ACTAS REUNIONES PLAN DE ACCIÓN

I will show how some of the symbolic language shared between the ancient arts of astrology and alchemy applied in the consulting room. In my clinical work I prefer to use the term ‘analysand’ instead of ‘patient’, because the term ‘patient’ implies for me a medical model suggesting illness, rather than a person suffering from a ‘Meaning Disorder’ (Mathers, 2001, pp. 6–7). The analyst’s consulting room can be likened to the alchemist’s vas or alembic, a sealed container or

temenos – in Greek, this means a sacred place around a temple. In this safe place

analysands may explore their dreams, nightmares, thoughts and feelings, however horrifying. Dream images often correspond to alchemical images, as follows:

Connie, an attractive, young-looking-old dancer in her thirties was in an unhappy marriage. An astrologer referred her. She had never had any psycho- therapy, initially had little insight and was surprised the astrologer was able, from her horoscope, to identify a childhood pattern of feeling unloved and abandoned by her mother, a theme repeated in her marriage. She symbolically married her mother as her husband shared the same birthday (not year) and was seen as having many of her mother’s negative traits of indifference and selfishness.

Her midlife crisis was reflected in her birth chart by Saturn’s transits, as well as a difficult Pluto and Sun connection. Pluto is the planet of death and evolution. When something has outlived its usefulness and it is time for it to die, Pluto transits can alert us to this. Combined with her natal Sun, Pluto in Connie’s chart seemed to be saying it was the right time for her to pay attention to her inner self, and give up trying to please her husband/mother in order to keep their love. She craved the care and affection she never had from her mother; her childhood was filled with rejection, repeated in her failing marriage.

‘The greater the area of unconsciousness, the less is marriage a matter of free choice, as is shown subjectively in the fatal compulsion one feels so acutely when in love’ (CW 17, para. 327). If someone lives too much from one part of the self, then the unconscious constellates the opposite. Jung calls this ‘enantiotromia’ (running round in a circle). It seemed to Connie she was too introverted and her husband too extroverted. His emphasis was on thinking, hers on feeling. What attracted at first repelled later; a new balance needed to be found.

Connie and her husband seemed unable to integrate this opposition. Her husband’s Sun opposed her Sun, as did her mother’s. His Moon was in the same sign as her Sun, which could have been positively reflected. However, he projected this ‘lunar’ emotional quality into her, as he perceived emotionality as weakness and vulnerability. The alchemical/astrological ingredients could have been ripe for transformation. I found myself asking what was her husband living out for her and she for him? While the pull of opposites could have been an opportunity to strive for integration on both sides, her husband refused to acknowledge any of his problems, and demanded she change to please him. ‘For two personalities to meet is like mixing two chemical substances, if there is any combination at all, both are transformed’ (CW 16, para. 163).

In alchemy, the first conjunction is an undifferentiated internal Sol and Luna psychic component while the second conjunction is where Sol and Luna unite in a chymical marriage of spirit and soul, uniting male and female aspects in the psychic heiros gamos (sacred marriage). Connie and her husband were unable to achieve this, so they split up. This collision of different temperaments was a catalyst leading to Connie’s journey of self-examination. Her astrologer had penetrated the surface of her persona and view of herself as always being a victim. Seeing herself as ‘unfortunate’ prevented her from developing her innate potential. In fact, rather than being weak and ineffectual, she was actually a creative, intelligent individual in search of meaning and fulfilment.

Initially, in spite of the difficulties, Connie did not want to give up hope that her marriage might be resurrected until she brought a dream that a building was on fire with her husband inside. She awoke most upset. Next day when she drove past the Registry Office where they married, she saw fire engines putting out a fire there. She was astonished but immediately saw the message, and told me she could no longer ignore the dream’s meaning. While dream and event had no relationship to each other, there was, as Jung describes, ‘an a-causal connecting principle’. Its intense emotional effect on Connie finally changed her perceptions. She started to believe she could let go of her marriage and using the motif of fire, both in her dream and reality, she could work on her inner rage and anger.

Connie started to make real progress; she took back projections and began to acknowledge her own part in the marital interaction. In analysis she became argu- mentative, especially as we started to work on her passive-aggressive controlling side. Although she denied her shadowy behaviour at first, eventually she was able to integrate this into her personality, finding more assertive and less aggressive ways to meet her needs.

She was intuitive and brought many dreams with alchemical imagery. She dreamed she was pulling a tame baby dragon on a lead. The full force of her aggression was not yet accessible hence the dragon, a potentially dangerous, fiery creature, was seen as tame. Later she was able to contact her anger, metaphorically spitting fire at me and the world, rather than being resentful, or worse, turning it inwards and plaguing herself with imaginary illnesses and using food for comfort. She also suffered a phobic fear of enclosed spaces. An example was when she went see the film Alien (Scott, 1979) where a monster grows inside an astronaut, finally gnawing out of his stomach with large teeth. After this she was so frightened she could not sleep for weeks, sitting up in bed with the lights on. This became another symbol for repressed rage, and she began to understand her fear of her own destructiveness. As she owned this rage she could sleep again and her claustro- phobia subsided (see Chapter 13 for an account of a similar fear of enclosure).

Another alchemical symbol is the hermaphrodite, who has masculine and feminine in one body (see Chapter 3). Connie dreamed she saw a man walking towards her, an orthodox Jew, naked apart from his shoes with a hat over his long locks. He had large breasts and a limp penis, as if the feminine and masculine were still undifferentiated. Her association was of mixed-up spirituality; she nurtured

others with the large breasts but could not assert herself and stand up for her beliefs, as symbolised by the limp penis.

She dreamed of floating in the sea and seeing an old castle in the sky. It had four towers and looked secure. She could not tell what was real, her floating or the castle in the air. I interpreted the dream as a mandala – a symbol of the wholeness expressed in astrology and alchemy as the four functions of air, water, earth and fire, with the castle foundation giving a structure. We looked at the possibility she could be building castles in the air, by romanticising. I think both interpretations applied.

Connie dreamed she was being driven in a white car. The driver wore white leather and a winged helmet covering his face. She asked where he was taking her. When he would not answer, she grew frightened and asked him to stop to let her out. He did so but first removed his helmet so she could see that instead of a face, it was a skull. When he opened the door to let her out, he turned into a handsome man. Connie did not know what to make of this, except she did not want to be symbolically driven by a man again, as it would be the death of her psycho- logically. A week later she had a serious car accident yet escaped only with a bruise. This time she associated the man in the dream to Hermes/Mercury who wanted to take her to the underworld. She refused the journey.

Mercury in astrology, alchemy and mythology is the divine messenger carrying information from the gods to man. Hermes is also a psychopomp, a guide of souls to the underworld. In alchemy, he is the catalyst for the work to begin and a binding force, the archetypal trickster and healer. This was a powerful alchemical dream. It changed the way she perceived her passivity. She became determined to be in the driving seat from then on. The synchronicity around this dream and the accident show a larger pattern is at work, an a priori knowledge of the numinous, which allows a different awareness to arise and connect us to the spiritual. Such synchronicities frequently occur in times of crisis or change, as a message from the unconscious may have been ignored, or projected. ‘Thus the first knowledge of psychic law and order was found in the stars, and was later extended by pro- jection into unknown matter’ (CW 13, para. 285).