Minutus

I sat at quite a few seminars and courses by Sankaran, Scholten and some of their students who now teach. I read their books, watched their DVDs.
So I tried to use what they were teaching.
I need to differentiate between their methods and their Materia Medica.
I was never able to get anywhere with the methods, as clear as it seemed during the classes. Simply too many assumptions, classifications and pigeon-holing for me: I could never be certain in which series or column to put the symptoms and signs, what "level" they were (Sankaran); deciding which miasm is already at times difficult with 5 ones, let alone with all the others, except for the Acute miasm.
I felt that it would be guesswork to try, even though I am fully aware of some of my colleagues being able to practice that way with very much success....but not me.
Yet, when arriving at a remedy the "usual" way and checking it/them in their Materia Medicas, I was and still am amazed at the precision and the "spot-on" description of the patient's situations; at times, I read some paragraphs to the patients, the reaction is often "yes, that is exactly me!!!".
I have also been able to "retro-fit" the cases: once done and the prescription made, I have looked up the case "backwards" and yes, the remedies generally fit well with the classifications of both authors.
Interesting.
But here is a case, which I will have to be vague about as I do not have permission to publish: this patient's ordeal started with a poorly done detoxification, with aggravation of all symptoms and signs. After going from one practitioner to another and receiving many treatments that made the situation even worse, this patient was then treated by 3 different well known homeopaths, some teaching in very well known schools.
One prescription was an animal remedy recently proved, based on the Kingdoms; one was a very bizarre mineral based on total misunderstanding of Scholten and one was a plant (root) based again on misinterpretation of Sankaran. Checking the case with those remedies did not make any sense, at least to me....
Each and every treatment made the situation worse to the extent that now the patient cannot even touch any bottle of any potency of any remedy without reacting; even the apparently best indicated remedies, although ameliorating some symptoms, terribly aggravate others.
Which brings me back to the very first sentences that both Sankaran and Scholten say during their classes: their systems are not to be used without a full understanding and a lot of experience of lets call it "conventional homeopathy"; it is not for the beginners, for the unexperienced and even with lots of experience, should not be used indiscriminately.
Dr. J. Rozencwajg, NMD.
"The greatest enemy of any science is a closed mind"
Visit www.drjoesnaturalmedicine.blogspot.com for articles and information.

Wow, that's sobering!
If you're able to say a bit more:
--how does a detoxification go so wrong--was it a matter of being too
aggressive, or something else?
--Do you mean you feel that those three wrong remedies caused more
problems than three "regularly mis-prescribed" wrong remedies would
have? i can't imagine why that would be... Or was the posology so
aggress, *or* the patient already so compromised--how does it seem to
you?
--What are your thoughts about how he might get past this--"tincture
of time", or ?

Shannon

Detox: there is a logical way to do it, called organotherapy, drainage and detoxification as in my book (wink, wink....) and a total hapahzard way, gut cleansing, liver drainage, whatever in any order and even worse when stuff like heavy metals stored almost safely in tissues are freed in the circulation but cannot be eliminated.
Any mis-prescribed remedy, when taken by a patient already in poor shape, will be dramatic; my thinking is that what we have is the accumulation of many poor treatments, poorly conceived, poorly understood, not a single "guilty" part.
How to get out of it.............I wish I knew........I am trying to think outside the square, find an inroad that would start an amelioration with at least a tolerable aggravation and progress from there, so far no success and a very angry patient who lashes out at me..........really a difficult situation, nobody is a happy camper here.
Dr. J. Rozencwajg, NMD.
"The greatest enemy of any science is a closed mind"
Visit www.drjoesnaturalmedicine.blogspot.com for articles and information.

Okay, I understand--and you poor guys, both of you...
One very hesitant thought (and you will know if it's irrelevant), I
have become more and more "enamored", let's say, of the great value
that "adrenal support" can be, in a wide variety of situations. My
usual start is a specific vitamin B formula (needs a very particular
balance of B5, B3, and some others), and/or some herbs I've found
helpful. I know there must be other useful approaches too, but for all
of my folks except one, that's been adequate. (That "one" is a whole
other deal...) I have assumed that adrenal exhaustion is behind--or at
least is playing a significant role--that kind of hypersensitivity?

Shannon

Everything is exhausted in this patient...............
But the point of my post was to show that Sankaran and Scholten methods DO have usefulness when used properly by people who do know what they are doing, and at the same time can be extremely harmful when used as shortcuts without understanding.
Dr. J. Rozencwajg, NMD.
"The greatest enemy of any science is a closed mind"
Visit www.drjoesnaturalmedicine.blogspot.com for articles and information.

Agree with this totally - these are specialist methods-

They definitely ARE useful; used properly and with close adherence to what the authors meant - and after exhausting the tried and tested method of grunt case taking....

Regular case taking improves the chances of any one finding the correct remedy - since it takes the element of speculation out of the equation as much as possible ( not totally out, as most of us know) - whereas in the hands of knowledgeable prescribers - Sankarans or any such method might be equally good

--- In minutus@yahoogroups.com, "Dr. J. Rozencwajg, NMD." wrote:

I also agree, I think the problem is there are a lot of schools where Sankaran and Scholten's methods are taught too early on in the training, people come into homeopathy as evangelists of these methods without having the "conventional" homeopathic grounding first.

Vera

there is so much subjectivity in case taking and i think
we are lacking in meaningful training to monitor our own
prejudices. and there are other subjective factors that
creep into how we hear a case or take it in. we get some
admonitions but then are left to our own personal devices
to apply them. our own personalities also come into play
in how we relate to a patient. the results are often not
stellar due to this. homeopathy is not unique with these
problems, but that, of course, is the arena of concern here.
tanya

Personally I still find the guidelines as given by Hahnemann about case taking as stellar... given that the system IS still more dependent on symptoms got thru proving, than using other methods, for comparing the materia medica symptoms with those of the actual patient, the case taking should basically follow Hahnemann's guidelines as much as possible...
And I agree with you, there still is subjectivity in case taking, and cannot be avoided... even though trying to be as objective as possible pays dividends in getting an uncluttered case sheet...
--- In minutus@yahoogroups.com, "tamarque@..." wrote:

Hello H good to 'see' you here

When I used to have students sit in with me I sometimes asked them not to ask questions (except the initial, 'tell us why you have come to see us") but just observe and then we would discuss the observations after the client had gone. Sometimes these observations were incredibly judgemental, other times extremely succinct and pertaining to the case to such a degree as to make further questions unnecessary. Not that I would suggest this method all the time but observation is crucial.

I think you can avoid subjectivity but maybe mention a few examples so we can talk about them. Here are a few I can think of

. you are too sympathetic and become too involved with your client, thus you do not observe objectively
. you are only treating friends and relatives and cannot be objective enough or they won't open up enough to you
. you associate too much with the client's remedy
. the case is not going well so you begin to withdraw from the client's needs
. you have problems with your own health and become too distracted and cannot 'listen' adequately to the client
. the case isn't moving along and you wait too long in referring the client to another homeopath
. the client is taking a lot of allopathic drugs and you get over concerned about this without going forward with the case
. you concentrate too much on giving advice to the client which can be both invasive and inappropriate
. you become attracted to the client
. you get too anxious about finding the correct remedy and the client picks up on this
. you let the client control the consultation and you do not get the required information about the case
. you are too emotional about the client's health instead of objectively incorporating the symptoms into the case taking
. the client has come to see you only because they have been told to and they are uncooperative
. the client wants to buy you an expensive gift as a thank you
. you just cannot relate to each other
. you make judgments about the client's lifestyle
. you feel intimidated by the client for some reason.

Every Homeopath has a problem with at least one of these aspects of client/prescriber relationship. Try to eliminate these problems within your practice. Recognising that there might be a problem is half the problem solved.

Joy
Personally I still find the guidelines as given by Hahnemann about case taking as stellar... given that the system IS still more dependent on symptoms got thru proving, than using other methods, for comparing the materia medica symptoms with those of the actual patient, the case taking should basically follow Hahnemann's guidelines as much as possible...

And I agree with you, there still is subjectivity in case taking, and cannot be avoided... even though trying to be as objective as possible pays dividends in getting an uncluttered case sheet...

--- In minutus@yahoogroups.com , "tamarque@..." wrote: