Dear John,

Please don't say we'll never agree! I would hate to think nobody wants to learn anything. I am dying to understand this method as it has a certain ring of truth to it. Most of us ARE going around in circles!
People complain, "I can't break out of this vicious cycle...I do the same thing in every relationship...etc." You could almost say disease is a circle the patient lacks the freedom to break out of; something makes him repeat the same mistakes over and over, despite knowing better.

It seems logical to ask, as a first question, "What does this complaint make you do?" Then you get the modalities for "better for this, or better for that". It makes sense that at some point he's going to display the exact opposite behavior that he's known for, because of polarities, because disease is an over-reaction or an under-reaction, it's the center--or being centered--that the patient can't manage. So, the timid patient is presumed to have angry outbursts; so instead of asking, "Do you ever get angry?" you'd ask, "When do you get angry?" and this gives you the half-way mark of the cycle; then you'd ask, "What does the anger make you do?" Presumably, this would lead to the distressing segment (the "worse for" modalities) that lead back to the chief complaint--the top. My problem is that all I've ever been able to gather from a case, even using this method, is the "better for" and "worse for" and the polarity, and even though it looks good on paper, what I often get is: What does the headache make you do? Lie down in a dark room. Then what do you do then? Nothing I just lie there. End of story! Then you wind up relying on your old case-taking methods: What are the modalities? What was the etiology? What's the sensation? Are there any concomitants? What's your mental/emotional state? How is your thirst? and so on.
Before you know it, you've totally abandoned Herscu's cycles and segments in favor of the standard method of taking an acute case.

So, I would encourage you to stick around and offer any assistance you can as cases come up on the BB and tell us more about your own cases, etc. and maybe we'll all learn a little something as a result. For instance, maybe you could help us understand this very important point: a case has dozens of symptoms; how do you choose what's worthy of repertorization? Do you pick only those symptoms that repeat on more than one level?

Snoopy