As a psychotherapist, it's always been important to help my clients feel as comfortable as possible. Typically the first interview can be awkward for new patients. It's understandable. They don't know me and may be unsure exactly what's expected. Sometimes they're not even clear as to why they're there except they want to feel better.
The homeopathic interview can be even more awkward. Not only does it start with the same "unknowns" as psychotherapy, but it adds new ones. You may have called the homeopath to get rid of that recalcitrant psoriasis, but he keeps talking about whether you kick the covers off at night, how you feel about injustice, or whether your sadness is worse in the morning.
Understanding the process and knowing what your homeopath is hoping to learn from you can make your experience more comfortable and productive. The following is not a medical manual, but a primer for those looking to work with a classical homeopath. Hopefully, it will give you a good idea of what to expect and how to participate so you get the most out of it.
Preparing Philosophically
My first session with a homeopath was confusing primarily because I was not prepared. Everything I had been taught to expect from medical treatment was turned upside down. If someone had given me a philosophical "heads up," I would have been far less anxious and more forthcoming.
There are three fundamental principles:
1. The Law of Similars or "like cures like." This is the manner of cure. It means you will be asked a host of unusual questions that will help him or her choose the remedy that is most "similar" to the totality of your symptoms. This means that the psoriasis you came in to get rid of may be only cursorily discussed while other, seemingly less relevant things (like the betrayal or grief you experienced right before your first outbreak) take center stage.
The simplest example of this law is how we get grease off our hands. We clean it with soap, which is little more than fat. The soap removes the grease because it is grease.
In a homeopathic case, it may look like this: A little boy suddenly gets a raging fever with a pounding headache, dilated pupils, bright red cheeks and delirium. The remedy a homeopath would choose (and there would be a couple of contenders) would have to produce those symptoms in a healthy person. By giving the remedy that would generate that particular type of febrile state to a person already in that state, it is theoretically cured.
As a psychotherapist, I think the tendency of trauma victims to unconsciously find themselves in traumatizing situations again and again is a desire to self-heal in some ways... They are searching for the similar agent. Freud was close to this when he talked about the repetition compulsion.
People are often horrified (and not unreasonably) when they engage in unhealthy behavior time and again. They rightly want it to stop. But when it is framed this way and they can see that they have only been seeking resolution, it becomes not only easier to understand but to actually resolve. They feel less guilty with unconscious complicity, less victimized by their pasts and more empowered to move towards change. I've seen this understanding alone start to bring about healing even before a remedy has been delivered.
2. Hering's Law. This is the road of cure. In simplest terms it refers to the way and the order in which the pathology will be healed. Cure moves from top down, from present to past, and from in to out (from the spiritual-mental-emotional down through the organs from most to least important and finally out to discharge in a benign way, e.g., a runny nose, brief diarrhea, fever, or skin eruption).
3. One remedy at a time. This is the technique of cure and it is an obvious but overlooked wisdom. If multiple remedies are given too frequently and in too rapid a succession (except in extreme and acute situations), the case can be lost. This is even more true with combination remedies (pharmacy concoctions that include multiple remedies, even those that antidote one another).
Levels of Pathology and Layers to Cure
This is not a standard homeopathic "principle," but it's one that I ask of patients regularly: patience. We are not out to just make a symptom disappear at the expense of your well-being. We want you to be healed. And that takes time because pathology is like an iceberg. Much of what is at work is under the surface.
We all operate like this because we have layers of defense against injuries, both physical and emotional. We can see this concept in our relationships. First bad joke, we get a giggle and a snort. Second bad joke, we get a "cut it out." Third bad joke, we get kicked in the shins.
In homeopathy there are three basic levels, starting with the most benign:
The Psoric
Physical level: Inflammation (fevers, rhinitis, cystitis), pain, spasm, constriction, sensitivity
Emotional level: Anxiety, apprehension, irritability, anger, sensitivity, insecurity
The Sycotic
Physical level: Accumulation (calluses, warts), synthesis, deposition, and proliferation
Emotional level: Hyper-anxiety, fearfulness, hypervigilance, excess vivaciousness, boasting, rigidity, hardness (like calluses), precocity, collection (OCD). Also the opposite: too relaxed (a loss of collagen, dropped uterus), looseness in character, overly yielding, shame
The Syphilitic
Physical Level: Exaggeration, distortion (pointed teeth, curved spine), destruction (cancer), auto-immune diseases, mutations (scoliosis)
Emotional Level: Perversion, cruelty, hysteria or mania, (psychosis), distortion of reality and loss of connectedness, destruction, fearlessness, suicidality
In the process of cure, each layer must be addressed as it presents itself, when it is right and the organism is ready.
Part of what makes a homeopathic interview successful is the synergy between you, the patient, and your homeopath. There must be a give and take, a relationship of trust, and an open dialogue. If you have questions, ask them. If you have fears, share them. The homeopath must observe and listen, but no one can see what you do not present.
If in fact there is as much art as science to a good case-taking, then you are as much a part of that process as your homeopath. Be as open and as honest as you can and you will reap the rewards in the health, vitality and freedom you have always longed for.
Follow Judith Acosta on Twitter: www.twitter.com/VerbalFirstAid
That said, homeopaths see no reason why they should abide the laws of physics so why should they bother to abide but the rules of a lowly state board.
Samuel Hahnemann's miasmic theory had two non-venereal and two venereal miasms. The two non-venereal miasms were Psora (the itch [not an ordinary itch] disease) and Pseudo-psora (the tubercle disease). The two venereal miasms were Sycosis (the fig wart disease) and Syphilis (the chancre disease).
1) When and by whom was it decided that the Sycotic and Syphilitic levels are not explicitly venereal?
2) Why aren't there 4 levels? I.e., why no Pseudo-Psoric level for the 4th miasm Hahnemann added in his later years?
But you don't answer any of my questions. Even if you are right, why doesn't homeopathy have a 4th level since 1910? Or was Allen wrong about adding a miasm, since Ms. Acosta and homeopaths like her obviously think it is invalid?
Although you didn't answer any of my questions, you did inspire others:
3) If Allen added a 4th miasm 101 years ago, why do Ms. Acosta and homeopaths like her reject it and only have 3 levels?
Soap gets rid of grease because both are hydrophobic, and in the presence of water they bind to each other. The mechanism is known and reproducible.
Homeopathy, however, was stillborn of its creator's inaccurate observations of the effects of chinchona in large doses. Chinchona was know to be efficacious at treating malaria. Homeopathy's inventor believed that in large doses it produced symptoms like malaria. He then concluded that because large doses of chinchona results in the same symptoms as the condition that smaller doses can cure it must be true of all substances.
However, further tests by others found that chinchona does not produce malaria-like symptoms. So, at its core, homeopathy was invented as a result of one person's mistaken observations.
That core value of homeopathy--specifically, mistaken observations--continues today with advocates ranging on a spectrum from ignorance and delusion to malicious malfeasance.
That said, there is a growing body of evidence that homeopathic medicines have an effect on gene expression: http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ecam/2011/286320/
However, I'm sure that the slimy ones out there will contend that homeopathic medicines are "placeboes," which then suggest that placeboes can have profound effects on genes too. Perhaps these deniers have a more far-out point of view than they realize!
Show me something better than a paper in "Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine" before I reject my reality and substitute yours!
"slimy"? Projecting much?
See my comment on their similarly shoddy research in the discussion following your article on Homeopathy for Radiation Poisoning (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/AJW1976/homeopathy-for-radiation-poisioning_b_842664_83053371.html).
The remaining two authors are employees of one of the world's largest manufacturers of homeopathic products.
How about citing an article from a respected research lab published in a reputable journal written by arms-length researchers?
I would concur with the observation by StThomas that the use of the word "slimy" is a projection: You have the audacity to accuse others of being representatives of pharmaceutical companies without a shred of evidence to support your statements while simultaneously citing articles on homeopathy co-authored by employees of a manufacturer of homeopathic products.
Are you capable of a modicum of self-reflection or demonstrating a semblance of self-awareness?
Incidentally, the study you cite featured only 6 mice in each of its four groups, which I note is a less than they used in 2001 and 2008, which featured, respectively, 8 and 30.
Further, no blinds were used.
It takes a pretty far-out point of view and a remarkable level of ignorance to consider the study you cited to have any reliability and worthy of relying upon.
Human basophil degranulation triggered by very dilute antiserum against IgE (1988)
http://www.criticandokardec.com.br/benveniste01.pdf
This is Jacques Benveniste’s famous “memory of water” study. Water has the capacity to memorise molecular “energetic signatures” i.e. new energetic state. Three other labs replicate the results before the paper was published in NATURE—an unprecedented requirement.
The mere citation of that study should preclude you giving health advice to anybody.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMGIbOGu8q0
In 1797 in his essay, "Are the obstacles to the attainment of simplicity and certainty in Practical Medicine insurmountable?" Hahnemann wrote, "Is it good to mix various kinds of medicines in a prescription? He further asked, "How can medicine attain a higher degree of certainty, when the doctor seems intent only on allowing a number of miscellaneous forces to be exerted at the same time on a pathological state?. He further said, "May I be allowed to confess that for several years I have never prescribed more than one medicine at a time....May I be allowed to confess that, as a result, I have successfully cured patients to their satisfaction..."
Ref: Samuel Hahnemann: his life and work, Richard Haehl, pp. 68-70 http://bit.ly/l5kSdz
In 1797, Hahnemann did not know about germ theory-- the medical wisdom of the day was focused more on 'humors' and 'temperamants'. Did his theories move science a little beyond the belief that health depended on just blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile? Perhaps.
But we know orders of magnitude more today. We know about germs, viruses, and bacteria. Just as we don't get fooled into bloodletting cures, we should not be fooled by promises of magic water. Not when the science of today had disproved the science of 1797.
I am not sure if you have looked at contemporary manuals on homeopathy but it remains rooted in the same such concerns for temperaments. Homeopaths attempt to fit individuals within a typology based upon characteristics of remedies. So a person who prefers to sleep oriented north-south and prefers to wear a hat is associated with a different remedy type than, eg, someone that sleep east-west and feels anxiety near the sea.
However, as you point out, medicine has progressed since those days and embraced science over superstition. In contrast, homeopathy remains mired in the demon-haunted world in which it first arose.
Dr. Hahnemann in 1828 (the modern light microscope was not invented then) in 'The Chronic Diseases' said the cause/origin of diseases is miasm. Bacterial Infections (material) and disease tendency arising from these infections are called as miasms.
Ref: JMS Schmidt, Josef M. Die philosophischen Vorstellungen Samuel Hahnemanns bei der Begründung der Homöopathie (bis zum Organon der rationellen Heilkunde, 1810). München: Sonntag, p. 29, 1990.
The progress of cure in chronic diseases
During the course of treatment the cure progresses from above (top of the body) downwards (bottom), from within outwards, center to periphery, from more important organ (wisdom of the body heals those most vital to life first) to less important one, in reverse order of coming of the symptoms (presenting symptoms disappear in the reverse order of their appearance i.e. First In Last Out, so old symptoms might resurface).
In other words: homeopathy was invented on the basis of flawed observations. Sadly, homeopaths have continued to hold steadfast to homeopathy's origins with the result being the collective accumulation of erroneous nonsense.
I believe he advocated removing the spleen to cure epilepsy.
Guess he must be right then.
Regardless of what you call it, obviously we agree it is important.
And how do you come to that conclusion? As an example, when diagnosing a patient as being depressed, understanding sleep patterns or mood and appetite changes can be quite important.
"homeopathy also takes into account very important subjective factors such as a patient’s own experience of his or her illness"
Then I imagine you would be very much against the over-the-counter sale of any homeopathic remedy, like Oscillococcinum, for how would a patient be able to determine for themselves whether such a remedy would or would not help their flu symptoms.
Again, like I said to StThomas (above in this column), the action of homeopathic remedies is what is elusive to people. And I think if we start thinking about it more in terms of quantum mechanics and the vibrational properties of subatomic particles, we may be approaching more of an understanding than if we think of it as ordinary drugs.
Sigh... spoken like a true person-who-has-read-about-QM-in-passing.
I'm intrigued - could you elaborate? I think we all would enjoy hearing a homeopath's theories on quantum mechanics.
Homeopathy is a rational science with respect to its concepts of health, disease and cure.
Homeopathy is not exclusive and can be used along with conventional and complementary medical treatments.
Homeopathic medicine is ideal for people of all ages, even the most sensitive like an expectant mother or a new born because it is devoid of chemical toxicity.
Haven't you heard: water is magical.
How is the concept of diluting something to make it stronger rational?
"Homeopathic medicine is ideal for people of all ages, even the most sensitive like an expectant mother or a new born because it is devoid of chemical toxicity."
How do you know that? Are there not some homeopathic remedies that are only slightly diluted? Therefore, those remedies still contain active ingredients and could potentially have chemicals that could cause unwanted side effects. Are all homeopathic remedies tested for safety in Phase I trials? If so, where is this information found?
Medicines beyond 12C retains nano-grams of fine nano-particles of original starting material (2010)
http://bit.ly/edUwqd
ref: Homeopathic Medicine for the new millennium, George Vithoulkas
When visiting a homeopathic physician, the patient is asked a lot of questions regarding his background and history. This is because he/she is equally interested in the character and mental and emotional background of the patient and not just on physical symptoms.
Most homeopath physicians practice classical homeopathy (the actual homeopathy) ("single medicine at a time, single dose").
The action of homeopathic medicine is dependent on various factors like sensitivity of the diseased person, the nature of illness of the person, the pathology of the disease, various other treatment measures taken before resorting to homeopathy, etc.
Most of the time patients experience exceptional well-being and optimism while on the homeopathic treatment.
Could you please provide some examples where the goal of homeopathic treatment is to cure the condition while the goal of conventional treatment is only to suppress symptoms?
How about influenza? The homeopathic treatment is Oscillococcinum. Could you please provide the mechanism by which Oscillococcinum eliminates the causative agent of disease, namely the influenza virus? The conventional medical treatment for influenza has two options, depending on the proximity to symptom development. If the disease is caught early, then you can administer either neuraminidase inhibitors or M2 inhibitors which are anti-viral drugs designed to directly impact viral replication. So, there is one example where conventional medicine is most certainly targeting the cause of disease and not the symptoms. If the infection has occurred for a certain length of time, then the correct conventional treatment is to alleviate symptoms as you are not able to interfere with viral replication at this point.
Do you really have any idea whatsoever about the claims that you make?
Here are some questions:
1) can you identify one, large scale, properly blinded, randomized control trial of homeopathy that clearly demonstrates that homeopathy is more efficacious than placebos?
2) Do you disclose to patients that the most recent meta-analysis examining clinical trials of homeopathy found it to not be more efficacious than placebos?
3) If the answer to 2 is "no" then how is your relationship with the patient based upon trust?
For patients to provide informed consent to treatment they must be provided with accurate and relevant information material to the decision. Failing to provide that information, such as the fact that in 200 years of testing homeopathy has consistently failed to demonstrate results when tested as in 1, above, denies the patient the opportunity to provide informed consent.
No relationship of trust can exist if its core is based upon deception and falsities.
Quite right.
I am curious to learn how homeopathy works, having seen no evidence for it so far. I am also curious to learn how you can reconcile your claim about "full disclosure" with this complete lack of evidence for any effectiveness for homeopathy and your espousal of the discredited - since the days of Louis Pasteur - doctrine of humours/miasma.
http://www.homeoinst.org/news/homeopathy-effective-according-swiss-federal-report
Who are you going to trust...someone like AJW1976 (who uses a fake name) or the Swiss government?
The Swiss government is great because it kept itself out of wars in the past and didn't take sides. Therefore it obviously must be neutral regarding everything it ever does. Therefore we should trust it completely on this matter, too!
And which of those fit the characteristics requested? (i.e. large scale, properly blinded, randomized control trial of homeopathy that clearly demonstrates that homeopathy is more efficacious than placebos).
"Who are you going to trust...someone like AJW1976 (who uses a fake name) or the Swiss government?"
Ahh yes...the obligatory Ullman ad hominem attack. I am curious, do you have the capacity to ever respond to a comment without engaging in one?
Thanks for the article, I am not that familiar with these processes, and you have piqued my interest. Do you have any suggestions as to what reading would be appropriate for someone at my level?
Lawson
If you want to learn about homeopathy, read "Bad Science", by Ben Goldacre.
Sam
Thanks for the reply... In most endeavors, truth seems to lie somewhere between the sincere practitioners and the snake-oil salesmen. Be assured, as is my habit, I will look into all aspects of homeopathy, from various perspectives, before I draw any conclusions.
Lawson