Hudson Valley Magazine People to Watch 2012!

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Most people don’t know that diagnoses vary and move along social currents. Because of the authority with which words like “clinical depression” or “bipolar” are used in modern conversation, they are given the impression that those words have a permanence and solidity they do not actually have.

For instance, what we now commonly call PTSD has only been recognized as a formal disorder since 1980. During the American Civil War, soldiers returning from battle with inexplicable symptoms were said to have “Soldier’s Heart.” In World War I it was referred to as “War Malaise” or “Shell Shock,” in World War II, “Combat Fatigue,” in Korea “Gross Stress Reaction” and after Vietnam, it was cleverly called “Post-Vietnam Syndrome.”

Does it matter what we call it?

Some think it matters a great deal because names often determine approach or treatment. It makes sense. If someone is called “Your Highness” we are sure to approach him or her quite differently than if he or she were called “dear.” Similarly, if we call a state of mind a chemical imbalance, than we are very likely to approach (or treat) that state with chemicals, often many. If, on the other hand, we call it a broken heart or loneliness or arrogance or self-pity, we take a rather different tack.

This comes up because of something a patient said to me the other day. She also recently moved east from New Mexico when her husband was made a corporate offer he couldn’t refuse. She came from an old family in Santa Fe with a history that went back almost 400 years to the Spanish Conquest. She had grown up with open vistas, nearly eternally clear skies, and a community in which everyone knew one another. To say hers was a shocking uprooting would be an understatement.

She came in complaining of inexplicable and free-floating anxiety, lethargy, a tendency to weepiness over trifles, an inability to sleep through the night because of dreams and restlessness. Her first question after she elaborated on her symptom picture was: “Do you think I’m depressed?” The as yet unspoken question underneath was: Did she need medication?

Instead of answering either of those questions, I asked her about her dreams, when these symptoms started, what she’d been doing since she moved here and how well (or poorly) she was getting acclimated to a new environment and culture.

As it turned out, her symptoms began about a month after arriving, shortly after the last box had been unpacked and recycled. Suddenly, there was nothing to do. Her husband was going to his new job. Her two young children were in school. She was at home, sans friends, sans work, sans family. In New Mexico, she had not only been working, she had an extended family that occupied a great deal of her time with social engagements and care-taking elderly members. People stopped into one another’s homes fairly regularly. She had a church she loved. Here, she was alone. Worse, she was lonely.

Could someone call that depression? I imagine they could find support for it in the diagnostics and standards manual. But I’d rather call it homesickness. Not only because it is more precise, but because it gives her a way out.

Of course she misses her home. Of course she feels lonely. Of course she’s bored and restless. Of course she longs for friends and relatives. Who wouldn’t in her situation? There’s no pathology in that.

What needed to be changed were not those feelings, but what she was doing all day with them. First prescription: Volunteer. Second prescription: Find a church with her husband. Third prescription: Join a club (in her case she agreed to a yoga class).

It took about a month for her symptoms to abate.  While she still missed friends and family (and bright, endless blue skies), she was no longer as lonely, bored or restless. She slept better because her energy was redirected and expended during the day. She began to make new friends and feel a part of something bigger than her own heartbeat in a large, empty house.

The more I think about her case, the more I am inclined to think of PTSD as Soldier’s Heart. I think it more clearly sums up what we are looking at: A wound of war that breaks a heart, not a chemistry problem.

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As I stumble, my husband patiently awaits my sound byte, still anxiously hoping I can give him a way to explain what I do to save him from sounding just as ridiculous.

As he is a musician, I put it to him this way: "Think of it as you do of music… notes and chords… entire arrangements of single notes (or combinations thereof) and the spaces between them."

He looked at me, single eyebrow raised. I had crossed over onto his turf. I'd better know what I'm talking about.

"In homeopathy, you can think of both the human being (or any living creature for that matter) and the remedy as pieces of music. A person comes in for treatment and the disease or pathology is presenting as a song, out of tune with the rest of the person when in a healthy state. We look for a remedy that most closely matches the totality of that pathology's song. When we give it to the patient, the remedy cancels the disease. A song for a song. Like cures like."

Eyebrow is lowered. I am momentarily reprieved. "Is it phase cancellation?"

"I'm not sure because it's not an opposing frequency, it's a similar one. But maybe the amplitudes are opposing."

Eyebrow is raised. I realize that I'm back to where I started.

Perhaps an easier way to see it is with this metaphor:

See yourself as a being of a million small crystals, each one with a frequency. When you become ill, some of those crystals change frequency and begin to vibrate or sing out of tune. When we choose a remedy, we choose it to best match those crystals that have fallen out of tune. When delivered, it shatters those sick crystals, leaving only the healthy ones behind.

Admittedly, it is a metaphor, and as such, still leaves a great deal unexplained. I can understand the frustration of allopaths and critics with the obvious absence of hard, linear facts that are repeatable regardless of the person or place. Compared to current pharmaceutical philosophy, making scientific "sense" of homeopathy is like trying to play ordinary billiards in a quantum pool hall.

The problem is that homeopathy is aimed at treating the individual with a single remedy, chosen specifically for him or her. It is not for treating masses of people with the same pill. Twenty people could have the "same" flu, but each one would need a different remedy (not necessarily Oscillococcinum) and be rightly cured because each one would manifest illness in a way that is utterly unique to him-/herself. We always treat the person, not the disease. As such it is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible to replicate homeopathic treatment the way pharmaceutical companies try to do in drug trials.

A Simple Case in Point

My dog, who is not generally considered a good candidate for placebo, was sitting in on a session with a young patient I had been seeing for quite a while. While he was curled up on the couch next to her, he looked up at my patient and she frowned, "God, what's wrong with him?!"

Without warning his eye had started bulging out of its socket. I was taken aback and instantly concerned. I begged her indulgence and called my homeopathic vet, who is located about two hours from us. He told me to take him for an emergency physical exam at a local hospital.

I asked for an emergency reschedule (she was in no danger and there was no threat to the therapeutic relationship) and rushed him over. After the exam, the local vet ruled out the more terrifying possibilities (rupture, tumor etc…) and pronounced it an inflammation, probably due to a scratch, spider bite or bee sting. She prescribed a bucket full of different pills and ointments.

More at ease now that there was no crisis and my panic had passed, I thanked her and left with just one of the ointments in case I didn't find the right remedy immediately.

When I got back, I went to the repertory (in a computer, unlike my first homeopathic physician) and made a scrupulous list of his visible symptoms. Obviously I could only surmise how he felt, so I didn't even try. These were the rubrics I chose for him:

1. Eye, inflammation

2. Eye, inflammation, acute

3. Generals, aggravated on the right side

4. Generals, sudden onset

5. Eye, lachrymation

6. Eye, protrusion with red discoloration.

The remedy was Apis Mellifica, potentized bee venom. This is a particularly straightforward example of how like (when it is potentized, meaning highly diluted to the smallest possible dose) cures like: Venom cancels out venom. Within minutes of giving the dog a few pellets, the inflammation was gone. And it never came back. No other treatment was necessary.

Is it always so straightforward? Hardly. I wish it were. It is especially more complicated when people come in with years and years of emotional suffering, chronic illness, and lists of medications sometimes two pages long. I had one patient on 27 medications because she had been diagnosed depressed. Was she feeling any better? Not in the slightest. It was a long haul to wellness for her with the incredible help of a thorough and patient physician.

Taking someone's case in this situation takes a great deal more time, sensitivity and patience than a simple inflammation. But the essential idea, the bedrock of the interview is the same: Find the remedy that matches the totality of symptoms, which means understanding precisely what it is in her life, in her experience, in her soul that has led to and expresses the essence of the state she is in. It is not enough to say someone is depressed. The word "depressed" doesn't really mean anything. To say, on the other hand, as one patient did, that she felt forsaken, was chronically sad because she felt all alone in the world yet she was averse to company — that begins to narrow it down a bit. When she added that she had no will power, yet felt better from a good debate, a challenging puzzle, or a lively conversation (mental exertion ameliorates), we begin to see how "depression" expressed itself uniquely in her. The remedy that patient needed (based on those and other symptoms) was Natrum Silicatum.

Now, just because you're sad doesn't mean you should go buy Natrum Silicatum. That is the mistake a lot of people and even poorly trained homeopaths make. It is unlikely that you will receive the benefit she did because her state (remember those crystals) was a Natrum Silicatum state. When it was given, what was unhealthy shattered and left behind only what was vital and strong.

I do not blame the debunkers. Homeopathy is very hard to repeat experimentally precisely because of the way it works: Individually. And so much of its success is in the hands of the homeopath whose task it is to see the patient clearly for who he or she is, to see that particular light, to hear that singular song. This is a hard pill to swallow until you've seen it work. But when you have seen it — it's the easiest one of all.

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Part 1 of a 2-Part Series on How To Explain (or Not) Classical Homeopathy

The American Sound Bite

Out of nowhere, my husband turned to me and said, “I wish you’d tell me what you do so I can tell other people. They ask me what you do and I can’t explain it.”

“I’m a psychotherapist and a consultant in classical homeopathy,” I stared at him. “You know what I do.”

“But I can never explain it quickly enough. I tell them ‘rebalancing,’ ‘rewiring,’ ‘peeling the skin off onions,’ but then I lose myself. I can’t come up with a simple way to describe it.”

This is the worst problem for a homeopath. How do we explain an exquisitely subtle and complex process in a simple way? Take something so important and put it in a sound bite?

I remember a long time ago having to try to explain Verbal First Aid in five seconds or less for a three minute TV news interview. I totally blew it. I’m not very good at sound bites.

But that is what we want in this country—drive through information, fast-food for the mind. If we can’t eat it in the time it takes to reach for the remote, the opportunity to communicate is lost.

But there is hope, because we do like stories. So, I thought that perhaps the best way to communicate what I do is to share with you a few cases. The first one is my own. The others (in Part II of this article) are patients with their identities protected. I have never shared my own story before, but I do so because I believe its dramatic nature will help you to understand what classical homeopathy can do and why some people are so passionate about it.

The Mysterious Case of the Disappearing Mass

Many years ago, I suddenly developed abdominal pain. I had not been sick in any other way and had no idea what was happening. I went for a gynecological exam and was told I was fine. The pain continued. I went back and after numerous exams was sent from the table to the couch. The psychiatrist sent me right back to the doctor. After about a year of bouncing back and forth with increasingly intense (searing, stabbing) pain, they finally “discovered” a mass several centimeters in width in the area of my left ovary.

At this point, the surgeons were called in. I was scheduled for an emergency laparotomy. As they wheeled me in, the surgeon said to my mother, “It could be cancer.” I was 26.

After surgery, as soon as I stopped vomiting, the doctor told me that it was not cancer. My mother wept. He said it was a streptococcal infection (Strep B) that had created adhesions and that I could forget about having children. He proudly went on to inform us that they had “scraped me clean” and that I’d be on antibiotics for about a month.

I did as I was told. I was raised by a doctor, surrounded by doctors, and had complete faith in the system.

Within a short time a whole new sort of pain emerged, this time, however, deeper. It was more localized, again on the left side. I thought the infection had returned. The pain continued for quite a while. I went to the doctor, but there was no infection. After dismissing it (and me) for at least a year again, I finally wound up in hospital. A cyst had burst. This cycle recurred every few months. They recommended birth control pills, pain pills, and pills I didn’t understand. Nothing helped. By the fourth rupture and hospital visit, they recommended a full hysterectomy.

I sat silently until I could take a deep breath again. I asked if there were no other options. The doctor said, “You’ll just keep getting them and since you can’t get pregnant anyway, this is the best idea.”

I told him I would think about it. He told me not to think too long but looked at me is if I couldn’t think at all.

I called a friend who had been talking about homeopathy. She used a homeopath for herself and had located a homeopathic vet. I asked for more information. She sat with me. She loaned me books. And she gave me the name of a doctor. I decided to at least try something before I let my reproductive center be removed forever.

I told my gynecologist about it. He said, and I quote, “You can use all the weed wackers you want, it won’t help.”

I said, “We shall see.” And I meant “we.” I had no more experience in it than he did. But I wanted some option other than organ removal.

He did not escort me out. He was more than mildly annoyed.

But I was on a mission.

Where the Magic Begins

This is what saved me: a young doctor with a tattered copy of a repertory (the book that is used to look up symptoms and match them to different remedies) and another equally frayed Materia Medica (the book that contains full descriptions of the remedies themselves) in a basement office in New Rochelle, NY.

It was the strangest medical experience I’d ever had. He didn’t examine me the way I had expected. He talked to me. Well, actually, he talked very little. He asked me endless questions: Where is the pain? When does it come on? What happened then? What does it feel like? What makes it better? Do you have any food cravings? Do you kick your feet out of the covers? Do you like other people around you? Are you warm? Cold? What makes you afraid? Anxious? Sad?

He was relentless. Two hours of questions that could not seem more unrelated to me or to my ovaries. But honestly, it was such a relief to have someone listen to me without judgment that I suspended my own.

At the end of the interview, he went into a little closet, pulled out an amber bottle, opened the cap, poured a few pellets into the cap, tipped my head back, and said, “Open your mouth.”

He poured the little pellets under my tongue.

That was my first remedy. It was Pulsatilla, a common flower in highly diluted (potentized) form.

After that, my mood improved slightly but briefly and the physical symptoms did not go away. Instead they shifted and got worse. I’ve learned since then that this can happen when a remedy is close but not a bull’s eye. The symptoms became far more localized and presented with greater clarity. It seemed to me then that it was like a boil coming to a head, collecting the “illness” from a large area and concentrating it so it could be seen properly and discharged. We waited a very uncomfortable month.

After the second interview he gave me Thuja. After that I had a frankly rude aggravation (cystitis) which lasted about a month and the cystic pain completely disappeared. An aggravation is what homeopaths hope for as the sign that a cure is beginning. It is also precisely what allopathic doctors find wholly inconsistent with their training. They are supposed to make symptoms go away, not generate others. But because homeopaths see the human organism as a moving, dynamic system, they believe that this discharge is absolutely necessary. Aggravations are like siphons; they allow previously suppressed diseases or eruptions a way out of the system. In homeopathic philosophy, it is part of the cure.

But I didn’t know that at the time. So I called him and complained, and after he ruled out any dangerous infections, he said “Now, we wait.” I’d call him back, still annoyed, uncomfortable, and worried. And he said, again, “WAIT!”

So, I did. After a while, the “rudeness” was gone and so was all the pain. And after a year I realized so were the cysts. None of it—not the cysts or the strep or any of that pain— has ever come back. More important, perhaps, than the physical relief, was that over the next couple of years I became calmer, more centered. Much of the insecurity that had ruled my life up until that point also seemed to just not be there. I didn’t see it leaving. It was just gone when I remembered to look for it.

That was a very long time ago. All my exams are still splendidly normal and I still have my own organs in my own body.

I went on to need other remedies over time to deal with other issues and wound up with a different remedy as my “constitutional,” the one that seems to fit my overall being. But this is how it started. And it convinced me on a cognitive and cellular level that what I had experienced was more than placebo or fanciful wish-fulfillment. As far as I could see, it could not be a placebo (although that would have been just fine with me at that point), because one remedy missed the mark, but the other did not.  And as far as wish-fulfillment—if it had been up to me, I’m sure I would have wished for instant relief—sans aggravation!

In the follow up article, we’ll look at a couple of other cases to demonstrate the most important principle of homeopathy: like cures like. And hopefully discover the sound bite people need to understand what Hahnemann’s legacy has been.

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(this is an expanded version of the piece currently on Huffington Post)

I’ve been a psychotherapist for 25 years. I believe it’s an important part of my job to make my clients as comfortable as possible from the first phone contact. Despite all reasonable efforts, though, the first interview seems to still be somewhat awkward and difficult for new patients. Really, it’s very understandable. They don’t know me. They feel vulnerable and unsure because they don’t know exactly what’s expected. They’re sometimes not even fully clear about why they’re there except they know they want to feel better.

The homeopathic interview may be even more of an unknown for some people. Not only does it start with the same “unknowns” as the social work assessment, but it adds some new ones, like the simple but monumental fact that it turns allopathic or “standard” medical practice on its head. You may have called the homeopath to get rid of that recalcitrant psoriasis, but he or she 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 or at night.

Knowing what to expect of the process and what your homeopath is hoping to learn from you may make the experience more comfortable and more 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 Yourself  Philosophically

One of the fortunate aspects of my practice is that I see people more frequently because the primary focus of it is mental health treatment. Even though it also takes physical conditions into account, people almost always call me because they’re sad, anxious, grief-stricken, panicked, or in some way emotionally distressed.

Unless a person comes specifically to be treated homeopathically and has already had some experience with the philosophy and practice of classical homeopathy, I usually anticipate spending at least some time in the first or second session on education. I give material for reading, lead them to the National Center for Homeopathy website, and take as much time as he or she needs answering questions.

What you can do, then, to make the time you spend more efficient and effective when you are actively seeking treatment from a homeopath is to learn a little bit about it beforehand.

In my opinion, the best book for the starting patient is Impossible Cure by A. Lansky. It is written in clear, concise prose and doesn’t fall back on “homeospeak” so you can follow her all the way through. And hers is an amazing, personal story of hope.

The principles of classical homeopathy are the following:

Like cures like.

This is the manner of cure. It is also called the Law of Similars and it is the way all proper remedies are chosen. It means that the practitioner is going to ask you a host of questions intended to draw out information that will help him or her choose the remedy that is most “similar” to your totality of symptoms.

The simplest example of the Law of Similars is what we do when we get grease on our hands. We clean it with soap (or, if you’re out in the garage, Goop), 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, cheeks so red they could be purple and becomes delirious. 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 with it, it is cured.

This is why quinine works curatively for malaria—because when it is given to a healthy person over and over, it creates symptoms similar to malaria. Like cures like. This principle goes back to Hippocrates and has been considered by homeopaths as the basis for all true healing.

Hering’s Law.

This is the road of cure in homeopathy. 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).

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).

It is terribly important to let each one reveal in its time what it must. Some remedies take longer than others. We all respond differently at different times to our environments. Remedies are no exception.

The Nature of Pathology:  Layers

This is not a standard homeopathic “principle” but it’s one that leads me to ask of patients regularly: Patience. We are not out to just make a symptom disappear at the expense of your vitality and health. We want to get rid of the psoriasis but not at the expense of seeing you develop uterine fibroids or heart disease.

We want you to be healed. And that takes time. When patients ask me, “Well, how much time,” I have to say, “As long as your organism needs. You’ll tell me how much time.”

The reason for this is that there are layers to everything today. Including pathology.

Western practitioners often mistake the presenting problem for the only problem they need to cure, not having been trained to see the embedding of one pathology over the other or the inheritance one may have received from one’s ancestors.

These are levels of defense. We know this by what happens 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.

It is common knowledge that when an organism is injured, it inflames. It is a mechanism of repair. Homeopaths trace what happens if the injury is not healed (by itself, with proper medicine or the removal of inflammatory agent): the inflammation worsens, leading to induration (hardening). If that is not healed, then the organism resorts to its last defense to save the whole. Thus a cancerous tumor or an ulcer is a result of this process at the genetic level.

In homeopathy there are three basic levels:

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, Super-vivaciousness, showmanship (most of American TV), 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, frivolousness, bashfulness

The Syphilitic

Physical Level:  Exaggeration, distortion (pointed teeth, curved spine), destruction (cancer), auto-immune diseases, mutations (scoliosis)

Emotional Level: perversion, cruelty, hysteria or mania, (borderline personality disorder, psychosis), distortion of reality and loss of connectedness, delusions, destruction, fearlessness, loss of will to live, loss of senses (smell, sight etc…).

Less Really is More

This concept is one of the major reasons why people have a hard time understanding and choosing homeopathy.

In homeopathy we do not use gross quantities of a substance. We use smaller doses, often below Avogadro’s number—meaning that if you looked at the medicine with an electron microscope you would see nothing. This is also called a “mole.” The mole, as defined by Wikipedia, “is a unit of measurement used in chemistry to express amounts of a chemical substance, defined as an amount of a substance that contains as many elementary entities (e.g., atoms, molecules, ions, electrons) as there are atoms in 12 grams of pure carbon-12 (¹²C), the isotope of carbon with atomic weight 12. This corresponds to a value of 6.02214179(30)×10²³ elementary entities of that substance. It is one of the base units in the International System of Units, and has the unit symbol mol.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mole_%28unit%29)

The way I explain it to patients is this: Homeopathy is an energy delivery system, like a musical instrument or a beating heart or a scream of “fire” in an auditorium. So if the remedy is sulphur 30c, there are no molecules of sulphur in it. It acts on the vital force (and this is important!!!) by energetic resonance. It does not work on our bodies directly the same way that taking an aspirin or steroid does. It seems to work more along the lines of quantum physics than Newtonian law. (Poitevin, Bernard (2005). "Jacques Benveniste: a personal tribute". Homeopathy 94 (2): 138–139. doi:10.1016/j.homp.2005.02.004.)

The rule of thumb is: The smaller the dose, the more potent.

How does this happen? According to one study, homeopathy works because water has memory.

(E. Dayenas; F. Beauvais, J. Amara , M. Oberbaum, B. Robinzon, A. Miadonna, A. Tedeschit, B. Pomeranz, P. Fortner, P. Belon, J. Sainte-Laudy, B. Poitevin and J. Benveniste (30 June 1988). "Human basophil degranulation triggered by very dilute antiserum against IgE" (PDF). Nature 333 (6176): 816–818. doi:10.1038/333816a0. PMID 2455231. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v333/n6176/pdf/333816a0.pdf.)

From Benveniste’s observations, it appears that what’s been in it has a resonant effect. It is similar to the way our bodies remember a trauma. We have body memory even when the trauma is long gone and resonate with similar states or situations, until that original traumatic injury is healed.

As a psychotherapist, I think the tendency of trauma victims to unconsciously set 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.

Yegads! No Coffee???

Perhaps the hardest thing for some patients is the need to temporarily give up coffee. I’ve seen patients give up vicodin, birth control pills, marijuana, and essential oils quicker than their daily java joy.  I can absolutely understand it, too. I love coffee. But it is an unavoidable part of the homeopath’s process.

Although I’ve met some homeopaths who do not worry about coffee or other known antidotes (steroids, marijuana, camphor) very much, many of us do take the more conservative path. In general, it’s best to be prepared to have your homeopath ask you to leave the java (and the camphor) aside until you’ve reached a solid plateau of good health. It doesn’t antidote everyone or every remedy, but for most homeopaths it isn’t worth the risk of complicated the case.

What Do They Need to Know THAT For?

Come to the interview ready for a lot of unusual questions. It will not be enough for us to just “name that disease.”

What is important when we look at a patient and what are we going to ask you? We will generally work along the following areas even though we all have different styles and personalities.

Interior function (most important):

Creativity, compassion, forgiveness, centeredness, relatedness, empathy, adaptability, consistency in relationships, integrity/honesty, and consistency between intention and behavior.

Exterior function:

This may not coincide exactly with interior function. However, I believe and have found that our pathologies normally express themselves poetically or holographically. You may recall the expression, “as above, so below.” It is true for us, as well. So we will ask you about situations that reveal your capacity for appropriate behavior (clothing, responsiveness to social cues), money management, job status, time management, socialization, housing.

Physiological function:

Parents’ medical history, personal medical history, current disease state (psoric, sycotic, syphilitic), diet (especially cravings and aversions), exercise, chronicity (how long the problem has persisted), periodicity (how often it occurs and whether there are specific cycles), and modalities (what makes it better or worse).

Spiritual function:

Rigidity, belief system, presence, judgment, fear.

The Art of the Interview

When I teach clinicians and medical personnel (Verbal First Aid, crisis protocols, and alternative healing principles, etc…), I always remind them that questions, no matter how clever or how technically astute, are no substitute for the therapeutic relationship. There is an art to homeopathy that is not “technical” and cannot be acquired solely by accumulating knowledge. I’ve met people who could recite remedies and their exact properties by memory, but could not see a patient in his totality and could not, therefore, come up with the right remedy.

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 creative 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.

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But culture manifests all over, even at the deli counter. I was waiting to place an order when I heard a painful whine behind me. A little girl didn't know what she wanted for lunch. A well-meaning mother asked her in a dozen different ways what her preference was. Would she like this? Would she like that? Remember when you had it before? Do you remember what you liked about it? What you didn't like about it? The sweet thing just didn't know and soon she was crying. The woman knelt down near her daughter (she was quite little) and talked to her in a gentle way about finding the answer within her heart and tummy.

I thought that was simultaneously sweet, amusing, and intriguing, also impossibly patient. Of course, I think the mother was trying to teach her child a valuable skill, one well worth learning. And she probably did a lot of other things that were kind, reassuring, and nurturing for her daughter.

But that child became so frustrated and tired trying to figure it out by herself that she screamed, "I DON'T KNOW!" loud enough to wake up the cashiers in the front of the store. Poor little thing just wanted someone to tell her, "here's your lunch, honey…" and it made me wonder if perhaps we were overdoing it a bit. Maybe within isn't the only way to go?

Were there always answers within? Indeed, are there any there for any of us? And if there were real answers, would we really want to hear them?

I thought of all the times I tried to figure things out for myself and wound up in ditches double my reach. I can still remember at least a couple of times looking entirely to myself–the Deeper Within–with important questions, and the Deeper Within shouting the answer back up to me: "Shmuck!"  The answers I've received that have been of enduring value have mostly come from others with greater experience, wisdom, or grace.

On the other hand, I can also remember having moments of utter certainty in the face of chaotic circumstances, times when I absolutely knew what was the right thing to do. I may have been scared or intimidated or concerned, but I somehow knew.

So, what our loving mother was doing at the deli counter was, in my mind, at least theoretically sound. It is good to teach a child how to rely on himself to some degree. But is it always right? Isn't it also necessary to teach that child what is right and wrong, what is expectable, and how the world works so he or she can make proper choices, can function socially, can be healthy? Isn't it necessary to have some leadership, even if it's as simple as pointing out which mushrooms to avoid in the woods? Or which foods to pick out at the deli counter?

As usual, I mentioned it to my husband and I asked him if he thought we could find the answers within ourselves. And, also as usual, my pithy Montanan said, "'pends what you mean by 'answers.'"

I thought about that for days. When people are looking for answers are they actually seeking out the truth? Or are they looking for corroboration for their impulses or desires?

The need to go to oneself may be in fact the way one satisfies the need to get one's own desires met. Often that leads us down the road to perdition, hence the old proverb–"A physician who treats himself has a fool for a doctor."

I asked another Montanan friend, Ed Johnson, a really bright fellow who's worked in higher education for more than 20 years, whether he thought it was possible to rely on oneself for the answers and whether looking within was all one needed.

At first he said, "I'll have to dig deep within myself for that one…" And then he referenced a National Geographic article he recently read on the teenage brain.

"It turns out," he smiled, "that they're not nuts. They have a different risk-reward equation. The teenager understands consequences, but they choose the potential-perceived reward and ignore the risks."

Because of this and other anomalies–genetic issues, early childhood difficulties–he felt that looking within could be unreliable until there was full neurologic development.

I had to agree with him but I take it one step further. Without real health and a full emotional, psychological, and physical maturity, we're looking for complex answers from an abacus when we require far more advanced equipment. Over the years of working with individuals in crisis of one kind or another, I have found that those who relied entirely on their own "feelings" or "inner voice" wound up in pain, confused, and rudderless because they had never received (or, later on, looked for) the kind of guidance, nurturing, or education (moral or emotional) that would have given them a proper reservoir of answers instead of a headache from feedback.

Which leaves me with this understanding: Answers are not innate. In fact, we are not born knowing very much. Children (and young animals) left to their own devices are perfect examples of what happens when we do not have the benefit of what others have learned, of ancestral wisdom. Those kids (and critters) either die or become socially and morally irredeemable. The hard-wiring for relationships is simply never created.

Answers are learned; sometimes they are intuited based on both spiritual and emotional input, sometimes inspired. But we all need road maps to start with.

People with a good inner compass have almost always been taught how to find true north, where to go and then precisely what to do to and when they get there. We may be born with the capacity, but not the skill. That is an important distinction. Unless a person is given the resources fairly early in life, the only answer he or she will find when they look within is either a resounding silence or, worse, an echo.

Which brings us back to my husband's point: Do we want answers or do we want truth? They are not always the same thing.

Ultimately this is about the search for truth. Unfortunately most people wind up in a search for what they want. Desire leads us down one road and often truth leads us down another.

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Again.

The other night during the news there was an announcement for a rerun of the interview done with the Madoff family. I looked at my husband, the question in my face.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“They interviewed the Madoff family???” I asked anyway. Sometimes you can’t help these things. It’s like an emotional Tourette’s.

In any case, I came to learn that recently there was a flurry of media activity related to the release of two new books by Madoff family members.

ABC aired the first Madoff family member interview on October 21, when Mack, the widow of Bernie’s son, Mark, appeared on 20/20. The show scored its best ratings since February 2010, with 7.6 million viewers overall. Surely not coincidentally, The End of Normal, published by Blue Rider Press and another book, Truth and Consequences: Life Inside the Madoff Family, hit bookstores in October.

Now, while it delivered wonderfully high ratings for the media, it did little to inspire book sales.

I’m not surprised by the fact that fewer than expected sales were reported. Who wants to give the Madoffs any more money than they already stole?

But I am—though I shouldn’t be—surprised by the fact that ABC and CBS both took a huge amount of time (and money) with these moguls of misfortune, these scoundrels who are now bleating poverty and victimization.

Why is anyone listening to them?

Why is anyone paying them a dime for their opinions when they haven’t paid a dime in compensation to their victims?

Worse, yet, why are we watching them? Not just once, but in reruns.

It seemed to me to be a form of bizarre cultural rubbernecking, not much different than what we do with car wrecks; a minor fender bender off to the side of the road can cause a ten-mile back up on a major freeway even though all the lanes are actually open. The jam is only because we slow down to look: Is there any blood? Any bodies? Despite all the anatomically correct horror shows on TV (CSI, Bones, Criminal Minds), we can’t seem to get enough of it. We want to see all the bad and awful things that people do.

This is even more pointedly true with famous people. There’s nothing the media or the media generation likes more than watching the crash and burn of a wealthy celebrity. Hence the inordinate amount of attention given to the slow, sublimating near-death experience of one Charlie Sheen. He even had live video to capture his expected demise from alcohol, drugs, and sex addiction and to disperse his rants about being dumped from Two and a Half Men all over cyber-land.

And, as far as I could tell, everyone was watching. It was amazing, but they were watching themselves watch him. And the media talked about it as if it were as important as the impending collapses in Greece and Europe, the epidemics and violence in Africa, or the economic issues in this country. If we measured importance in terms of airplay, I think Charlie won.

What does that say about us?

I am loath to consider the implications.

Because, in my experience, what we look at tends to reflect what we are. What we choose to do tends to be an expression of who we are.

Which says we, like Sheen, are on a slippery slope towards self-indulgent suicide. We, like the cyber-voyeurs who wait for the shape-shifting demise, are caught up in our own “near-life” experience. We, like the Madoffs, are prone to expect something extraordinary for nothing. We too are entitled. We too want our 15 minutes of fame, sometimes at the expense of our good names, even our souls. It may be more a matter of degree than essence.

Not because I am immune to any of the above or because I don’t sneak a peak at traffic accidents, but because I had a momentary lapse of sanity, I turned the TV off and left the Madoffs to their new book-sale travails and to their lonesomes. In fact, the more lonesome the better.

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In My Lost City, Fitzgerald wrote, “I can only cry out that I have lost my splendid mirage.” He was referring to the life and the loves that he and so many others had enjoyed in New York when it truly roared in the 1920’s.

It was a giddy mirage, an imagined impression across the distance of a desert; a time of the swirling, singing nouveau, the sultry and seditious slipping off of Victorian repression, of skyscrapers and millionaires and railroads that seemed to be able to leap over mountains, of planes that hurled themselves through the air. It was the era that led to the consummate American hero in 1932 with the birth of Superman. It was an era of Romance that made people feel they could finally catch up to the horizon, and—better yet—go beyond it to a life never imagined before. The possibilities were limitless. They were limitless.

Until, as all great romance must eventually, it crashed.

And all the wild speculation encouraged by big business at the time came tumbling down like a torn party dress around the ankles of the people who could afford it the least. Farmers, small businesses, dreamers, and desperate immigrants were swindled into sinking their lives’ savings into high-risk real estate investments, even though it was plainly evident that the need for space was almost nil, production schemes, even though growth was slowing, and consumer gimmicks even though they were as shady as an unregulated economy had ever been.

Sound familiar? Seems we have neither changed nor learned much since then.

It was heartless scheming. It was ruthless capitalism. It was cronyism at its worst. All true. Yes. But it was the Romantic Vision that allowed and perpetuated it. It was the insistence on the impossible and the belief in the limitless self that made people easy prey.

When I speak of romance in this sense, it is not just a reference to that flurry of the heart when we are falling in love. It is there then, as well. But it is more than that.

When Romance Is Good

In The Four Loves (1960, Harcourt Brace), C.S. Lewis talks about Romance as Eros and distinguishes it from lust by defining it as the rapture of the divine, the emotional foreplay of the gods within us.

When we are moved by this sort of romance or Eros to “fall in love,” what we are actually doing, he says, is seeing the divine in the other. When that happens we are inevitably guided by the impression that “Love conquers all” or that “In love all is possible.” It was the guiding principle of the late 1800’s and has been, in one form or another, one of the American four basic philosophical food groups since then.

He says, rightly, I believe, that this willing self-deception is both necessary and good for meeting and wooing the Beloved.

“By Eros I mean of course that state which we call "being in love"; or, if you prefer, that kind of love which lovers are "in"…. 

“Sexual desire, without Eros, wants it, the thing in itself; Eros wants the Beloved. The thing is a sensory pleasure; that is, an event occurring within one’s own body. We use a most unfortunate idiom when we say, of a lustful man prowling the streets, that he ‘wants a woman.’ Strictly speaking, a woman is just what he does not want. He wants a pleasure for which a woman happens to be the necessary piece of apparatus. How much he cares about the woman as such may be gauged by his attitude to her five minutes after fruition (one does not keep the carton after one has smoked the cigarettes). Now Eros makes a man really want, not a woman, but one particular woman. In some mysterious but quite indisputable fashion the lover desires the Beloved herself, not the pleasure she can give.”

This state of heightened awareness and ecstasy is precisely what allows us to become blissfully unaware of the Beloved’s imperfections and to begin a relationship which we might otherwise too quickly dismiss. For a relationship in which perfection is no longer necessary, we must move past Eros into Friendship.

To the extent that romance allows us to struggle through obstacles, hold out hope when it is truly needed and helpful, and imbue our lives with both promise and purpose, it is good. Meaning, when it serves us—when it helps us to build relationships, conceive of such miracles as airplanes, anesthesia, or cell phones, or push through malevolent military blockades to rescue the innocent—it is a blessing.

When it leads us to see ourselves as somehow beyond the laws of nature, as capable of controlling what is not controllable, as immune to the inevitable draw of gravity, it is a curse.

When Romance Is Not So Good

All things must ripen or fall off the tree too early and die. It is the way of things. Often it brings terrible sadness to us. Sometimes, shock. It is never easy to see the sun come up after the revelry and delight of dancing gods and goddesses; even harder to see what the brighter light reveals about who we’ve been dancing with.

But for us to have the lives and loves we long for—both individually and collectively as a culture—it is absolutely necessary for Eros to be replaced by a more sanguine and subtle understanding. If it doesn’t, we wind up like Fitzgerald, lost in a lost city, besotted by booze and benumbed by grief. And our society winds up in the same position we found ourselves in ’29 and in ’08, bereft of our fortunes, throwing ourselves out of windows in despair and shame.

Eros cannot tolerate bright light. It must either die or flee or be reformed by a new reality.

If it is reformed, we will be transformed.

We will stand ready to see clearly and know the Other. We will stand ready to be seen. Not for who we might be, who we represent (Venus or Mars), but for who we are.

Easier said than done.

We are surrounded by forces—economic and cultural—that will do anything to keep us from making that transformation.

If you look carefully at what happened in the twenties, you may notice a profound connection between the rise in advertising as a broad medium of communication and the rise in a sort of cultural far-sightedness, in which we could only see that which was far away and nearly out of reach. (“You, too, can have this X, Y or Z when you just send us…”) We became in many ways the nation we are now—consumers and climbers, always waiting on line for the next version or the newest sensation that will somehow make our lives what they “should” be.

This is the romanticism that is sold on Madison Avenue, not the Romance of the gods.

And, I believe, it is the one that has shaped us as a country and kept us from that which we long for most: love, joy, gratitude, companionship, a sense of belonging, purpose. So long as we exist for the revelry of Eros, dance only in the dark, and shield ourselves from the morning’s truth by turning our faces inside out so we can only see our own ideas, we are trapped in a lie. We may become mortals without morals, but we cannot become humans without limits.

The irony is that we are so much more.

"It is a serious thing," says Lewis, "to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no 'ordinary' people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.”

–C. S. Lewis, From The Weight of Glory.

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I've had it. I give up.
It's utterly impossible.

I have more than fifty, maybe even one hundred different so-called "accounts"–linkedin, huffington post, twitter, cable, phone, internet, website administrator, google, yahoo–the list has become a ten-page typewritten list of account names, numbers, passwords, and pin numbers.
I can't remember any of them.

And each time I call a company for either customer support or account management information, I sound like a thief.

"And may we have your pin number to verify your account?" they ask.

And I stammer over three or four that spring to mind. Sometimes I have to make them wait and go look it up.
But they tell you–very urgently–never, ever to repeat a password. Make each one unique. Make each one impossible to guess. Fill them with numbers, letters and symbols for which most of us don't even have names, like "ampersands" (&).

I don't know how much better I'd be at this if I were 25. I can't imagine it would be all that much easier. But I do know I'm not alone in the sandy-haired set.

One woman at the grocery store had to input a password to get access to the cashier so she could  scan our food order. She stood there mesmerized. She was probably a little older than I am. But her face became utterly blank.

Finally, she turned to me, chagrined, "I can't remember my number," then locked the system back up and went to get her boss. It became a 15-minute process.

So.

This leaves us with a bit of a problem. Do we carry around lists of passwords? That would make having a password rather foolish since anyone could just grab it out of our pockets or off our computers.
Do we have a separate system under a single password, in which all our other passwords are available? Sounds like an idea, but it still leaves us one password away from identity theft.

My husband had a great idea.

"Why not just have one password for the whole lot of 'em?"

"What?"

"Fuggedaboudit."

I thought that was the best idea I'd heard all day.

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74 JEMS OCTOBER 2011
BOOK REVIEW
It’s probably quite easy to recall an injury or sickness that occurred during your childhood,
but did you know that the first words you heard after the event played an
invaluable role in how well you would manage the situation, heal and subsequently deal
with similar events in the future?
Derived from current medical research, Verbal First Aid demonstrates how the words
a caregiver chooses to say when a child is sick or in pain will cause chemical responses
to travel through the child’s body and either help or hinder the healing process, as well
as set the course for their physical and emotional recovery.
Techniques provided through descriptive scenarios teach the reader how to empower
children to actively participate in their own healing, conquer their fears and turn seemingly
tragic events into an accepted part of life.
Easy to read and compassionately presented, Verbal First Aid announces revolutionary
non-pharmaceutical healing that can be used anywhere at any time. This book is perfect
for healthcare providers, teachers and parents. It provides the key that can unlock
a child’s inner strength in any situation, thus promoting a healthy and happy life.

JEMS—By Natalie Harris BHSc, AEMCA

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