Homeopath says it’s patients fault they are ill
Posted by gimpy on April 28, 2008
Homeopaths like to present themselves as a caring profession with their talk of holistic medicine and treating the person not the disease. One might also be inclined to think that they themselves are of sensitive disposition as their innocent bleatings grow ever louder as their ideas come under attack. Indeed I have often said that I believe homeopaths are fundamentally decent people. However, a recent lecture announcement questions the assumption that homeopaths are well meaning if querulous quacks. This lecture is billed as “REVEALING THE INNER CONFLICT” and the lecturer, Liz Lalor, will:
present[s] a body of work which is new and interesting. Liz will teach homeopaths and students alike how to listen for the mental and emotional dialogue within the patient and how then to use the Mind and Delusions sections of their repertory to best advantage.
Far from being the well meaning pseudo-psychoanalysis (if there is such a thing as a pseudo-pseudo-science) one might expect it seems this lecture exposes the dark heart of homeopathy. The belief that the patient brings their pain, suffering and disease on themselves. It’s not their environment, their genes or bad luck that causes disease, it is the patients state of mind.
In homeopathy, if we can delve into the original crisis that created the first emotional stance or psyche, we immediately become aware of how the person has constructed their self and their presenting disease around the Mind’s Delusions. Once we have the Mind or Delusion rubric, we have the cure for the crisis and conflict of the person’s existence and subsequent disease. Homeopaths have often underestimated the power of the insight that lies behind the psyche, the emotional disturbance or the Theme of a Constitutional case, which is the connecting link between the physical, emotional and mental disturbance.
The proposed format will include video cases to illustrate Liz’s methodology.
Each case presented believes deep within their own self that they deserve the disease state or the emotional pain they are currently suffering.
Liz expands on this theory in more detail in the supplemental material to the advert. First off she makes the staggering assertion that the cases she present
believe[s] deep within their own self that they deserve the disease state or the emotional pain they are currently suffering.
before issuing a
challenge to all homoeopaths is to find me a patient with a serious illness - whether it is Mental, Emotional or Physical - who does not believe they have caused their own demise. I know if you don’t know how to look for and find that Disturbance inside of the patient you will not find the interplay of the Simillimum; that interplay is our homoeopathic philosophy of ‘like cures like.’ If we as homoeopaths do not know how to find the ‘eye of the storm;’ we will not find the Simillimum.
So much for any pretence at being caring and on the side of the patient. Liz seems to be proposing the idea that the patient is responsible for their illness and it is the homeopaths jobs to point this out (while charging for the privilege). Liz goes onto expand this idea:
There is always interplay with the correct remedy. ‘Like cures Like’ ruminates with energy; that energy is the Simillimum. Inherent in the medical pathology and somatic presentation of our most serious diseases like Cancers and all the Auto Immune diseases is internal conflict and destruction. If you want to treat patients with these serious diseases and be able to cure, you have to be able to find the disturbance which caused the destruction. The reason why it is important to know the disturbance in a case is because any severe disease state is always a reflection of our deep sub conscious struggles; our inner angst.
Disturbance within a patient will cause such conflict and pain that it will eventuate in a physical illness or mental and emotional illness which is reflective of the intensity of the conflict. Do we know how to find the ‘Like to Like’ energy interconnecting the Mental disturbance; the Emotional Disturbance and the Physical disease? In homoeopathy we do not treat the disease we treat the person; but the Simillimum is the remedy which is able to contain the same intensity of conflict and destruction to match the disease presentation. Our patients with Ulcerative Colitis, Crohn’s, Rheumatism, and Cancer to list just a few, all ruminate with the energy of conflict.
If you can’t identify the inherent conflict you will not be able to help your patient; it is as simple as that. If you as a homoeopath do not know how to look for the inner conflict in the case you will not find the Simillimum.
l cannot be alone in finding this a deeply unsavoury and unsympathetic way of approaching illness. I wonder if the customers paying £60/hour know that that apparently kind and sympathetic homeopath listening to their problems is really thinking ‘it’s your fault you’re ill’.
April 28, 2008 at 11:04 pm
It has been re-cast into more modern language, Gimpy, but this is straight from the James Tyler Kent school of homeopathy.
A selection of Kent quotes:
Substitute “inner conflict” or “emotional disturbance” for “internal sickness” and you have this mad woman’s schtick, essentially.
Kent, who was a religious mystic, believed that the homeopathic remedies were really “spiritual” therapies; the more dilute they were, the more purely spiritual and hence the more effective. It is completely barking, of course, but Kent is considered the greatest homeopathic teacher after Hahnemann. Kent was really a key influence on modern British homeopathy, and the taste for “ultramolecular” (beyond the Avogadro limit) dilutions really comes from him. More about Kent here.
April 28, 2008 at 11:25 pm
Thats not an uncommon view among alt-med types. Its not even confined to homeopaths.
I knew some nurses who worked in a cancer centre and that was exactly their belief.
I think it was their way of dealing with facing that disease every day and compensated for the lack of control of the medical staff.
April 29, 2008 at 8:33 am
Draust, homeopathy is like a religion isn’t it? Reinterpreting ancient texts for modern times and all that.
Bill you are of course right that this view is rife within the CAM community and not exclusive to homeopathy. I suppose a lot of people have trouble with the idea that ultimately a lot of illness and disease is caused by factors beyond our control and most which we can never control.
I’ve been thinking a bit about the parallels between a lot of CAM and fundamentalist religious teachings in the context of evolution. Both require and encourage a dogmatic belief in the writings of scholars ancient and modern that is often contradicted by modern biology. In the case of creationists they believe the bible is true so science must be wrong. Homeopaths are perhaps more subtle, they try and use the language of science (see Shpalman on Milgrom’s abuse of Quantum theory) to explain Hahnemann’s writings in a modern context. However, I believe this isn’t their greatest abuse of science, it lies not in trying to justify the memory of water, like cures like or even Kent’s mystical meanderings but in their denial of Darwin’s great idea. It is their belief that we live in harmony with nature, that it provides tools and medication out of altruism and benign benevolence. Their insistence that natural=good and synthetic=bad. The outrageous notion that it is better to stimulate the immune system by exposure to pathogens rather than to antigen derived from that pathogen and presented in controlled circumstances. They do not seem to understand that it we are a product of nature red in tooth and claw, the survival of our species depends not on harmony and living with nature but on living long enough to have children and ensure their survival to have children of their own in the face of other species, like these pathogens, that to them we are foodstuffs, hosts or rivals to the survival of their species. True there is a great deal of cooperation between species but ultimately our genes care not for any top down rationale we may care to use to describe their action, they are simply blind replicators that, if we indulge ourselves by ascribing motive, care only about their own survival. As ultimately as we are and as we do.
April 29, 2008 at 8:53 am
Wow. Won’t try for Gimpy’s eloquence but as well as religion I’ve always thought alt. med. has a heavy investment in an arts-based aesthetic. It’s all very romantic era Wordsworthian ‘let nature be your teacher/nurse/mother’ (GaleG you may remember is an English major). I think even without big Pharma these people would still be decrying modern medicine because the idea of double blind clinical trials is just so much more *ugly* than mystical little white pills.
April 29, 2008 at 9:06 am
It’s not eloquence so much as caffeine induced word splurge. But, yes, there is a large dose of Romanticism in homeopathy to go along with the homeopathic dose of science. I think homeopaths often see themselves as wise sages dispensing sympathetic cures in the form of sugar pills inspired by the artistic interpretation of the customers mental state (probably while sitting on a grassy tussock while Hares gaze at them in adoration and doves alight on their shoulders). Of course they do subscribe to the ludicrous notion that it is that mental state that informs the disease which rather detracts from sympathy.
April 29, 2008 at 9:34 am
They sell ineffective ‘remedies’ containing no active ingredient, offer homeopathic malaria-prophylaxis-that-isn’t, hold an AIDS symposium and now they want to tell us it’s our fault we are ill. Nice.
April 29, 2008 at 10:10 am
The parallels with religion are extremely strong, Gimpy. Indeed, back in Kent’s day (late 19th and early 20th century) the US homeopathic movement was pretty much synonymous with the Swedenborgian church, though I suspect modern 1st world homeopaths these days are commonly sort of New Age mystic vitalists rather than members of organised religions.
Anyway, the religious parallels live on. Apart from the sacred text, to which the meaning of “literal and unalterable truth” is ascribed by Believers, there is the presence of a priestly caste (the homeopaths), who interpret the sacred texts for followers and who by ritual action (the dilution and magic shaking) turn everyday objects (water and traces of other things) into something of magical powers (the remedy). Compare transubstantiation.
Indeed, I am sometimes surprised that Catholicism hasn’t gone after the homeopaths for stealing their act.
April 29, 2008 at 10:34 am
Indeed, Draust, indeed. In fact I can see parallels between the belief that the patient is responsible for their illness and that of Original Sin. Both assert that ones inherent disease or sin can be overcome through ones actions, however, I feel the Catholics are great deal more humane in that they believe that a simple ritual, that of baptism, is required to absolve one of this taint. Homeopaths regard the removal of the taint as a time consuming and costly, but profitable to them, process. Say what you like about the Catholics but they have long moved away from the notion that paying money to the clergy is enough to excuse ones sins.
April 29, 2008 at 11:30 am
I’ll resubmit:
You are misinterpreting somewhat the subject of the lecture. Liz Laylor is presenting some cases where the patients themselves have a very strong belief that they have brought the illness upon themselves. This is useful information in finding a remedy. She is presenting ways of getting to that information as patients won’t necessarily volunteer this attitude to their illness. In some cases you CAN bring illness upon yourself for example by submitting yourself to exposure on a mountain without sufficient protection. These cases have not done such a thing, but they strongly believe that somehow they HAVE caused it. This is therefore a delusion.
April 29, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Homeopathy4health, that was my initial impression of Ms Laylor’s lecture but a closer reading of the text and examples belies this, in particular the lines
If you want to treat patients with these serious diseases and be able to cure, you have to be able to find the disturbance which caused the destruction. The reason why it is important to know the disturbance in a case is because any severe disease state is always a reflection of our deep sub conscious struggles; our inner angst.
shows that there is a great deal more to it than the patient simply believing they are ill. It is clear that homeopaths believe the patients mental state informs the disease whereas I suspect most medics would argue (except in the case of depression and related disorders) that the patients mental state is affected by the trauma of dealing with the disease, amongst other things such as familial and societal support structures.
PS I also recall you, and others, implying that pv’s personality traits were responsible for his son’s condition on another thread.
April 29, 2008 at 1:29 pm
“…challenge to all homoeopaths is to find me a patient with a serious illness - whether it is Mental, Emotional or Physical - who does not believe they have caused their own demise.”
Demise?? As in, in common usage, ‘death or decease’( I take it we’re not discussing arcane legal niceties of conveyancing or transfer of sovereignty, less common usages)? She must be thinking of having a seance!
April 29, 2008 at 7:33 pm
I guess she means “downfall” rather than “death”. Odd choice of word, though. It sounds even better in German - Untergang.
Talking of words, Whenever I hear homeopaths babbling about the “Simillimum”, I can’t help thinking of Prof JRR Tolkien. Strangely appropriate in a way, since Tolkien was a devout Catholic and his works contain many of the same ideas about “healing through spiritual force” as Kentian-style homeopathy.
Of course, Tolkien’s oeuvre, while widely read and even taught in Universities, is an admitted work of imagination. Whilst homeopathy is a work of imagination, but hasn’t noticed.
April 29, 2008 at 11:34 pm
I’m sure you’re right, Dr Aust, but this kind of carelessness and inaccuracy irritates me and prompts uncharitable thoughts about the kind of thinking - or lack of same - that produces such statements.
April 30, 2008 at 7:39 am
“…challenge to all homoeopaths is to find me a patient with a serious illness - whether it is Mental, Emotional or Physical - who does not believe they have caused their own demise.”
That should be a fairly easy challenge. But of course no homeopath will take it because homeopaths never argue with each other. In any real scientific discipline, a challenge along those lines would have people rushing to their notes and files to see whether they could prove this claim to be false. But homeopaths, indeed CAM practitioners in general, simply accept without question anything that any other homeopath tells them to be true.
April 30, 2008 at 7:52 am
But homeopaths, indeed CAM practitioners in general, simply accept without question anything that any other homeopath tells them to be true.
and disregard without question anything a critic tells them to be is false.
It really is like arguing with the more dogmatic religious types.
Draust, unbelievably and beyond parody, Liz Lalor has apparently written essays on the personalities of Tolkein’s characters from a homeopathic perspective.
April 30, 2008 at 8:05 am
I’m afraid I have to out myself as one of those who simply couldn’t get on with Lord of the Rings, my response being similar to that attributed to Hugo Dyson http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings :
“On one memorable occasion a small group had gathered in Lewis’s rooms and were listening to Tolkien read the last installment of The Lord of the Rings. They were sitting there puffing on pipes and sipping tea when Hugo Dyson, who had been lounging on a sofa and growing increasingly bored with the proceedings, suddenly exclaimed: “Oh, fuck! Not another elf!”
* As quoted in C.S. Lewis: Creator of Narnia (2005) by Michael White, p. 152
April 30, 2008 at 8:27 am
Claire, I suspect you are approaching it with the wrong attitude. While it is undeniably an impressive feat of intellect and story telling in its inspired fusion of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic mythologies to create a modern mythos with an admirably academic attention to detail in creating languages and histories it is best approached as Star Wars for academics.
Like Star Wars, and for that matter Wagner’s Ring Cycle, it best approached with an admiration for bombast and bluster and a willingness to overlook the cardboard characterisation, the clunky dialogue and interminable poetic interludes (which no doubt inspired much of the clunk in the second Star Wars trilogy).
April 30, 2008 at 8:44 am
“Star Wars for academics” haha!
to paraphrase (reportedly) Hugo Dyson:
“Oh, fuck! Not another light sabre!”
I think my wrong attitude is probably incurable.
April 30, 2008 at 11:32 am
Good grief…. Sadly (or perhaps thankfully, since I wouldn’t really want to think my Univ library was paying money to subscribe to this) I can’t access the “full text article”… though it is published by a respectable academic publishing house. But simply the idea is…. well, beyond parody, as you say.
Of course, it is just another example of the inadvertently comic high seriousness with which homeopaths regard their cult. The “Emperor’s New Clothes”, in spades.
The real eye-waterer is that this is listed as an actual “journal”, though it is really a collection of essays about homeopathy, written needless to say by enthusiasts.
Sometimes I find it hard to disagree with the proposition that “there are too many academic journals”. I once had a Head of Department whose mantra about academic science journals was:
Of course, this was really an RAE “try harder you slackers” message, and I thought he was a hectoring bully. But in the context of AltMed loonery and the proliferation of journals devoted to it the idea takes on a different significance.
I imagine that since he was telling us this (a decade plus ago) the total number of journals has increased substantially, so it is probably “…the bottom four thousand” by now.
April 30, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Dr Aust’s post on ‘peer reviewed’ altmed journals is well worth reading esp. for those without third level science education (such as I) who might be bamboozled into thinking that because a piece of research has been published in a peer reviewed journal, it must be kosher. This is a trick I feel Sense about Science missed in their pamphlet on peer review - http://www.senseaboutscience.org.uk/pdf/ShortPeerReviewGuide.pdf
‘Is it peer reviewed?’ is a start, but what kind of peers? what quality journal?
April 30, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Thanks for the recommendation, Claire.
Talking of elves / elfs … have no great problem with people believing in whatever they want on their own time / dime.
What I object to is when loonies like the homeopaths demand that they should get this claptrap on the National ‘Elf Service/