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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
James Hillman and astrology: Return the events to the gods

James Hillman and astrology: Return the events to the gods

Quagliarella, Paolo

Paperback

Gifts & Stationery GeneralGeneral Psychology

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN13: 9798170609499
Publisher: Independently Published
Pages: 58
Weight: 0.20
Height: 0.12 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

The relationship between astrology and psychology is usually discussed by starting with the question of whether astral configurations actually describe or determine personality and life events. Formulated in these terms, the question is legitimately brought into the realm of empirical verification: if astrology makes causal, diagnostic or predictive claims, such claims must be subjected to the same criteria of scrutiny required of any other factual assertion. This paper, however, proposes to examine a different issue. Drawing on the writings of James Hillman, the Jungian concept of synchronicity and Thomas Moore's reinterpretation of Marsilio Ficino's astrological psychology, it is argued that the birth chart can be regarded, within strict methodological and ethical limits, as a narrative, metaphorical and imaginal device through which the subject can reinterpret their own life experience, character, conflicts and recurring patterns in their life story. From this perspective, Hillman's critique of literalism does not constitute an obstacle to the psychological use of astrology, but rather becomes its prerequisite: the planets are not taken as causes of behaviour, but rather as archetypal images capable of amplifying and differentiating experience. A comparison with contemporary research on the use of metaphor, narrative processes and the co-construction of meaning in psychotherapy allows us to formulate a cautious clinical hypothesis: the potential usefulness of astrology should not be sought in its ability to objectively describe a person from the moment of birth, but in its potential to generate, within a therapeutic relationship, new forms of meaning and re-authorship. Finally, the risks of suggestion, confirmation bias, determinism and the abuse of interpretative authority are discussed, alongside a possible methodology for the non-diagnostic and non-predictive use of the birth chart. In the appendix, you will find various quotations from J. Hillman taken from his works.

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