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bwv11 · #6 (**permalink**) 5th January 2003, 05:05 AM

First things first. Psychoactive medications such as Prozac etc have their place in the management of emotional disorders. Since they tend to work quickly, when they work at all, they are good for managing emotional crises that interfere substantially with the quality of life and with the ability to function. Depending how severe your emotional disturbance, they may be necessary to sustain you during the time your homeopath finds the appropriate remedy for you, and as that remedy begins to work. The goal, however, would be eventually to discontinue the medication, under supervision, as homeopathic treatment begins to resolve your difficulties. A major problem with homeopathic treatment is the difficulty finding a good homeopath, but its advantage is that, when successful, it cures your symptoms, makes them ‘go away,’ and doesn’t just suppress them. If you are fortunate, a short course of treatment with allopathic drugs may be all you’ll ever need, but many, many patients only get off of them for brief intervals, if at all.

There are other measures that may also help, that are consistent, imho, with homeopathic treatment, either concurrently, or before, or during breaks from, or after completion of homeopathic treatment. For more detail see my comments in the thread, “Bipolar/Anxiety Disorder…can homeopathy help?” (last post December 2002).

Second things second. This should probably get kicked into the Coffee Shop, but O well, here goes anyway. David and Shirley and John, apart from being a materialist, I would respectfully suggest that treatment, especially anything resembling psychotherapy in method or objectives, should not establish a particular set of beliefs, to which the patient must subscribe if he is to be deemed truly cured. It is certainly not stretching credulity too far, to assume there are a few happy atheists out there, or a few of the devout who are miserable. The trick of the therapist, and I would include the homeopath in this, is to assist the patient in finding balance and peace in his life, regardless his beliefs, attitudes, opinions…. I’m not sure you would disagree with any of this, but your comments raise the concern.

As for personal or professional experience, that can lead in many directions. For example, when a patient tells me I’ve turned his life around, or his wife tells me I’ve saved their marriage, and all I’ve done is tell them to eliminate dairy from their diet, then I am witness to the effects of essentially toxic substances (materia) on mental health; their effects on physical well-being (cancer, heart disease, etc) are better documented but no more real.

In short, your observations, or mine for that matter, don’t translate neatly into verities—for if they did, then how would we reconcile the marked contrast in the conclusions I draw from my experience, compared to the conclusions you draw from yours? All observations must be interpreted. For this reason, I also mistrust ‘scientific’ investigations and scientific method, because these experiments must be designed and interpreted by human beings. Honest inquiry, common sense, logical debate, and a commitment to scrupulous analysis of results override any statistical or observational or experimental methodology, in my book. Do our findings make sense? Is our defence of them thorough and logical?

For my part, I can’t understand how you can look at the color and drama and scope of galaxies and nebulae, planets and storms, oceans and sunsets, smiles and gestures, the intricacies of the biosphere and the intricate precision binding one species to another, and the enormous variety of the tiniest particles, without reeling at the incredible creativity of the physical universe. All—the most distant and the largest as well as the nearest and the smallest—built out of the same few hundred elementary particles. This is no ‘mere’ pool table. It is a pool table fit, metaphorically, for the gods, and is in my book quite capable of producing emotions of ecstasy and doom and everything in between.

Best regards to all,

Bach

[ 05. January 2003, 05:07: Message edited by: bwv11 ]