Hello, I can't speak for waybread or Zarathu, but I don't see the plights of psychological astrology as really any different from, say medical astrology in the modern age (aside from the inherent differences in the ability to verify). I, personally, am more likely to consider the opinion and practices of someone who has formal education in medicine or a sub-discipline of it over someone who does not. In the past, most university trained doctors were astrologers, so their texts on the subject were basically their polished up case files. Similarly, I am more likely to trust the opinions and practices of someone with a degree in psychology if I were to study psychological astrology.
If I have health issues serious enough to require medical intervention I'm going to a doctor, period, not an astrologer, whether he or she is self-described as a medical astrologer or just an astrologer. And if I have psychological issues serious enough to warrant intervention I'm going to a counseling psychologist or psychiatrist, not an astrologer, whether he or she is self-described as a modern astrologer, a psychological astrologer, a traditional astrologer, or just an astrologer. Astrology is simply not advanced enough, its facts not factual enough, to be of much practical use. The idea that a person with mental health issues, who would otherwise trust a degreed counseling psychologist over an astrologer, might nonetheless trust and turn to a
psychological astrologer rather than the psychologist for help solely because of the inclusion of "psychological" in the title, is simply not credible. If a client trusts counseling psychologists applying the knowledge of academic psychology as helping professionals over astrologers applying astrological knowledge as helping professionals, do you really think he or she will be fooled into thinking a person calling himself a psychological astrologer is a member of the former rather than the latter group? At any rate my orientation is to astrology as a knowledge enterprise, not a helping profession. My own self-identification is that of astrological theorist. But I see no problem with astrologers wishing to emphasize the psychological dimension of their enterprise appending that term to astrology as part of a descriptive tag. As long as astrology is also part of that verbal tag no one is likely to be fooled into thinking they're something other than astrologers. Only if they refer to themselves as psychologists or counseling psychologists, period, are they misrepresenting themselves and possibly committing fraud.
If I'm reading your post correctly, it seems like you are putting most of the focus on the astrological part (that if astrology were more academically accepted, they would be astrologers who do psychology, not psychologists who do astrology). However, my main focus is on the part of the astrologer who is able to take their education and profession and apply that to their astrological work.
Yes, I am focussing on the astrological part, but I think the phrase "astrologers who do psychology" is misleading, as is the phrase leading into it. I think astrology is
intrinsically psychological, that as it becomes more highly developed that fact will be more evident as astrologers do a better job of empirically determining which (psychological) effects consistently and thus predictably coincide with which configurations, and that
as a result astrology will
then be more academically accepted. Notice the reversal of emphasis, with academic acceptance being the result, not the cause, of a demonstrated psychological dimension in astrology.
As for "the astrologer who is able to take their education and profession and apply it to their astrological work," I contend that at astrology's current developmental level, in which verbal games and other means of multiplying ways of being "right" substitute for empirically demonstrated correspondences, any event or knowledge or kind of effect can be made to seem relevant and valid. Psychological astrologers, degreed or otherwise, tend to
impose modern psychological categories, relevant or not, on astrology, and astrology's current epistemological structure enables them to do that. But even if it's conceded that only relevant categories will be applied, an inability to transcend existing modes of astrological reasoning, which I think is true of the overwhelming majority of astrologers, including those with university degrees, virtually guarantees that they will not be associated with those configurations, and only those configurations, that consistently coincide with them. Psychological knowledge, with or without a degree, is helpful
only to the extent that 1) the astrologer is,
qua astrological researcher, capable of empirically ascertaining which effects correspond to which configurations, and 2) his or her disciplinary knowledge is relevant to those effects (e.g., cognitive developmental psychology, life span developmental psychology, personality psychology, and chronobiology, for instance).
The thrust of this discussion has been that those who describe themselves as psychological astrologers are misleading others. Who knows, a person suffering from some psychological difficulty might engage a psychological astrologer thinking she's thereby gaining the help of a therapist trained in academic psychology, and if that's not the case is being misled. The implication is that if the psychological astrologer does have a degree in one or more psychological disciplines the prospective client is not being misled. In the first place the person who chooses to consult with a psychological astrologer does so because of the word astrology in the title, because he believes in it and its efficacy. That belief might be mistaken but he's not being misled. On the other hand, a person who does not believe in astrology or its efficacy, who believes instead in academic psychology and in helping professionals trained to apply it in therapeutic contexts, will avoid astrologers and engage a degreed counseling psychologist. But
Zarathu, who raised the nomenclature issue in the first place, in response to
Inline's "This might explain the lack of practicing psychologists/astrologers," admits, "Yeah.... we definitely don't tell people that we are also practicing astrologers. I never told a soul." In that case who is misleading whom?
) that the reason why the modern world has seen so many different techniques to supposedly "explain" what is going on within any context is a complete ignorance of existing technique. I just have a hard time believing that astrology is going to be able to be at all scientifically recognized since each part is so interconnected with the next.
