Liz Greene - The Development of Personality

First published in 1987

by Samuel Weiser, Inc.

P. O. Box 612

York Beach, Maine 03910-0612

www.weiserbooks.com

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Copyright 1987 Liz Greene and Howard Sasportas

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Samuel Weiser, Inc. Reviewers may quote brief passages.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Greene, Liz.

Seminars in psychological astrology.

Bbibliography: v. 1, p.

Contents: v. 1. The development of the personality.

1. Astrology and psychology. I. Sasportas, Howard. II. Title.

BF1729.P8G735 1987

133.5'815

86-33977

ISBN 0-87728-673-6 (v. 1)

BJ

Cover illustration copyright 1987 Liz Greene

Typeset in 10 Point Palatino

Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992(R1997).

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To our students

Part 1
The Stages of Childhood

by Howard Sasportas

Part 2
The Parental Marriage in the Horoscope

by Liz Greene

Part 3
Subpersonalities and Psychological Conflicts

by Howard Sasportas

Part 4
Puer and Senex

by Liz Greene

Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above the ground lasts only a single summer. Then it withers awayan ephemeral apparition.... I have never lost a sense of something that lives and endures underneath the eternal flux. What we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains.

C. G. Jung

There was a time, not so very long ago, when an astrological consultation was something people sought because they wanted predictions about the futuremoney, love, healthand, if there was any character analysis involved at all, it consisted primarily of the astrological cookbook kind: You are a Gemini and therefore you are clever, versatile and articulate. This listing of static personality traits was either already well known to the client, in which case there was not a great deal of value to be gained from such a reading; or the client could not immediately identify with the character traits described, in which case the validity of astrology itself was consequently held in question.

Naturally there are still many people who go to an astrologer for these reasonspredictions and a pat on the back about one's apparently fixed and unalterable behaviourand there are still many astrologers who will happily oblige such clients by providing the information requested. But over the years, particularly the last five years, there has been a gradual change not only in the reasons why people seek out astrologers, but also in the kind of people who seek them out; and the astrological community has in turn met this challenge and has begun to formulate a different and much more creative kind of astrology, built firmly upon tradition but adapted to the changing and more sophisticated needs of the client. There was a time, not so very long ago, when an astrologer's clientele was fairly predictablea fair number of show business people, notoriously superstitious anyway, and a smattering of upwardly spiritually mobile aspirants hoping for a formula for enlightenment without mess. This, too, has been changing. Now the astrologer's client may be anybody at all, from a government minister to a secretary, from a doctor to an artist, from a computer programmer to a fashion model. Having one's horoscope interpreted is no longer an obscure sort of entertainment or a replacement for making choices in life.

The reasons for this shift lie in part in the increasing interest inand investigation ofserious astrology, which has helped break down the barriers which often spring from the ignorant layman's assumptions about what astrology can and cannot do. But this increasing interest is itself a symptom of something. There may be some quite profound underlying reasons why we, as astrologers, are beginning to be taken more seriously; and why we, as astrologers, are increasingly being challenged to take ourselves more seriously, and more professionally, as well. For one thing, the astrological consultant has, willingly or not, been usurping what was once the role of the priest, the physician, and the psychiatrist. The client is no longer merely a gullible soul seeking fortune-telling, nor an esoterically inclined aspirant wondering what he or she was up to in the last incarnation. The client may be depressed without external cause; anxious or fearful; in the throes of an emotional crisis, or the breakup of a relationship; seeking serious insight into potential vocational opportunities; or troubled by apathy and an inability to make anything of his or her talents. In short, the client may have psychological problems and questions, and may be intelligently seeking insight into these problems in order to have a greater range of choices and responsesa situation which can apply to just about anybody at a certain crossroads in life. And with due respect to those readers who might be members of the clergy or of psychiatry, this client with psychological problems may often fail to find the tolerance or depth of understanding that the clergy might justifiably be expected to provide, receiving meaningless aphorisms instead; or may fail to obtain the insight into symptoms and the openness to discuss them without clinical labelling which the orthodox medical establishment sometimes finds rather difficult to offer. So, willingly or not, consciously or not, the consultant astrologer has arrived as a counsellor. And those astrologers who heatedly deny this psychological aspect of their work are at best naive and at worst destructive through their ignorance of what they are really dealing with. But for the most part, astrology has responded to this new role by accepting the psychological dimension of the study, and whatever term we wish to usepsychological astrology, astrological psychology, or simply good and insightful astrological counsellingastrology is coming of age and taking its place among the helping professions.

There is another thread to this fabric which is being woven out of the marriage of astrology and psychology, and that is the thread of meaning. Meaning is essential for life, and human beings seem to require it. Without meaning, there is often the feeling that we have nothing to live for, nothing to hope for, no reason to struggle for anything and no direction in life. Whether it is ultimately up to us to create our own meaning, or whether it is our task to discover some grand cosmic scheme or divine intention, the search for guidelines, goals, and a sense of purpose is an innate drive in all of us. And the problem of meaning has, in the last few decades, become an urgent one. Disillusionment with traditional religious structures accounts for some of this crisis of meaning which is upon us; and the increasing complexity of our lives in a world beset by new and daunting problems and challenges for which there are no existent guidelines or methods of approach accounts for even more of it. Loss of meaning is often the root from which spring the myriad psychological problems which masquerade as clinical symptoms, and loss of meaning is often the crisis which drives the client to seek an astrologer.