On Dynamics of the Unconscious

This is an interesting, enjoyable follow-up to The Development of the Personality. As in the first volume, it’s about the relationship between psychology and advanced astrology, with a healthy dose of Jungian analysis. The chapters take up aggression, depression, encounters with the sublime, and alchemical metaphors in astrology; the strongest were on aggression and the sublime, while the alchemy chapter was very interesting but noticeably less focused. I love the Liz Greene chapters for their mythopoesis, though they aren’t quite as strong here as in the first volume, and Sasportas’s chapters are much more fatherly.

The depression chapter was a letdown. The author is right to emphasize Saturn and Pluto, but I’d hoped for something on the Saturn return and didn’t find it. The alchemy chapter drew on symbolism I’d picked up in The Secrets of Alchemy, and I was glad to have read that one first. It’s worth the time of anyone interested in psychological astrology; playing with symbolism like this is a lot of fun.