Dynamics of the Unconscious

319 Pages·1988·2.8 MB·English

by  Liz Greene

CONTENTS
Introduction
Part 1
The Astrology and Psychology of Aggression
by Howard Sasportas
Part 2
Depression
by Liz Greene
Part 3
The Quest for the Sublime
by Howard Sasportas
Part 4
Alchemical Symbolism in the Horoscope
by Liz Greene
Suggested Reading
About the Centre for Psychological Astrology
INTRODUCTION
Among all the proliferating maps and models of the human psyche which are
now available to us, there is one which dominates the rest in depth, subtlety and
importance: the duality of conscious and unconscious. This view of the psyche
is called “dynamic” because of the tension, movement and exchange implicit in
such a duality; and its official history begins in 1775 with the Viennese
physician Franz Anton Mesmer's discovery of what he called the “universal
fluid.” Of course human duality is a much older concept than Mesmer's,
although known in antiquity under other, more mythic names. But in the two
centuries following Mesmer have come the giants of modern depth psychology
—Charcot, Janet, Freud, Klein, Adler, Jung—and a growing body of
knowledge and skill has become available to those who wish to, or must,
traverse the strange byways of the unconscious.
Viewed through the flattening lens of behavioural observation, the
astrological chart is static: no more than a listing of fixedcharacter traits, or a
map of potentials many of which, for inexplicable reasons, the individual
cannot seem to fulfil. But viewed through the three-dimensional lens of a
conscious—unconscious duality, an entire play emerges—full of the twists and
turns of a surprising plot, teeming with tragic and comic Shakespearean
characters, ornamented with ingeniously changing stage sets and costumes,
punctuated by perfectly timed cues, the opening and closing of the curtain, and
intervals where everyone goes out for a cup of tea. The astrological chart is
indeed a map of potentials and character traits, and reveals a rich portrait of a
complete individual personality. But, like the characters in a play, the planets
do not all come out at once; the parts may be played differently according to
interpretation and the skill of the actors; the timing may be mucked up by a
stage manager too preoccupied with what the audience will think. And some
characters are unable to come out at all, locked back stage by the imperious will
of the ego or the dictates of parental voices, numbed or bound, unable to speak
save through moods, dreams, illnesses, and compulsions, and capable only of
covert sabotage to communicate the fact that they are still, despite one's best
efforts at becoming what one is not, alive and waiting to be heard. There are
dimensions of every horoscope which are conscious—qualities and values with
which the person identifies and dimensions which are unconscious, partly
through childhood repression, partly through social expectations and pressures,
partly through sometimes misguided moral conviction, and partly through sheer
ignorance of just who these characters really are.
It would seem that the unconscious, whatever it is, possesses its own wisdom
and intentions, and its own plan for the proper direction of the play; and this
hidden intelligence may or may not coincide with what we believe we are and
what we think we want from life. It also seems to possess a drive toward
completeness that is, all the characters seem to want to have their time onstage
and their appropriate interaction, so that the innate integrity of the play can be
achieved. An unconscious drive or compulsion, be it interpreted as creative or
destructive by the ego, is capable of thwarting the achievement of our conscious
aims, often creating the feeling that “something” is “working against” us. For
example, a man born with Moon conjunct Venus in Cancer in the 1st house
might be acutely aware of his need to be involved with another person in an
intimate and enduring relationship. He may see him self as a warm, loving
person, eager to accommodate the needs of others and frightened of loneliness
and solitude. But if this man also has Uranus in Gemini in the 12th house, he
will also possess a powerful unconscious drive toward independence and
absolute autonomy—a part of him, a character in his play, who furiously resists
commitment because it means losing both space and alternatives. The more the
man identifies with his Moon-Venus conjunction, and the more he attempts to
repress the Uranian voice, the more he guarantees that Uranus will defeat him;
for in any contest between conscious and unconscious, it is the unconscious
which wins-not because it is inimical, but because it is wiser. The man may be
habitually attracted to those partners who are not free to be with him, or who,
for whatever reason, cannot reciprocate his advances. Or he may offer love
generously with the right hand and unconsciously sabotage it with the left,
gradually driving a partner into that separation which he himself covertly
desires, although he seems to be a blameless victim of someone else's coldness.
And he may, sooner or later, turn up on the astrologer's doorstep asking why,
despite his longing for closeness and commitment, fate seems to keep dealing
him the wrong cards.
We can, to some degree, educate and manage, or at thevery least, provide
constructive outlets for, what we are conscious of in ourselves. But if we are
unconscious of something, it will sooner or later find a way to dominate and
control us. Those characters whom we believe have been removed from the cast
list have a way of bursting onstage and disrupting our lives at the worst possible
moments. Even more mysterious, what we are unconscious of has a way of not
only of erupting from within, but of materialising from without—so we
cyclically and inevitably meet those circumstances and people in life who are,
in a strange and inexplicable way, distillations of our own unknown selves. Ian
Fleming once wrote that once is chance, twice is coincidence, and three times is
enemy action. If an individual has a repeating pattern of conscious goals which
are blocked or frustrated, then it is wise to look to the unconscious for the
reason why.
The astrological chart is a superb map for navigatingthis mysterious terrain,
for it is not only a portrait of those parts of us which we are willing to
acknowledge or are happy for the world to see. It tells the whole story,
revealing all the characters, and exposing aspects of our natures we may try to
conceal not only from others, but from ourselves as well. People, without
meaning to, lie; but the birth chart does not. Nor do astrological symbols
moralise as we are wont to do, by pronouncing judgement on what is higher or
lower, good or bad within us. Every astrological symbol contains a spectrum of
positive and negative qualities, and a teleology or inherent meaning. Like a
prism, the view depends upon where the source of light is located. Interpreted
and understood with some insight into the complex workings of the
unconscious, the chart can help put us in touch with all the characters, and offer
a possi bility of developing a different and more compassionate attitude toward
those aspects of ourselves which we may have misinter preted, feared, or
simply never met.
A great body of psychoanalytic literature has accrued in the years since
Mesmer's discovery of the “universal fluid,” and all of it addresses the question
of just what is “down” there. Freud, in his great pioneering work, revealed that
whatever else might be down there, all of the more primitive “anti-social”
drives—aggressive and sexual—were to be found in abundance, locked in the
darkness where we think they cannot harm us. As children, our survival
depends upon winning the love of a caretaker. Certain impulses are not very
acceptable to the environment; and therefore, for the sake of winning love and
securing our survival, we deny or repress them. In other words, they are
relegated to the unconscious. But it is also possible that our caretakers might
not wholly approve of other, more positivetraits we exhibit—innate
spontaneity, curiosity, even creativity. Envy has always been a profound human
problem, and never more destructive than when a parent envies the creative
potentials of his or her child. Once we sense that the environment does not
validate such qualities in us, these too will be banished to the unconscious.
It would seem, therefore, that the unconscious is not merely a repository for
evil, but a limbo in which dwell many of our best potentials. Even the “bad”
impulses are, like every character in the play, essential to the plot—and
sometimes they are “bad” not because of any intrinsic evil, but because of the
treatment they receive at the hands of a more self-righteous ego. Jung, building
upon the edifice that Freud had laid, found that, alongside the more primitive
dimensions of human nature rendered outcast by civilised society, the
unconscious contains an equally potent urge to transform itself, to become
integratedinto life, to be transmuted from alchemical dross into alchemical gold.
In other words, in each individual lies a motivation toward individuality. This
word “individuality” is used a great deal these days, often to describe behaviour
which runs against the collective norm. But we are using it here to describe a
loyalty to one's own unique nature—an embrace of all the characters in the
play. Individuality costs, as T.S. Eliot once wrote, nothing less than everything,
and many are understandably not prepared to pay the price of the internal
freedom they claim they want. It is much easier to identify with one group
against another, or to adopt an “ism” as a surrogate parent. But the astrologer
who can respond to the unconscious needs as well as the conscious strivings of
the client is in a unique position to offer help to the person who, somewhere
along the line, has lost the understanding that it is really all right to be oneself.
The four seminars which comprise this book deal with different aspects of
unconscious dynamics—what might be hidden in us, and how we might work
with what we discover. Inevitably, because it is what seems unacceptable to
conscious eyes that remains hidden in the unconscious, much of the material in
these seminars concerns the darker dimensions of the personality. But there is a
great paradox in this apparent darkness, because an honest confrontation with it
can often yield a profound inner expe rience of some wiser Other at work
within-and such an experience, because it is direct and one's own, is worth
more, in the testing-ground of ordinary life, than the most exquisite edifice of
philosophical tenets and teachings. When searching for the numinous, one can
be very surprised about where God may be found. This is put most beautifully
by William Blake:

God appears, and God is Light
To those poor souls who dwell in Night;
But does a Human Form display
To those who dwell in Realms of Day.
Liz Greene
Howard Sasportas
London, August 1987
London, August 1987
PART 1
THE ASTROLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGY OF
AGGRESSION
At origin, aggressiveness is almost synonymous with activity.
D.W. Winnicott
THE TWO FACES OF AGGRESSION
One of my fit astrology teachers, Isabel Hickey in Boston, compared the energy
of Mars to a burning fie. If employed in the right way and in the right places, it
is wonderful and helpful, giving light, heat, warmth and power; but if used in
the wrong places or in the wrong way, it means disaster. It's the difference
between fire burning the floor boards in the middle of your sitting room floor,
as opposed to where it is better contained—in the fireplace. The fire itself isn't
good or evil. Likewise, Mars in itself is not good or evil, but it may become evil
if it is misused.
Isabel was bringing out an important point: that all natural energies are
neutral. Piero Femcci, in his book What We May Be,1 makes a similar point.
The natural energies of the wind, the sun, of an atom or a river—these can
either bring about disasters or prevent them. A river provides water, power and
irrigation and yet it can flood and drown. Natural energies can either kill or
they can sustain. If you take an atom and split it, the power unleashed could be
used to blow us all up or could be directed productively and creatively.
Similarly, aggressive energy is a natural energy. Mars is the most obvious
astrological significator for aggression and everyone is born with Mars in his or
her chart. We are all born with Mars somewhere—we are all born with innate
aggressive urges. In today's seminar, I want to explore both the positive and
negative faces of aggression as they relate to the astrological chart.
Aggression is an inborn component of our biological make-up, just as the
sexual drive is an essential part of our human instinctive equipment. Sex serves
a very obvious positive purpose to humanity: we wouldn't be here without it. So
why shouldn't aggression, which is also a natural part of our biological
inheritance, likewise serve an important evolutionary purpose? It's interesting
that Mars has traditionally been associated with both sex and aggression.
Astrologers have always known this, but it was only more recently that science
showed the close connection between sex and aggression. Do you remember the
famous Kinsey Report that was published in the 1950's? Kinsey found a close
physiological correlation between a person in an angry state and a person in a
state of sexual arousal. In fact, his study found fourteen physiological changes
which were common to both sexual arousal and aggression, and only four
which were different.2 It's fairly common that a fight with your lover can end
up in an orgasm; or you can be in the middle of sex and it turns into a fight.
American psychologist Clara Thomp son sums up aggression nicely: