During my daily life, which takes place in the American corporation, I’m 100 percent Freudian. Corporations are in the domain of Saturn, that planet of structure, rules, authority and hierarchy. As such, Saturn and corporations provide stability, security and routine – all that good stuff that keeps people out of trouble.

In American society, the corporation is also challenged with the burden of providing health care benefits and other benefits that in other countries are provided through the family or government. In that sense, the corporation has become the local government or pseudo family of one’s American life, if one is attached to a corporation. The Trusted Professional states that more and more Americans are working at large corporations. The corporation, then, is very powerfully tied to survival in so many ways.

Daytime – Sigmund Freud

Psychologist Sigmund Freud with sun in earth-sign Taurus is known to the layman for his psychology of parent relationships. Taurus is the fixed earth sign which is strong, stubborn and focused on the material and physical world.

Born with Uranus and Pluto also in the sign of Taurus, Freud was fated with a Taurus life that would undergo intense transformation (Pluto) and sudden, unexpected change (Uranus). Neither of those energies is fun for a Taurus seeking stable ground.

Moon in Gemini in Freud’s chart adds an additional energy of change in contrast to a sun that wants certainty and permanence. Gemini moon is changing, dualistic emotions and reactions. Gemini isn’t meant to travel one straight path while Taurus wants not only one path, but a paved path.

The mother is also represented by the moon so Freud’s mother may not have been the archetypal mother represented by the water sign Cancer. Instead she was mentally active, changeable but not necessarily emotional and interested in friendships, not simply blood relationships.

The Freudian narrow lens on the complexity of human personality may be due to a Taurus desire for permanence in a life that did not offer permanence. Parental focus digs into our grounding, as this is where we develop our reactions to the world around us.

In corporate life, I tend to look at reactions (my own and others) as stemming from parental relationships. My cubicle psychology views those that adjust most easily to corporate life as having stable, loving parental relationships that provided an adequate sense of security.

Politics is the term generally used to describe at work behavior of others deemed unpleasant while we tend to view ourselves as outside of such behavior. Yet survival means we all play politics in some way. The top two types of corporate “politics” from my vantage point stem from the need to maintain job security (not an unimportant thing) and the desire to please authority which can be tied to security but often looks a lot like the need for parental love.

In a spiritual lecture I attended recently, the perfectionism was described as a need for approval. While perfectionism is gender agnostic, women seem to be more trapped in perfectionism than men. Through my Freudian lens, I see this tied to seeking approval from the mother.

The desire to please authority seems more related to the father as men still generally represent authority. You may argue that women have much more power than in the past, but the salary disparity we see in male labor versus female labor is simply a representation of men continuing to have more value. Male sports still dominate and most earth religions have a male image in the center.

If I were applying my workplace Freudian psychology to Freud, I’d guess he was trying to please a both a mother and father who were inconsistent in their emotions – sometimes they were encouraging sometimes disparaging and often emotionally neglectful.

Nighttime – Carl Jung

Carl Jung was born with sun in fire-sign Leo. Like Freud, he also had Uranus on his sun indicating a life of change, although with fire-sign Leo, change isn’t entirely unwelcome.

Jung’s moon in Taurus conjunct moon in Pluto also suggests a need for security and a very powerful, consuming mother figure. The mother might, as punishment, withhold physical items and physical affection. Pluto is power itself which transforms often by first destroying.

Wikipedia describes Jung’s mother as a Pluto figure:

Emilie Jung’s [Jung’s mother] continuing bouts of absence and depression deeply troubled her son and caused him to associate women with “innate unreliability”, whereas “father” meant for him reliability but also powerlessness.[8] In his memoir, Jung would remark that this parental influence was the “handicap I started off with. Later, these early impressions were revised: I have trusted men friends and been disappointed by them, and I have mistrusted women and was not disappointed.”

Since Jung speaks disparagingly of both parents, I would guess Jung would have difficulty in a corporate life. His Leo sun conjunct Uranus would probably do something more individualistic if he were in today’s American culture (maybe even be a psychologist!).

Jung’s philosophy appears more complete than Freud’s. Rather than looking merely at parental relationships, Jung acknowledged the male and female within each of us. Jung was looking for wholeness which is looking forward, not merely backward.

Leo Jung was a bit more creative in his approach to psychology which included describing archetypes. Leo in astrology is considered the actor of the zodiac due to its need to express the self without any justification. Actors need stories and Jung the Leo gave credence to the stories of life – we are all actors!

Freud During the Day, Jung at Night

During a corporate day, we must put aside various aspects of ourselves as we maintain professionalism. That can involve suppressing many traits (good and bad) of our true selves. Freudian psychology fits well during the day as we strive to please those around us and deal with the “politics” of corporate life.

But at night, it’s all Jung — anima, animus, shadow, self, thinking, feeling, sensation, intuition and archetypes. So much more description, so much more to experience, so much more to feed creativity.