by Guy Payen
J. is a young man who first came for treatment in 2003 at the age of 26. He suffered from recurrent complaints: pain and tension in the back, loss of sensation in the left hand on waking, and above all a general feeling of unease that grew over the years with the responsibilities he took on. But the tenor is clear from the outset:
J: “At about 17 I became depressed. I could no longer centre myself, I felt completely lost. There were times when I thought I was going mad. I sought refuge in religion, but I could not find my footing. The depression recurs periodically.
I constantly struggle with the duality of good and evil. Sometimes I am completely overwhelmed by those thoughts — they dominate me. I fear that my thoughts are beginning to take on a life of their own.”
He is greatly afraid of illness and admits to being “hypochondriacal”; he resorts to magical or ritual acts to try to find out.
By trade he is a furniture maker. He was married to a young woman with whom he has a small child. However the couple quickly got into crisis and his partner left him. He made a long journey through the desert where he confronted his “demons”.
J: “That threw me back into the past, to my fear of being alone. It’s a catastrophe — I am incapable of overcoming this fear. I am always upset with other people, and I have negative thoughts about those close to me. My partner’s presence calmed me and clarified my ideas. For me thinking is a creative act, and thoughts contain the possibility of manifestation. I have always had difficulty distinguishing between good and evil. For me spirituality is like a high mountain. I climb high; I escape myself by being on the mountain.”
He begins a relationship with his ex-wife’s sister, who has two children and is on the verge of divorce. He is tired and says he feels the weight of the whole world on his shoulders. He cannot invest himself in his work; everything seems heavy. He goes into therapy.
Dream: “I dreamt about my ex-wife, I had sex with her. She is dominant — often in the dream she merges with my mother…” Interpretation: “I behave like a little boy.”
The years go by; J. is now 32.
J: “From time to time I suffer from anxieties. For some months now I have to repeat the same phrase. For example, I am afraid of hurting Lola (the eldest child of my new partner) through my thoughts. I am always afraid that I send her negative energy when I hold her.
I fear that the invisible ones penetrate me. I always have to protect myself from the head. I feel influenced.”
He opens his own interior design business but has trouble coping. He is trapped in his inner conflicts.
GP: “Tell me about your family!”
J: “My parents divorced when I was about 12. My father was a cabinetmaker. He was extremely violent and attacked my mother and my brother. My mother and my grandmother believed he was mad. He was admitted to a psychiatric clinic. I experienced scenes of verbal violence and physical aggression. I stood so firmly with my mother that I began to kill my father in my thoughts. After the separation I slept at my mother’s — she used to flee into my bed. I still have a very close relationship with her — if she is alone I call her.
My mother always gave me a very negative image of my father. I consider her frigid; my father was probably sexually frustrated all his life. He used to call her “little herb-don’t-touch-me”.
I find it difficult to live in the present; I have the feeling that my spine is not centred. I am very hypochondriacal and I am afraid of death. I fear that I will not live long, or that I will get a serious illness, I particularly fear cancer.
Now I have had my spine properly realigned, and that helped — I had become quite bent. I cannot stand up straight. My head is completely foggy and I cannot think properly. I do not feel anchored, and that frightens me. I have the feeling that my balance is unsteady. But it is not vertigo (he moves his head from side to side). When everything comes together like that, I go to my knees. I question everything — my life, my relationship. They are not suicidal or death thoughts. I am afraid of losing control of myself, of going mad.”
The feeling of rocking developed into true vertigo, and he underwent a series of otological and neurological tests which were all normal.
“My brain cannot keep up with me; I feel as if I am beside myself. I have just found out that I will have another child; that had not been clear to me. The more time passes, the less I feel prepared. I have not managed to confront this subject, I feel completely unprepared.
It comes in cycles. At times I suffer from obsessive thoughts, with the feeling of being torn back and forth between good and evil. I always have negative thoughts and I must constantly fight against them. I am always afraid of evil, of the devil. In my head I want only light and goodness, but I have thoughts that are the exact opposite. It is an incessant inner struggle. I think of praise, of the archangel Gabriel, but suddenly the opposite happens: it goes from praising the Lord to the devil. I am afraid of losing control.”
GP: “Tell me about your obsessive thoughts!”
I must make sure that I have no time to think of nothing, because then the obsessive thoughts come. I cannot describe them to you in detail, because if I speak about them I bring them to life. I notice how they are driving me mad.”
Dream: “Huge worms on my head.”
J: “Sometimes I feel the need to say prayers and read religious texts, but I am afraid of not addressing the right person, and afterwards I feel lost for about a week. For about 2 or 3 weeks I have been completely beside myself again, not centred, as if I were outside my body.
I have the feeling as if the devil were in me, as if I were possessed. I fear that all my evil thoughts will manifest. These obsessive thoughts can be blasphemous — afterwards I feel as if I deserve to be punished.”
Prescription: Mancinella C 15
Follow-up
Two months later: “I noticed nothing, no change. I am very tired, mentally and physically. Every day I greet the day with joy; particularly in the mornings, because my thoughts have gone when I wake. Then it starts again. The thoughts circle and gain enormous importance, and I have to fight against them. I begin to develop tics — I have to rub my face to fight against these ideas.
The obsessional idea is: I do not want the devil. It is as if I am afraid of crossing over to that side. If I try to take a positive, a bright thought, the exact opposite appears, and the good thoughts are compulsively overshadowed.”
Prescription: Mancinella C 30
Three months later: “I still suffer from obsessive thoughts. I must constantly push the devil away. I am compelled to perform ceremonies and rituals.
Our daughter was born at the beginning of April, and I dreamed that it was my mother who gave birth to the child, not my wife. I fear the power of my thoughts.
I have no real pleasure in the sexual act; it is more in my imagination and my fantasies.
All these thoughts began in my youth with my parents’ separation. Added to that were my feelings of guilt when I masturbated. I had to ask God for forgiveness.
If I see a police car I tell myself: “That’s for me.” Sometimes I feel insecure when driving and fear I may have run someone over; then I go back to check that no one is lying in the road.
At this point I am puzzled, because I am sure I gave him the right remedy. Something seems to have escaped me — I give him Kalium bromatum C 15, then C 30. He comes back four months later and says that the vertigo he had some time ago has returned. He is increasingly disturbed:
J: “It reminds me of death, it disturbs me greatly. I feel as if I must die. I still have these obsessive thoughts, but I cope with them. I think it has something to do with my mother: she does not need to say anything, it is only her tone. I know she waits for me when I call her on Sunday. Every Sunday I feel obliged to do that, to go and visit her. In front of her I do not feel like a man. She has a component that acts as castrating — she transfers her fears onto me.”
The symptoms are:
- Delusion of being possessed
- Delusion of two trains of thought at the same time
- Delusion of being under a strong influence
Prescription: Salix fragilis
Follow-up
Two months later I see him again — in an emergency situation: he is suffering from severe vertigo. An ear, nose and throat specialist told him: “I know what you don’t have, but I don’t know what you have!” This magical formula leads to a panic attack that comes on top of his vertigo. One dose of Conium ends the vertigo, but not his anxieties.
J: “I had a dream: looking for someone at the airport I got into a lift. I became stuck in the lift, and that woke me up — I was suffocating. The next day I went shopping and felt increasingly depressed. I did not go into the shop, but went straight to the emergency department and was prescribed Laroxyl.”
He begins again to tell me about his obsessional ideas, about his fight with the devil, the fear that his thoughts might materialise, the fear of losing control of himself and getting to the “other side”.
“I believe I carry a great guilt. I think it has to do with my sexuality, or perhaps with the relationship between my parents. Did something happen to my mother? The obsessions began when my parents separated. In my memory my father is a sexually frustrated man. I always defended my mother; I had a symbiotic relationship with her. Even in puberty I slept in the same bed with her. I wanted to kill my father.”
He had summed up his story. I read my notes about him again and reflected on him; then I gave him a dose of Mancinella MK.
We see each other two months later, and I marvel at the implementation of the theory of homeopathy and Hering’s law in practice.
J: “It was like an electric shock. The obsessive symptoms disappeared for 3–4 days, then reappeared and invaded all the internal organs: I felt them in the chest, then in the lower abdomen. Then they moved further down and it was as if someone was digging their fingers into my kidneys. Then I felt a burning in the urinary tract, first in the urethra and then in the testicles. Then it went further down to the thighs, then to the calves, as if the blood circulation were being cut off. I had the feeling of icy cold hands and feet, tingling and alternation between hot and cold.
Now I am well — I am not tired at all. I notice that my obsessions are beginning to disappear. I mean, I am about 80% better. I feel much more anchored in myself, much better centred. I hardly suffer from vertigo any more. I was greatly afraid of losing control and causing something terrible in my environment, but that feeling has gone.”
GP: “Any dreams?”
J: “I dream much more than before, but they are more concrete, realistic dreams. I dream a lot about my family. My sexual desire has much diminished. My partner now tries more to seduce me.”
This case has a one-year follow-up during which J. was no longer haunted by his former “demons”.
This article was published on www.interhomeopathy.org
Photos
Portrait of the Devil from the church in Rennes-le-Château ©Wikimedia Commons
Old tailors scissors on wood background ©shutterstock.com - vesilvio
Category: Cases
Keywords: anxiety, being possessed, hypochondria, obsessive ideas, fear of invisible intruders, vertigo, fear of going mad, castrating mother.
Remedy: Mancinella
