In the light of the strange position of astrology in our modern culture, how do astrologers develop and how do we work with each other as professionals? What are the potentials and pitfalls of an astrologer's development?
My interest here is to explore our professional development and community in light of important issues of psychological development. Because astrologers are often held in low esteem in our modern culture, how do we maintain our own esteem? One problem is that astrologers sometimes cannot rely upon each other, and, in fact, we often make the problems worse. This has to do with some "shadow" issues that we astrologers need to work with. I take as my model the teachings of a branch of modern psychoanalytic psychotherapy called "Self Psychology." Pioneered in the 1960's and 1970's by Heinz Kohut, its concern is with how we develop self-esteem and maintain self-esteem, how and why we admire others, and how we try to become people worthy of being admired by others. 1
One premise of any branch of psychoanalysis is that adult psychological issues reflect impasses or incompletions accumulated from childhood,. The further back in childhood these difficulties occurred, the more pervasive and damaging they are to us adults. Even under the best of circumstances, issues of self-esteem, self-value, and our ideals for ourselves continue throughout life. We all depend on the affirmation of others for our sense of self-worth. For example, when difficult things happen our lives, we tend to take them personally, our self-esteem diminishes, and we have to find ways to make up for that. Without certain kinds of support in our lives, we also begin to feel we are falling apart. This is true for all of us human beings; the difference is only that of degree.
Jennifer Freed, at the last ISAR convention, spoke about these issues regarding an astrologer's clients. I will extend this investigation to the astrologers themselves! First I will present the problem, then our common ways of working with them, and finally I will make some recommendations.
Our Strange Place in the World
Every astrologer in modern times is caught in a contradiction. We are diviners, people with intuitive abilities who can help people to a surprising extent. Yet we function within a culture that does not understand us very well.
When you the astrologer go to a party, social occasion, or any event where you meet some people for the first time, notice their response when and if you tell them you do astrology. Usually you have no way of knowing ahead of time who will think you're prophetic and who thinks you're a fraud or must be flaky. In any event, you'll soon be assaulted by various stereotypes about astrology and the work of astrologers. Because astrology has a long history, is at odds with conventional ideas about reality, and manifests within popular culture, the perceptions of others about astrology are wildly divergent.
At our worst, we've internalized how our culture negatively looks upon astrology, and we've become part of that, almost like an "identification with the aggressor." Some of the problems we astrologers encounter with each other are manifestations of this shadow.
None of us have power over astrology's history or how the public perceives our work. It's easy to to wish that things were different and to stop there. For purposes of this article, I'd like to accept our situation as fact and explore how we work with the question of legitimacy.
"Narcissistic" Lines of Development
The literature on "Self Psychology" is rather opaque but its ideas are very simple. 2 For all of us, in our early years, we begin to achieve intactness from relationships which soothe us and make us feel good. If we don't there can be major difficulties throughout life. Later, the need for soothing develops into a phase of grandiosity -- we require "mirroring" from others, that somebody else treasures us as special and wonderful.. For basic psychological health, early in our lives we need to have an inflated sense of ourselves, and for that inflation to be modified by "reality."
Although this process of deflation is painful for all of us, we also internalize that mirroring as the basis of our self-esteem, our feeling good about who we are. We've never fully "outgrown" our grandiose selves; we are always somewhat vulnerable. We are all dependent on others' mirroring to maintain self-cohesion and self-esteem and we need to pretend we are not. We all have this basic vulnerability.
Further in our early psychological development is a need to admire another who we can idealize, who we can put on a pedestal. That person represents the best of ourselves. Under the best of circumstances, as the object of our idealization becomes more "real" and more life-size, we have internalized enough of that person's qualities to sustain realistic ideals for ourselves. For many of us, the process of idealizing somebody and becoming disappointed is very painful. Avoiding these patterns will limit our opportunities in life, as so much of our own growth happens through an idealizing relationship.
Grandiosity and idealization are called "narcissistic" issues as they stem from the development and vicissitudes of self-love in early psychological development. A person we call a "narcissist," however, is one who has had failure in normal development. Because that person has not developed the ability to maintain self-esteem without perfect mirroring from others, they tend to "take" from relationships and be unable to give. We tend to dislike them intensely -- they drain our energy and withhold from us our needs from them!
If the "narcissist" tends to relate to somebody in an unrealistic idealizing manner, we the admired briefly enjoy the admiration but soon we feel suffocated and repelled by it.
Now I connect these general issues of grandiosity and idealization with the development and professional life of an astrologer. These patterns are not exclusively the province of astrology; you can find them, for example, dominant in political, religious, or an artist's life. Since I'm an astrologer and I'm writing this article for astrologers, I'll confine myself to astrologers. Unlike many other professionals, however, we have to deal with the complex situation in our conventional world.
The Astrologer's "Grandiose" Self
What is the grandiose self of an astrologer? What is the overt or hidden fantasy of the astrological student, professional, and teacher? A grandiose self exists under the veil of consciousness and is present in our fantasies or implicit in our disappointments when reality doesn't measure up. We tend to be embarrassed by them. We shouldn't belittle these components of our grandiose self, for they are keys to our greatness as astrologers and as people.
A few of these qualities are similar to the fantasies of a psychotherapist or a healing professional, but we also have a few others:
All-knowing - astrologers have this ability to understand people or a situation in a very direct way. We see this clearly in the brilliance of an astrologer's work. When we learned astrology for the first time, we were all amazed at how much we could find out about somebody from his or her birthchart. A light went on for us.
Benevolent - we can help people with all kinds of difficulties. As with many psychotherapists and healing professionals, we desire to do great good for others. Most of us are in this field because we can make a positive difference in a person's life, not because this is just a "cool" way to make money.
Able to change our world - because our work is so different from the governing paradigms of our culture, any small victory for us compromises that governing paradigm. We are at the "cutting edge" of a more open future. This is much of the appeal of the Aquarian Age.
Connected - we have access to some higher source of wisdom. This is where astrologers are more like clergy, energy healers, channelers or psychics than conventional psychotherapists. Astrology by its nature has cosmic implications and is imbedded in a kind of divine mystery. Any astrologer, by use of the tools of astrology, connects with that mystery or primary numinosity. Somehow, and we don't quite know how, the cosmos speaks through us. Any astrologer, no matter how "scientific" he or she tries to be, partakes of this experience.
This desired quality of connectedness provides us some of our greatest weaknesses and strengths as a profession. As I will conclude, it helps provide a way through some difficulties I outline below.
A novice astrologer, not yet feeling all-knowing, benevolent, or connected, and certainly not ready to change the world, will likely project these grandiose qualities to a teacher or mentor or favorite author or, possibly, to the astrological community as a whole. The novice also needs to have his or her aspirations and possibilities reflected back by one's mentor or by the astrological community as a whole. This is the acknowledgment that "indeed you too are one of us." This helps us understand how relatively new astrology students or professional astrologers become completely inspired at large astrological conferences.
As with a child's development, reality cannot bear up well against the pressure of those kinds of expectations. And there are consequences. I'd like to first speak from the viewpoint of grandiosity and then from that of idealization.
Often there's a time of personal deflation, followed by a time of mourning and recovery or by defeat and disengagement. The need for mirroring is stronger at the beginning of an astrologer's career, when one is more vulnerable and can feel more easily defeated . How does this happen to you, the novice astrologer? Here's a sequence many of us have been through.
1. Your clients baffle you - the Virgo keeps a messy room or the Capricorn is lackadaisical or a party-animal - or your client doesn't like you. You're not being helpful and you become frustrated and anxious. Sometimes these experiences alternate with times in which your interpretations are potent and the rapport with clients is excellent; difficult sessions can be disconcerting because they are unpredictable.
(Interestingly, astrologers working with clients for the first time often complain about how much preparation they need. We felt compelled to account for every house placement, every aspect in a natal chart, or the perfect astrological correlate for every important event of a client's life including now. Why do we put ourselves through this? Most of our clients don't quiz us on our perfect knowledge; all this preparation serves to calm anxiety at possibly being caught off-guard by our clients.)
2. Over time, as doubts emerge about yourself, reflecting on the poor esteem astrology can have in our world, your ask yourself, "am I some kind of well-meaning fraud?" You call into question your own basic honesty and benevolence.
3. That leads to a disconnection to the divine mystery - of the realm of numinosity - that astrology takes as its province. Astrology becomes as if made of cardboard; it doesn't speak to us anymore.
The disapproval of one's parents or partner or the sight of your co-worker thinking of you as flaky begins to hurt you much more than before. At least once you were inspired and you knew you had right on your side -- this is true no longer.
Now let's go to the other side, our need to idealize.
Patterns of Idealization
1. Admiration is necessary but at first out of bounds -- we think, 'I want to be like this person; I read all their books, take all their classes, etc." This is particularly potent because there are many people in the astrological world who have charisma. In this context, what does a person's "charisma" mean? That person reinforce others' idealizations of him or her. This can become creative and powerful but can also lead to a kind of narcissistic fantasy for both people or for a group clustered around a teacher.
As developing astrologers, we need this stage: we're not yet all-knowing, benevolent, or connected and we need to find somebody who is. This is how we're able to connect with our own possibilities. The relationship of teacher and student, even if to an author you have never met, appears indispensable to becoming an astrologer. The more personal it is, the more potent the astrologer's development.
2. Eventually this leads to a problem - hopefully and often a normal one. If the idealizing person can make a relatively smooth transition to "reality," disappointment in his or her mentor can lead to grieving (sometimes expressed as resentment), perhaps a period of noninvolvement; and, with any luck, the mentor and student can have a newer kind of comradely relationship
3. If, however, the student has had unsatisfactory idealizing relationships in the past or elsewhere in life, the student may move quickly between extremes of hero-worship and outrage.
The alternative is to shrink from this kind of relationship even beginning. As with the spiritual life, this can result in as narrowing of possibilities. Why? Our urge to protect ourselves exceeds our need to admire and learn from a person you would like to emulate, and thus we are cut off from our ideals for ourselves. And, as with the spiritual life, one remedy is to continually shop around for the next new thing without ever being satisfied.
How Do We Adjust to Deflation of Grandiosity and Idealization
How do we astrologers deal with these important issues, which co-exist with our culture's strange attitudes toward our art? These strategies range broadly in their effectiveness. What they have in common is that as a community we do all these things.
1. We become the "expert", looking for new astrological ideas so our clients or their situations won't baffle us. We study a hundreds of different techniques from a dozen different systems, looking for the "magic bullet" that always works. Maybe we attend counseling school so our clients don't make us so anxious. Our effort is to never be caught unprepared or ignorant.
2. We deny our own shadow quality -- maybe our own doubts about astrology or being astrologers. Then we become outraged and self-righteous at carefully selected qualities of "other" astrologers. I've sometimes wondered whether many astrologers who spend time and energy polarized against other astrologers are actually displacing their own shame at being one. A good question for us to ask ourselves is this: who are the astrologers who embarrass us? Who are those we feel indignant about? This is a form of splitting where the "other" astrologers serve as proxy for our own issues of poor self-regard. Examples abound -- humanistic astrologers think predictive astrologers are callous and inhumane; predictive astrologers think of spiritual astrologers as mushy-minded people indulging in some kind of guru fantasy; elitist astrologers see writers of popular astrology as selling their soul to the devil of the marketplace -- and it goes on and on. The advantage is that you've made yourself immaculate and you've inoculated yourself from your own insecurity and uncertainty.
3. We give up. We lose hope because we're not going to be good enough anytime soon - we stop trusting ourselves or our art and drop out. Many people begin to study and practice astrology, but many don't continue.
4. We compensate for astrology's lack of legitimacy by stressing its cultural, historical, psychological, or scientific aspects, by creating a lockbox of legitimacy for astrology. We begin to make astrology seem like magic, history, science, or psychotherapy.
(I must at this time acknowledge that I've gone through all four strategies except the third. I have never lost hope, #3, because my students and clients always have inspired me to be a better astrologer, helper, and person).
I'm not through discussing our strategies. Here are some more:
5. We take another job with more social legitimacy. In that way, at a party with strangers, or with relatives, we can present ourselves differently and then later might take a chance.
6. We become politically savvy and active. Although it has had its share of community problems, AFAN is a good example of how to make a pragmatic difference for astrologers in our modern culture.
7. We only trust other astrologers and strive to be a leader among them. Our need for support can become creatively utilized in community-building among astrologers, and there is much good work done that benefits astrology as a whole. The shadow side, however, is our ambition to become a "big fish in a small pond" as a way to make ourselves feel better about who we are. We all know what happens when too many big fish inhabit too small a pond.
8. It's easy to circle the wagons and adopt a kind of self-righteous paranoia. Interestingly, our great adversaries, skeptic societies, do the same thing! We are the misunderstood and misrepresented, as opposed to all that unified opposition to us out there. This can manifest in some kind of secure and pious defiance of our culture as it is.
9. We go along with some popular stereotypes of an astrologer, and practice our astrology in a less than ideal way; this does pay the rent and perhaps there is some good we can accomplish within our market society. Its quality ranges from true education of the public to cynical hucksterism.
Solutions?
There are ways through these difficulties Do not cast hope aside!
We need to normalize the situation, to understand that many of our difficulties are understandable and not cause for shaming ourselves or others. It's necessary for us to understand how people navigate the emotional difficulties that can arise within our profession. We have to take greater responsibility for our shadow of vulnerable self-esteem and not to inflict it on others. We all have our stories, our strengths and our weaknesses: as people we need to give each other enough room to grow, find our own solutions, and support for avoiding the easy sidetracks I have listed.
We, as professional astrologers, need to engage in a personal activity that allows skillful and honest self-reflection: a personal supervisory relationship, a counseling training program, psychotherapy, or a spiritual practice. Among these possibilities, we all have our preferences and styles, which can also change over time.
Finally, we need to appreciate and use astrology's inherent connection with a larger world than the one we have been told is the only "real." one. We have to remember the original intent of our work as astrologers and, as appropriate, as personal healers. Within a larger vision of what we are about, we can work through the pettiness of our smaller versions of ourselves, to see clearly and even become inspired by our own sense hopefulness and the vulnerability. In that way we can see that the real meaning of what we do is to reconnect one to a more cosmic viewpoint. In that way, we can work through our difficulties with daring and strength. 3
1 This article is largely inspired by an article I worked with in graduate school: (1983) "Narcissistic Issues in the Training Experience of the Psychotherapist." International Journal of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy
2 The primary literature of Self Psychology is mostly authored by Heinz Kohut. His later writings are (1971) "The Anaylsis of the Self" and (1977) "The Restoration of the Self" (both Madison, CT. International University Press.) I also suggest a secondary work, (1983) "Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory," Greenberg, J. R. & Mitchell, S. A. (Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press.
3 Redington, R. "Personal communication." Dec. 2000
My interest here is to explore our professional development and community in light of important issues of psychological development. Because astrologers are often held in low esteem in our modern culture, how do we maintain our own esteem? One problem is that astrologers sometimes cannot rely upon each other, and, in fact, we often make the problems worse. This has to do with some "shadow" issues that we astrologers need to work with. I take as my model the teachings of a branch of modern psychoanalytic psychotherapy called "Self Psychology." Pioneered in the 1960's and 1970's by Heinz Kohut, its concern is with how we develop self-esteem and maintain self-esteem, how and why we admire others, and how we try to become people worthy of being admired by others. 1
One premise of any branch of psychoanalysis is that adult psychological issues reflect impasses or incompletions accumulated from childhood,. The further back in childhood these difficulties occurred, the more pervasive and damaging they are to us adults. Even under the best of circumstances, issues of self-esteem, self-value, and our ideals for ourselves continue throughout life. We all depend on the affirmation of others for our sense of self-worth. For example, when difficult things happen our lives, we tend to take them personally, our self-esteem diminishes, and we have to find ways to make up for that. Without certain kinds of support in our lives, we also begin to feel we are falling apart. This is true for all of us human beings; the difference is only that of degree.
Jennifer Freed, at the last ISAR convention, spoke about these issues regarding an astrologer's clients. I will extend this investigation to the astrologers themselves! First I will present the problem, then our common ways of working with them, and finally I will make some recommendations.
Our Strange Place in the World
Every astrologer in modern times is caught in a contradiction. We are diviners, people with intuitive abilities who can help people to a surprising extent. Yet we function within a culture that does not understand us very well.
When you the astrologer go to a party, social occasion, or any event where you meet some people for the first time, notice their response when and if you tell them you do astrology. Usually you have no way of knowing ahead of time who will think you're prophetic and who thinks you're a fraud or must be flaky. In any event, you'll soon be assaulted by various stereotypes about astrology and the work of astrologers. Because astrology has a long history, is at odds with conventional ideas about reality, and manifests within popular culture, the perceptions of others about astrology are wildly divergent.
At our worst, we've internalized how our culture negatively looks upon astrology, and we've become part of that, almost like an "identification with the aggressor." Some of the problems we astrologers encounter with each other are manifestations of this shadow.
None of us have power over astrology's history or how the public perceives our work. It's easy to to wish that things were different and to stop there. For purposes of this article, I'd like to accept our situation as fact and explore how we work with the question of legitimacy.
"Narcissistic" Lines of Development
The literature on "Self Psychology" is rather opaque but its ideas are very simple. 2 For all of us, in our early years, we begin to achieve intactness from relationships which soothe us and make us feel good. If we don't there can be major difficulties throughout life. Later, the need for soothing develops into a phase of grandiosity -- we require "mirroring" from others, that somebody else treasures us as special and wonderful.. For basic psychological health, early in our lives we need to have an inflated sense of ourselves, and for that inflation to be modified by "reality."
Although this process of deflation is painful for all of us, we also internalize that mirroring as the basis of our self-esteem, our feeling good about who we are. We've never fully "outgrown" our grandiose selves; we are always somewhat vulnerable. We are all dependent on others' mirroring to maintain self-cohesion and self-esteem and we need to pretend we are not. We all have this basic vulnerability.
Further in our early psychological development is a need to admire another who we can idealize, who we can put on a pedestal. That person represents the best of ourselves. Under the best of circumstances, as the object of our idealization becomes more "real" and more life-size, we have internalized enough of that person's qualities to sustain realistic ideals for ourselves. For many of us, the process of idealizing somebody and becoming disappointed is very painful. Avoiding these patterns will limit our opportunities in life, as so much of our own growth happens through an idealizing relationship.
Grandiosity and idealization are called "narcissistic" issues as they stem from the development and vicissitudes of self-love in early psychological development. A person we call a "narcissist," however, is one who has had failure in normal development. Because that person has not developed the ability to maintain self-esteem without perfect mirroring from others, they tend to "take" from relationships and be unable to give. We tend to dislike them intensely -- they drain our energy and withhold from us our needs from them!
If the "narcissist" tends to relate to somebody in an unrealistic idealizing manner, we the admired briefly enjoy the admiration but soon we feel suffocated and repelled by it.
Now I connect these general issues of grandiosity and idealization with the development and professional life of an astrologer. These patterns are not exclusively the province of astrology; you can find them, for example, dominant in political, religious, or an artist's life. Since I'm an astrologer and I'm writing this article for astrologers, I'll confine myself to astrologers. Unlike many other professionals, however, we have to deal with the complex situation in our conventional world.
The Astrologer's "Grandiose" Self
What is the grandiose self of an astrologer? What is the overt or hidden fantasy of the astrological student, professional, and teacher? A grandiose self exists under the veil of consciousness and is present in our fantasies or implicit in our disappointments when reality doesn't measure up. We tend to be embarrassed by them. We shouldn't belittle these components of our grandiose self, for they are keys to our greatness as astrologers and as people.
A few of these qualities are similar to the fantasies of a psychotherapist or a healing professional, but we also have a few others:
All-knowing - astrologers have this ability to understand people or a situation in a very direct way. We see this clearly in the brilliance of an astrologer's work. When we learned astrology for the first time, we were all amazed at how much we could find out about somebody from his or her birthchart. A light went on for us.
Benevolent - we can help people with all kinds of difficulties. As with many psychotherapists and healing professionals, we desire to do great good for others. Most of us are in this field because we can make a positive difference in a person's life, not because this is just a "cool" way to make money.
Able to change our world - because our work is so different from the governing paradigms of our culture, any small victory for us compromises that governing paradigm. We are at the "cutting edge" of a more open future. This is much of the appeal of the Aquarian Age.
Connected - we have access to some higher source of wisdom. This is where astrologers are more like clergy, energy healers, channelers or psychics than conventional psychotherapists. Astrology by its nature has cosmic implications and is imbedded in a kind of divine mystery. Any astrologer, by use of the tools of astrology, connects with that mystery or primary numinosity. Somehow, and we don't quite know how, the cosmos speaks through us. Any astrologer, no matter how "scientific" he or she tries to be, partakes of this experience.
This desired quality of connectedness provides us some of our greatest weaknesses and strengths as a profession. As I will conclude, it helps provide a way through some difficulties I outline below.
A novice astrologer, not yet feeling all-knowing, benevolent, or connected, and certainly not ready to change the world, will likely project these grandiose qualities to a teacher or mentor or favorite author or, possibly, to the astrological community as a whole. The novice also needs to have his or her aspirations and possibilities reflected back by one's mentor or by the astrological community as a whole. This is the acknowledgment that "indeed you too are one of us." This helps us understand how relatively new astrology students or professional astrologers become completely inspired at large astrological conferences.
As with a child's development, reality cannot bear up well against the pressure of those kinds of expectations. And there are consequences. I'd like to first speak from the viewpoint of grandiosity and then from that of idealization.
Often there's a time of personal deflation, followed by a time of mourning and recovery or by defeat and disengagement. The need for mirroring is stronger at the beginning of an astrologer's career, when one is more vulnerable and can feel more easily defeated . How does this happen to you, the novice astrologer? Here's a sequence many of us have been through.
1. Your clients baffle you - the Virgo keeps a messy room or the Capricorn is lackadaisical or a party-animal - or your client doesn't like you. You're not being helpful and you become frustrated and anxious. Sometimes these experiences alternate with times in which your interpretations are potent and the rapport with clients is excellent; difficult sessions can be disconcerting because they are unpredictable.
(Interestingly, astrologers working with clients for the first time often complain about how much preparation they need. We felt compelled to account for every house placement, every aspect in a natal chart, or the perfect astrological correlate for every important event of a client's life including now. Why do we put ourselves through this? Most of our clients don't quiz us on our perfect knowledge; all this preparation serves to calm anxiety at possibly being caught off-guard by our clients.)
2. Over time, as doubts emerge about yourself, reflecting on the poor esteem astrology can have in our world, your ask yourself, "am I some kind of well-meaning fraud?" You call into question your own basic honesty and benevolence.
3. That leads to a disconnection to the divine mystery - of the realm of numinosity - that astrology takes as its province. Astrology becomes as if made of cardboard; it doesn't speak to us anymore.
The disapproval of one's parents or partner or the sight of your co-worker thinking of you as flaky begins to hurt you much more than before. At least once you were inspired and you knew you had right on your side -- this is true no longer.
Now let's go to the other side, our need to idealize.
Patterns of Idealization
1. Admiration is necessary but at first out of bounds -- we think, 'I want to be like this person; I read all their books, take all their classes, etc." This is particularly potent because there are many people in the astrological world who have charisma. In this context, what does a person's "charisma" mean? That person reinforce others' idealizations of him or her. This can become creative and powerful but can also lead to a kind of narcissistic fantasy for both people or for a group clustered around a teacher.
As developing astrologers, we need this stage: we're not yet all-knowing, benevolent, or connected and we need to find somebody who is. This is how we're able to connect with our own possibilities. The relationship of teacher and student, even if to an author you have never met, appears indispensable to becoming an astrologer. The more personal it is, the more potent the astrologer's development.
2. Eventually this leads to a problem - hopefully and often a normal one. If the idealizing person can make a relatively smooth transition to "reality," disappointment in his or her mentor can lead to grieving (sometimes expressed as resentment), perhaps a period of noninvolvement; and, with any luck, the mentor and student can have a newer kind of comradely relationship
3. If, however, the student has had unsatisfactory idealizing relationships in the past or elsewhere in life, the student may move quickly between extremes of hero-worship and outrage.
The alternative is to shrink from this kind of relationship even beginning. As with the spiritual life, this can result in as narrowing of possibilities. Why? Our urge to protect ourselves exceeds our need to admire and learn from a person you would like to emulate, and thus we are cut off from our ideals for ourselves. And, as with the spiritual life, one remedy is to continually shop around for the next new thing without ever being satisfied.
How Do We Adjust to Deflation of Grandiosity and Idealization
How do we astrologers deal with these important issues, which co-exist with our culture's strange attitudes toward our art? These strategies range broadly in their effectiveness. What they have in common is that as a community we do all these things.
1. We become the "expert", looking for new astrological ideas so our clients or their situations won't baffle us. We study a hundreds of different techniques from a dozen different systems, looking for the "magic bullet" that always works. Maybe we attend counseling school so our clients don't make us so anxious. Our effort is to never be caught unprepared or ignorant.
2. We deny our own shadow quality -- maybe our own doubts about astrology or being astrologers. Then we become outraged and self-righteous at carefully selected qualities of "other" astrologers. I've sometimes wondered whether many astrologers who spend time and energy polarized against other astrologers are actually displacing their own shame at being one. A good question for us to ask ourselves is this: who are the astrologers who embarrass us? Who are those we feel indignant about? This is a form of splitting where the "other" astrologers serve as proxy for our own issues of poor self-regard. Examples abound -- humanistic astrologers think predictive astrologers are callous and inhumane; predictive astrologers think of spiritual astrologers as mushy-minded people indulging in some kind of guru fantasy; elitist astrologers see writers of popular astrology as selling their soul to the devil of the marketplace -- and it goes on and on. The advantage is that you've made yourself immaculate and you've inoculated yourself from your own insecurity and uncertainty.
3. We give up. We lose hope because we're not going to be good enough anytime soon - we stop trusting ourselves or our art and drop out. Many people begin to study and practice astrology, but many don't continue.
4. We compensate for astrology's lack of legitimacy by stressing its cultural, historical, psychological, or scientific aspects, by creating a lockbox of legitimacy for astrology. We begin to make astrology seem like magic, history, science, or psychotherapy.
(I must at this time acknowledge that I've gone through all four strategies except the third. I have never lost hope, #3, because my students and clients always have inspired me to be a better astrologer, helper, and person).
I'm not through discussing our strategies. Here are some more:
5. We take another job with more social legitimacy. In that way, at a party with strangers, or with relatives, we can present ourselves differently and then later might take a chance.
6. We become politically savvy and active. Although it has had its share of community problems, AFAN is a good example of how to make a pragmatic difference for astrologers in our modern culture.
7. We only trust other astrologers and strive to be a leader among them. Our need for support can become creatively utilized in community-building among astrologers, and there is much good work done that benefits astrology as a whole. The shadow side, however, is our ambition to become a "big fish in a small pond" as a way to make ourselves feel better about who we are. We all know what happens when too many big fish inhabit too small a pond.
8. It's easy to circle the wagons and adopt a kind of self-righteous paranoia. Interestingly, our great adversaries, skeptic societies, do the same thing! We are the misunderstood and misrepresented, as opposed to all that unified opposition to us out there. This can manifest in some kind of secure and pious defiance of our culture as it is.
9. We go along with some popular stereotypes of an astrologer, and practice our astrology in a less than ideal way; this does pay the rent and perhaps there is some good we can accomplish within our market society. Its quality ranges from true education of the public to cynical hucksterism.
Solutions?
There are ways through these difficulties Do not cast hope aside!
We need to normalize the situation, to understand that many of our difficulties are understandable and not cause for shaming ourselves or others. It's necessary for us to understand how people navigate the emotional difficulties that can arise within our profession. We have to take greater responsibility for our shadow of vulnerable self-esteem and not to inflict it on others. We all have our stories, our strengths and our weaknesses: as people we need to give each other enough room to grow, find our own solutions, and support for avoiding the easy sidetracks I have listed.
We, as professional astrologers, need to engage in a personal activity that allows skillful and honest self-reflection: a personal supervisory relationship, a counseling training program, psychotherapy, or a spiritual practice. Among these possibilities, we all have our preferences and styles, which can also change over time.
Finally, we need to appreciate and use astrology's inherent connection with a larger world than the one we have been told is the only "real." one. We have to remember the original intent of our work as astrologers and, as appropriate, as personal healers. Within a larger vision of what we are about, we can work through the pettiness of our smaller versions of ourselves, to see clearly and even become inspired by our own sense hopefulness and the vulnerability. In that way we can see that the real meaning of what we do is to reconnect one to a more cosmic viewpoint. In that way, we can work through our difficulties with daring and strength. 3
1 This article is largely inspired by an article I worked with in graduate school: (1983) "Narcissistic Issues in the Training Experience of the Psychotherapist." International Journal of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy
2 The primary literature of Self Psychology is mostly authored by Heinz Kohut. His later writings are (1971) "The Anaylsis of the Self" and (1977) "The Restoration of the Self" (both Madison, CT. International University Press.) I also suggest a secondary work, (1983) "Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory," Greenberg, J. R. & Mitchell, S. A. (Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press.
3 Redington, R. "Personal communication." Dec. 2000
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