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’.
draust said
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.
Bill said
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.
gimpy said
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.
Sophie said
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.
gimpy said
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.
jdc325 said
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.
draust said
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.
gimpy said
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.
homeopathy4health said
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.
Jyoti said
Thank you H4H…a sane voice in a vitriolic tirade against homeopathy…
gimpy said
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.
Claire said
“…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!
Dr Aust said
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.
Claire said
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.
M Simpson said
“…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.
gimpy said
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.
Claire said
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
gimpy said
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).
Claire said
“Star Wars for academics” haha!
to paraphrase (reportedly) Hugo Dyson:
“Oh, fuck! Not another light sabre!”
I think my wrong attitude is probably incurable.
Dr Aust said
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.
Claire said
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?
Dr Aust said
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/
Dr. Narayana Prasad Pillai said
Have anyone here tried homeopathy? why don’t you try hom. medication for some relatively common diseases? you don’t have to fear,because it won’t do harm since there is no medicine in it..
Don’t talk about any subject unless you have experienced it, you could be wrong. Ask people who have been benefitted by homeopathy, be unbiased in your thinking and the only way is to try homeopathy on oneself. millions of people cannot be fooled by a psuedoscience. happy discovery…
Chris said
Have you ever tried to jump off a building just because gravity is just a theory?
It is up to you to show that homeopathy works better than placebo. Have you ever tried to do that?
Mojo said
“millions of people cannot be fooled…”
I’ll have to stop you there.
Mojo said
Attempting to treat delusions with homoeopathy sounds like a classic example of similia similibus curentur.
Narayana Prasad Pillai said
you only have a superficial understanding of similia similibus curentur. don’t try to argue about something unless you know it well.
Dr. Narayana Prasad Pillai said
i have tried jumping off buildings when i was a kid, but the buildings were only one story high. just like jumping from smaller buildings try homeopathy for smaller diseases less serious diseases.And the next question about the placebo effect.. placebo comes from the word placere ie, to please. blank medicine given to please patients are called placebo. they get the impression that they are getting medicines and then they feel better. to get placebo effect you should first believe that you are getting medicine and what happens next is our auto suggestion faculty gives us the impression that we will get better and then we start feeling better. but lets consider these examples about treating infants and animals. they don’t know what they are getting.. is it medicine or something else.. hen any effect that happens cannot be attributed to placebo effect. many homeopaths can attest to several brilliant cures of diseases of children and animals. I accept that the potency theory is one strange principle.. but higher potencies work.. maybe in the future we may find a better way to explain homeopathy.. in science so far nothing has been static, science is evolving.yesterday’s discovery may feel less complete unless we add new information to it. i would like to add one more thing i have been practicing homeopathy for the last 9yrs and i haven’t felt that homeopathy is bad, but the homeopaths are not able to practice true homeopathy.
Abiezer Coppe said
400,000 Medical doctors practise homeopathy in India and 13,000 new doctors qualify in homeopathy in that country every year. Homeopathic clinics in India treat severe pathologies
with success on a regular basis, pathologies untreatable by the dominant system of medicine. Dr A U Ramakrishnan (see his book The Homeopathic Treatment of Cancer) has treated many thousands of cases of cancer with homeopathy alone and with around a 70% success rate. Homeopathy is the second most widely used system of medicine in the world. The 2005 WHO report (suppressed) on
homeopathy acknowledged its clinical success. Homeopathy is a system of empirical medicine: the science and inductive method of Hahnemann’s Organon is also clear to those who study it.
Chris said
An argument from popularity is not evidence that homeopathy works. Claims of 70% success without supporting evidence is not proof that homeopathy works.
Also, you may want to look at the more recent statements by WHO.
Narayana Prasad Pillai said
Who said there are no supporting evidences? And who said that success can’t be used as a measure as evidence of one thing’s credibility? how does a scientist discover something? take for eg. newton discovered gravity when an apple fell on his head.. the same happened when he let go objects from a height.. he did his calculations and arrived at the theory of gravity… the process, first is accept the things that happen to be true and then try to explain with presently accepted theories.. if the present theories can’t explain what it is , that thing is set aside but not discarded and is analyzed with a modified form of the present theory.. why anyone can’t think about homeopathy in the same way.. we have evidence that homeopathy works what’s still lacking is the theory to explain it… lacking an explainable theory doesn’t make homeopathy a pseudoscience. We came to know about great many theories from analyzing the effects of many phenomena. and about the statements by WHO. they tried to explain homeopathy by their criteria disregarding the fundamental aspects of homeopathy.
treatment of grave pathological cases and removal of pathological lesions in disease conditions not amenable to modern medicine (where controlling the disease is the only thing they can do) is indeed a good evidence of the effectiveness of homeopathy.
regards
Prasad
andy said
Ahhhhhhhh, animals eh? of course, roll out the animals, they don’t suffer placebo issues do they, so therefore homeopathy must work…..
Oops, did the homeopathic vet tell the dead animal’s owner that it actually did die of lack of proper treatment, or did the homeopath not want to admit it and therefore the animal died of something else? unspecified…..and caused by lack of treatment.
Proof, proof, proof. Guess what though…there is only “real” proof against homeopathy, not for it.
Anyway……
Narayana Prasad Pillai said
there are curable and incurable diseases. i am speaking about curable diseases that could be treated by homeopathy.it’s true that pets can die from incurable diseases. Doesn’t the same happen with modern vets too? death from a curable disease is another issue. It’s due to lack of proper treatment. did you have such an experience or are you quoting someone? deaths in homeopathic or modern veterinarian practice doesn’t challenge the credibility of these systems. but the living ones do..
regards
prasad
Narayana Prasad Pillai said
there are curable and incurable diseases. i am speaking about curable diseases that could be treated by homeopathy.it’s true that pets can die from incurable diseases. Doesn’t the same happen with modern vets too? death from a curable disease is another issue. It’s due to lack of proper treatment. did you have such an experience or are you quoting someone? deaths in homeopathic or modern veterinarian practice doesn’t challenge the credibility of these systems. but the living ones do..
regards
A L J Hall said
I worked with a ‘homeopathic’ vefor a good many years. one interesting point is that ‘homeopathic vets have to be, under Veterinary medical law, a duly qualified weterinary surgeon to treat, diagnose or prescribe for any animal. This particular vet admitted to me that any competent and experieced vet could usually had a good idea from first impression whether an animal was likely to recover, remain the same or croak. Diagnostics usually confirmed the above. If the animal was likely to die without regular treatment the usual veterinary practice prevailed,, paliatives were administered in the second case and homeopathy was reserved for the third with the provisio that a return visit was on the cards uneffective. Two more points – only a veterinary surgeon can treat and prescribe for humans but a doctor cannot treat or diagnose for animals. A human homeopath needs no qualification at all – a week long course at the local tech is sufficient to brush up on the sciency bits ( make up your own sciency letters!!). A homeopath, unless medically qualifie, cannot diagnose human treatment – hence the necessity for Dr’s in homeopathic hospitals. It might be a wise move to visit youd local homeopathic vet than the yellow pages.
ALJH
Narayana Prasad Pillai said
Dear ALJH,
In india if one has to become a homeopathic doctor he/she has to complete 5and a half years in homeopathic graduation school and there is 3year MD or post graduation training, if the student is willing to apply for. It’s done in medical colleges where there are in patient and out patient departments. We homeopaths has to study everything a modern doctor has to study except their pharmacology. it’s true that there are institutions that offer diplomas after 1 or 2 weeks of intensive training. but homeopathy can’t be learned in that way. this might be good for a homeopath if he had training elsewhere. if one vet homeopath doesn’t have the courage to treat an animal with an illness serious enough, he can’t be sure how homeopathy cures.
warhelmet said
It is worth pointing out that the BHMS and DHMS qualifications are not recognised in all but a few countries. It is also worth pointing out that many of the “medical colleges” that offer these qualifications are not internationally recognised as medical schools at all. The postgraduate qualifications are not recognised either. The MD(Hom) qualification is particularly unfortunate as many homeopaths omit the (Hom) bit in an attempt to claim equivalence with qualified medical practitioners.
A L J Hall said
Indian homeopathy. Why then does India have some of the best cancer treatment centres in the world?? If homeopathy cures cancer we should be told and a 70% success rate should mean worldwide use and bu**er ‘big pharm’ Get out there BMA and research, report back and adopt PDQ.
OR – tell everyone you treat that they may have cancer and give the schpiel and, knowing the likelyhood of cancer is no more that 30%, a 70% cure rate is as expected. Fame and fortune await!! A bit like the drink for Chines ladies to ensure sons.
Blue tonic water for boys and pink for girls. $1HK each to be taken weekly for nine months, and a cast iron cash return if it didn’t work. Cost a penny a bottle to make. This is actually true and was one of the founding Hong Kong fortunes!! Bad science indeed!!
yesalem said
j.d.Hall or hollow, and the rest of Gimpy’s gang.
Ramakrishnan and his son were cordially invited often to lecture on their positive experience with cancer patients all over the world.
You are ignorant and you do not want to know. You tke a notice about a course in homeopathy of a segment and hang on it all the homeopathic training.
Your knowledge is nil, and you illustrate it with great skill.
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