Psychological Functions: Decoding the Pull in the Pit

The Soulful Art of Psychosynthesis Coaching - Part 3 : How One Woman's Body Held the Wisdom Her Mind Couldn't Find

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 A Note on Privacy

All client stories are shared with permission and carefully anonymized. Names and identifying details have been changed. What remains is the truth of the work itself—the struggles, the breakthroughs, and the ordinary courage of showing up for oneself.

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My client couldn't see the people along her path.

In our first session, during the guided visualization, I'd described distractions—people, situations, feelings trying to pull her off course. But when My client walked toward her pyramid, her eyes saw nothing.

"I wasn't able to see people," she told me. "But I was able to feel things. I felt something like a force pulling me downwards, and it was stirring a little bit in my solar plexus."

She placed her hand on her stomach.

"The pit of my stomach," she clarified. "My will to go forward, but also something pulling me down. Doubt. Fear. Guilt. All those kinds of emotions."

The body holds the story that thinking can’t access. When the mind is blank, the solar plexus often speaks first. Image created with Gemini AI.

In psychosynthesis, we don't just work with thoughts. We work with all the ways human beings experience the world.

Thinking. What we analyze, plan, reason with.

Feeling. What we value, what matters, what moves us.

Sensation. What we perceive through our bodies—temperature, tension, ease, pain.

Imagination. What we picture, visualize, create.

Intuition. What we know without knowing how we know.

Impulse/Desire. What we want, what we're drawn toward, what moves us to act.

Most of us have favorites. We over-rely on one or two and neglect the rest. And when we're stuck, it's often because we're trying to solve a problem with a function that simply doesn't have the answer.

My client's thinking mind couldn't see the distractions. But her body felt them.

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  The Star Diagram reimagined with Gemini AI: A map used to identify how our psychological functions—like sensation and feeling—interact to create the patterns we feel in our bodies.

When the Body Speaks: Identifying Psychological Functions

As my client walked toward the pyramid, something was happening in her physical body—in real life, not just in the visualization.

"I felt a lot of heat coming up," she said. "Physically, in real life."

This is one of the most common experiences in deep coaching work. The issue isn't just in the mind. It's embodied. The body holds the story that thinking can't access.

When my client finally reached the pyramid and rested against it, her body spoke again:

"Welcome home."

Not a thought. A felt sense. A knowing that came through her whole being, not just her brain.

And then, on the way down, when she dove into the water:

"It was refreshing. It was cleansing. It was invigorating."

The body told her what she needed. Not through words, but through sensation.

The Function That Got Left Behind

Later in our session, we did a different exercise—a "life satisfaction" assessment that asked my client to rate different areas of her life on a scale of 1 to 10.

Fun and recreation? A 4.

Personal growth? A 7.

Romance? A 3.

Friends and family? An 8.

Health? A 2.

Money? A 2.

Career? A 6.

Physical environment? A 5.

Then I did something that might seem unusual. I pulled out a deck of Tarot cards—but not for fortune-telling. In psychosynthesis, we can use symbols and images as illustrated with our first session in blog post 1, and one such symbolic system is the Tarot. I use it in my work to access any content of the psyche that might be underused or overlooked. I can also help evaluate how a client relates to their psychological functions.

I asked my client to let me draw a card for each area, not to predict her future, but to reflect back something her conscious mind might be missing.

What the Cards Revealed

For health—where my client had given herself a 2—I drew the Three of Swords.

"Very, very close," I told her. "The Three of Swords usually means you've been in denial for a while about what you need to be doing about your health, and now it's bursting into consciousness. You need to do something about this."

My client's response was immediate: "Yep. Totally."

For money—another 2—I drew the Ace of Pentacles.

"What I like about the Ace of Pentacles," I said, "is that it's also a potential. A potential that's not being used well. There's something my client possesses that can change this."

For physical environment—where she'd given herself a 5—I drew the Ace of Swords.

"That's lower than what you put," I observed. "There might be a part of you that says, 'I have everything I want,' and another part that says, 'But you can have more.'"

My client's face shifted. "Do you want to know how I see it?"

She went on to describe a story that connected all these low scores: the house they'd had to sell, the rental that didn't feel like home, the husband whose mental health had shaped their decisions, the body that didn't feel like her own.

"I feel like I'm living in someone else's body," she said. "This is not my body."

And then, the connection that brought it all together:

"I guess a pyramid has stability because of its big perimeter at the base. And there's something so elegant and pristine and strong about its shape. It dominates, but it doesn't make any effort to dominate. It's just there."

I sat back. "You've just described your home. Your physical home. But also how you want your body to be."

The Web of Functions

Here's what my client's story illustrates so beautifully:

Sensation (the pulling in her stomach, the heat in her body) connected to Feeling (doubt, fear, guilt, resentment). Those feelings connected to Imagination (the pyramid, the water, the different path home). Imagination connected to Intuition ("welcome home"). Intuition connected back to Sensation (the refreshment of diving in).

And all of it was held by Thinking—the part of my client that could observe, reflect, and eventually make meaning of the experience.

This is what Assagioli, the founder of psychosynthesis, understood: we are not just one thing. We are a symphony of functions, and wholeness is not about making them all equally strong. It's about letting them collaborate—each contributing its unique intelligence to the life we're living ((The Act of Will. New York: Viking Press, 1973).

The Breakthrough

The moment of shift came when my client connected her dissatisfaction with her physical environment to her dissatisfaction with her body.

"You've actually put words that I've used before in the past," she said. "I feel like I'm living in someone else's home. This is not my body."

I asked her: "What would it feel like if you were living in your home? In your body?"

She didn't hesitate: "I would have my power back. I would be going back home."

"And the word pyramid comes to mind," she added.

"Your home would be like a pyramid," I said.

She nodded. "Stability. Elegance. Strength. It dominates without effort. It's just there."

This wasn't a thought she'd constructed. It was a knowing that emerged when all her functions were allowed to speak.

What Psychosynthesis Made Possible

If we had stayed in thinking, my client might have analyzed her housing situation. She might have made pros and cons lists about renting versus buying. She might have strategized about how to talk to her husband.

All useful. None of it would have touched the deeper truth: that her longing for a home was also a longing for her self. That her dissatisfaction with her body was also a call to inhabit herself more fully.

By inviting all six functions to the table, we allowed wisdom to emerge that thinking alone could never produce.

- Sensation told us about the pulling, the heat, the need for refreshment.

- Feeling told us about the fear, the guilt, the resentment—and also the peace of coming home.

- Imagination gave us the pyramid, the water, the different path.

- Intuition gave us "welcome home."

- Impulse/Desire gave us the urge to dive in, to do it differently, to claim her own way.

- And Thinking gave us the ability to reflect, connect dots, and commit to action.

Your Invitation

Here's what I want you to take from My client's story:

You have more than one way of knowing. And the function you're over-relying on right now—probably thinking, if you're anything like most of us—might be exactly what's keeping you stuck.

What would it feel like to ask your body what it knows?

What would it feel like to invite your imagination to show you something new?

What would it feel like to trust that sudden "knowing" that doesn't come from logic?

And what would it feel like to let all of these functions work together—not in competition, but in collaboration?

My client's body held wisdom her mind couldn't access. Your body does too.

The question is:

• Are you willing to listen?

A Postscript: The Integration

At the very end of our session, My client reflected on what had shifted.

"I thought you would start with my birth chart," she laughed. "I'm kind of relieved it's not that. The Tarot was an eye-opener. I don't feel that I was far off the mark. I have a fairly accurate idea of where I'm standing—more than what I expected."

She paused. "All of those points—fun and recreation, family and friends, career—were just amazing. I never thought we would tackle health. It's been a huge chunk of my life for the last seven or eight years. I didn't even know we'd tap into that."

"But I know that, like it or not, all of these things are tied together. Closely knit. I have a better picture of what's coming up."

Not a solved problem. A clearer picture. A more integrated self. A willingness to listen to all the ways she knows.

That's the gift of working with all six functions.

Next week: The Will That Wouldn't Quit – How Small Actions Reclaimed My client's Power

About Michelangelo Arcamone

Michelangelo is a trained Psychosynthesis Life Coach and Psychological Astrologer based in Montreal. Through his practice, Celestial and Soul Perspective, he helps "practical mystics" navigate the complex intersection of fate and soul. By weaving together the archetypal depth of the birth chart with the grounding tools of psychosynthesis, Michelangelo guides clients toward their "Inner Ground"—a place of stable, conscious witnessing amidst life's shifting tides.