Sociocognitive Terminology Theory

Psychosomatic Unity and the Integration of the Acting Person

The crucial problem for understanding man's dynamic reality is to establish the fundamental significance of the integration and disintegration of the acting person.

Very often man is defined as a psycho-physical unity and it is then assumed that this notion is sufficient to define and express adequately his essence. But in fact the notion expresses only everything that is accessible to the particular empirical

sciences; all that makes man to be a person and allows him to realize himself as the person in the action undergoes, in this approach, a specific reduction. It is precisely the reason why in this study, in which we are trying to trace step by step the

experience of the dynamic reality of the acting person, we have to abandon this approach and change drastically our way of looking at the problem.

An interpretation of the fundamental significance of integration as well as of disintegration may serve as a key to our point of view. In the light of the total experience of man the view that he is a psycho-physical entity presupposes the concept of the "person" who manifests himself first of all in action. It thus

presupposes a comprehensive interpretation of the experience of "man acts" in which transcendence and integration are considered as mutually complementary aspects. It is only within the framework of that dynamic unity which is constituted by the person in the action that man can be seen as a psycho-physical unity.

The Person-Action Unity Has Precedence over the Psychosomatic Complexity

Such is the case especially with integration. This is clearly indicated by the

fundamental significance of the integration as well as of disintegration of the acting person. The subordination of the subjective ego to the transcendent ego - that is to say, the synthesis of efficacy and subjectiveness - in itself implies the complexity as well as the unity of man as a psycho-physical entity. It seems, however, for reasons which will be discussed later, that the term "psychosomatic" is here more

appropriate than "psycho-physical."

The subordination of the subjective ego to the transcendent ego also includes both the psychosomatic complexity and unity of man. The same applies to the integration of elements and functions within the structure of self-possession. An analysis of integration imposes, on the one hand, the necessity of assuming the existence of these personal structures - this we have already done - but on the other hand, it also makes absolutely necessary an insight into the psychosomatic complexity of man.

This complexity has here a special importance because ultimately man owes his psychosomatic unity to the integration as well as to the transcendence of the person in the action. This insight does not receive adequate or sufficient prominence in interpretations conducted solely along the lines of inductive thinking characteristic of empirical sciences.

The crucial fact in the total experience of man is that it is in action that the whole psychosomatic complexity develops into the specific person-action unity. This unity has precedence relatively to both that complexity and the psycho-physical unity, if the psychosomatic unity is understood as a kind of sum total of the somatic and the psychical as well as of their appropriate natural dynamisms. Action comprises the multiplicity and diversity of the dynamisms that belong to the soma and to the psyche. In relation to them action constitutes that superior dynamic unity. This is, in fact, what the integration of the person in the action - as the complementary aspect of transcendence - consists in; for the human action is more than a sum of those other dynamisms; it is a new and superior type of dynamism, from which the others receive a new meaning and a new quality that is properly personal. They do not possess this meaning and this quality on their own account and, insofar as they are but the natural dynamisms of the psyche and the soma, they attain these only in the action of the person.

Consequently we may say that only the person's integration in the action justifies an insight into the elements of that natural dynamic multiplicity constituting the

psychosomatic totality of man. This insight allows us to construct an image of man as a psychosomatic unity. But as the image presupposes that more fundamental view of the person-action unity which is given in the experience of "man acts" it also draws from this experience its features and significance. The notion of the "person's integration in the action" supplies, in fact, the key to this significance.

There are indeed various dynamisms of man at both the psychical and the somatic levels that take part in human action.⁶² In every action these dynamisms are

"blended" together, but blending implies forming a whole from more or less homogeneous elements, and this is not the case with action. What does actually happen has more import; the dynamisms of the psyche and the soma take an active part in integration, not at their own levels but at the level of the person. By being the complementary aspect of transcendence, integration of the person in the action allows the realization of the person's structure of governance and

self-possession. Thus also in this case integration means introduction to a higher level of unity than that indicated in the expression "psychosomatic unity" taken in its

empirical sense.

Integration Introduces Psychosomatic Activations into the Dynamic Unity of Action

At this higher level of the person-action unity the dynamism belonging to man's psyche and soma seem to disappear. They fuse together. This does not mean, however, that they cease to be in some way distinct. On the contrary, they continue to exist in their own right and essentially co-create the dynamic reality of the

person's action. In every particular case the manner of their participation is different depending on the individual character of the action. For instance, when an action involves a definite movement of the body as the visible element of its individual character, then the somatic dynamisms, without which the movement would be impossible, collaborate to produce the action. On the other hand, we know from experience that when the action is wholly internal and consists, let us say, in making the final decision on some important issue, then the different psychical dynamisms of an emotional nature play their role in the individual character of the action and determine its concrete form.

We saw in our earlier analyses that these dynamisms are not as such an "acting";

they are rather to be identified with the experience of "something-happens-in-man"

and not with that of "man-acts." A close examination of the dynamic elements in man's psychosomatic complexity allows an analysis of the diverse "happenings" or of what we then called the various "activations," this term being used both by analogy and in opposition to the action, which alone corresponds to the experience of "man-acts." At the same time the person's integration in the action introduces the various activations of the psychosomatic structure of man into the action. In the action they reach a new and superior unity, in which they play an active part, but apart from action, when they are only the dynamisms of the soma or the psyche, they only

"happen" in the man-subject. The function of integration consists in this overstepping of the dividing line between what only "happens" and "acting."

The integrating function is necessary to bring about, in and through the action, the personal structure of self-governance and self-determination. Without the integration function taking place in action only man's subjectivity would be realized in his ontic basis, but not his efficacy. We know from experience, however, that it is efficacy that

dominates in the ontic structure of man. Efficacy and the freedom that we discover in this experience as the constitutive elements of the action draw all the

psycho-physical dynamism into that unity in which the ego becomes for itself the first object of its acting. Owing to integration these dynamisms play an active role in

self-determination, that is, in making the human person's freedom emerge.

4. THE INTEGRATION AND THE "INTEGRITY" OF MAN ON THE BASIS