What's actually happening
Pluto's orbit is long and elliptical. A full circuit takes about 248 years. Scorpio is a fixed water sign traditionally co-ruled by Mars, with Pluto as a modern co-ruler — making this a domicile transit in the modern scheme. The Pluto in Scorpio transit ran from approximately 1983 to 1995.
What the tradition makes of it
Pluto in Scorpio is Pluto fully expressed. The qualities that define the planet — depth, transformation, the surfacing of what has been concealed, the restructuring of power at its most fundamental — operate without the modifying influence of another sign's character.
The transit coincided with the AIDS crisis, the global intensification of awareness around sexuality and mortality, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the generation born into this concentrated confrontation with what had been hidden or denied. The collective consciousness around death, power, and sexuality was permanently altered.
The generation born under Pluto in Scorpio tends to carry an unusual degree of psychological acuity and a natural comfort with what most people prefer to avoid — depth, intensity, the reality of mortality.
How to actually use it
This is generational weather. The individual relevance is in recognizing how the transformation of the collective relationship to power, mortality, and the hidden has shaped your own psychology — what you are comfortable looking at, what you have been trained to see through.
When in doubt
What does this generation know that previous generations refused to look at?