From Base Camp to Summit: Why Capricorn Achievement Needs Cancer Security

Because Cancer, the sign, symbolically embodies the mother-child relationship, this month I have re-read the Grimm Brothers’ story Rapunzel, which I used in workshop to explore the opposite sign, Capricorn, six months ago. This time, I was seeking to understand how the idea of attachment, used in the context of early childhood development, related to the Cancer archetype.

In Capricorn, we turned to Rapunzel to study ideas surrounding the traditional father-child relationship: independence, authority, self-possession, individuation. Now, in Cancer, I wondered if the balance point, the mother-child relationship, would make an appearance as well. As a starting point, I looked at Rapunzel’s mother figures, the birth mother and the Wicked Witch, and quickly realized that each of them embodies one of the four widely documented attachment styles.

Rapunzel’s birth mother — or, I would say, her birth parents together — symbolize an avoidant style inasmuch as they allow Rapunzel to be taken immediately upon birth, exposed to the harshness of the world and expected to mature quickly enough to manage it on her own. (Please understand that I’m not suggesting this of real-life birth parents who release their children for adoption but am using Rapunzel rather as a metaphorical look at attachment.) Rapunzel cannot form any kind of attachment with her birth parents, to the point where they might as well be strangers to her. No emotional investment exists from her perspective, though her parents may feel differently.

On the other hand, the Wicked Witch forms an ambivalent attachment with Rapunzel, attempting to arrest her maturation process by locking her in a tower. The Witch appears in the tower only often enough to provide for Rapunzel’s physical needs and to ensure the girl is dependent on the older woman’s authority and resources. Rapunzel gets just enough from the Witch to want more: more warmth, more connection, more consistency. But what she develops instead is clinginess and insecurity — a near-neurotic need for reassurance and a terrible fear that any connection at all will vanish.

Attachment theory came out of studies by Englishman John Bowlby that found that infants and toddlers need responsiveness and sensitivity from close adults in their lives. Such interactions help children develop a sense of security, or “secure base,” from which they will then dare to move ever-further away from the parent in order to explore and build independence. A secure base is first embodied in the responsive, sensitive adult who provides empathy, compassion, self-management and consistency for the child. Over time, the secure base and its constituent parts are assimilated into the child’s self-image, influencing perceptions and expectations of all future relationships.

In other words, the development of safety and security, in the tradition of Cancer sensitivity and intuition, are critical to children’s eventual ability to risk independence and self-authority in the Capricorn way. Secure attachment in Cancer is necessary to authentic independence in Capricorn. When the Cancer archetype is seriously imbalanced in either direction — by way of an under- or over-emphasis on attachment — then independence becomes either the only available choice or too frightening even to contemplate.

But, you ask, didn’t Rapunzel manage to escape the tower and build a new life for herself despite her childhood? Yes. That’s because she had a third attachment figure that balanced the archetype nicely: the Handsome Prince.

I love this part of my musings because it re-visions traditional feminist interpretations of the Handsome Prince role in fairy tales. In a huge departure from the criticism that the Handsome Prince suggests a woman always needs a man to save her, I want to suggest that — at least in Rapunzel – the Handsome Prince provides Rapunzel with a very necessary secure attachment.

The Prince visits Rapunzel consistently, presumably providing warmth and responsiveness, which are key ingredients in secure attachment. He also treats Rapunzel appropriately for her age and her experience, neither infantilizing her nor heisting her away immediately, which would likely be too frightening for someone of her history. But perhaps most important, the Prince also helps Rapunzel transition from childhood to adulthood. He slowly but consistently provides her with the means to build a ladder to her own independence (one strand of silk thread each night) instead of simply carrying her off to be “his,” which would be just echoing the Wicked Witch’s role. Not only that, he also helps Rapunzel weave the ladder, demonstrating both that he will be there for her — a secure base — and that he simultaneously believes in her ability to create her own independence.

The Prince embodies the perfectly balanced Cancer archetype, the care-giving figure who is secure enough both to act as a secure base and to encourage independence in its own right time.

The Prince is such a strong and secure attachment figure, in fact, that when the Wicked Witch discovers Rapunzel is pregnant and exiles her into the desert, the young woman is able to survive and raise her twin children alone, without the aid of the Prince. We know she has succeeded in internalizing the Prince’s example when she is able to receive him back into her life after years of separation.

This is the legacy of a secure attachment: the capacity for authentic independence alongside the ability to be a secure base to one’s own children (or to others who need one). And to be able to do so, if one chooses, from within the embrace of a mutually loving, respectful and joyful adult relationship.