A Thousand Ways of Suffering Love; through the psora of some remedies in paediatrics

To illustrate the interest of the subject we intend to address, one could say that if there is one thing that makes man suffer most on earth, it is love. Going further, one could say that many diseases, and perhaps all, are diseases of love, or of affective origin, as psychologists say — love of the other as well as self-love. As much as love ennobles man, it is also one of the things that can make him most ill.

In many remedies, one can find suffering related to love, to affectivity. The proof is that in the symptomatology and in repertories there are many symptoms listed as "following disappointed love" and similar etiologies. We will not speak about that. We will not focus on the symptomatic level. We will only show the affective suffering of some remedies that we know — in order to discover them under another light — at the level of the core of their deep suffering, that is to say of the psora in the purest Hahnemannian sense, and at the level of their difficulty in loving.

A word of explanation. The psora, as described by Masi, is the basic illness of man, of humanity; "perfect health" (physical and mental) never exists (I hope you are convinced!). Normal life is not a balance, but a permanent and changing imbalance, a constant search for balance, for happiness. This means that every person will always have suffering (perhaps except for brief moments of ecstasy!), as well as happiness — except that suffering will be more habitual than the latter, because life is hard, as many great thinkers have shown. Individual psora is each person's malaise of living: each patient expresses it in his own way, with physical and mental symptoms. Behind these symptoms, what is there? There is a problematic area, an unacceptable lack concerning a specific domain for each person, an imperfection corresponding to a desired perfection (one might say divine); he cannot bear not being able to do, have or be … this or that. It is this problematic (related to his physical and mental constitution), at an almost metaphysical level, that must be specified for each remedy, the Disease probably being due to a disease of the soul, which is particular for each person and also for each remedy. Thus, this problematic will be expressed by a few key words and some essential phrases, while knowing that this choice of words and phrases can be constantly revised, modified, and refined as a result of practice which aims to verify these hypotheses.

What must not be confused is the miasmatic level, that is the psoric problematic, and the symptomatic level, the first explaining the second, and not appearing at first glance easily, but being deduced, by hypothesis, from the symptoms.

Most of the great authors have tried this approach, in particular Kent, Ghatak and more recently Sankaran, Scholten, Shore and especially Masi. The great interest is to grasp at a glance the patient's deep suffering and thus to apply a deep and global treatment to their troubles; another advantage is to deduce from the primary psoric suffering miasmatic pictures unknown in current pathogenesis which remains always incomplete, namely: a picture of egolyse (roughly corresponding to the old psora) where the subject accepts exaggeratedly and despairingly his incapacity, his lack; a picture of egotrophy (old sycosis) where the subject reacts by denying his impossibilities and lack, and by asserting his desire and capacity for power; finally, a picture of alterlyse, where the subject projects his lack onto others, holds them responsible and attacks them by making them suffer from their incapacity.

We have "worked" the words so that the psoric problematic is roughly intelligible to all, our desire being to reveal new aspects of known remedies. In passing, we will have the opportunity to lift a little the veil on secret and unexpected motivations of some patients' love. The list of remedies studied (17) is entirely arbitrary and not limiting.

ANTIMONIUM CRUDUM: the glutton of romantic and unattainable love

Unable to desire a real love, it does not even interest him; refusal to be touched, called, attracted, looked at, summoned, to be the object of attention, while he covets love because without it his life has no meaning. He is only attracted to unrealistic, inaccessible, romantic, imaginary, ideal and ecstatic love (dream of the ideal woman). Greedy for that, like a glutton for food. Very much a dreamer, compensates through poetry, ecstasy faced with aesthetics. Very disappointed by the reality of life, he is ready to believe he is being abandoned at the slightest conflict with his own. His next reaction will be hardening (antimony is a hardening metal): he is the disappointed dreamer, nauseated and rejecting; children irritable, oppositional, stubborn, repulsive (refusal of the breast), angry and sullen, with callosities, warts, eczema, thick nails (isolation from the outside). Nauseated, he digests everything badly, especially since he stuffs himself (remedy of the pig).

BRYONIA: love is security

Dominated by the fear of losing his reserves and of being broken by external movement, this plant suits individuals obsessed with security. Children who cling, who fear changes and separations, and fear lack of food, physical and emotional security. Attached to their home, to their family — which can make them very affectionate — fear of the future, of movement (remedy for sprains!), of physical dangers (> by pressure, which reassures and contains movement). Immobility, in egolyse. Very materialistic in egotrophy, extremely provident and very miserly, constipated.

CARBO VEGETABILIS: short of love: first be born to oneself

First, it is a burned product, which evokes a difficulty in accepting a change of state, an evolution of the individual after having accepted "a little death", as many life situations of separation represent, starting with birth. Secondly, the beechwood has not been consumed to the point of losing its form: this remedy will correspond to individuals who have remained halfway through their evolution, their transformation, their "birth"! They cannot love because, to love, one must exist, feel comfortable in oneself. They can only seek refuge in the love of the other (egolyse), with enormous anguish at losing them, unless they pretend to love (egotrophy) and to succeed in life.

CARCINOSINUM: undifferentiated and incarcerated in family love

Carcinosinum's love is very strong; it is total devotion, up to self-sacrifice, like a saint. The only problem is that it is not free; it did not choose to love in freedom, but by obligation. It allowed itself to be locked into an obligation to atone for others, in a tyrannical family law. Out of duty, it feels responsible for restoring order in its family plagued by suffering and terrible secret dramas. It is incarcerated in there, like a slave who never complains, very docile, conscientious and stoical. Thus, its love and compassion are even more marked for animals, especially those that are confined or mistreated. Precocious and serious children, who have severe illnesses: better to turn aggression against oneself than to transgress family laws. Overprotected, sad and stifled by a rigid upbringing. Or else open revolt, to the maximum: agitated, destructive, stubborn, disobedient children, intolerant of contradiction and any annoyance, jealous, etc. Remaining undifferentiated from his family, his cells tend to dedifferentiate (cancer).

FLUORIC ACID: love or freedom?

This light and hyperactive halogen has the gift of being able to bind very easily to almost all elements and even to organic molecules. It suits individuals wishing to love without obligations towards the other. It is a way of not tolerating deep emotional bonds, experienced as a limitation of one's liberty. The egotrophic reaction will be to deny this incapacity to bind, and will produce the known picture of the Don Juan or excited, precocious, brilliant, seductive children, teenagers superficial, flirting champions, friends also ruthless, allergic to fidelity and emotional responsibilities, quick to detach from romantic relationships and even from their family. A variant can be, in masked egotrophy, to show a great capacity to bond and to love faithfully by overprotective behaviour toward loved ones or a very solid attachment. In egolyse, the picture will be inverted: he will painfully experience a sensation of abandonment at the slightest separation, will not tolerate being "let go", being a very "clingy" child, gentle and docile.

HYOSCIAMUS: possessive love

For him, to love is to capture, to play with, to possess. He is like that with others, with words (inexhaustible loquacity, wordplay) and with things (need to manipulate objects, the child touches everything). Desire to be loved exclusively or preferentially. Great feeling of jealousy and abandonment at the slightest occasion. Although he manipulates and possesses the other, he cannot bear feeling manipulated or possessed; for him, that is to be treated as an object or ridiculed. He is Othello. He even has a paranoid tendency to believe he is cheated, betrayed and ridiculed during affective traumas of life; the worst for him being punishments, mistreatment or handicap (neurologically handicapped children). He reacts either by lamentation, passivity, adynamic pathologies (malignant adynamic fevers), or by megalomania, mistrust (the fox impossible to deceive), naïveté, egocentric greed, or finally by mania and extravagance, the ridiculous ("kitsch" clothes, clownish behaviour, puerile, obscene, grimacing, mocking, hypomanic, exhibitionist), with spasms (nervous cough, tics, St Vitus' dance).

IGNATIA: the lover of love

Passive and nostalgic character, who falls in love easily. A dreamer who seeks more a certain lover's state of mind than a true relationship, with its risks and uncertainties (love at first sight, love-and-water life). Believes he loves deeply and cannot tolerate criticism. Can only love according to his idea, contemplative love, up to forgetting himself and giving himself, to sacrifice, but which is not in accord with the other's expectations. Self-directed love, adhesive and selfish, without respect for the other (he projects his dream onto the other). Intolerance to a break that surprises him; after sentimental failure: self-reproach, inferiority complex, guilt, silent and solitary grief, refuses help (except magical help) and to think again about his problems (<); cannot decide anymore, refuses to choose, to commit; great sense of injustice, inward hatred (difficult to be aggressive), nervous tension, hysterical reactions and contradictory and paradoxical somatisations (parasympathicotonia, smooth muscle spasms, tetany, convulsions).

LACHESIS: self-love

For Kent, this remedy "may suit the entire human species", because "this venom only reveals what is in man". Which venom is it? Later he also tells us: "nothing shows more clearly than self-love, high opinion of oneself, envy, hate, etc… These tendencies derive from an inadmissible self-love". It is therefore clear: Lachesis does not love the other, despite all appearances of generosity and devotion, but loves himself! To believe himself loved, he needs to be useful and indispensable and above all to be admired: if he is not admired, he feels unloved and abandoned. As this cannot last long, he will soon be convinced that he is not admired enough because he is bad and cursed (like the serpent), and will always feel betrayed and abandoned. Consequently, he will not tolerate someone else being admired without suffering envy and jealousy, and will not be able in turn to admire the other. All energy will then be released to make himself prominent, to dominate others, to force them to favour him or for hatred.

MAGNESIA CARBONICA: in search of perfect happiness

According to Scholten's analysis by chemical group, magnesia + carbonica would literally be: fear of losing the father, or fear of losing wisdom. That is indeed the problem of this remedy which, according to Masi, would have envied perfect, easy happiness. Unable to obtain it, in egolyse, he becomes sour, as if condemned to hard labour for life; it is the repulsive, dissatisfied, greedy, jealous child who needs a familial cocoon and is very sensitive to all quarrels. In egotrophy, it is the portrait of the lazy one, always very happy with the smallest things; it is the child in search of pleasure, touching everything, desiring to possess everything. In alterlyse, it is the acidic, bitter subject who believes he is prevented from attaining happiness because of others; it is the irritable, agitated, angry and quarrelsome child, with sour-smelling secretions.

MAGNESIA MURIATICA: fear of losing love

Magnesium chloride is essentially a dehydrating agent and, therapeutically, a purgative. The Magnesia mur subject has sensations of tearing, disintegration, loss of friends, disunions. He is constipated and experiences defaecation badly; he would prefer not to lose anything, not to give anything back. How then to give in love? In egolyse, he has the impression that he achieves nothing by himself; the child fears losing his parents' affection, he greatly fears arguments and conflicts (which separate), power struggles (a major remedy for children of divorced parents). He is a passive pacifist and introvert. In egotrophy, he is an active pacifist — a unifying factor — who constantly wants to surpass himself, and tends to feel above others.

NATRUM MURIATICUM: cannot receive nor give

Scholten begins his analysis clearly: "there is no mother", that is to say no affection, no love. Salt, symbol of exchanges, cannot accept exchanges of love; salt, a preservative, cannot accept the affective exchanges necessary that would allow it to blossom, to be protected, "preserved" and in turn to be a source of life and love (like the "salt of the earth"). Not accepting exchanges means not accepting the gift, which is experienced as a loss when it comes to giving, or as "sterilisation" when it comes to receiving, which is experienced as humiliation, a negative dependence, a limitation, a depressing subjugation. Thus, it is the "Jewish mother" who wants to protect without giving ("You don't eat? You want to kill me!"); it is the person who misinterprets the sympathy of consolation as demeaning pity; it can also be someone who needs to depend on a stronger being whom they will idealise (a father, for example), and who will not be consoled by his loss. In all these pictures, there is no place for doting, mothering, giving oneself by forgetting oneself; we are not in love lived in true exchange, there is only the appearance of love, the illusion of love, and impossible, unbearable, disappointed love.

PHOSPHORIC ACID: refusal of mystery in love

Like Phosphorus, he has a senseless desire to have the light, to be himself the light, but he is always afraid that reality hides something incomprehensible, mysterious. He has difficulty accepting the element of mystery in love; thus, he will be even more lost if he is disappointed, if he loses the loved one, and especially if something was hidden from him or if a breakup is inexplicable. His reaction will then be nostalgia, abandonment in exhaustion, apparent indifference, physical losses (weight loss, diarrhoea, hair loss, haemorrhages).

PHOSPHORUS: needs the other to be the flame

Desire to be the light, the flame of love for others, which illuminates and warms. Needs the other to shine and to be loved. Passionate, he burns too much and fears being consumed, to be extinguished. Fear of no longer being loved, fear of obscurity if the flame goes out. He is nothing without love, without the other, exists only through them. Needs fraternity. Loves everyone, even animals and the beauty of creation. If love is lacking, he can fall into melancholic withdrawal or into indifference and even malice.

PULSATILLA: conceives love only in fusion, union

Obsessed by fusional love. Greedy need of maternal love, never satisfied. Wants total union, in an obligatory bond with the other. Loves out of need, acts like a macrophage. Cannot give himself, it is belonging to the other. False selfish love, false giving of oneself, false compassion. Sensation of abandonment, loss of union and emotional protection. Feeling that he has no bond with anyone, fear of the opposite sex, excessive modesty, anaclitic depression, tears for nothing, indecision, isolation, extreme emotional dependence. Or else, if he denies his impossibility of ideal union: selfishness, stinginess, envy, jealousy, excessive attachment with false submission and complaisance, seduction and emotional manipulation.

SEPIA: cannot love without knowing

Needs to know to love someone or something, believes he loves if he knows totally, which kills any authentic feeling, any gratuitous love. Cannot accept being attracted by love with a part of the other unknown, whereas this is essential in true love. In the loving relationship, he desires his independence. Aversion and incapacity to feel, to sense, to let himself go to feelings. This results in a deep feeling of not being loved and of abandonment, so intolerable that an attitude of indifference and dissemblance (affectation) is then adopted. Behind this false face there corresponds internally a contradiction between his desires and his actions, a frequent impression of deceiving himself, of not mastering himself, of being guilty. The whole is compensated by hyperactivity with great efficiency. The child cannot blossom in a harmonious mental development (reserved, secret, docile, manic children) and physical (growth delay, earthy skin with naevi, warts, hypertrichosis, mycoses and eczema), joint fragility, caries, sensitivity to colds, vomiting, enuresis, helminthiasis, etc.

SPONGIA: attachment is a restraint to freedom

Marine animal: fits people who will have problems with their environment ("everyone is in the same bath"). Curious animal, almost at the boundary of the plant kingdom, as its destiny is to attach itself to the ground to feed and live. Temptation to do without this attachment, to have freedom for one's future, to uproot oneself, to take autonomy, that is to refuse the minimum "attachment" to others that life imposes: refusal of constraints, of law, of commitments, of one's destiny. Corresponds well to children prone to laryngitis, thyroid problems and palpitations. Either they declare themselves incapable of taking autonomy whenever needed (< by separations, "clingy" children who refuse to take charge and "vegetate"), or they want their freedom before they are capable (then they are rebellious and headstrong children, who are always right, refuse rules and even subject others).

STRAMONIUM: the "shot" of absolute love

Stramonium is mad for perfect amorous union, in a flash of light, it is a "shot" of the "must", of raves, of the most beautiful things, of infused science — the flower blooms at night. As life does not always allow that, as soon as he is no longer in ideal love, immediate understanding, luminous hallucination, he is lost, no longer recognises the world (feeling of being in a wild desert), as if condemned to infernal obscurity, to animal condition; he is divided into two parts, one alive, the other dead, and is obsessed by fragmentation (refuses to eat small pieces, likes puzzles, the child dreads family disintegration). Faced with the dark part (fear of the dark and tunnels), he lives one of the most terrible abandonment anxieties, feeling hunted; he flees the horror of hell, and either enters into violent furious rage, or rebuilds his world with his own laws in a delirium where he can rise to mystical spheres or fall into the worst delinquency. Affectionate children who would like everyone to love them, but also terrible children, who feel easily abandoned, with night terrors, stammering, convulsions, violent pathologies.

SOME MISTAKES OF REMEDIES IN LOVE

Confusing love and romanticism

Antimonium crudum: dreams of inaccessible ecstatic love
Ignatia: loves the lover's state which he confuses with love, as it does not require decision, commitment.

Confusing love and need

Phosphorus: wants to be the light one loves
Carbo veg: cannot be reborn through love
Stramonium: high on mad love
Bryonia: loves out of need for security.

Confusing love and loss of freedom

Fluoric acid: the bond is experienced as loss of freedom
Spongia: refuses the constraint of attachment
Sepia: refuses attraction of love, experienced as loss of independence
Carcinosinum: conversely, lets itself be incarcerated in obligation and sacrifice.

Confusing love and possession

Hyosciamus: loves only by "possessing" (in the literal and figurative senses) the other
Pulsatilla: conceives love only in fusion.

Confusing love and loss of self

Natrum muriaticum: experiences exchanges of love (giving, receiving) negatively
Magnesia muriatica: too afraid of losing what he has to love.

Confusing love and difficulty

Magnesia carbonica: fear of not reaching easy happiness
Phosphoric acid: cannot tolerate the element of mystery in love.

Confusing love and admiration

Lachesis: loves only himself, needs to be admired by the other, inferior.

Understanding A second motivation is the desire to understand what health and disease are. Homeopaths want to understand themselves; their body, their psyche and their soul. By observing illness and healing in their patients, they learn to understand what is happening within themselves. This understanding is not simply rational; it is also practical and emotional.

Aversion to doctors
Homeopaths often have an aversion to conventional medicine. This aversion is known in certain remedies, Arnica, for example. In Arnica, we find the symptom "declares he is very well, sends the doctor away." It is a typical attitude of the Lanthanides. The Asteraceae family, to which Arnica belongs, contains a significant proportion of Lanthanides and possesses in its profile that of the Lanthanides. A great motivation for becoming a homeopath is to be able to treat oneself and thus no longer be dependent on conventional medicine.

Freedom
This aversion to conventional medicine is strongly linked to an aversion to being controlled. Homeopaths, like the Lanthanides, want to be their own boss, they want to decide for themselves and not be dominated, and that is exactly what conventional medicine does: it dominates you; it makes you swallow medication after medication, injects you, vaccinates you, and in the worst cases, anaesthetises you to operate on you. The patient's own will is completely denied. This tendency to domination can be observed in doctors themselves who often behave as if they know what the patient needs; they tend to decide for the patient instead of advising them. For the Lanthanides, freedom is a fundamental concept that can be expressed in different ways; they want to do things "their" way, live "their" life, follow "their" path. Of course, this also expresses itself in negation: they do not want to be dominated, controlled, commanded or limited by others.

against bacteria, viruses, etc.
If one considers, however, that the cause is internal, this fight against external causes is not only useless but also harmful. Thus there is a philosophical conflict between the two approaches.
Secrecy
Another important aspect is secrecy, which is linked to the previous theme of the inner world. The inner world is a secret world. Since ancient times, groups that emphasise the inner world and try to deepen it are perceived as secret societies; Rosicrucians, Freemasons, etc. The homeopathic movement as a whole is not a secret society, but it is marginal to society. It is not part of the mainstream currents and is often completely misunderstood, which gives it this secret character. In some countries, homeopathy has been banned and still is, forcing it to be clandestine.

Philosophy
We can observe in homeopaths a strong desire for philosophy, which is also an important aspect of the Lanthanides and is linked to the desire to understand. This understanding is not only technical; it is related to the understanding of oneself, the world, the universe and essence itself. It goes to the deepest of Being and desires to understand what life is made of, its origin and its destiny.

Depth
There is a strong desire to understand, not in a superficial way but deeply. It is the depth that we find in spirituality and philosophy. It is not about superficial forms of religion; it is rather experienced as a spiritual experience of life. It is a fairly common aspect among homeopaths and is integral to the Lanthanides. Patients needing a Lanthanide often use the word
"deep"; their pains and experiences are deep.

Post-scriptum
If we look at the development of the Lanthanides over the last ten years, we can observe an incredible expansion of our knowledge and the number of cases treated. I feel immense gratitude towards these remedies which are now available for my practice. There are so many cases in which the Lanthanides have brought healing and without which I could not have done much!

There is a kind of random beauty in the profiles of the Lanthanides. They are often so close to the inner state of those who chose to be homeopaths. When I started, we often talked among ourselves about this paradox: we had clear success with our patients, and mediocre results when it came to treating ourselves; we joked, saying that homeopaths were incurable! The Lanthanides changed that situation; it is now possible to do much better for homeopaths themselves. It is a bit as if homeopathy returned the compliment to those who practise it. **************************************************************************

Photos: Wikimedia Commons
Gnothi seauton (Know thyself); Mladifilozof
Falun Dafa, fifth exercise; source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/14871980@N05/2482099283/in/set-72157605013738654