literature of self-direction and wellbeing.