Video presentation: Case-Taking in Emotional Trauma

Case-taking in emotional trauma can be much more effective if we have more clarity about what we want to learn from the patient.  I’ve set out a more focused way of working with cases involving emotional trauma in the video below.  I’ve disabled comments as I don’t always have time to keep track and reply, but if you’d like to comment please drop me a line on the contact form.

I hope you find this presentation helpful.

Aphorism 224 – mental disease

These days so many situations are classified as mental disorders, from defiance in children to reasonable depression (where it is normal to be unhappy, due to  temporary or changeable situations of loss, firing etc.) in adults.  So many people are on anti-depressants these days, and the age of those taking the drugs is constantly dropping.

But where will these mental states fit into our prescribing?  Are we looking at early stages of a mental disease, which is part of a systemic problem, or at a reasonable mood change resulting from events and lifestyle where what is really needed is encouragement and advice from friends or professionals?  I am of necessity simplifying a complex differential for this article, as when a reasonable mood change becomes prolonged and entrenched, encouragement and advice may no longer be of use.

Questions that have been asked regarding homoeopathy

The following article, posted by Gary Weaver on the main IHM site, sheds light and clarity on issues which are constantly confused, sometimes among homeopaths and frequently among the general public:

What is Psora?

Psora is Hahnemanns model for a disease process stemming from a singular root. Hahnemann considered it as the most common ailment to affect mankind. He also made the point that it was acquired by INFECTION and therefore was not transferred by hereditary.  A full and thorough examination of the medical models of Psora Sycosis and Syphilis is conducted in the IHM Advanced training course. It is not a disease per se, it is a process via infection and the resultant sequela.

10 Tips for Homoeopathy Students

Read Primary Sources!

10 Tips for Homoeopathy Students

1.  Read the Organon yourself.  Read Chronic Diseases.  Read Hahnemann and Boenninghausen’s Lesser Writings.  You are not a baby, don’t stick to the pureed version.

2. Never let anything go unchallenged.  Ask why, and if you don’t get answers from your teachers look for them yourself.  This includes everything from the law of similars, to plastic cups, dosing methods, antidotes, choices of remedies, concepts of miasms.

Hahnemann, fees, respect and self-respect

Hahnemann, fees, respect and self-respect

The letters brought in volume 2 of Richard Haehl’s Samuel Hahnemann: His Life and Work shed much light on Hahnemann’s views and the circumstances of his practice.  Many of his letters show that little has changed, that today we are still addressing the same issues which often impact negatively on our work.  A particularly raw subject is that of fees, incorporating as it does both respect for the homoeopath and the art, and our own self-respect as practitioners.

Viewed through proving: the alternating Pulsatilla

Most of us are very familiar with Pulsatilla as a remedy with wandering symptoms, when the patient says that the pains keep moving from place to place. But Pulsatilla is also a remedy with alternating symptoms. Even though it did not appear as one of the specific examples presented in Aphorism 251 of the Organon, the proving of Pulsatilla in the Materia Medica Pura is full of examples presenting the alternating nature of the remedy.

Aphorisms 5 and 6 – the changed and the unchanged…

What has changed?  And what has stayed the same?  How is the patient in health and how does he change in sickness?  How do we reconcile “take note of nothing…except the deviations from the former healthy state” (Aphorism 6), with “the most significant points in the whole history of the chronic disease” (Aphorism 5)?

Let’s look at them… (text taken from 6th edition)

Aphorism 5:

Useful to the physician in assisting him to cure are the particulars of the most probable exciting cause of the acute disease, as also the most significant points in the whole history of the chronic disease, to enable him to discover its fundamental cause, which is generally due to a chronic miasm. In these investigations, the ascertainable physical constitution of the patient (especially when the disease is chronic), his moral and intellectual character, his occupation, mode of living and habits, his social and domestic relations, his age, sexual function, etc., are to be taken into consideration.

The Homeopathic Diet – Coffee and Cigars..

The Homeopathic Diet – Coffee and Cigars…

Many practitioners struggle with the question of how much to limit patients in terms of diet. Patients ask quaveringly “does this mean I can never have coffee any more?” as they clutch cans of caffeine-laden Coca-Cola with whitening knuckles. Is Homeopathy intended to be draconian in food and lifestyle restrictions?

Desire in Homoeopathy – a musing

Desire in Homoeopathy – a musing

A recent sample case showed a patient who said he kept wanting to move – even though he knew it would hurt him. When and how should we use such symptoms?

In this case the patient had dislocated his shoulder. He stated a constant desire to move even though movement was painful for him.

How confident are you? How confident should you be?

On confidence:

How confident should we be as practitioners? This is a question which worried me greatly when I started out. I felt uncertain (not surprisingly as I was entering the world of sickness and health armed with a copy of Kent’s repertory – a copy of which a colleague justly through out of a window in a different continent – and some basic core delusions about Sankaran’s teaching.). I was qualified, I had the grades, supervised clinical work and diploma to prove it. And after all that training, I did not feel confident.

It will come, some said. The more patients you work with, the more confidence you’ll feel. Until a cold voice cut through the general internet babble, as a colleague (armed with a handbag full of plumbum crude – if you’re reading this, you know who you are) said sharply “if you’re not confident in what you’re doing, you shouldn’t be practicing.”

I see my own inner debate of that time reflected in many forums, where some few honest souls admit to worry and lack of confidence. With hindsight and its freedom of constraint, I see that confidence, for a homeopath, actually relates to at least two separate issues.

We must feel confident in our tools. If we do not feel confident in the principles of homoeopathy – not a blind faith but a clear understanding of the rationale of our practice, if we only know how to parrot “like cures like” without understanding what that means and more specifically, what that demands of us – we really should not be practicing. If we do not grasp that there is a quirk and a default in nature, whereby a stronger similar disease can annihilate a weaker one and will always do so unless something else is standing in the way of cure, whether it is a maintaining cause or a deeper inherited miasmatic taint – if we don’t get that then we really should not be practicing. We’re not talking about confidence in our ability. Here this is the confidence that our tools work. That “like cures like” is a prescribing principle, not a holistic “airy-fairy” slogan.

Personal confidence is another thing altogether. We have to get used to working with patients, to eliciting the information we need for prescribing, to listening to our patients without interrupting, to allow the picture of the disease to take shape before our eyes. We have to keep studying Organon, materia medica, provings, Hahnemann and Boenninghausen’s writings and works of similar value to keep our abilities honed and our homoeopathic knowledge checked and re-checked. We have to gain confidence in prescribing, in case-management, in effective follow-up.

Personal confidence is something every practitioner gains in time – in any field. But without confidence in our tools, that personal confidence is worthless. It’s worthless in the sense that if we are genuinely trying to work according to principle and don’t understand it, our confidence is a thin shell, a shiny veneer covering a world of insecurity in practice.

However, the worst expression of the worthlessness of personal confidence without true professional conviction is that those bumping up their levels of such personal confidence to overcome the lack of professional conviction are drawn to the new and the shiny, to developing their own new and shiny theories to astound the world.  As a result, they never investigate the tools properly, and learn to work faithfully and honestly to principle.

Something Hahnemann said in the Organon within a slightly different context seems an apt quote to close this post:

“A true homoeopathic physician, one who never acts without correct fundamental principles, never gambles with the life of the sick entrusted to him as in a lottery where the winner is in the ratio of 1 to 500 or 1000 (blanks here consisting of aggravation or death)…” (note to Aphorism 285).