OBSESSIVE LOVE

Dr. Susan Forward, author of Men Who Hate Women & the Women who love them published the book Obsessive Love in 1991. Advertising copy for this book reads, "whether you are an obsessive lover or the target of that desperate love, free yourself from the prison of that passion." This sounds like the stuff for fiction and indeed it is in the '90s. Any Woman's Blues. Erica Jong's 1990 novel is about a woman gripped by a sadomasochistic obsession for a young hustler and her efforts to free herself from this self-destructive addiction. This she succeeds in doing, only to later in the novel enter another doomed from the start relationship.

Men as well as women are liable to become involved in obsessive relationships in the '90s. Josephine Hart's 1991 best selling novel Damage is the story of a happily married man who becomes sexually obsessed with his son's girl friend. Damage, the novel, became the December 1992 film of the same name, starring Jeremy Irons and Juliette Binoche).

Obsessive love as a grand passion is ruled by Pluto. But if we mean by "obsessive love" the experience of unrequited love, then we are talking about Neptune, most especially Venus/Neptune aspects, but also Neptune in any aspect to a personal natal planet. Quite often the sufferer of unrequited love is often in love with a Plutonian type. When we read of unrequited love that turns into a crime of passion, such as in the film Fatal Attraction (1990). we are again talking about Pluto, especially when in Scorpio. Sometimes, Neptune and Pluto are both involved in obsessive relationships and obsessive individuals. For example, in Single White Female (1992) we are shown a clinging self-sacrificing Neptunian type who turns into a Plutonian psychotic monster from Hell.

SEX AND THE PSYCHIATRIST

Through Freud we know of the links between psychoanalysis and sex, and this preoccupation continues in the 90’s (Yes again, I will refer to that pivotal year 1930 when Pluto was discovered. In that year the first institute for the training of psychoanalysts in the United States was set up in Boston, Massachusetts). Paradoxically, Pluto in Scorpio in the '90s has brought us films and real life stories of psychiatrists acting out their obsession with sex or shrinks sexually involved with obsessive types. All of us are familiar with the basic psychiatric tenet that the patient often falls in love with the analyst, or rather in technical jargon, experiences "transference."

Now, in the '90s, we learn the situation works both ways and that sometimes it is the therapist who falls in love with the patient. Maybe, this is another example of ‘90s revenge, and that an age-old resentment towards the therapist, as being more knowledgeable about our sex lives than we are, has finally found a voice in current cinema (an extreme example is psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs ) Or maybe, we are taking out our revenge through his disciples on Freud himself, who, so blinded by his Oedipus complex, failed to see that the women who complained about child abuse and incest in the 1890's perhaps were not acting out Oedipal fantasies, but were in fact telling the truth. (See The Assault on Truth; Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory , by Jeffrey M. Masson, published in 1984, the first year of Pluto's transit through Scorpio.) In either case, in the '90s, the therapist has joined the patient on the couch!

1991 brought us The Prince of Tides, starring Barbra Striesand as a psychiatrist who falls in love with her suicidal patient's twin brother. Then we have 1992's Basic Instinct with Jeanne Tripplehorn starring as a potentially homicidal bisexual psychologist who has an affair with her patient. Also in 1992 Annabella Sciorra starred in Whispers of the Dark as a lonely and needy therapist who starts going out with a man who may be a sadomasochistic killer. Richard Gere, as a psychiatrist in 1992's Final Analysis falls in love with the sister of one of his female patients, who turns out to be a psychotic killer.

On the basis of Final Analysis, it appears that clinical psychologist Kenneth Pope wasn't exaggerating, when interviewed by Newsweek about the growing number of reports in the 90's about psychiatrists sleeping with their patients, said, "when a therapist engages in sex with a patient, he or she is engaging in a potential homicidal activity." 7 Though we haven't as yet read in the headlines of any psychiatrists being killed by their patients, we suddenly have a flurry of cases in the public eye of therapists who have violated the Hippocratic oath and have slept with their patients. In 1991 we learned that the late poet Anne Sexton had an affair with one psychiatrist who treated her. In 1992. John M. Hamilton, a 68 year old former deputy medical director for the American Psychiatric Association, resigned his post after the Maryland medical board learned of his two-year affair with a female patient.

How widespread is this activity? A 1986 nationwide survey conducted by psychiatrist Nanette Gartrell revealed that 7 percent of male psychiatrists and 3 percent of female psychiatrists admitted having sexual relationships with their patients. More alarming were Gartrell's findings that 65 percent of therapists said they had treated patients who had been sexually involved with previous therapists. No one knows how widespread these practices are in 1992, but 8 states now have enacted laws making sex between patients and therapists a crime.

The most bizarre story to come to light in 1992 was that of Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Margaret Bean-Bayog who was sued by the family of Paul Lozano for malpractice. In 1991 Paul, a 28-year old Harvard med student committed suicide by injecting himself with cocaine 75 times. Lozano's family claimed that she seduced him. Though a medical board found insufficient evidence of any sexual relationship, Bean-Bayog's diaries which include descriptions of exotic sadomasochistic fantasies were found in Lozano's apartment. In this civil suit, some 3,000 pages of medical records, notes and letters, plus tapes, books, and gifts exchanged by Lozano and Bean-Bayog were presented to authorities. The therapist, who is married with two children, was so obsessed that she wrote to Lozano almost every day during her vacation. Here we have all the ingredients of a TV movie of the week, and yes, two TV movies about Dr. Margaret Bean-Bayog were made by 1993. Also, in 1993, Richard Gere's Hollywood film, Mr.Jones, in which he stars as a manic-depressive in love with therapist Lena 0lin opened to favorable reviews.

In the "90s psychoanalysis itself is being psychoanalyzed. Stuart Schneiderman's New York Times review (August 16, 1992) of three new books about psychotherapy has the following headline, "Therapist, Shrink Thyself." Schneiderman says that Michael B. Sussman's A Cur i ous Calling . Wayne A. Myer's Shrink Dreams, and Stanley Siegel and Ed Lowe Jr.'s The Patient Who Cured His Therapist all deal with the reasons why therapists fail their patients. As the reviewer says, "It appears that the profession's new motto is going to be 'We know that you're not O.K.; does it make you feel any better to know that I'm not O.K. either.'" Be that as it may, the current revelations about sex and the psychiatrist provide us with another example of dark secrets being brought to light while Pluto transits through Scorpio.

SEXUAL HARRASSMENT

The October 1991 Hill/Thomas hearings fixated the American public for the full length of the hearings on the issues of pornography and sexual harassment. Whether you believe Hill or Thomas was innocent or that they both were lying, these hearings served the Uranus in Capricorn purpose of awakening the public to the very real need for changes in politics as usual and that the woman's point of view certainly could not be appreciated by an all-male Senate investigating committee. Sexual harrassment per se, which permeates our society and is not limited to just the work place, is a Pluto in Scorpio issue. A strange anomaly occurred in the aftermath of this trial. Though most woman polled believed that Thomas was innocent and that Hill wasn't telling the truth, most women also believed that sexual harrassment was indeed an everyday occurrence in our society — a sort of, "now that you mention the subject, I'm extremely angry about it."

Legislation affecting sexual harrasment only began in 1975 with Uranus in Scorpio. Prior to then, if a man made lewd remarks, he was thought to be boorish, a lout, and ill mannered. Now, with Pluto in Scorpio, judging from a united womanhood in America complaining of this issue, we realize that sexual harrassment is indeed a mainstream problem and a national concern.

Whether or not Anita Hill was telling the truth, women identified with her. In fact, it didn't matter even if she were lying; she had a greater role to perform than a personal one — she, became Pluto in Scorpio's representative of the sexually harassed woman. In this instance, there was a more important issue here than who was telling the truth and that was the issue of sexual harrassment. What in the early '70s was considered a minor concern had now become a national issue affecting all women. Again, Pluto in the sign of Scorpio takes Scorpio issues and makes them go mainstream.

THELMA AND LOUISE

I myself was not moved by Anita Hill's testimony, but I was awakened to the issue of sexual harassment some four months earlier when I saw the film Thelma and Louise. Speaking not as an astrologer or a movie critic, but just as a human being, I agreed with Thelma and Louise, that no one would believe their story that this guy whom they had just met at a seedy pick-up bar had tried to rape Thelma. And yes, I secretly applauded when Louise came to the rescue. Anything to me was O.K. to stop the degradation and rape of Thelma. I was caught up in the moment, just as Louise was. She acted instinctively to prevent a horror from occurring — and I could understand her action, as I could understand the girls making a run for it.

Critics found this movie very controversial. The core issue of this film was sexual harassment, yet many male and female critics missed this message. Some critics thought Thelma and Louise an example of male bashing, for its portraiture of males as insensitive louts. And some feminist critics didn't like the portrait of Thelma and Louise as surrogate male outlaws, and so they saw this movie as an example of female bashing. They saw Thelma and Louise acting as men and they didn't like it.

Though feminist critics acknowledge that women are angry, for women to act on that anger was verboten. Violence is something that only men do, and despite the barrage of female psycho killers in films in the '90s, it hasn't occurred to some feminists yet that both males and females have the capacity to become violent and to kill people.

Shortly after this almost-rape incident occurred, the girls run into a hitchhiker (played by Brad Pitt) and Thelma immediately has the hots for him. One critic said that after a near-rape experience, the almost rape victim would be too traumatized to readily agree to a sexual encounter so soon afterwards. This sounds clinically correct, but we're dealing with human beings here, not case studies. Thelma was attracted to this young guy, for the simple reason that he was cute. Is that so hard to understand? Remember, she was almost raped, but this experience perhaps was more traumatic for Louise who had a prior history of sexual abuse in her life. No wonder Louise was so quick to the trigger.

Some critics noted in passing the theme of sexual harrasment in this film, but the main theme of their arguments were other aspects of the modern day warfare between the sexes. Feminists didn't like Thelma really getting off on her role as outlaw and getting kicks from violence. But if you view Thelma within the context of her own psychic makeup and don't burden her with carrying the feminist movement on her shoulders, you will see that her actions throughout this film are consistent with her character. She's a person who acts first and thinks later. The consequences of her actions aren't foremost on her mind. It's not a question of what this film says about women, rather it's a question of what this movie says about Thelma and Louise.

One critic interpreted this movie — two women taking a joy ride to what ultimately ends in death — as having the subliminal meaning that if a women exercises the male prerogative of freedom, it will automatically lead to death. Other critics found some of Thelma's actions — ordering the cop who had stopped them into the trunk of his squad car and later blowing up the truck of a lascivious truck driver who made passes at them — excessive and non-realistic. That critic doesn't know, even if she's a woman, how seriously women take the issue of sexual harassment. Thelma's parting words to the police officer were to be nice to your wife and then she adds, "My husband wasn't sweet to me, and look how I turned out."

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THE DAMSEL OF DEATH

If the whole story of Thelma and Louise sounds make believe, let's consider the real life story of Aileen Wuornos, more popularly known as the Damsel of Death, the first ever woman convicted of being a serial killer. Remember, Thelma's violence was directed at a policeman and a truck driver, and lo and behold — among the five victims of the Damsel of Death were in fact a policeman and a truck driver. Yes, I know this is a coincidence, but I think a meaningful one. If we think Thelma and Louise's story is non-realistic, what are we to make of this female hitchhiker, who in real life lured five men who picked her up to a violent death?

Serial killers as opposed to mass murderers usually have something sexually traumatic in their backgrounds. The Damsel of Death was abandoned by her mother as an infant and was then orphaned when her father committed suicide while in prison for raping a seven-year old girl. Sexually abused as a child, Wuornos was pregnant at 13, and by age 15, she was selling her body. She told her psychiatrist she had been raped 10 to 12 times as she hitchhiked cross- country. These prior experiences explain her hatred of men, but they do not excuse her actions or make right her vicious revenge on the male sex. Would Thelma, if she had escaped her fate and in the process lost her car, have ended up as a hitchhiker on some highway luring men to their deaths? Both the stories of Thelma and Louise and the Damsel of Death serve as reminders that sexual harassment is not an issue to be taken lightly — by either sex.

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1. Factual References in this section are chiefly derived from Newsweek “ Sex and Psychotherapy,” April 13, 1992. pp. 53-57.