Psychological astrology: the question turned inward

There is a branch of astrology that has no wish to know what is going to happen. It asks instead what is at odds inside a person. It is called psychological astrology, and one of the names attached to it is the astrologer Liz Greene.

Where this branch comes from

In the twentieth century, part of the astrological literature turned towards depth psychology. That was not a whim but a response to a changed demand: anyone looking for a consultation was less and less interested in when a contract would come through, and more and more in why they behaved the same way in every other relationship. Astrology had a well-developed system of images and little language for inner life; psychology had that language. The connection was an obvious one – and it has probably changed consulting practice more than any technical innovation of the same decades.

What changes in the interpretation

Take a tension between the Moon and Uranus. Read in the older way, it points to restlessness at home, to change, to unsettled circumstances. Read psychologically, the same angle describes two needs that stand in each other’s way: the need to feel safe and the need to be tied to nothing.

The difference is not merely a matter of wording. A statement about circumstances becomes a statement about a pattern – someone who leaves as soon as things get close, and then feels homesick. In one sense that is more solid, because the person can check it against their own life. And it is less binding, because it names no date.

The idea of projection

One point from this branch has particularly wide consequences. What someone will not grant in themselves meets them from outside: anyone who does not admit their own hardness ends up among hard people strikingly often. On this reading, a chart shows which theme is present – not which side of it someone is standing on.

In practice that means: the same configuration fits a person who lives it and a person who keeps finding it in others and complains about it. Anyone who does not allow for that misreads half the cases. For you as a reader it is the most useful question to put to any reading: does this apply to me – or to the people I am constantly annoyed by?

What this branch costs

Honestly, a fair amount, and the price hangs on the very tool that makes it strong. For the idea of projection can be turned against any objection: anyone who rejects a reading is told that the rejection is precisely part of the picture. A sentence that contradiction confirms is no longer a finding, it is a closed door. Anyone who works cleanly lets a no count as a no.

The second price is the borrowed language. Terms from psychology carry a seriousness they earned in their own field; taken over into an interpretation, that seriousness goes on working without anything having been done to deserve it. If “separation from the mother image” is only a finer word for “a row with one’s mother”, the term has achieved nothing but the impression it makes.

And where it stops

Psychological astrology is not psychotherapy, and practising it does not make anyone a therapist. The difference is not one of form: behind a therapy there is regulated training, supervision and a tested procedure; behind a reading there is a chart and a conversation. With persistent low mood, with anxiety that narrows everyday life, with a crisis after a loss, the first step is to a doctor or a psychotherapist. A serious astrologer says so too, instead of carrying on with the reading.

Within that boundary a usable offer remains: a description of your own material that you can push against. You will find the building blocks it works with under the planets and the zodiac signs.