provings

[Chris_Gillen]

Hello Shannon, I don't actively set out to do follow ups on cases years afterwards to see if a cure "held". People come and go, come back, don't come back, or come back unexpectedly years later. My understanding and observations are that the symptoms of a chronic (miasmatic) case will, by necessity, change appearance over time anyway. So it's not always a simple matter of once upon a time the patient was ill, and now they're completely cured. It's more like a journey with multiple destinations. Once you reach one destination, you're already on the road to another one. But yes, I've had cases that have progressed over a number of years, and certainly sometimes they will stall. Could it be that the cure happened and we missed it because we were expecting it to look different?? )
I guess I have a philosophical attitude. Why would I honestly expect to be able to provide a therapeutic solution to everyone at all times?? A better solution might lie in psychotherapy for one patient, or perhaps a parent could investigate getting better parenting skills for the child who's acting out, or maybe they really just do need to get a divorce, or get another job... Why would we think everything can or should be able to be eradicated with a pillule?? To me, it's as if we're expected to prescribe grand constitutional medicines that will innoculate people from experiencing their own life !! I only see prescribing medicines in these types of situations as facilitating an ease to the anxiety around life issues, but I don't take responsibility for the life decisions that another person makes. I hope this makes sense.
Regarding beginning the study of homoeopathy with the basics... For me, there IS only the basics, even after 15, 20 years... The deeper I get into it, the more fascinating and profound they become.
Chris.

[John Harvey]

Hi, Chris --

I have the impression that if, in those statements in which anyone has discussed "the basics", one replaced that phrase with "the essentials [of homoeopathy]", the statements would for the most part express their actual intent: the importance of learning the essentials of homoeopathy.

And if you later omit what's essential -- if you replace it with something else -- then what remains of what it was essential to?



John
2009/7/6 Christine Gillen >

[Shannon Nelson]

Hi John,

I don't think *anyone* here has argued or would argue against the
importance of beginning with the basics! It's the later parts where
are agreement seems to quickly fall apart.

Shannon

[John Harvey]

Hi, Shannon --
I understand what you're saying. But my points are
(1) that there is no earlier and later: neither of the two practices is based on the other, and in fact they are inconsistent with one another and cannot be practised simultaneously upon the one patient;
or, to put that another way -- that homoeopathy's essential law has to be entirely overlooked, misunderstood, evaded, misquoted, and ignored in order to practise the S&Sopathies; and
(2) that the essence of homoeopathy, that thing without which you are not practising homoeopathy -- the practice of seeking the best pathogenetic match to the patient's symptoms -- is no more "basic" than diving obsessively into the "meaning" of a hand gesture; it is in fact far more sophisticated. In its elegant simplicity, its successful practice necessitates many skills that Sankarinism doesn't require, including
• intelligent, open-ended listening unencumbered by preconceptions and analysis;
• willingness to complete the case-taking, including the chronological ordering of the information;
• an ability to elicit the strength of symptoms' effects upon the patient;
• intelligent analysis of which symptoms are characteristic of the patient's individual response rather than of the illness;
• intelligent (not routine!) use of a repertory to produce a workable list of remedies to compare;
• a system of comparison of one remedy's suitability to the patient's symptom totality with another's;
• later analysis of any changes (largely impossible if the remedy given has no pathogenesis!) in relation to the pathogenesis of the remedy prescribed, in order to determine its effect.
By contrast with homoeopathy, Sankarisism invokes ritualistic procedures and spiritual keys by which to prescribe a remedy, certainly; but it is incapable of follow-up analysis in relation to those keys, and both the procedures and the spiritual keys are more akin to church ritual and church dogma than they are to the application of skill and knowledge.
To call homoeopathy "basic" in relation to Sankarinism is to suggest that Sankarinism not only is in some way more advanced than homoeopathy but also uses homoeopathy as its basis. Nothing, as I hope is clear to you, could be further from the truth.
Cheers --
John
2009/7/6 Shannon & Bob Nelson >
--
------------------------------------------------------------------

"Nothing is so fatal to the progress of the human mind as to suppose that our views of science are ultimate; that there are no mysteries in nature; that our triumphs are complete; and that there are no new worlds to conquer."

— Sir Humphry Davy, in "An Account of some Galvanic Combinations", Philosophical Transactions 91 (1801), pp. 397–402 (as quoted by David Knight, Humphry Davy: Science and Power, Cambridge, 1998, p. 87)

[Shannon Nelson]

Hi John,

Once again I disagree with what you're saying below, but have not been
able to explain my reasons why. My attempted explanations made sense
to *me*, but since they don't to you, I dunno what else to do, and
don't have time to debate it. I think we have each made our points,
and will pretty much leave it to each reader to make their decisions.

If anyone *else* wants to ask for specific clarification of my thoughts
I will try again (tho am similarly unlikely to get my points across to
Joy--but would try once, if asked). I wish this weren't so difficult,
and at a different point in my life would be more tempted to pursue it
farther, but honestly just can't right now.

I guess I'll make one more attempt to restate some of my reasons for
disagreeing--which you may re-contradict if you're so inclined, and I
will then give you the last word.
1) Each uses symptoms correspondences, just different types of
symptoms.
2) Everything *except* method of choosing the remedy is the same.
Disagree 100%.
The chosen remedy can be evaluated by both methods; the "traditional"
method can (in many cases) be used to evaluate the otherly-chosen
remedy.
And, everything except method of choosing the remedy is the same.

Disagree.
(1) Both use symptom correspondences, just different areas of symptoms.
(2) Even in case such as choosing by "accident" or muscle testing or
whatever, to "not-use" a principle is completely different from
"overlooked, misunderstood, evaded, misquoted, and ignored."

Sorry, gotta move on!

Best wishes!
Shannon

[John Harvey]

Hi, Shannon --
Yes... and if you'd like to sum up homoeopathicity and "being like a swan" as both being "symptom correspondences", then I accept that. But, whereas homoeopathicity is "symptom correspondence" (of one kind), symptom correspondence is not homoeopathicity. To put it simply, your argument appears to be of the form:

H is SC;
S is SC; therefore,
------------
S is H.

Clearly an argument of that form doesn't have legs.
Okay -- but the different "method of choosing the remedy" was my entire point.

Even if Sankaranism happens to hit upon the patient's homoeopathic remedy, my argument is that it does not do so on the basis of known pathogenesis and full case-taking (the only method that's reliable), but upon the "symptom correspondence", as you put it, between a non-pathological action or thought of the patient (one not necesssarily ever produced in any proving) and whatever sympathetic correspondence it suggests in terms of remedy classifications based solely upon Sankaran's pronouncements rather that upon any replicable observation, let alone from pathogenetic trials.

The weakness in that relationship is not that it is a primary method whose result is then examined carefully and compared with other possibilities for its greatest homoeopathicity to the patient, which would be a far stronger method; but that it is the only method of arriving at a result, and there is no self-correction in the process.

This is partly because the interview has been wasted in diving down rabbit-holes rather than obtaining a full case in the manner Hahnemann developed; partly because Sankaranists have turned to Sankaranism as an alternative to studying materia medica; and most critically because the Sankaran method is not at all fazed by lack of a pathogenesis: it simply presumes that the kind of "symptom correspondence" it uses is sufficient. No comparison possible, and none necessary!
Yes, I should have said "or" rather than "and".

Cheers --

John
--
------------------------------------------------------------------

"Nothing is so fatal to the progress of the human mind as to suppose that our views of science are ultimate; that there are no mysteries in nature; that our triumphs are complete; and that there are no new worlds to conquer."

— Sir Humphry Davy, in "An Account of some Galvanic Combinations", Philosophical Transactions 91 (1801), pp. 397–402 (as quoted by David Knight, Humphry Davy: Science and Power, Cambridge, 1998, p. 87)