Minutus

Leaving aside any misinterpretation of homoeopathic suppression as curative in any particular case raised here: what Hahnemann intended by § 210 is possible to understand only through the concept of the capacity of an illness or a remedy to derange health.
It is possible for an illness, as for a remedy, to institute in a person traits that seem admirable: quietness, long-suffering patience, meditative consideration of options and ideas, rapidity of thought. Think of coffee and the derangement it induces, which students actually use to advantage; or marijuana and the one it does, which the restless use to rest their minds. Think of the painlessness induced by morphine. These are not exceptional states; and all mirror states of natural illness found in patients every day.
Once that derangement has been removed, whatever it has been covering over by its very nature or through simple suppression -- frustration, impatience, preference for action before thought, or perhaps preference for deep, slow contemplation -- may emerge.
Such traits are not necessarily connected with individual health at all, but may be perfectly adapted to survival in the society, circle, or family that has most influenced the individual's behaviour (using behaviour broadly to denote patterns of thought and emotional response as well as of action).
If the homoeopathic removal of psora has left such traits in the now relatively healthy individual, it's possible to see, there may be room still for him or her to have a more fulfilling life if the traits that were once but are no longer suitable are susceptible to being replaced by ones that enable him or her to adapt most readily to his or her present environment.
That may be a matter of simply developing habits of greater appropriateness. Some schools of homoeopathic thought contend that the state imposed upon the individual by strong influences (think, for instance, of post-traumatic stress disorders) is itself a dynamic state susceptible to homoeopathic removal (possibly, but not surely, via the remedy's awakening of a broader awareness in that person). And it may be so.
Chris, what have I omitted?
Cheers --
John
2009/12/12 Shannon & Bob Nelson >

All pertinent and interesting points! Joy, I meant to say that I was discussing the intent of Hahnemann's footnote (131) to § 210 rather than the aphorism itself, and I take it that you were discussing that too, and it's a useful way to look at what he was doing there; thanks.

Kerry and Tanya, it's interesting to consider what you've raised here in the context of the propensity of primates (including humans) to do exactly the same thing, establishing dominance hierarchies and dominant and submissive behaviours that, though they will reflect perhaps to some extent a pathological view of the place of the self in the pack, will very much -- if the animal is to manage in society, or even, in the wild, to survive -- also reflect a realistic view of the self's place in the pack due to circumstances that cannot by any stretch be attributed to a dynamic disease process in that individual -- circumstances including match or mismatch between capacities (skills, gifts) and society; the socioeconomic circumstances of the family of birth or adoption; and the value that the society places on children and on family life as opposed to, for instance, a capacious appetite for entertainment or societal status. The place of all such values and influences in determining the quality of life of an individual animal must, if that animal is to do well, be matched by a compatible choice by that animal as to what matters are of greatest importance in his or her life at any moment.

None of these choices in mental, emotional, and actual behaviour can validly be ascribed to dynamic illness as opposed to mere circumstance.

That said, it is interesting to consider what may be possible. For instance, a person who enters a marriage that slowly turns abusive and who because of that increasingly avoids conflict and practises appeasement thereby seems commonly to reward and fuel the abuse, and thus to exacerbate the very circumstances responsible for the apparently adaptive behaviour. In such circumstances, when it might fairly be judged by that person him- or herself (on a good day) that the survival-oriented behaviour has arisen through mistaken judgement of what will serve him or her best in the long term, it would seem reasonable to take that person's own judgement into account in assessing whether the apparently adaptive behaviour has been based on fear out of proportion to the early circumstances of the marriage, and to prescribe accordingly.

Any thoughts?

John
2009/12/12 Kerry