Course description:  Students will continue to build their astrological interpretation skills as they examine issues related to families’ patterns, groups, and themes. Students will also continue to build their knowledge of psychological principles and ethical considerations.

This course offers practical guidance for astrologers working with their own and clients’ family issues: parents, children, siblings, or extended relationships.

Family relationships form much of the background complexity of a person’s life: they set patterns that manifest in relationships with bosses and subordinates, close friends and intimates, and in our career and lifestyle choices.

This course will go beyond the “nuclear family” to include a consideration of the social, ethnic, and historical contexts of family life. Students will sample psychodynamic approaches that inform much modern astrology and
systems approaches that enable an exploration of the interlocking patterns of our birth and family connections.

Students will examine parental/offspring and sibling relationships within family structures through the astrological chart. They will look at generational transmission, sibling position, and changes within the family to see how astrological indicators reflect these considerations and how they might run counter to them.

Participants are invited to share cases they have encountered in their work and to share insights from their own family experiences and their own lives.

Required Books: Recommended:
not required.

–      
McGoldrick, Gerson, Petry.
Genograms: Assessment and Intervention 3rd Ed. Norton
2008.Sullivan, Erin. 2008. (Wonderful book on generational change and
continuity within families)
–      
Sullivan, Erin. The Astrology
of Family Dynamics. NY,NY: Penguin.(2008 revision
dropped Dynasty from 1996 title, same book) (Uses systems
theories mixed with psychological astrology)

–      
Gauquelin, Michel. 1966 (1988 English
edition). Planetary Heredity. San Diego, CA: ACS Publications,
Inc.  (Astrological research on patterns that repeat over generations)

 –      
Greene, Liz & Howard
Sasportas. The Luminaries. York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, Inc.
1992.  (Psychological astrology approach, interesting insights)

–      
Greene, Liz & Howard
Sasportas.  Chapter – The Parental Marriage and the Horoscope from The
Development of Personality. Samuel Weiser Publisher 1987. 
(Psychodynamics between parents and their influence on  children.)

 –      
Cowger, Barry. Reconstructing
the Real You. Mercurius Publishing 1992. (Families described as something
to escape from)

 Pre-requisite: Foundations,
or equivalent.

This counts as an elective for the Professional Diploma 

Weekly topics:

1.   
History, Ethnicity, Astrology’s Houses

2.   
Genograms, Parental Units, and Triangles

3.   
Parental Units (conclusion), Siblings

4.   
Family dynamics across time

5.   
Case Studies and Issues of Perspective