(AUTHORS NOTE: It is with great misgiving that I offer this paper which really the introduction tot he paper on Phosphorus that is to be presented the Bureau of Materia Medica. Briefly, this is how it came to be:I started to collect material for this Phosphorus paper, trying to follow the same line that was followed with the former ones (Lycopodium and Natrum mur), and was rather taken aback by what came out,so much taken aback that for the Phosphorus paper, indeed, I felt an explanation was needed of the method used. This method, I believe, is somewhat new; if it proves accurate and acceptable, it may open up entirely new avenues for the understanding of mental and material physical effects.
I want to clarify one other point. When I speak of :analytical psychology.” I do not mean psychoanalysis of the Freudian School.. Relatively less well know, another school of psychology has come into being during the last ten or ears,that of Jung in Switzerland. As I understand,he was first a teacher psychiatry in Zurich,and was ousted from the position because of the revolutionary aspect of his methods. Her was reinstated and is very highly respected. His work is accepted now.
The outlook he gives is truly startling, particularly when brought into relation with our homoeopathic experience).
In correct prescribing,the system totality, as we call it,of the patient must be matched against the symptom totality of the medicine. This totality should not be a multitude of irrelevant details but a certain basic pattern, significant of the total functional unit. Two or three symptoms may already represent a totality, if they are truly characteristic of the outstanding pattern of the drug pathogenesis.
This empirical observation points to the fact that in the multitude of observable details certain expressions, notably the mental and general symptoms, are outstandingly representative of the wholeness of a disturbed organism; they subordinate logically,almost automatically, the “particulars”, namely symptoms and changes referrable only to certain parts and organs. Attempts have been made since the beginning of Materia Medica study to arrange and classify the multitude of symptoms in accordance with the patterns suggested by these guiding symptoms.
However, we have to admit that our Materia Medica confronts us with a maze of recorded observations which still seems to defy and attempt towards such a logical arrangement.
The resulting difficulty is a double one. {practically, it renders the study of Materia Medica more difficult by requiring a great e dependence on merc memorizing theoretically, it leaves us at a loss for a rational explanation for the sometimes rather strange hodgepodge of clinical indications, peculiar general and mental symptoms and modalities in one and the same remedy.
Since the mental symptoms are of determining and overruling importance in establishing the pattern of the totality,t he conclusion is justified that they must also be a basic factor in its formation. As yet,though, we are unable to indicate why certain mental characteristics are associated with certain physical disorders. We are also at a loss to understand why certain substances again are related to certain mental characteristics, such as salt to seclusiveness Phosphor to sociability, Gold to depression and Sulfur to cheerfulness to mention a few examples.
What avenues can we find leading toward a solution of these problems?.
The homoeopathic approach is a phenomenological one. Hahnemann developed his theory not on the basis of speculation but as the result of pure observation. An analogy was observed between the symptoms caused by a drug upon a prover and the similar symptoms of spontaneous illness. Such an analogy was found to be not merc chance but the expression of a basic functional interrelation between drug pathogenesis and illness.
From this fact the conclusion offers itself that in general an analogy of similar appearance may express a basic relationship since a common factor must be the cause of the similar features, provided that this analogy covers a real totality and is not accepted on the basis of merc superficial resemblance.
The law of similars is the law of the basis relationship of analogous phenomena.
In our attempt at finding a logical correlation between a drug and its mental, general and particular symptoms we are justified,therefore, in looking for analogous phenomena. It is in analytical psychology that a similar phenomenon,that of matching outer phenomena with inner mental happenings, comes to out attention.
Analytical psychology has shown that paramount psychological happenings are summarized and expressed in picture language of symbols. Carl G.Jung has drawn attention to the fact that the interpretations which he gives to these symbols have been fairly invariable throughout the recorded history of man, appearing as the expression of identical meanings not only in our individual dreams but also in the various religions, mystery teachings, mythologies and fairytales as well as in alchemistic sources.
Thus the interpretation of those symbols appears safely removed from any arbitrary personal preference or prejudice; rather it strikes us as an expression of an actual analogy, or similarity, between the symbol as an object of outer physical nature and the mental content which it represents. A few examples will make this clearer: the color green symbolizes inner growth; red stands for emotion; the number four expresses the principle of Wholeness; the sea expresses the collective unconscious; salt the tendencies of the individualizing mind.
What are we really confronted with in a symbol of this kind? a mental impulse or,in our clinical language, a mental symptom, borrows the image of an object or activity of outer nature for its expression. With what right does it do so? Obviously, some objective factor must be common to the mental impulse as well as to the symbol material in order to justify the regular repetition of the pattern. This fact of the regularity of the associated patterns,regardless of epoch or individual, speaks against the possibility that we may deal with associative processes based on merely superficial resemblance.
The color green, for instance,may seem to appear as the symbol of growth because green is the color of plants and our mental process therefore commonly associates it with growth. Undoubtedly this is true, yet, on the other hand, not only do we associate green with growth but if actually is the color associated by nature with growth: namely, in the plant where growth appears in its purest and least impeded form., Whenever green is replaced by a different color it means that growth has come to a standstill, as witnessed in the termination of the plant in the varicolored blossom (seldom green) or in the reverse action of growth, namely wilting. when it is restricted in its abounding power by the appearance of a soul-life,the green of the plant changes to the red of the blood: the color of emotion.
Thus it appears that our subjective, associative processes follow what they intuitively grasp as already objectively associated by nature in a creative totality. Not every symbol association, of course, reveals its objective justification so obviously; our search for its background, on the other hand, may lead us to new in sights. Jung himself mentions the fact that the number four appears as the symbol of wholeness and points to what he ironically calls the strange polite of nature which have a chemical valence of four to the carbon atom, the most basic building stone of all organic matter.
Accepting the hypothesis of the objective association between symbol image and symbol meanings we still are unable to account for the fact of our knowledge of the connections expressed in this way. We find ourselves confronted by the phenomenon of an intuitive insight into connections and secrets, hidden as yet from our understanding and buried in the dark cauldron of creative natures and of our own unconscious (since this material is shared more or less alike by all men,Jung terms it the “collective” unconscious).
Returning now with our considerations to the problem of the interrelationship of symptoms and substances,m we note that the connecting threads between outer substances, mental symptoms and physio chemical organ-functioning lie within the same darkness of our unconscious: nothing but the fact of their objective association is know to us. An analogy thus is found between the way a mental impulse is related to a biological happening as affected by an outside drug, and the way the same mental impulse is related to an objects quality or force-process of outer nature, the image of which it borrows for a symbol expression.
In a summary we state:.
1. Mental impulses are objectively associated with physical changes and the dynamic energies of drugs.
2. Mental impulses are objectively associated,through symbolical meaning,to outer activities and objects. The conclusion appears logical and inescapable that the symbol meaning, as emerging from proper analytical interpretation, can serve as a bridge to link and clarify for our understanding the connection of outer substances to mental impulses and to the drug pathogenesis wherever the identical mental symptom is common to both symbol and drug pathogenesis. One would be justified in attempting to use the material furnished by the analytical symbol interpretation as a means to discover the hidden meanings of the multitude of apparently unrelated symptoms.
