astropsychology

Little box of astropsychology

Astropsychology aims to be able to draw a portrait of a person using the birth chart. But we know that the observer interferes with the object studied. Do you really need many years of study in astrology to become a good astropsychologist capable of extracting all the substance from the chart? It is likely that the astrologer learns mainly on the job and that this is really how he manages to satisfy his client. Just like you don’t learn cooking by going to a restaurant, it appears that you don’t learn astrology by consuming too much of it. Wouldn’t the astrological consultation ultimately be a psychological consultation that incidentally uses some notions of astrology? Isn’t the astrologer firstly involved in a helping relationship?

About fifteen years ago, we published a booklet entitled “The astrologer facing his client. The tricks of the trade”, prefaced by Jean-Paul Sauzéde which was translated into English by the Australian astrology critic, Geoffrey Dean and which can be found on the Internet in the two languages, the rather tasty illustration drawings being due to Larissa Bliman. A little humor doesn’t hurt when we deal with the practice of astrology and when we prepare students for this activity (see the courses we taught in 1995-1996, at the INAD (Institute of Divinatory Arts, see intervideo by Youcef Sissaoui, on teleprovidence)

We would advise the practitioner of astrology to begin by testing the degree of resistance - which is roughly equivalent to the degree of credulity - of his client of the day but this also applies to the teacher or lecturer in astrology in relation to his audience.

The consultation reminds us of a game of chess and sometimes between the two players, there is one who is much more experienced than the other and it is generally the astrologer who is with his umpteenth client and who knows perfectly well how to play on the difficulty of responding to a proposition concerning us. The experienced astrologer will make short work of a novice client and will have little difficulty, at least immediately, in having the last word. It is therefore good for the astrologer to know from the start whether or not he will be dealing with a strong party. We will therefore begin by assessing the responsiveness of the interlocutor and the listeners to determine what can “pass” and the degree of precaution that will need to be adopted. In other words, it will be a question of testing the defenses of the other party who must be seduced and convinced of the merits of what we are addressing to them. These directives do not only apply to astrology, as we suspect, and in this regard it is often quite vain to want to isolate the case of astrology at the level of communication and maintenance in relation to other practices. Let it be understood that in the end, it is not of astrology that is at stake here but of the astrologer and what he will say and predict in the name of astrology, even if he takes the trouble to choose in the chart what comes under tense your point by leaving aside what goes against it, which the “customer” - in the broad sense of anyone paying for a service - is rarely able or willing to realize. The astrologer will therefore put forward some preliminary thoughts to test the waters and he should quickly get an idea of the degree of receptivity of the said client both concerning himself and herself.such or such knowledge of which we would expose some principles. If the client does not “twitch”, we can continue without too much fear of causing rejection, as in the case of a transplant. In truth, going to the astrologer is already a sign of immune defenses that are not too activated and demanding. And if we accept what astrology claims to be able to do, we can also accept what astrology has to tell us personally.

The experienced astrologer will quickly test the more or less low degree of reactivity on the one hand and identify in the chart what corresponds to what he thinks is appropriate to communicate to his customer. These are, it seems to us, the two skills which will allow the consultation to proceed well, according to the rules. In both cases, the client seems unable to:

1 to affirm that the astrologer could have just as well told him something else thing and that would have worked too

2 to affirm that the data of the theme put forward do not exhaust in no way what the said theme conceals.

A classic case is obviously that of the astrology conference, around the theme of someone more or less well known. We only retain from the theme what corresponds to what the audience thinks they know. The exercise will consist of looking in the theme for what corresponds to what we think of the person whose theme it is. We are here in the learning of a language. Just as in French, we will have to choose the words that are appropriate to say what we want to mean, likewise the theme appears as a sort of specific corpus from which we will extract what we need. But everyone knows that whatever the syntax or lexicon of a language, we always find a way to communicate. when you are skilled….

It would seem that instinctively certain people only retain what goes in the direction of what they want to demonstrate and tend to minimize or even systematically neglect anything that would go in another direction. We can also affirm that such an approach is selective and only considers as active the factors corresponding to subsequent developments but with such reasoning we can only confirm astrology!

Is the purpose of astropsychology to freeze the behavior of the person – be careful, we no longer move like in front of a photographer!: to justify their blockages, their little habits, their phobias which would make them a separate being? Are we, in fact, so different from each other, once we take into account collective conditioning (sex, country, religion, era)?

For the benefit of future astrologers, we will say that the real issue is not telling the “truth” to the client – what truth? – but to carry out a sort of massage – rather than a message, to unblock the joints a little and to lead the client to do the work of assimilation, of reinterpretation of what the astrologer says, even if it means completely betraying the astrologer’s thoughts. Let the astrologer therefore have the humility not to claim to have had access to the Truth and to have definitively “validated” his astrology through any approval from the client which is quite simply a search for resonance which goes no further than when someone likes music, chooses a piece of clothing, changes their look. Change is a key word in astrology not so much at the event level but at that of the representation of oneself. The astrologer more often helps his client to “change his skin” than to find what he is. Besides, fundamentally, are we not all cut from the same mold and therefore able to recognize ourselves in everything that is human? This is why even if the astrologer is on the wrong track, this can lead the client to rethink themselves, to look at themselves differently.

Jacques Halbronn