astrology.web.net

It's been a while since I had the chance to write. I've been much too busy at work, which brings me to this blog...

At the beginning of the summer, while I was in Chicago, I picked up this book by Dr. Robert Hare. Hare is regarded by most as 'the' expert on the subject of psychopathy... a term that I have long regarded as synonymous with antisocial personality disorder. When I was taking my undergraduate courses in psychology there was a group of students that would drool just at the mention of these two disorders and I could never really empathize. Myself, I was much more interested in normal personality psychology.

However, as it turned out, I convocated and have been working with at-risk youth for the last five years, most of whom qualify for antisocial personality disorder or its popular developmental antecedant: conduct disorder. The approach of our organization (and my approach as well) is to use a humanistic/existentialist approach to serving these youth. Almost of all of the youth that I serve have survived conditions that many of us could not dream of. They have survived precisely because of their intelligence, or rather, their ability to adapt to their environment by using antisocial behaviours (e.g., aggression, lying, etc.). Of course, in our middle class white society these behaviours are pathological and I assumed that Hare's book would promote the pathology of the youth that I serve... I was wrong.

Hare works very hard in this book to contrast the individuals that I work with from a psychopath, whom he argues can arise from any culture and from any socio-economic condition. With regards to the nature vs nurture debate, Hare is decisively interactionist (a position that is most common in contemporary academia). What is fundamental to the make-up of the psychopath is the absolute inability to perceive the 'other' as anything other than an 'object', regardless of what type of 'other' this may be (e.g., lover, father, child, etc.). In conjunction with little to no depth of emotionality and high impulsivity, you have an individual that is manipulative and dangerous.

So besides the fact that I enjoyed the book, thought that it was well articulated and highly recommend it... what does this have to do with astrology you may ask?

I have argued in my section 'My Position' that astrology is essentially a personality theory of increasing socialization. If we perceive the chart as a development, we move from the ascendant on to the nadir and arrive at the descendant. Thus, successful navigation or development of the personality resides in our ability to move past the descendant... to negotiate development between the self and a subjectified other. Of course, this move towards socialization is also reflected in the development of the planets as we move outward from the sun, the self moves into an increasingly larger social perspective.

Of course, the psychopath also has a larger social perspective, but it is not one whereby the larger social entity is subjectified. Rather the masses look little more than pawns to used by the psychopath. What might account for this astrologically? An empty upper half of the chart (strong emphasis upon subjective self)? A prominent Saturn (social limitations gone awry)? A blocked Moon (failure to emphathize)? As Hare iterates throughout his text, a concrete definition of psychopathy is only recently emerging. So, popular psychopaths may or may not actually be psychopaths. As such, looking for the charts of popular psychopaths may or may not be revealing.