and I agree, there are lots of similarities in pyschoanalysis and homeopathy--but the BIG DIFFERENCE is INTENTION.

Recovering repressed memories is not the goal of homeopathic treatment. Homeopathy doesn't even depend on this to take place to be effective. It just so happens that in this case, making a connection between a haunting daily event taking place on a dream level and a haunting (practically daily) event on a memory/reality level became relevant to the homeopathic case taking because it brought the patient to an important realization:

that is, the patient realized when the physical problems began, and how they have continued, for the length of time they continued.

It also gave me a few good rubrics:

-a history of sexual abuse
-mono--or terrific physical weakness and lack of resistance--resulting from this abuse, whenever it occured;
-continued behaviour AS IF the patient were still being abused when the abuse situation was over AND forgotten.

What I needed to do my job is very different from what any psychoanalyst would need to do theirs.

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...and deliverance has many faces<br />but grace<br />is an aquaintance of mine

psychoanalytically, the dream actually intends to assist in repressing or minimizing the traumatic event. in this instance, your patient appears to have repressed the memory "for many years." in this situation, the dream's defensive efforts may be summarized with the feeling your patient may have on waking, 'thank goodness, it was only a dream.' this is a 'typical dream,' a prime example of which is the 'examination dream,' in which one fails the test but wakes up with relief, saying, 'thank goodness...."

in drawing the connection between childhood events and adult symptoms, the analyst is essentially displaying the 'similarity' between the two, effectively neutralizing the traumatic effects of the former. the experiential component of this process is extremely powerful, but the therapeutic component is in my view not as direct nor as reliable as it is in homeopathy. boyer's article (cited in my last post) is the best case illustration of the richness of the analytic/therapeutic process i have ever seen, for anyone interested.

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"The need to perform adjustments for covariates...weakens the findings." BMJ Clinical Evidence: Mental Health, (No. 11), p. 95.... It's that simple, guys: bad numbers make bad science.