Family Constellations

In California, the hours you intern in preparation for licensure as a Marriage and Family Therapist must directly relate to the way people conduct their relationships: It ain't called "Marriage and Family Therapist" for nothin'. The state is markedly interested in perpetuating the stability of marriages and families. They don't much care about your archetypes, the Divine within, the transcendent function, blah blah blah.

That said, pretty much any therapy you do -- even therapy focused on the slipperier aspects of the Self -- can be understood as directly relating to the way the client conducts relationships. After all, Who You Are is what you bring to relationships -- marriage, family and all the rest of 'em.

Still, being part of a Marriage and Family myself, and being, for once, in agreement with the state -- there really is nothing more important to me than the strength of my little trio in the L.A. Foothills -- I am very taken by the Hubers' understanding of the nuclear family within the birth chart.

Because in a few quick glances at a child's chart, you can actually get a glimpse of how you, the parent, are being experienced by your child. You can start to make sense of the overwhelm of parenting advice out there -- from the Internet to your mother-in-law and everyone in between. You can start to trust your own intuition about how you parent -- and catch yourself when you start to slide sideways. You can not only separate the wheat from the chaff but also the wheat that's good for you from the wheat that might just give your family bloat.

For example, in the chart at the right, which was randomly generated from a date, time and place I just picked out of nowhere, the child (Moon) is going to naturally feel more kinship with the father (Sun) than with the mother (Saturn) -- by simple virtue of the fact that Moon and Sun have a direct aspect relationship, whereas Saturn is not connected to either Sun or Moon. This indicates not a "bad mother" (too much of those accusations going on in traditional psychotherapy!) but a mother who the child may perceive as distant or disconnected. The child's perception, whether "accurate" or not (and, really, who's to say?) is what informs his emotional development. Understanding not how you parent, but how your parenting is perceived by the person to whom it's directed, is critically important.

What's so great about this way of reading the chart is that we can know it before it's too late -- before attachment disorders develop, before parent and child grow up stewing in misunderstanding and missed opportunity, before anger and accusations overtake interactions, before the most extreme and incomprehensible nightmare of estrangement. Because we can know the likely skews in perception and even in actual behavior, we can head them off at the pass. The mother in the above randomly-generated chart could compensate for the perceived disconnect by making a conscious effort to connect -- by setting aside time and devoted energy just for her child every day. Another mother might not have to be so deliberate about doing so because her child will naturally have the expectation, propensity and experience of connectedness. In fact, in the chart above, the child would probably have such an experience of the father.

Consciousness can prevent and cure a lot of things. The state and I, for once, agree: Marriage and Family Problems are among the most important targets for prevention and cure. Now if only they'd reimburse astrologers with public funds...

(Image credit)