After the “Genius epidemicus” (1/21) and “Long Covid” (3/21) we again devote ourselves to the dominant theme of the past two years. But this issue is different. When we began planning an issue on “Plague and Psyche” in the summer of 2021, it was already clear that the pandemic would have not only fatal consequences for people's physical health but also serious psychosocial effects. The psychological pressure from existential threats in many areas of life, from social distancing combined with cramped family life, from the restriction of civil liberties, the heated vaccination debate and other divisive controversies led to anxiety disorders, panic attacks, paranoia, depression and suicidality. We wanted to portray the psychosocial aspects of the Corona crisis in various areas of society and to show possibilities for homeopathic treatment.
But implementing this idea was not easy. SPEKTRUM 2/22 was created against the backdrop of a world exhausted and divided by severe past and current crises and an equally exhausted homeopathic community. A number of authors withdrew their commitments because they were on the verge of burnout or had just been infected with the rather unpleasant Omicron variant. Others wanted, in addition to their patients’ suffering, to describe their own experience of the pandemic and to place it in a broader context. From very different perspectives this produced not only an unusual issue of our journal, but also an exciting and moving contemporary document: very personal, open, emotional and also vulnerable. Our authors disclosed a great deal about themselves.
Thus Pat Deacon recounts how her initially critical attitude towards vaccination changed permanently through experiences in her practice and how she became estranged from many colleagues in the process. On the other hand we read accounts of patients who, as unvaccinated people, suffered massively from bullying and exclusion. In this global crisis we homeopaths often experience similar wounds to our patients and share their deep insecurity. Those who, like Deborah Collins, nearly died of Covid-19 in intensive care have a completely new view of their own life and that of others around them.
Like Collins, many of our authors also see the pandemic as an opportunity: on an individual level the pandemic crisis brings old traumas and hidden conflicts to the surface and typical reaction patterns with the corresponding remedies can suddenly be recognised more clearly. Some patients in our case reports owe their simillimum and a profound cure to this magnifying effect that the Corona crisis exerts on each individual as well as on society as a whole. Also at the global level one hopes for healing impulses from the crisis. A prerequisite for this, however, is a ruthless diagnosis, as Franz Sowboda sets out in his contribution. With Corona and the Ukraine war he sees us in an explosive time, which he assigns to stage 17 of the periodic system and to picric acid: emotionless, relationship-less, prone to violence. “Our skin is hungry”, writes Wiet van Helmond. As for Swoboda, for Helmond too the cure lies in a new social cohesion, in exchange, closeness and contact, in a future which – as Roland Guenther writes – “is based not on fear and control but on trust and cooperation”.
The case studies in this issue show how homeopathy can help on an individual level to heal the wounds of separation, isolation, loss of relationship, paternalism, discrimination and disorientation, and how it can thereby contribute to a new trustworthy social cohesion. Although the centre again is the stories of patients with detailed case analyses, interesting prescriptions and accounts of the healing process, alongside the learning effect for practical homeopathic work it is a primary aim of this SPEKTRUM issue to hear very different voices and views on the pressing problems of this ominous Picric era and thereby build bridges across the chasms that have opened up in recent years. For this reason we have also placed the unusual review of a book with no immediate connection to homeopathy at the end of our sequence of articles. With Jane Goodall’s “Book of Hope” we send a wake-up call to the homeopathic community: be tolerant, let us speak to one another again, let us draw hope and let us do our best for others where we stand.
