There is a strange cultural indulgence that insists on separating astrology from psychoanalysis, relegating the former to the corner of magical thinking and elevating the latter to the status of intellectual depth. However, if we remove the scenery from each, we discover that both systems operate by selling exactly the same merchandise: a sophisticated existential alibi.
In the market of modern angst, both offer the seductive relief of turning the subject into a mere vehicle of forces that, conveniently, always precede his will.
Human beings suffer a very specific type of suffering that is not physical, but moral: it is the weight of responsibility. Assuming that we are the sole authors of our misfortunes or our inaction generates unbearable pain in our conscience.
This is where astrology and psychoanalysis come in, not as sciences that seek a refutable truth, but as mythological machines designed to attack that suffering. Its function is not to explain reality, but to offer a lie sufficiently structured and authoritative so that we can believe it and, thus, stop suffering.
To achieve this anesthetic effect, both disciplines build an iron determinism. Astrology tells us that our temperament and our reactions are set by the position of the stars at birth; Psychoanalysis tells us that we are governed by unconscious drives and childhood traumas that operate from “behind the scenes.” The result is identical: the “I” is no longer the culprit.
If I am aggressive, it is not that I have decided not to control my anger; is that “I have a badly aspected Mars” or “I am acting out a death drive.” If I fail to maintain a partner, it is not a lack of current commitment; It is my “falling Venus” or a “repetition compulsion” derived from the maternal figure. In both cases, the cause is externalized. It is located in a remote past or in a distant sky, places where our will cannot reach and over which we have no control.
This is the master trap, because both systems generate circular and irrefutable diagnoses. Like a religion, they cannot fail because any objection is interpreted as part of the problem, whether it is a “dissonance with your natal chart” or a “resistance to analysis.” But this lack of scientific rigor is not an error of the system; It is its greatest commercial virtue. We need them to be closed and mysterious systems, dependent on an authoritative interpreter, for absolution to be credible.
What we buy in the office or in the astrological chart is the dissolution of guilt. It is the tranquility of thinking that we are passengers in our own body, victims of a script written by invisible forces.
In the end, the popularity of these disciplines is not sustained by their null empirical results, but by their analgesic effectiveness. They allow us to look in the mirror and say: “it wasn’t me, it was my destiny.” And that lie, dressed in technical or mystical jargon, is the most powerful narcotic that exists to silence the unbearable noise of our own freedom.
Things as they are
Mookie Tenembaum addresses international topics like this every week with Horacio Cabak on his podcast The International Observeravailable on Spotify, Apple, YouTube and all platforms.
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