Why a Swiss psychiatrist took astrology seriously

Carl Gustav Jung was one of the most influential psychiatrists of the 20th century. Trained in medicine, a close collaborator of Sigmund Freud before developing his own line of thought, Jung was neither a mystic nor a fortune-teller — he was a clinician who spent decades observing patterns in the human mind through thousands of patients.

And at some point in that trajectory, he began to study astrology. Not because he believed that planets control anyone's destiny, but because he recognized in astrological symbols an ancient language describing something that clinical psychology was also trying to name: internal patterns that repeat.

The central concept: universal patterns

Jung developed the idea that there are universal psychological patterns — present in virtually all human cultures, independent of contact between them. The Hero, the mother figure, the wise elder: these are images that appear repeatedly in mythologies, dreams and stories around the world, suggesting structures shared by the species.

For Jung, astrological symbols — the planets, the signs — functioned as a particularly detailed cataloguing of these patterns. Not as external forces controlling a life, but as a symbolic language for naming internal dynamics that are otherwise difficult to verbalize.

From theory to practice

Decades later, psychologist and astrologer Liz Greene took this idea forward in a structured way. Trained in analytical psychology — Jung's line of thought — and with training in astrology, Greene founded in London, together with astrologer Howard Sasportas, the Centre for Psychological Astrology.

The centre's goal was never to predict events. It was to train professionals to use the natal chart as a tool for reflection — a structured starting point for conversations about behavioral patterns, affective bonds and processes of personal maturation, always anchored in psychology, never in fortune-telling.

Why this is different from prediction

This is the most important distinction in all of psychological astrology: it does not claim that a planet causes an event. It claims that astrological symbols can function as mirrors — ways of organizing and naming psychological material that is already present, but not always easy to identify on one's own.

It is the same logic behind personality tests widely used in organizational psychology: none of them predict anyone's future, but all offer a structured language for reflecting on behavioral patterns. Psychological astrology occupies a similar space, with older symbols and a richer symbolic structure.

It is precisely this theoretical foundation that shapes the way the Sun and Moon are interpreted in any serious natal chart reading — including yours.

See these patterns in your own chart

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