Pluto in the 4th house means that Pluto takes on the values of the 4th house, similar to Cancer.
This placement is all about the trauma that happened to you as a child, and the resulting control issues that come from this repressed trauma.
Pluto In The 4th House
If you have Pluto in the 4th house, you probably had a difficult childhood with some kind of hardship within your family.
You probably wanted a safe refuge inside your home, yet many of the problems of Pluto actually came from within your home.
Pluto in the 4th house often indicates either power struggles with the other figure or some kind of trauma with the mother.
Due to these traumas, you may become self-protective and secretive as you grow older.
Obsessions & Fear:
With Pluto in the 4th house, you did not receive the proper safety and support that you needed as a child.
You may have experienced power and control issues in your home environment, violence, abuse, or even more subtle manipulation and constant tension.
In some way, your childhood was certainly difficult. Your home was not the sanctuary that you wanted it to be.
Power struggles are usually evident with Pluto in the 4th house. You struggled to control your own environment, and felt rage at this, but you were forced to bury the rage deep in your subconscious mind.
Your relationship with your mother figure was probably confusing or difficult. In some way, she was quite toxic to you.
With Pluto in the 4th house, your issues with your mother fell into one of two categories.
In the first scenario, your mother was too powerful and tried to control you, obsessing over you and never allowing you to have personal boundaries.
Alternatively, you probably had a mother who was destructive in some way, whether she was an addict or had a mental disorder. She probably spun out of control on a regular basis and appeared to be quite weak. You may have wished that she would be stronger.
These issues can pop up over and over, or you may simply have experienced one event that was extremely traumatic.
Ultimately, you felt as though you did not have personal power as a child. You never found a sense of peace in your intimate world and did not have parents who were there for you.
You also had to care for other people from a young age. With Pluto in the 4th house, you were forced to take on too much responsibility because the adults in your life didn’t step up.
This placement usually indicates that your caretakers acted like children themselves in some way. You didn’t get the support you needed, but you also had to act like an adult when you were too young.
These responsibilities make your family home quite exhausting.
As an adult, you may try especially hard to stop this from happening to anyone else. You’re afraid of vicariously reliving that trauma through another.
However, you can get obsessed with this, especially when you have your own children. You may want to do things differently as a parent but you could take this to extremes.
You are probably afraid to trust other people with Pluto in the 4th house, even for yourself. You can never be fully vulnerable with someone because you must always guard your heart so that you never experience the pain of childhood again.
When you develop your own sense of security (such as by having your own home as an adult), then you may strongly fear change because you don’t want to lose this security.
With Pluto in the 4th house, you could also be afraid of where you come from and of going back to your roots. However, these feelings may cause guilt, so you repress them.
You can also be obsessed with your family in some way. Family is what created you the most pain, yet you also fixate on family, whether this is your family of origin or the family you try to create later as an adult.
Positive Power:
With Pluto in the 4th house, you have a lot of positive qualities.
You know how to be very resourceful. Because you had to figure things out on your own as a child, these qualities are integrated into your life as an adult.
This placement also means that you know how to get things done and control your own emotions. When you need to accomplish a task, specifically caretaking for someone else, you can put everything else aside to do it.
You’re also very good at working behind the scenes. In many scenarios, you will be the one in power, even though other’s don’t realize it. You know how to get things done without revealing your position.
Control:
Pluto in the 4th house suggests that you carry emotional baggage. You probably have trauma buried in your memory, yet this may be repressed and entirely unconscious to you.
These repressed traumas may control your everyday life without you realizing what’s happening. You simply find yourself unable to completely open up and feel vulnerable.
Though you control your own inner self by keeping him/her far beneath the surface, you can also become controlling or domineering yourself as an adult.
If you don’t work through your issues with Pluto in the 4th house, you may find that you control those in your household. You unconsciously want to be the “head of the house” to make sure that you never experience that trauma from childhood again.
This can manifest in many ways. You may be manipulative, controlling, or violent. In general, you seek power in your own home.
Your need for control with Pluto in the 4th house comes from your childhood fears. However, this need for control can make life quite difficult for the rest of your family.
Pluto in the 4th house means that you gain a sense of power from being a part of a family system, yet you may also feel the need to control your family. This is a bit of a push-pull problem.
You probably fight inner battles with control, but you’re only fighting with yourself.
In order to find a true sense of control, you may also become extremely patriotic (often to the level of fanaticism) or extremely religious.
Transformation:
With Pluto in the 4th house, you must work hard to transform yourself in order to deal with your demons. You probably have some serious karma to work through.
Your trauma here can only come from karma, because it occurred when you were so young. However, this also means that it is even more painful.
Pluto in the 4th house means that you gain power by being a part of a family system, yet you must transform the way that you use this power.
By finding your own personal power inside, you won’t need to control others. You will find that things happen in your family system to force you into this transformation.
The way to begin is by reliving the most painful periods of your childhood and confronting the false judgements that you made as a child, often about yourself and your self worth.
Only then can you begin to let others in to see the true you. Instead of hiding your fear with anger or manipulation, you must learn how to share your vulnerable feelings with others who you can trust.
Transform with Pluto in the 4th house by sharing your fears. You try to keep your fears locked down so that you’re never hurt, but you can never then have an honest relationship with another person.
You have a hard time accepting yourself with this placement. Sometimes, psychotherapy or intense inner work can aid you on your journey.
Delve into the traumas caused in childhood in order to realize that none of it was your own fault. This will then teach you how to give up control so that you can have familial relationships that are on equal footing.
