Should homeopaths prescribe themselves?
NATIONAL JOURNAL OF HOMOEOPATHY 2000 July / Aug VOL II NO 4.
Reprinted, with permission from author from Homoeopathy Today.
Jaine L Benson

3 Real Reasons why Homoeopaths should not prescribe for themselves and why self-prescribing is contraindicated.

1. The First Reason: We usually don't see ourselves clearly as other objective observers can and do. Frankly we don't even see ourselves clearly in a mirror. We think we are raising our right shoulder and the mirror shows it as our left shoulder. How much more do we reverse perceptions and projections when we attempt to find our similimum? We think we are being clear in our expression, but there are many ways our perceptions differ from others. Are we not more comfortable in the visual modality and disregard those whose auditory and tactile modalities are less familiar to us? As homoeopaths, we must absolutely understand how we can easily fail to be the objective observer if we do not increasingly understand our own unique pathology. When we repertorise, our questions probe what we know the best. We tend to refer to our own culture, our own preferences and unfortunately to our own peculiarities. It is then the multitude of counsel and the collective wisdom will help. We need each other.
   
   
2. I liken homoeopaths to farmers: we tend to see ourselves as an isolated source of growth and development to our charges. This has bought petty arguments to the forefront of presenting homoeopathy to an unbelieving world. If we could alter our needs a bit, to be right in our own little field and exchange cases and protocols non competitively instead, the unity in diversity would be apparent to newcomers. Naturally the way to start would be with us. Kent repertorises "distrust" under "suspicious". In Hering's "Repertory of the Mind" neither references are present. For us, a quality of "suspiciousness" is inherent in "suspecting" a remedy. Maybe we need an Aconite cocktail to begin working with one another. Isn't the competitive spirit rather allopathic in its nature to bombard and distance" And isn't homoeopathy rather cooperative to work with the whole body to build it up? We need each other.
   
   
3. Finally, because of our skills and training as Homoeopaths, we can convert symptom pictures into personality types. We hold multiple thoughts and easily jump in our mental file system to pull up remedies that are the perfect match. However, I have seen, heard and experienced in various studies and verbal exchanges the phenomenon of bias. I call it "playing bumper cars", to juxtapose where you are vis-à-vis others whom you esteem. I hear a hint of a negative comment and I choose to ally or oppose, generally allying if I think it's fairly benign and I want to associate with the one who made the comment. You know what I mean. It's one of those human nature things where you walk away and wish you could have been more self-actualized, but this was your mentor and you wanted to agree. Later, when you are assured your place on the "chessboard", your place as one of the players, so to speak, you hardly do that bumper car game anymore.
   
   
4. My challenge to you and me is this: How often do we go back through that file drawer of remedies in our mind, to reposition remedies vis-à-vis ourselves. I missed the help of Sepia for myself because when I first studied its rubrics, it was clearly about someone indifferent to her children, but I was "super-mom" so naturally I filed that in the "not-for-me" file.
   Others, I noticed, file Aresnicum in their "not-for-me" files because of the "nasty" factor associated with perfectionism. You can see their eyes glaze over when their similimum comes up as Ars-alb. We'd rather pick a remedy that has a pleasant negative symptom picture, forgetting that it was our bias that locked it in our not-for-me file.
   
   
5. Actually this miss fitting is what can be called modern day stress relating dyslexia. When your learning of new material coincides with a stress issue yet unresolved, the access to recall that information typically is buried in that stress, fairly irretrievable until the stress is recognized and alleviated. It creates holes in our thinking. Our best intentions cannot release the not-for-me file, but letting go of what locked it up can. Meanwhile, we need one another to expedite our own cases.
   
   
6. So, as homoeopaths, we think we observe ourselves as well as others, but perhaps we don't and can't due to the nature of our humanness as well as the mirror or paradox of who we are as gifted individuals. We are able to find the rare, strange and peculiar in others, which predispose us to be suspicious of one another's help and collective insights. Let's take homoeopathy out of the fields of isolation. Let's take our remedies out of the: "not-for-me" files and place our dividing differences there instead. Let's keep competition where it belongs, in our own reservoir of information to be a better homoeopath, so we can cooperatively welcome new homoeopaths, and together heal some of the endemic chaos that is before us.

Back