The Sociopath Next Door

I just got a book from Amazon, ‘The Sociopath Next Door’. I was beguiled into ordering it by the title, but the book itself seems dull, albeit worthy. (Much better is Jon Ronson’s ‘The Psychopath Test’.) All the same, it’s an American book, and it got me reflecting that there is this theme in America that the ordinary person next door, who looks just like you or me, could be harbouring a dark secret.

You see it in 2 current TV series, ‘Homeland’ and ‘The Americans’. In the first, a soldier returned from Iraq, now living with his family as a regular American and a hero, is secretly a Muslim terrorist. In the second, set in the 80s at a Reagan-induced height of Cold War paranoia, what appear to be a normal American husband and wife are in reality Russian agents living under false identities.

This theme seems to go all the way back to the Salem witch trials, when ordinary women were put to death for practising witchcraft. It is a theme that can turn into mass hysteria, as occurred (along with Salem) in the Communist witch hunt of the 1950s.

I wondered what is it in the US chart that might express this theme? A bit of illegitimate astrology is revealing. The US Sibly Chart is for 1776, the Declaration of Independence. It occurred at the Uranus Return of the Salem Witch trials. So even though the US did not exist in 1692, Uranus was at that time conjoining what was to become the US natal Uranus at 8 Gemini.

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And the US Uranus is conjunct the Descendant, the point of other, of projection onto the other. Uranus is about splitting/division, and you also have uncertainty, you can never be quite sure what is going on, your neighbour really might be a Communist/Muslim terrorist/Russian agent/Devil Worshipper. (In Homeland, the evil has spread even to an American hero. Is no-one immune?) The theme of projection is intensified by Sun, Jupiter, Venus and Mars all being in the 7^th House.

The Salem Witch trials were religious in origin – Satan was in the world, and he could be infesting anyone, so keep on your guard. All misfortunes, the people believed, were due to the work of the Devil. The US has both Sagittarius Rising and Sun conjunct Jupiter, making it an unusually religious nation.

So putting all this together, the theme of the neighbour with the dark secret seems to go all the way back to the Protestant/Puritan origins of the US, the religious fanatics who came over from Europe to found the New Jerusalem. There were, of course, witch trials in Europe around that time as well. But Europe was more of a mixture. In England, the Puritans came and went.

In psychological terms, it comes down to the shadow, projecting it ‘out there’

and seeing others as having the brutality or whatever that is in fact your own, but unacknowledged. We all do it in one way or another. It’s the bits we are ashamed to admit to. They may not be ‘bad’, they may just be conventionally unacceptable. And if we are happy to talk about what we think of as our shadow, then it probably isn’t.

A book that has this American theme is ‘The Human Stain’ by Philip Roth. The ordinary person here is secretly black. His ancestry is black, but his skin is so white that he can conceal it. It is his shameful secret. He is a Professor, and he is unfairly accused of racism. And the story develops from that. But I thought it was rather a brilliant take on the theme. Your neighbour might be secretly black. As if blackness is an inherited evil that is not the same as skin colour. You can never be too careful.

And perhaps the American Dream is the obverse of the same theme, with the same religious root. Just as Satan can enter anyone, so can anyone, if they work hard enough, be saved. Anyone can become rich and famous. Maybe they are 2 sides of the same coin?




PS I didn't talk about Pluto, who is typically associated with the Shadow. But maybe he is the content of the Shadow, whereas in this case Uranus and the 7th House are the propensity to split, to see it in the other. And a major feature of this particular Shadow issue is treason - whether it is the Russian agent or Muslim terrorist, both disguised as ordinary Americans. And treason is a betrayal (Pluto) of the State (Capricorn). The US natal Pluto is in Capricorn.