Hahnemann used exactly this method in comparing the symptoms common to most of the provers with those of the most similar diseases; out of those common or similar qualities he fashioned the abstraction of the totality of a drug picture. This drug picture contains every special instance of a proving or similar illness as a potentiality. It is an archetypal abstraction according to Goethe’s postulate, since neither any single prover nor any single patient can ever actually exhibit all the characteristic symptoms predicated of a drug totality; every actual case presents but a rudimentary and varied aspect of the ideal conceptual totality.
While Goethe and Hahnemann compared shapes with shapes and symptomatology with symptomatology, respectively, Jung compares soul impulses with pictorial images; their common qualities lead back to the archetypus that expresses itself through symbol and soul impulse. Our study in this essay suggests the possibility of an extension of this method-used independently in morphology, psychology and medicine-towards a synthetization of these hitherto relatively isolated fields.
We might hypothetically consider it a fact of general validity that phenomena which are homogeneous, namely essentially similar but of varied type of manifestation can be correlated with each other in the most practical fashion by establishing the “archetypal phenomenon” of which they represent the special instances of manifestation.
Whereas the comprehension of the archetype establishes the common connecting idea, the individual variations which account for the manifoldness of natural phenomena can be understood by what Goethe describes as “metamorphosis”. As a generalization he states:
In the fact that which is of similar concept may appear in its manifestations as like or similar, yet even as totally unlike and similar, yet even as totally unlike and dissimilar, in this fact consists the ever changing life of nature…
We find that the manifoldness of shapes is accounted for by the fact that a preponderance has been granted over the others to this or to that part. For instance, the neck and the extremities are favored at the expense of the body in the giraffe, whereas the opposite happens in the mole. Upon this consideration we at once meet with the law that nothing can be added to one part without having it subtracted from another one and vice versa.
Any intensification of certain qualities of necessity means the abridgement of others thus leading to a polarity of apparent opposites. Whenever the blossom of a flower is enhanced by cultivation its reproductive ability suffers; conversely, grasses which have the tendency towards particularly abundant propagation have only very diminutive blossoms. Persons who live in a world of ideas may do so at the expense of their sense of practicality, whereas the more practically minded people often care little for abstract thought. On the other hand, an under expression of one side means a compensatory overstress of another function.
Thus the utterly practical and rationalistic businessman may fall victim to unexplainable romantic or erratic whims owing to his unconscious soul compensating for the drabness of his “practical” daily life. Plants of very stubby, short growth often will surprise us by the extensiveness of their root. Suppression of physical manifestations of a disorder leads to an accentuation of the disturbance on the mental level, whereas the most violent physical sufferings may show but few mental symptoms.
Thus one and the same basic pattern can be varied endlessly by the means of extension and intensification with complementary contraction and diminishment, leading to ever new tensions of polar opposites. The law of complementary balance is the law of metamorphosis.
In his work on the metamorphosis of the plants Goethe demonstrated that the manifoldness of the various plant forms, as well as the different parts within one and the same plant, namely root, stem, leaf, blossom, fruit, seed, etc., represent but variations or metamorphoses of one archetypal plant. Similarly, he demonstrated the various animal and human skeletal forms as variations of one basic form.
Yet, the interplay of complementary or compensatory qualities may also encompass entirely different fields of expression. Goethe draws attention to the fact that, by regulating the composition of the soil, either the longitudinal growth or the flowering can be enhanced in plants; thus growth may metamorphosize into reproduction and vice versa. We have also seen that somatic expressions metamorphosize into psychical ones and vice versa. The manifestation of identical impulses upon different media of expression may be assumed to belong, fundamentally, in the same phenomenology of metamorphosis that underlies the comparatively simple morphological phenomena which Goethe described.
Thus, archetype and metamorphosis may appear as basic dynamic principles of manifestation throughout. Our own finding of a common functional force-manifesting itself in the diverse levels of psyche, soma and outer substance-is but a special instance of the broad law of archetypal manifestation through metamorphosis which is the law of creative nature.
The archetypal principle itself, however, is as such inaccessible to our direct sense observation. We can see only its manifestations, e.g., root, stem, leaf, blossom, etc. By means of reasoning abstract do we proclaim the existence of the common primordial force principle which brings itself to manifestation in those elements. Similarly, we can describe only the manifestations of the spiritual entity that metamorphosizes as soul images, body functions and shapes, as well as animal, plant and mineral forms. The very direct experience of this creative entity itself is not possible to us, as yet. However, exactly the same situation prevails in our understanding of any other force or energy (e.g., gravity, magnetism, etc.). We experience only its effects and deduce by reasoning abstraction its inherent laws of manifestation.
In the investigation of phenomena which we consider homogeneous, it becomes essential, then, to grasp the underlying conceptual entity which more or less perfectly brings itself to appearance in the various forms of manifestation. As Goethe says: “In the deeds of men like those of nature the intentions deserve our foremost considerations”.
The method of uncovering these “intentions” lies in the comparison of the circumstantial evidence of analogous phenomena (e.g., extracting the similar elements of drug and disease, symbol and morphology, symbol and psychological problem, etc.).
In order to avoid mistakes it is essential that only total phenomena be compared with one another. Goethe compared skeletons with skeletons and shapes with shapes, rather than single qualities. Hahnemann compares the totality of proving symptoms to those of the patient and not isolated symptoms (the old doctrine of signatures which represents an instinctive recognition of our basic law becomes a scientific absurdity when applied on the superficial basis of only single attributes, e.g., yellow for bile, etc., instead of total phenomena.). On the other hand, a totality is represented not by an endless number of details but by the peculiar, unusual and characteristic general qualities which typify the phenomenon.
By the application of the concept of metamorphosis we resolve the moot question of causation in related phenomena. Neither does the chicken cause the egg, nor the egg the chicken (if we wish to avoid logical absurdity), but chicken and egg are different phases of the metamorphotic manifestation of one organism. Thus the various phenomena of living nature are, all too frequently, linked not by causality but by virtue of their being different phases of manifestation, of a “creative intentions” of evolution. Since this evolutionary intention underlies psychic as well as somatic phenomena, we may well look even upon a person’s illnesses and constitutional problems as but one aspect of the evolution of his total personality in the same way that we look at his psychological problems.
By applying the concept of a basic archetypus to a practical problem Goethe was able to claim the existence of the intermaxillary bone in man, as a scientific postulate, in spite of apparently obvious evidence to the contrary. Subsequently it was actually discovered.
By applying the same law, as the therapeutic law of similars, Hahnemann could indicate the effective remedies for the new disease of cholera, before he himself had even seen or treated a single case of it. Therefore we may consider this concept of basic archetypal entities not a poetic notion, but an eminently practical approach to a basic, encompassing, natural law which includes, as special instances, the therapeutic law of similars, the psychic evolution by symbolization, the laws underlying morphology and biologic evolution, the law guiding psychosomatic relationships and probably many more phenomena now understandable to us.
