Zarathu wrote:
In my opinion, most people who think they are doing psychological astrology are not, because to do psychological astrology, you must have training in both counseling or clinical psychology and training in astrology.
and
waybread added:
Psychology "is a modern discipline and university subject which has gone through big changes over the course of its history, but today seems closer to "behavioural science" or even neuroscience. So it isn't anything we really find astrologers engaging in at a professional level, so far as I know. . . . It may be a misnomer to call much of what we do "psychology."
If astrology were a developed research discipline the relevant psychological categories and functions would be an integral part of the astrological curriculum, and a degree in it would be an intro into that research community, a route to effectively contribute to it, and an indication that the holder exceeds a minimum level of knowledge and competence. But it isn't, and present-day astrologers, much less our distant predecessors, can't even say unequivocally what those categories and functions are. At astrology's current level of development what makes an astrologer a psychological astrologer isn't a degree but an orientation, one in which what is sought is psychological information rather than information about events and circumstances. I doubt that the information provided by astrologers, psychological or otherwise, is accurate, but a degree in one or more psychological disciplines, which individually might or might not be relevant to astrology, will not in itself enable such astrologers to provide better information. The problem with looking for astrological correlates of modern psychological categories and functions is that we don't know, absent appropriate and sufficiently rigorous
astrological research, what kinds of information astrology actually provides. In my opinion it provides information about psychodynamic states, and about events only to the extent that they're probable outcomes of such states. The ideas of depth psychologists Freud, Jung, Abraham Maslow and Erik Erikson, of lifespan development theorists Daniel Levinson and Gail Sheehy, and of cognitive development theorists Jean Piaget and L.S. Vygotsky are strikingly relevant to astrology. The contents of their theories, appropriately recast and contexted, are the stuff of astrological effects. These effects are time based, and their timing corresponds to planetary periods. For instance Freud's ego, Jung's persona, Levinson's and Sheehy's Age 30 Transition, Maslow's esteem needs, Erikson's Industry vs. Inferiority stage, Piaget's Concrete Operational stage, Vygotsky's Crisis at Age 7 and Grant Lewi's Saturn Return all refer to the same phenomenon, a psychological drive that exists continuously but which intensifies and comes to the forefront at 7⅓-year intervals before receding again into the background. Other drives correspond to other planetary periods.
From this perspective the evolution of psychological astrology is the evolution of astrologers' understanding of the effects astrology actually encompasses, and of how those effects are indicated. That's how I read
Kaiousei no Senshi's useful comments in his initial response to the OP, and
waybread's inclusion of English-language astrologers Arroyo, Greene and Rudhyar as more recent contributors, to which I would add Grant Lewi and some of his transitist predecessors. However, the lack of academic degrees worried about by
waybread,
Zarathu and
Kaiousei no Senshi would be relevant only if astrology were much more advanced than it actually is (in which case the degrees would be
in astrology and would include relevant psychological knowledge).