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Editorial: Whitmont's legacyby Colin Wood

These cases and other articles together identify a sensibility within the field of healing that is not directly to do with schools, systems or theories.

One of its protagonists was Edward Christopher Whitmont, whose centenary falls on 5th December. In his practice, he touched on all of these: homeopathy, analytical psychology, anthroposophy, natural history, new physics, music, astrology, alchemy, mythology, gaia, dreamwork and Central European social, cultural and rabbinic history.

Most of the contributors to this issue were inspired by Whitmont early on in their journeys and went on to make their own paths. An important theme, then, will be different ways in which this work is being continued. Jane Cicchetti has written a book on dreamwork that treats of method and the language of materia medica. Kris Frank has long worked with astro-psychology in the homeopathic context. Rachel Koenig is a practitioner of oriental medicine who studied with Whitmont in a small regular group. Peter Morrell is a chronicler of the Hahnemanian tradition.

One idea they all may well hold in common is the belief that finding the good remedy is not in itself sufficient for cure, good idea though that is.

Categories: Editorials Keywords: editorial Remedies:

Edward Christopher Whitmont: a timelineby Colin Wood

Edward Weissberg was the only child born, after many miscarriages, on 5th December, 1912, to a couple who had migrated to Vienna from Poland (now Ukraine). His father was said to be an illiterate furrier who never managed to adapt to his new language and economic situation, who abused his wife and resented his son’s gifts. Later, while a student, he worked to support his parents.

At the Wasa grammar school, Latin and Greek were the order of the day but also German literature (among whom, Hahnemann’s contemporaries). While some of his teachers were 'sadists', his class teacher from the age of eleven was a devotee of Goethe and implemented a system of classroom democracy. Already as a youth, Edi

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Weissberg belonged to a social milieu that was passionate about Schubert piano playing, psychology, anthroposophy, socialism, walking in the Alps and the thirst for a universal education. This became a way for them to forget their Jewishness and embrace Viennese cultural life to the full, with its coffee houses and, above all, the opera - preferably Wagner. **

After hesitating between music and medicine, he chose the latter and graduated from the University of Vienna in 1936. As he was unable to bear the bloody process of dissection, he gravitated towards psychology, alchemy and homeopathy, especially within a small group led by anthroposophist and physician Karl König from 1936. For them, the purely psychological explanation of life was not sufficient, yet he remained skeptical of some of the current spiritual excesses.

As an outspoken socialist, he was wanted by the Gestapo, from whom he escaped by emigrating to the USA, arriving on 15th September, 1938; through his smartness, he survived but his parents died in Auschwitz and, to the end of his days, he retained a deep feeling of survival guilt. Once in New York, he connected with the pushy environment and reinvented himself for a second time, changing his name to Edward Christopher Whitmont and marrying, in 1940, a girl from the anthroposophical background, Gretchen Foltz.

During the 1940s, he learned a more rigorous form of homeopathy from another anthroposophist, Elizabeth Wright Hubbard. He taught homeopathy between 1947-51 and, from the 1950s, collaborated with Maesimund Panos. His interest in analytical psychology was kindled and, after the war, he deepened his training after seeking out the Jungian analyst Gustav Heyer in Berlin. Heyer had been a member of the National Socialist Party and Jung would have nothing more to do with him, though Whitmont tried unsuccessfully to arrange a meeting between the two.†

With his co-founding, in 1962, of the C.G. Jung Foundation in New York, there followed a period that lasted the rest of his life, in which he was very present on the scene, innovative, popular as analyst with his students, and a family man with five children and a weekend house in Connecticut.

From around 1948, his growing practice with patients consisted increasingly of an eclectic gestalt form of psychotherapy, supported by homeopathy whenever he saw an appropriate remedy picture.‡ “He wanted to find a different level of listening as a homeopath.”* Going a stage further than Jung, he always sought an embodied response to unconscious material.≠

These were decades when homeopathy itself was under a cloud. Articles on homeopathy, written mainly between 1948 and 1955, were finally collected together in book form in 1980. However, The Alchemy of Healing, 1993, considered by some to be a central thesis for homeopathy and the healing art, is not widely read.

The last phase, the fifteen years up to 21st September, 1998, has a special atmosphere, characterised from all accounts by an inner transformation.

For Whitmont, it was not good enough just to combine homeopathy and psychotherapy. He wanted to find out what each on its own had to offer. Had he lived, his next book was going to be an exploration of the relative therapeutic domains proper to each. ◊

This is a tale he told to a conference, in England, in 1993:

He gave a remedy to a patient, after which, she had a dream of there being feathers in her mouth. She agreed, then, that they try physically stuffing feathers into her mouth. After they had done this, her memory came back of a childhood incident in which, as a young girl living on a farm, her uncle took her into a barn. He used chicken feathers to stop her from screaming, as they were to hand.

Here, we have the interplay of psychotherapy and homeopathy. Sometimes, the only way forward is by dreaming, working with the unknowable.

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References

* Sarah Schaleger, personal communication, 2012, on which, for the most part, this article is based.

** H.W. Francke, Hans Schauder: Vienna - My Home, privately published by Agathe Dawson, Edinburgh, 2002.

† Thomas B. Kirsch, The Jungians: A comparative and historical perspective, Routledge, London, 2000

≠ Joyce Ashley, Edward Christopher Whitmont (December 5, 1912–September 21, 1998), The San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal, 17:3, 1998, pp.75-76

Dana Ullman, personal communication, 2012.

‡ Edward Whitmont, personal communication, 1994.

◊ Nicholas Nossaman, 1) The Homeopath, No 72, 1999. 2) personal communication, 2012.

Photo: Edward Weissberg as a young man, by courtesy of Sarah Schaleger

Categories: General Keywords: Whitmont Remedies:

Edward Whitmont in perspectiveby Peter Morrell

This essay explores the thinking and mindset of Whitmont, how he was influenced by and used homeopathy and also what influence he has had on homeopathy. Whitmont shows that homeopathy has been very willing to learn from Jung and Alchemy, but Jungian analysts seem not to have shown so great a willingness to learn very much from homeopathy.

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Edward Whitmont graduated from the Vienna Medical School in 1936. (1, 2, 3) and specialised in psychology, studying Adler (2) and Jung (1, 3). He escaped from the Nazis by emigrating to the USA in 1938; both his parents died in Auschwitz. (3) He was trained in homeopathy in New York by Elizabeth Wright Hubbard in the 1940s (1), and he then collaborated closely, as friend and associate, with Maesimund Panos from the 1950s on. (4) He taught homeopathy courses in the US 1947-51, but he had first come across it in Vienna along with anthroposophy under Karl König (2, 5), where he had also studied Steiner (1, 2) and alchemy (3, 5, 6, 9). He saw many important parallels and correspondences between Jungian psychotherapy and homeopathy and traced their origins back through figures like Goethe and the Romantics, (5) to Paracelsus and alchemy (6). He made useful contributions to both psychotherapy and homeopathy.

Edward Whitmont represents a fertile and revolutionary approach, pioneered from the 1950s on, that eventually found great favour a generation later and has since become more or less absorbed into the mainstream. It extends the original idea of Hahnemann in his attempt to answer the question of what a drug is most useful and suitable for, what type of sickness and what type of individual. In this matching process that homeopaths must all inevitably employ, the proving became the solution to the age-old issue concerning symptom correspondence and fine detail.

What psychology, and Whitmont in particular, supplied to homeopathy was the means to understand remedies as personalities, going beyond the mere facts of the proving, fleshing out the proving into more credible, vivid and realistic images of real people. (see Gladwin) This approach was emphasized by Kent and has since been adopted and extended by people like Philip Bailey. It usefully illuminates the specific issues that each person or remedy face, and which signs to look for both in the proving and in the patient. This greatly assists the matching process.

Trained in Adlerian and Jungian psychology, he viewed remedies as people, through their failures and successes, their strengths and weaknesses. By exploring their unresolved underlying tensions, Whitmont was able to enrich and deepen our understanding of remedies in their essence. That in turn enabled the homeopathic consultation to become a therapeutic event in itself.

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His long-time familiarity with the work of Rudolph Steiner sharpened his perception of materia medica, making it a vehicle for understanding human sickness, as well as the wider problems of humanity, in terms of an interplay between symbolic polarising forces. He thus universalised the issues that we encounter in our study of materia medica and in case-taking.

Four key elements are visible in his work, which we can take or leave as we wish: homeopathy pure, alchemy, anthroposophy and Jungian psychology. However, bound up with these are various aspects of medieval and modern thinking about connections, correspondences and energy fields, creating in all a 'rich soup' of ideas for the reader. It is therefore pretty clear from reading his works that he viewed homeopathy primarily through a Jungian lens and saw in homeopathic drug pictures the abundant symbolism of archetypes, polarities and unresolved repressed psychological tensions. This mixture formed the basis of his discussions of individual remedies.

Whitmont the man

Whitmont had a big impact on people who knew him: People noticed "his gentle, quiet, and humble way... Dr. Whitmont’s humility, intelligence, and never-ending search for truth in meaning." (7) "Walking with him, I admired the quick step of someone who enjoys nature, and moreover, loves to move, to ascend, to overcome obstacles, to break new ground continuously. He was young, very young - physically and mentally." (2)

He was "a classic ectomorph, short, wiry, Whitmont had a restless nervous energy, a quick and creative mind. He was forever dissatisfied with what he knew, constantly exploring new avenues, prodded along by a Merlin-like quick silvery intuition." (8, p.145) Generously sharing his knowledge with respect and affection... His passion for life extended to nature. He loved to climb mountains and walk in the forest. Above all else, he was an evolving, struggling human being, fully “in the soup,” confronting his own shadow to the very end." (3)

His writings have proved insightful: "Dr Whitmont's erudition is immense, but his style is deceptively simple and easy to read. It is not so easy to retain what one has read because of the depth and complexity of the ideas presented, and the further perspectives which they indicate. (1)

Jungian psychotherapy

– ego and dark ego, and setting boundaries

Whitmont describes the young child as existing in "the state of unconscious wholeness," (9, p.206) with unlimited psychic potential, some of which gets encouraged, realised and developed through life experience, and some that does not. The child is testing, experimenting and adapting. In this manner, the 'unmoulded' psyche manifests a variety of impulses and attitudes to parents and others. Some of them get validated and as acceptable, while others are rejected and repressed. Thus, what we might ordinarily call the 'personality'—but what he calls the light or daytime ego—emerges gradually, as we grow up, while the unused and repressed parts become the 'dark ego' or 'shadow.' (9, p.204; 10, p.216; 4; 11, p.43; 12, p.110) It is this dark ego that forms the main focus of psychotherapeutic exploration.

Parents set boundaries for the growing child, such as right and wrong, good and bad, masculine and feminine. Such boundaries do not exist in the unmoulded psyche but have to be learned, established and repeatedly reinforced. It can be a painful process, meeting with the child’s resistance. Jungians call this the separation of the ego from the Self.

The only thing that can harm one is that which is hidden from view. The more violently or rigidly the boundaries have been imposed upon the child, his will thwarted and the 'unwanted' material repressed, the more likely it is that trouble lies ahead. Setting rigid boundaries strengthens and clearly defines the daytime ego but at the same time strengthens the dark ego. A more balanced person can be defined as someone whose boundaries are in constant dynamic adaptation, who has accepted and embraces both

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aspects of his psyche. Repressed impulses remain strong and active, impelling the person to act in irrational and inexplicable ways.

All those elements that were not deemed as acceptable by one's peers and parents become welded in the unconscious into a 'shadow self' or ‘dark ego,’ that holds all those qualities which we dislike in ourselves and in others. According to this scenario, what we dislike most in others are the potentials in ourselves that we were unable to see fulfilled in our development. Thus the world and society mirrors in many ways the key elements of our dark ego and spawns tensions, conflicts, polarities and unresolved anxieties that reside within us.

The discarded and unvalidated impulses in ego formation are like bricks that were left over when the ego was being built. Corresponding to archetypes, they lie dormant as the dark ego. They are often polar opposites of the dominant ones in our usual personality and can pull us this way and that compulsively. They become active and manifest in dreams and daydreams and form part of the 'inner chatter' against which we measure and evaluate ourselves, our life goals, and what we see as our successes and our failures. In men, the feminine is a key part of the dormant repressed 'dark ego,' while in women it is the masculine that takes this subordinate role.

Jungian analysis

During sleep, the boundaries defining the daytime ego become blurred and then dissolve completely such that all aspects of the psyche can become accessible to the conscious awareness. They appear to us in dreams, using "the symbolic language of the unconscious" (9, p.207) and analysis is able to bring them into the light. Dreams are viewed as dramatisations of various unresolved issues in the unconscious: "dreams are allegoric and symbolic statements from a universal information bank." (13, pp.15-16) By exploring them with help from the analyst, the analysand is able to see and come to terms with the issues that are of concern to him. The patient becomes whole again by "integration of unconscious material into conscious awareness." (10, p.240) Whitmont and others realised, too, that homeopathic remedies likewise can greatly assist in this bringing of issues to the surface.

Whitmont refers variously to the "daylight ego," (13, p.14) the "habitual ego consciousness," (13, p.15) or "the ego consciousness," (13, p.15) that stands in sharp contrast to the "non-ego or non-personal psyche," (13, p.15) which he regards as the deeper source of our mental and emotional activity. "The prime human motivations are pre-rational and unconscious. We do not understand them unless we have learned to decipher the primordial language of symbolic images which happens to be the spontaneous mode of expression of the pre-rational unconscious psyche." (15, p.56) "The functioning of the ego is based on rationality and will. It is power-oriented." (15, p.57) "The logical rationality of the ego has pushed emotion, intuition, and image into the shadows of the margin." (10, p.216) In this view, "the language of the Self is that of images, feelings, metaphors and symbols, called mythopoetic in contrast to the verbal, rational language of the ego.." (10, p.241)

As a Jungian, he especially values dreams: "dreams are allegoric and symbolic statements from a universal information bank," (13, pp.15-16) emerging from the non-ego psyche; a dream is a "performance that mirrors our inner reality." (13, p.20) During sleep, the normal waking ego is disengaged and fades from view, and aspects of the primordial ego, with its cargo of unresolved issues, can take the stage. And so, in dreams otherwise unconscious aspects of the repressed dark ego come more to the fore and into play, which is why dreams are so important in Jungian analysis. They reveal to the therapist where our tensions and conflicts lie.

The purpose of therapy, and of dream analysis in particular, is to explore these hidden aspects of the psyche, bringing them into conscious awareness, and so to release the hidden tensions within us. "He applies his theory of the actualization of archetypes to explain the emergence of the ego out of the self through body experience." (12, p.112) The connection to homeopathy comes through looking at the dark and light elements in drug pictures and seeing these polarities in actual people. In his practice, and his view of the person, he also blends all of this with the symbolism of medieval alchemy which he derived from his study of Paracelsus as well as various Steinerian concepts.

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To summarise, Whitmont describes Jungian psychotherapy as a system for understanding the mind and for helping individuals who have unresolved psychological tensions and issues. These are viewed as remnants of difficulties that have been repressed into the subconscious mind during childhood and which therefore have a power to make us act compulsively and irrationally without knowing why or being able to stop it. He thus views the purpose of psychotherapy as the bringing into conscious awareness that which lies hidden in the unconscious, by bringing into the light that which is in the dark. (9, p.206) By repeatedly bringing such problems into the open, they are deemed gradually to dissolve and their power fade away, leaving the patient released in greater freedom and happiness. This is achieved through one-to-one discussion, group work, dream analysis and dramatisation.

Homeopathy

Whitmont’s view of health and healing took in a broad sweep of modalities that included “a post-quantum view (along with) Paracelsus, I Ching and Jung's workings on alchemy, synchronicity and the collective unconscious”. (6, p.146) It was rooted in the fundamental aspects of our lives. Life is full of tensions and disappointments: "whichever way we turn we cannot avoid crisis, pain and disease." (16, p.9) We all experience "tension, stress, conflict, repressions, depression and disappointment." (16, p.9) Some of these give rise to sickness.

Whitmont points up the value of "the ancient recognition of the potency of natural resources for healing. Our Post-Enlightenment Western society, rooted in a rational, empirical way of looking at the world, resists the notion of ‘folklore, gods and healing’. The ancients lived intimately attuned to natural resources (including dreaming) and movements of the cosmos, and were therefore in a position to benefit from the restorative properties of these sources." (17, p.126) Whitmont saw sickness and proving symptoms as an "interplay of polarizing forms." (13, p.vii) He regarded remedies as "substances administered in the ultramolecular transmaterial form." (13, p.viii) Each remedy embodies "a specific personality type," (13, p.x) each one "representing aspects of the human life-drama." (13, p.4) It is through potentisation that drugs reveal their "specific dynamic characteristics," (13, p.6) in the patient, behaving like "transmaterial fields." (13, p.7)

Whitmont makes a grand synthesis between homeopathy, humanity and cosmology when he depicts the "patterns underlying the human microcosm and outer macrocosm in mutual analogy and reflection." (13, p.8) For him, homeopathy illustrates the ancient alchemical notion that "various states of human consciousness are encoded in various mineral, plant and animal substances...they slumber in these materials waiting for their unfolding on the human level," (13, 18) which become manifest only in the homeopathic provings. He also feels that homeopathy is firmly linked "to his post-quantum understanding of the universe." (6) Potentisation of a drug, "while dematerialising on the molecular level, preserves its specific dynamic characteristics and intensifies its energetic change." (6)

He describes homeopathic remedies as "transcendental patterns prior to and playing with substance, directing the life force." (16, p.8) For every "illness pattern there is also a substance pattern 'out there' which minutely duplicates it." (16, p.10) Homeopathy is "a phenomenologically descriptive field." (16, p.17) "Hahnemann developed his theory not on the basis of speculation, but as the result of pure observation." (16, p.40) He regarded both Jung and Hahnemann as great empiricists, formulating their systems from direct careful observation almost devoid of theories. The "totality of symptoms," (16, p.55) forms the sole reliable guide to the remedy. With the provings, homeopathy "has amassed a tremendous amount of reliable experimental material." (16, p.81) He regarded the symptoms of the provings as a field of facts just as real as the symbols and archetypes of Jung’s psychology. And between these two bodies of information he saw massive correspondences.

Whitmont built bridges between homeopathy and psychotherapy. He seems to have seen remedies as somehow akin to archetypes, which means treating them in a non-causative, non-linear, phenomenological way, perceiving simply and without judgement the issues and tensions in the person, as mirrored in the provings. For him this bridge-building enriched and deepened the matching process but it also opened up the

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homeopathic consultation to a wider Jungian perspective of letting patients 'reveal themselves' (as they must) to the homeopath, and in the process, watching while the mental archetypes that typify the remedy come tumbling forth. His view of the psychological benefits to the patient of this type of consultation was also strongly coloured by his background in psychotherapy. He therefore began to apply to remedies the same process that he had long been familiar with for patients.

All of this connects both with the therapeutic aspects of the homeopathic consultation and also in the polarities we can see in the drug pictures. Therefore, what Whitmont has to say greatly and profoundly enriches the work of homeopaths. His contribution therefore amounts to a lot more than merely fleshing out the mental aspects of drug pictures a wee bit. Furthermore, the phenomenon of somatisation of dark ego issues means that Jungian analysis is directly related to all therapeutic interventions, including homeopathy. There is an interplay between the unconscious mind and actual bodily ailments not just in terms of how we might feel about aspects of our body.

He saw each remedy/person compassionately, and very much as individual fragments or splinters broken from a much broader mosaic of human suffering. The issues that his work brought to light, concerning damaged self-worth, betrayal, rapture, shyness, lack of confidence, courage, salvation, self-harm, jealousy, anger, hatred, fear, anxiety, self-loathing, shock, grief, loss, pain, sentimentality, sexual deviance, psychosis, delusions, clinging, reserve, revenge, secrecy, etc., were all, of course, grist to the mill of a practising psychotherapist like Whitmont, and he sought to show vividly that the contents of the homeopathic materia medica resoundingly echo all of that.

From an anthroposophist’s point of view, Ralph Twentyman (5) tells how: Whitmont attempts "to get beyond the dualism of mind and body and the associated mechanical, cause-and-effect thinking which still dominates the 'scientific' medicine of to-day. William Gutman produced some excellent studies in a Goethean spirit. Karl König, an old associate of Whitmont from Vienna days, produced some on the basis of Steiner's anthroposophical ideas. Otto Leeser proceeded from orthodox pharmacology, adding the refinements of provings to the experimental data. All these and others seem to me to be essential for the task of bringing the raw material of homoeopathy forward....healing is not to restore patients to the state of health they were previously in but to help them through to a new phase of life. Illness should be creative."

He believed that the homeopathic provings had revealed mysterious and amazing things about matter; subtle things alluded to only by alchemists centuries before, and the significance of which had never been seen or systematically explored until Hahnemann. He seems to have felt that this aspect of homeopathy connected deeply with Jungian psychology to reveal interesting aspects of the human psyche, suffering, medicine and healing.

Whitmont undoubtedly and vividly illuminated the psychology of a range of remedies, and the materia medica in general. However, the practical application of this information to homeopathy can prove a more difficult undertaking. The provings data is clearly useful for illuminating psychotherapy, but the other way round things are not quite so straightforward.

What he brought to our study of materia medica was a vast psychological insight which penetrated down like bright sunlight into each remedy, revealing their sharp contrasts and hidden depths as actual people and all their psychological frailties. Like actors moving on a stage, the people who populate the materia medica world were revealed by Whitmont to be shadows that mirror actual psychological archetypes which dwell deep within the mental world of humanity itself. This seems to be his most important and lasting contribution to the homeopathic tradition. “The case for a parallel relationship between homoeopathy and analytical psychology is made but not stressed. It is characteristic of this author that he states the case and leaves the reader to make up his own mind." (1)

Conclusions

Some might see, and therefore dismiss, Whitmont as just another New Ager like Sheldrake and Capra, dabbling in this and that and writing long-winded and speculative

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tracts – with "quantum silliness" (6, p.146) – while others see him as a true philosopher of genius attempting a grand synthesis and knitting a fabric composed of many aspects of the exciting post-quantum world we live in and linking together unfinished medieval aspects of life with much that science has left behind in its assertive, masculine surge towards rationalism and progress.

He saw the essences found in plant, animal and mineral remedies as acknowledging "the alchemical roots of homeopathy," (14, p.1) and resonating as a kind of energy set free and purified by the metamorphosis of potentisation. Take away the molecules and only the purified essence is left behind. It's a kind of transmutation, a kind of alchemy. "By undergoing potentization, the original material substance is dematerialized and thereby spiritualized; the substance's inherent healing properties are released. As such, homeopathy can be seen as a practical application of alchemy, tapping into the endless Mercurial fountain, the mystery of the boundless spirit and energy that is present in matter, the source of healing vitality and animation that lives in a potential form in all of us." (14, p.4)

Exactly as Paracelsus had said centuries before, as above so below. "The healing properties of homeopathy derive from profound resonances between substances in the outside world and phenomena in the inner world of the organism." (14, p.3)

The sub-molecular idea of potentised substance struck him as a primordial dynamic underpinning all matter, suggesting that a previously undisclosed unknowable essence resides in every substance. Such an essence forms a drug's unique ‘spiritual fingerprint’ which can be made to manifest its psychic properties only through the proving technique. The proving thus provided him with sufficient proof that not only humans but all matter, and thus the entire universe, is permeated by and underpinned with an otherwise invisible fabric of unseen essences with seemingly infinite and inexhaustible potential. As he puts it: "the elements of form...precede our material existence." (16, p.130)

With the symptoms of the provings, homeopathy seems to have provided Whitmont with the language of the psyche. In other words, through the language of the provings he found expression of the symbolism and polarities of the collective unconscious. Homeopathy allowed him to tap into this rich vein of archetypes and see the feminine and irrational shadow or dark ego, simultaneously providing him with strong confirmation of his long-standing Jungian and alchemical interests.

He applies his Jungianism equally to society which he holds to be in imbalance because dominated by the masculine, fragmented, linear, reductionistic, forceful daylight ego that yearns for rationalism, order, control, progress and domination—qualities all recognised, rewarded, applauded and revered in our modern technological existence—while the feminine, the irrational, gentle, circular, holistic, dreamy, intuitive, creative, emotional and nurturing shadow self or dark ego of humanity remains generally repressed, ignored, neglected, sidelined, unrecognised, bypassed and unrewarded. In The Return of the Goddess Whitmont urges that mankind needs urgently to rediscover those feminine aspects. He thus universalises Jung, homeopathy and alchemy.

Acknowledgement

I wish to express my grateful thanks to Gregory Vlamis for tracking down and supplying some of the reference material for this article.

Sources

1. Marianne Harling, Review of Psyche & Substance, BHJ, 72:4, October 1983

2. Uta Santos-Koenig, Edward Whitmont, 1912-1998, Homœopathic Links, Winter, 1998, Vol.11.4, p.186

3. Joyce Ashley, Edward Christopher Whitmont (December 5, 1912–September 21, 1998), The San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal, 17:3, 1998, pp.75-76

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4. Julian Winston, The Faces of Homeopathy, New Zealand: Great Auk Publishing, 1999, p.329

5. L R Twentyman, Review of 2nd edition of Psyche & Substance, BHJ, 81:1, January 1992

6. Patrick Pietroni, Review of The Alchemy of Healing, J Analyt Psychol, 1996 41.1, pp.145-147

7. Virginia Downey, In Memoriam - Edward C. Whitmont, 1912-1998 Heilkunst, 1998

8. Yoram Kaufmann, Edward Christopher Whitmont Obituary, Journal of Analytical Psychology, 1999, 44, 139–145

9. Nicholas Nossaman, Homoeopathy and Jungian Psychology: Kindred Spirits, AJHM 100.3, Autumn 2007, pp.202-213

10. Roger Brooke, Pathways into the Jungian World: Phenomenology & Analytical Psychology, London & New York: Routledge, 2000

11. Edward C. Whitmont, The Momentum of Man, Anima 3.2, 1977, pp.41-48

12. Lola Paulsen, Review of The Symbolic Quest, J Analyt Psych, 1971, 16.1, pp.110-112

13. Edward C. Whitmont, The Alchemy of Healing: Psyche and Soma. Berkeley California: North Atlantic Books, 1993

14. Anita Josefa Barzman, Closer Than They Appear: Homeopathy, Analysis, and the Unus Mundus, Paper delivered 26 August 2010 XVIIIth Congress of the IAAP: Facing Multiplicity Psyche Nature Culture, San Francisco, California, August 2010, 12 pages

15. Edward C. Whitmont, Jungian Theory: A Reply to Feminists, Anima 4.1, 1977, pp.56-59

16. Edward C. Whitmont, Psyche and Substance: Essays on Homeopathy in the Light of Jungian Psychology, North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, California, 1980

17. Jeffrey B. Pettis, Earth, Dream, and Healing: The Integration of Materia and Psyche in the Ancient World, Journal of Religion and Health, Vol. 45, No. 1, Spring 2006, pp.113-129

18. Peter Morrell, Hahnemann: the True Pioneer of Psychiatry, JAIH/AJHM 95.1, January 2003, pp.164-169 & Peter Morrell, Was Hahnemann the Real Pioneer of Psychiatry? chapter 4 in Johannes & Van der Zee, 2010, pp.86-94

Bibliography

Phillip Bailey, Homeopathic Psychology: Personality Profiles of the Major Constitutional Remedies

Frederica E Gladwin, People of the Materia Medica World, India: National Homoeopathic Pharmacy, 1974

Rosemary Gordon, Review of Return of the Goddess, J Analyt Psych 1984, 29.1, pp.85-87

Christopher K. Johannes & Harry van der Zee, Homeopathy and Mental Health Care: Integrative Practice, Principles and Research, Amsterdam: Homeolinks Publishers, 2010

Nicholas Nossaman, Edward C Whitmont, MD, In Memoriam, JAIH 91:3, Autumn, 1998, pp.292-293

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Nicholas Nossaman, Reflections on my Experiences with Edward C Whitmont, JAIH 92.2, Summer 1999, pp.63-70

Edward C. Whitmont, The Symbolic Quest: Basic Concepts of Analytical Psychology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969

Edward C. Whitmont, Return of the Goddess, New York: Crossroad Publishing Co., 1982

Edward C. Whitmont, & Sylvia Brinton Perera, Dreams: A Portal to the Source, London: Routledge, 1989

Photo: Sarah Schaleger

Categories: General Keywords: Whitmont Remedies:

The use of dreams in homeopathic treatmentby Jane Tara Cicchetti

Homeopaths have used dreams since Hahnemann’s time. Our repertories and provings contain many references to dreams, yet there are many questions about how to effectively use dreams to help locate the simillimum. I would like to address why we need to use dreams more than in the past and show some techniques that assist in using dreams in homeopathic practice. Finally, I will present a case where the remedy is found through a dream and give some suggestions for developing the ability to use dreams.

Much of what I have learned about the use of dreams is from my mentor and supervisor, Jungian analyst, V. Walter Odajnyk. Dr. Odajnyk is an analysand of both Marie Louise von Franz and Edward Edinger who were well-known colleagues of Carl Jung. I am very grateful to the four of them, for their research and teaching.

Why use dreams in case analysis?

Our predecessors asked about food desires, physical modalities and sensations and often got clear, straightforward answers. It is rare for a contemporary homeopath to treat an individual who has not had most of his or her mental, general and physical symptoms suppressed. We live in a very complex and over-medicated society that is reluctant to allow any physical symptom to go untreated or any mental symptom untrained. Most people live a life that is so removed from nature that symptoms are intellectualized and unreliable, making for a very difficult time finding the correct prescription.

Fortunately, dreams lie outside our ability to manipulate them. We cannot create a false reality in our dreams or influence them with our will. Material that is suppressed from the conscious state moves into the subconscious and is frequently expressed through the dream state. Because the dream is an attempt on the part of the organism to heal itself, when used and analyzed accurately, material from dreams can lead to some of the most reliable symptoms in a case. Although they seem ephemeral, dreams are actually objective facts about a person’s mental and physical state.

Carl Jung said that the most likely reality is that there is no such thing as body and mind but rather that they are the same life, subject to the same laws, and what the body does is happening in the mind. This relationship is already quite clear to homeopaths on one level, however, we often use dreams in a way that misses this connection. We use the dream as if it were a separate symptom out of the context of the entirety of the case.

We need techniques that will help us to use dreams so that they enrich the “red thread that runs throughout the case”. Used in this way, dreams give a clear picture of

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pathology, lead us to the remedy and help us to understand the process that is about to unfold.

Techniques of dream analysis

Similar to homeopathic case taking, techniques of dream analysis are more like non-techniques, an informed and intelligent “stepping out of the way” and allowing the process to unfold.

One of the most important approaches to using dreams is to understand that no dream stands alone. It is meaningful only in relationship to the individual dreamer. Therefore, even though there are symbols in dreams that frequently have particular meanings, they are only valid symptoms if it is correct and helpful to the dreamer. The dreamer must be in agreement with the analysis. If the dreamer disagrees or only just “goes along” it cannot be reliably used as a homeopathic symptom.

To receive accurate information from a dream, we allow the person to speak about his dream with only a little question here and there when stuck. It is the dreamer who makes the associations in the dream, who puts the pieces of the puzzle together. The equivalent to the case taking “what else” when applied to dream analysis is, I don’t know what it means, what do you think. Or, what do you associate with (this or that aspect of the dream). As the process goes on the information will unfold and, if the homeopath can keep his/her “not knowing” mode long enough, a very surprising and complete picture may emerge.

Dreams that are given during the homeopathic interview are subtly different than the dreams that are dreamt for psychotherapy. This is because the dreamer dreams the dream for himself and for the therapist. In the case of the homeopathic interview the dreamer’s psyche knows it is working within the symbolic realm of homeopathy, so the information will often be coded with images about the remedy. Also, the clients associations will be more likely to be directed towards the remedy. All this goes on from a level that is beneath the conscious mind, it comes from the center of the psyche of the client to the receptive psyche of the homeopath. The more receptive the psyche of the homeopath is to the dynamics and interactions of the dream state, the more this will happen. The psyche has its own intelligence and does not speak to those who will not or cannot hear what it has to say with an unprejudiced ear.

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The symbolic realm

When we work with dreams we are entering into the world of imagery and symbols, a primary way that human beings experience our inner and outer world. This symbolic realm is pre-verbal and often points to a greater reality than can be expressed in a more linear form. Symbols and imagery can lead us to the reality of an individual’s dilemma because, being so fundamental, they are a connection between the mind and the body. Symbols are defined by Carl Jung as an expression of a spontaneous experience which points BEYOND ITSELF – that goes beyond the limitation of rational thought. It is the best description or formula of an unknown fact.

Very often, that unknown fact is exactly what we need to know to find the simillimum. The following case helps to illustrate how the symbolism found in a childhood dream points not only to the simillimum but helps us more fully to understand what needs to be healed in the individual.

This article and case were first published in Simillimum, 1999.

References:

Chevalier, Jean and Gheerbrant, Alain, Dictionary of Symbols, New York, New York, Penguin Books, 1996

Jung, C.G., the Practice of Psychotherapy, Princeton N.J., Princeton University Press. 1985.

Whitmont, M.D., Edward C. The Symbolic Quest, Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press. 1991.

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Von Franz, Marie- Louise, The Way of the Dream, Boston, Mass. Shambhala Publications, 1992.

Photo: Wikimedia CommonsAdam Elsheimer; Jacob's dream

Categories: General Keywords: dream analysis, symbols, Carl Jung Remedies:

The Axis Mundi: a case where the remedy is found from a dream

by Jane Tara Cicchetti

Marie, 53-year-old woman. Artist/photographer. She is married and has three children. She has very low energy; tired all the time. A general sense of not feeling successful in life and a great sense of internal emptiness. She has trouble learning and thinks she may have ADD: “I don’t metabolize information that comes into me. I don’t feel enough in my body.”

Although she has three grown children, she has not been an active participant in raising them. Her mother dominated the early training of her children.

Aside from low energy, she presently has no physical pathology. There is a history of rickets as a baby.

She looks much younger than her age. She is small and has a childlike look and demeanor. She is very pleasant; she has a beautiful smile.

She does photography, calligraphy, sculpture and installations.

She shows me photos of her installations. Some are beautiful cloth hangings hung from hemlock trees in a forest. Others are twigs wrapped with colored wire.

Dream from childhood:

“The house that I lived in would never be lived in by anyone else and there were flames all around it.”

Now, this is indeed a very short dream and we might wonder: What could we do with this dream. Do we use the symptoms dreams of burning houses? Or dreams of fire? Not necessarily. The first step is to ask the dreamer what the dream means to her. I now proceed with the analysis of the dream and ask: “What does this mean? What is the flame?” Her associations: “A protective flame – slow, steady. I probably needed to do that because I was terrified out there. When I was little, somebody told me there was a boogie man in my house; it terrified me. Trust in the world was cut off at that point.”

Now, as often happens in dream analysis, she slips into another association. It relates to the feeling of not being safe that has been stimulated by the association of being terrified. Now she tells us why. At times, these associations can be very helpful in finding the remedy. At other times, as in this case, they help us to understand the underlying emotions.

“At 4 or 5 I wet my pants. Mom was so furious – she set me on the hot radiator. It wasn’t safe! She was a loose cannon – she would erupt.”

I let her speak and then bring her back to the actual dream by asking again about the specifics. I ask her to tell me more about the flame because I feel that it is an essential aspect to understand. Remember that I have very few other symptoms to go on in this

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case. The fact that she has remembered this dream is a door that may lead to the remedy. “It’s the burning bush – the presence of God; the flame that isn’t consumed, the Axis mundi. I pray a lot that’s how I can bear the situation, particularly with my youngest child; someone will watch over her. I get relief from prayer. But it’s … I didn’t finish this job either (with my daughter) and I turned it over to God.”

Analysis

The house represents her psychic structure; it’s empty, the void, surrounded by the presence of God.The hole or emptiness, however, is also the gap to the other world. This is why she has this sense of emptiness and as we can see from her associations, she is very spiritual. The flame of god protected her but she needs human comfort as well. This sense of emptiness is a very important symptom. The feeling of emptiness is in a dream that she remembers from her childhood and she tells about this sense of emptiness in the very beginning of her anamnesis. It is a spiritual issue: she must to come to grips with the presence of God in her life and with the void or emptiness in a different way. So, our first symptom is emptiness. Then, she associates the flame of God with the Axis Mundi. Here, we have something very interesting: an archetypal symbol. For a symbol to be archetypal means that it has existed in human consciousness in pretty much the same form for hundreds or thousands of years, and its meaning is greater than the meaning that can be understood through one individual. Because of its universal context, we need to understand the universal meaning of this symbol in order to find its significance in the case. It is my experience that when an archetypal symbol found in a dream pulls the whole case together, it is very related to the actual substance of the remedy. Our second symptom is Axis Mundi- a symptom from the archetypal realm. Finally, she associates all this with her connection to God and to praying. And what does she say about these prayers? She says she turns her responsibilities for her children over to God through prayers but she is aware that she personally needs to finish this job. Using this statement coming from the association in the dream and adding the fact that even though she has many skills as an artist, she does not find deep satisfaction and success in her work, I choose the third symptom: undertakes many things, perseveres in nothing.

Now, we have three symptoms, emptiness, Axis Mundi and undertakes many things, perseveres in nothing. The first symptom – emptiness – is in the repertory in several forms: Mind, emptiness, Mind, Delusions, emptiness, and Generalities, emptiness, hollow sensation.

For Axis Mundi, I look up the universal meaning of this archetypal symbol to see if anything in it responds to the whole of this woman’s story. I often use The Dictionary of Symbols by Jean Chevalier because it is a compilation of information from many traditions. In looking under axis, I find what I am looking for. (If I had not, I would have resorted to the internet, which has practically become my second repertory.) Under axis is found: “The axis around which the world revolves, links the dominions or hierarchical levels together by their mid-points. If the junction of Heaven and Earth is taken, then it is the precise center of Earth to the precise center of Heaven, symbolized by the Pole Star.” Is her remedy the Pole star? Let us not stop just yet and continue to investigate this archetype. It is very important to use information that we find on archetypal symbols with the same care that we use when selecting other characteristic symptoms in a case. The information must fit into the whole case and help connect the totality of symptoms that will direct us to the choice of a remedy. If we use books that interpret dreams we can make some big mistakes. The interpretation of the symbol must make sense in terms of the whole picture.

Even if we make a big mistake, however, we are not totally lost; the next dreams will often tell us that we made a mistake and try to correct us. Of course, we must be willing to listen! The definition continues: “In space, the Axis Mundi is the polar axis in time of the solstices. Its symbolic representations are numberless, but it is seen most often as the tree and the mountain, but also as lance, staff, pillar lingam, a chariot pole or axle or columns of light or smoke. The idea of the Axis Mundi, the cosmic Pillar, recurs, from America through Africa and Siberia to Australasia.”

Now that we know a little more about the Axis Mundi, we move to the next symptom: “undertakes many things, perseveres in nothing,” a symptom found in the repertory.

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Finally, we have one more symptom that does not appear in the dream: she had rickets in childhood. It is especially important because it is a physical symptom and rounds out the otherwise one-sidedness of the repertorization. We cannot specifically repertorize Axis Mundi.

Repertory

Undertakes many things, perseveres in nothing Hurry, haste, desire to do many things at once but cannot finish Thoughts, vanishing Mind, dull, unable to think Rachitis (rickets)

In our repertorization, we see Pinus sylvestris as the ninth remedy. This is very interesting because suddenly, the case makes sense. Pinus sylvestris or Scotch pine fits in beautifully with the idea of the world tree – the Axis Mundi. It is a pine tree that is often used as a Christmas tree, which, incidentally, is often topped by a star – the Pole star. All trees can symbolize the Axis Mundi but the Christmas tree is a traditional representative of the tree in relation to the Pole star. Notice that the major symptom, emptiness, is not covered in the repertorization. In Asa Hershoff and David Warkentin’s research on tree remedies, we know that the feeling of emptiness is a symptom that belongs to remedies in the conifer family. Finally, with the exquisite elegance that only comes from an organizing power greater than ours, the client makes art in conifer trees.

Prescription: Pinus sylvestrus 200c split dose (evening and next morning) and 12c 1x a day

One month after taking the remedy, Marie reported having better energy. The sense of emptiness as begun to decrease. She says it feels like a thin tube of energy growing inside. She continues to improve and I have been following her progress through her

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dreams for the last five months. So far, Pinus sylvestris has continued to guide her on her path.

The remedy: Pinus sylvestris

Doctrine of Signatures (from Bach)

Scots pine, native to the Scottish highlands, a land known for high morals and introversion. It is grown for Christmas trees. The tree’s crown has a tendency to grow in irregular branches and appears crooked. In the pine state, the personal “crown’ of pride in oneself is damaged or out of line.

Developing the ability work with dreams

To get reliable information from dreams we need not only to learn technique but prepare ourselves for the adventure. One way to understand deeply hidden symptoms found in dreams is to be connected to our own dreams. One can achieve this by keeping a dream journal. When I teach, I ask my students to keep a journal of their dreams for several weeks before the seminar begins and we use some of this material during the course. The journal is a very important part of learning dream analysis because a dream is a living entity, one that transforms and creates transformation as we work with it. In order to engage in dream work, we must be open to and prepared for that type of encounter. The dream often shows the relationship that the client has to the homeopath, positive or negative, and we must be ready to see that.

It is also helpful to have someone to tell your dreams to. A professional who is trained in dream analysis is the best choice, but if it is not possible, any attentive ear will be better than doing it on your own. We tend not to be able to see what our own dreams are telling us because it is “behind our back” and therefore out of sight. Jung did not have anyone who could analyze his dreams professionally and he would use anyone who came along. Even though they did not necessarily get it right, it was nevertheless enough to stimulate his thinking.

Who is dreaming?

I would like to end by telling a story about a dream that was dreamt by the 4th century philosopher and mystic Chuang Tzu. He once dreamed that he was a butterfly. This dream left him wondering if he was a man who dreamt that he was a butterfly or whether he was a butterfly who dreamt that he was a man. Dreams are not static symptoms; they are living impulses that come from the very center or matrix of the individual, that inner circle of our psyche that acts as a compass to guide us on our way. Who is the dream maker?

Photo: Wikimedia CommonsScots Pine Pinus sylvestris, Sgurr na Lapaich, Glen Affric, Scotland; Erik Fitzpatrick

Categories: Cases Keywords: dream analysis, Axis Mundi, emptiness, archetypal symbol, undertakes many things, perseveres in nothing Remedies:

Using Astro-psychology with homeopathyby Kris Frank

The term astro-psychology (1) denotes how a person’s natal horoscope can help understand their psychology, including the potential at birth on all levels from a holistic perspective. Being astrologically literate entails being able to read a birth chart to derive the meaning of the positions of all the planets in all the signs. Astro-psychology has, of course, no formal connection with homeopathy nor with psychology but is a very useful adjunct to both.

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In a letter to the Hindu astrologer, B.V. Raman, on 6th September, 1947, Carl Jung wrote: "Since you want to know my opinion about astrology I can tell you that I've been interested in this particular activity of the human mind since more than 30 years. As I am a psychologist, I am chiefly interested in the particular light the horoscope sheds on certain complications in the character. In cases of difficult psychological diagnosis I usually get a horoscope in order to have a further point of view from an entirely different angle. I must say that I very often found that the astrological data elucidated certain points which I otherwise would have been unable to understand. From such experiences I formed the opinion that astrology is of particular interest to the psychologist.” (2)

Jung, too, wrote about his study of astro-psychology and of particular interest is his own research on marriage relationships in relation to planetary positions and astrological signs. He seemed to adopt an objective viewpoint and to be convinced that here was something worth studying that could be of use to the psychologist (3).

With his immersion in anthroposophy followed by the encounter with Jung, it is not surprising to learn from his daughter, Sarah Schaleger, that Edward Whitmont drew up the charts of his patients as a matter of course. He quotes Gauguelin’s study of birth charts showing possible correlation between planetary positions and a person’s occupation. He combined psychology with astrology and, as we know, went further by bringing in homeopathy, being perhaps the first to combine them in his practice as a triad of disciplines. Sadly, he never wrote about his experience.

Some astrologers think that astro-psychology works not in a causative, but in a symbolic way. In other words, there is no celestial or cosmic mechanism that causes a person to have a certain personality at birth but, rather, the birth chart may be viewed in a slightly similar way to an I Ching or tarot reading, albeit more permanent. Whitmont’s discussion of non-causality (4) suggests that he may have possibly thought along these lines although he did not mention astrology specifically in this context.

Jung, on the other hand, raised the possibility of a causal connection and, more recently, there have even been scientists, swimming against the stream, who have ventured with their own theories to that effect (5). A scientific explanation may one day be forthcoming although, most likely, from within a new scientific paradigm. In the meantime, it must be realised that a causative explanation implies that, alongside genes and the psycho-physical environment, there are astro-morphic forces which act as a third factor in determining and shaping our constitutions and personalities. If, as homeopaths, we are prepared to accept that, then awareness of these forces can at times inform our prescribing and case management.

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Astro-psychology and homeopathy

There have been several articles in the homeopathic literature over the last few decades about using the elements of Fire, Earth, Air and Water to help understand the patient - mainly stemming from the map of elements developed by Israeli homeopath Joseph Reeves, which many teachers call the ‘Circle’ of elements, but which Misha Norland has renamed the ‘Mappa Mundi’.

There has been almost nothing that looks at how we can use a patient’s birth chart to help us understand the patient apart from focusing on the elements. An unpublished final-year dissertation proved to be a step in this direction, attempting to link certain constitutional types to particular sun-signs (6).

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Instances of where astro-psychology can be helpful in the homeopathic context:

~ When our understanding of a case is limited, with no idea of what to give.

This especially applies after several prescriptions have failed. Also, where the person is obviously sick and suffering but no medical diagnosis is forthcoming, and / or when the symptoms are all common ones, or there are too few symptoms in the case (the two-legged stool) - then techniques involving the natal chart and transiting planetary positions may help to elucidate what is going on in the inner psychology of the patient. (An example of this will be given later.)

~ In case of uncertainty about whether to prescribe for the central dynamic (expressed by the natal chart) or for a ‘happening’ - an acute or chronic acute, a ‘side issue’ that seems to manifest as a recent ‘layer’ and often seems unrelated to the central dynamic, delusion, or sensation.

Sometimes, this can be due to an astrological transit (the positions of particular planets as they move now in relation to where they were on the birth chart). Jung wrote: “I have observed many cases where a well-defined psychological phase, or an analogous event, was accompanied by a transit (particularly when Saturn and Uranus were affected).” ³

~ The natal chart can be useful, too, in counselling clients about their relationships with others, or in helping them understand their own ‘stuckness’.

A patient of mine was convinced that her mother-in-law disliked her, and would not believe her husband when he said this was not the case. In the course of homeopathic treatment, we spent much of one session focusing on the issue that concerned her. With the mother-in-law’s date of birth, I was able to ascertain that the she had been unable to demonstrate affection in a normal way, and her coldness was not directed at my patient in a personal way but was part of her personality structure. That transformed my patient’s understanding of her mother-in-law’s behaviour and made her seeming coldness much easier to deal with for my patient.

An instance of where homeopathy can assist research into the nature of astro-psychology:

One criticism incurred by astrologers is their tendency to make the person fit the birth chart or vice versa. My term for this is ‘automatic convergence'. One way to minimise it is by attempting to predict which planets one would expect to be involved in the central dynamic of their natal horoscope. (That is done once the first consultation is over, and from one’s accumulated knowledge of the patient’s story and personality.) This then can be checked against the actual birth chart on the computer to test the accuracy of the astro-psychological theory.

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A limitation of that method is that, without the time and place of birth, one is unable to ascertain a person’s rising sign, nor the exact position of their moon. Another, is that the prediction rate is in proportion to one’s acquired experience.

If the principles of astro-psychology have not just been adopted as received wisdom, then procedures like this can help the open-minded practitioner to test out the theory of astro-psychology. According to Karl Popper (7), no theory can be regarded as scientific unless it is capable of being proved true or false, and this is the philosophical bedrock of all modern science. To do that is not always an easy task and even some seemingly scientific theories fail to meet the criterion, String Theory in theoretical physics being a current example of this.

The method of experimentation outlined above, while not without flaws and caveats, might go some way towards satisfying Popper’s ‘falsifiabilty’ criterion and therefore partially solve the problem of 'automatic convergence'.

Different ways that the birth chart may be used in homeopathic analysis:

~ Assess what element each planet is in, to find out the overall balance of the four elements.

This can be for various purposes, one of which is to get an idea of the kingdoms. A predominance of Water might suggest a sea remedy; if all Earth, then one might think of the mineral kingdom or certain plants; if all planets and lights (lights is the old word for the Sun and Moon) are in Air, that might make one consider a gas or certain imponderables; and I will leave you to consider what might be suggested by having almost all planets in Fire.

Of course, these are maybes and possibilities. We must always consider the polarity between Fire and Air, and Earth and Water. I had a client once whose chart was all Earth but her spoken imagery was all watery. She seemed to be compensating for what she lacked. Most people, though, are a mixture of elements, which makes the choice of kingdom less easy. I find in case analysis with students and colleagues that there is a tendency to rush into a decision on the kingdom too early and with inadequate information. Only very occasionally do I use the elements as guide towards finding the kingdom, and only when there is a clear predominance of one.

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~ Look at the the central dynamic of the chart (the pattern of lines drawn in the centre circle between planets) and get a feel of the effect.

Very occasionally, the pattern alone can give one an idea for a particular remedy or family of remedies. This should of course, if at all possible, be borne out by the symptomatology. Are there one, or two, planets that are controlling everything? What are they and how do their astrological qualities relate to the symptomatology, dynamic or story of the patient.

Example: What impression do you get from the central pattern in the chart below? It belonged to a patient of mine. Ignatia had helped her greatly in 1995 while her husband was suffering from motor neurone disease, but stopped working soon after he died, and for several years nothing worked at all. All her symptoms were common symptoms, such as lassitude and tiredness, with hundreds of remedies listed for each symptom and with very few modalities. Eventually, I was forced to prescribe on her chart alone.

The pattern we see at the centre looks like a two-dimensional form of what, in geometry, is called a Five Simplex, or Hexateron.

I immediately thought of a crystal of some kind and, in the days before the internet could furnish us with instant information, I prescribed Adamas, partly because over several years, with a dying husband and two wayward and disturbed teenage daughters, she had coped amazingly under huge emotional pressure without ever showing the sign of an emotional crack (and the structure on the birth chart appeared to be a very strong one). The only other minor characteristic of a diamond was that she always seemed emotionally very flat when arriving for a consultation, but left with sparkling eyes following some humorous banter at the end of the consultation, (shining from reflected light). I had also heard somewhere that in their natural state, before being cut, a diamond only has six sides.

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Adamas broke the log-jam of ‘no change’ in the patient, improving her energy, mood and physical symptoms whenever they returned, where no other remedy had acted.

~ Some homeopaths use the principles of traditional medical astrology (8).

Medical astrology is an ancient system that associates the planets and signs with particular parts of the body and specific tendencies to illness. It is very occasionally employed by homeopaths, as when choosing herbs and supplements.

~ One can look at the transits of the planets as they are affecting the person now.

A transit in astro-psychology is a method of interpreting the continuous movements of a planet in terms of its effects on a person. To do that, a comparison has to be made between the position of the planet at a given moment and that of other planets fixed in the natal horoscope (the two-dimensional map of the psycho-physical forces active at the moment of birth). Specific attention is given to the angles that these transiting planets make with the natal planetary positions of an individual (called ‘aspects’).

Why has the patient come to consult a homeopath now? In the case of a sudden flare-up, what might have caused it, if no other external cause is apparent? When is the transit due to finish? Might the patient’s chronic flare-up be due to a transit and, therefore, be self-limiting and, if minor, not needing homeopathic intervention? Alternatively, with the apparent onset of serious disease, what was the exciting cause and could a transit be responsible? Should we treat it at all, or prescribe only for the central dynamic structure of the birth chart? Although the latter is only the potential, and not a disease, it does reveal much, in depth, about the person and their constitution.

This brings up the general question of causation. Caution is needed for, if a transiting planet can sometimes cause a health phenomenon, can we be sure that our homeopathic prescribing acted curatively, or was it just that the transit had come to an end? We should remain forever cautious about ascribing credit to a given remedy prescription.

However, it is still of course possible for a patient suffering from a challenging transit to derive great benefit from the homeopathic prescription that helps them weather a period of physical or psychological instability thrown up by such a transit. It can often help them manage what otherwise might be a frightening and confusing period.

This raises another important point for prescribing astro-psychologists. If a flare-up of chronic complaint occurs at the start of a major transit and the chosen remedy palliates well but does not cure, it is not necessarily the wrong remedy, although that is of course a strong possibility. It maybe that the effect of some transits, whether physical or psychological, is just too strong even for the simillimum.

For those open to such explanations the fact, too, of being aware of why it is happening often helps patients cope with their instability during a transit.

~ Provings of planetary light

For homeopaths who use astro-psychology, there exist, too, the provings of Sol, Luna, Light of Venus, and Light of Saturn with, hopefully, more to come. To skeptics, most of them will never be more than the reflected light of the sun, however, there are cured cases suggesting that this light is somehow transformed into a number of different healing medicines, possibly bringing with it an accumulated memory of the dynamic of each of the planetary bodies.

They may sometimes be indicated as remedies in patients where a particular planet is central to the dynamic inherent in their natal horoscope. They might, too, sometimes be effective when prescribed for the effects of a specific planetary transit. However, as yet, there is a paucity of recorded cases.

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Conclusion

Homeopathy, astrology and psychology are two of the most fascinating humanistic disciplines. They can be an invaluable combination. For finding the simillimum, astrology is not needed every time, yet it remains in our toolbox for when needed and as a constant support.

On this hundredth anniversary of Whitmont’s birth, perhaps it is a fitting time to form a group of like-minded, astrologically literate, astro-psychologists who practise homeopathy. Those interested may contact me via astrohoms@gmail.com.

References

1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_astrology

2 http://elizabethspring.com/Jung_and_Astrology.html

3 G.C. Jung - Collected Works, Vol. 8, pp 459-483 edited by Sir Herbert Read (Routeledge & Kegan Paul).

4 Edward Whitmont - Psyche and Substance, 1980 (North Atlantic Books).

5 Dr Percy Seymour (Astronomer) - The Scientific Proof of Astrology, 1997, St Martins Press, New York (and 2004, Quantum).

6 Lyn Ringuet - Comparing Homeopathy and Astrology (Arsenicum and Virgo), London School of Classical Homeopathy, 1997 (Not Published)

7 Karl Popper - Logik der Forschung, 1934; ‘The Logic of Research’, 1959.

8 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_astrology

Photos: Wikimedia CommonsC.G.Jung; public domain

Categories: General Keywords: Astro-psychology, homeopathy, Carl Jung, Mappa Mundi, astrological transit Remedies:

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Comments: Dr.K.C.Muraleedharan Posts: 1

AstropsychologyReply #1 on : Fri September 28, 2012, 18:11:22

Are we going backwards?One side, our scientists are struggling to prove the materialism in homoeopathic potencies,but in other hand we are publishing such articles where hypothesizing to combine astrology & homoeopathy. Combining both this (homoeopathy and Astrology)will definitely damage the system than any allopathic propaganda.It is my humble request to all homoeopaths that please abstain from such misguiding informations.

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Sabina : Mysterium - A dream teaching

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by Rachel Koenig

We have not thereby explained the law of similars. Like every fact of life and nature, we have simply to accept it as basic, indeed axiomatic, not subject to any further explanation. Any further questions as to “why” are as unanswerable as questions about the why of gravitation. The absolute and ultimate mystery of being does not reveal itself to the human mind. [P&S, p. 40]

Whenever I reflect upon Edward Whitmont, I am immediately brought into a timeless sensation, as if our contact cannot be recalled without recalling the dreaming-ness his very being exuded, for to leave that dimension would be to exit the only realm that can contain relationship in its dynamism, in its wholeness. This may be a way of saying the obvious, that Dr Whitmont himself, his presence, was extraordinary, and that for many – his students, his patients, his colleagues, and his readers – he emanated a tangible force, or “Self-field” as he called it. That is to say, he was a living remedy.

I heard of his passing through fellow students who had, like me, sat in a simple circle, season upon season, in a tiny room off his main house in the woods of Connecticut, or out upon redwood picnic benches on the generous porch when weather permitted. I attended his moving memorial, feeling a spiritual necessity to face his death, but I was not alone that night in sensing a light and a vibrancy still among us.

I was greatly saddened. Having no real way to process the loss in a familial or communal sense, I was left with my hand-scribbled notes, his generous photocopied materia medica (which I still consult), and my precious cassettes. Despite my Buddhist grounding in the Truth of Impermanence, I missed Dr Whitmont. Perhaps because my experience of Whitmont was one of sharing in the presence of a seemingly timeless being – an “old soul”, a master – his bodily non-eternity was harder for me to accept. So, it was indeed among the most remarkable experiences of my life to receive, nearly a year after his death, the gift of a dream – a luminous dream teaching, whose recollection has ever since been a source of healing relief. The Tibetans say one can make a fine distinction between an ordinary karmic dream, one that simply discharges our mundane existential stress, and a dream of clarity, that is, a dream which brings us into the state of luminosity and awareness.

I am sitting at a long and marvelous table, the wood is of fine, old world quality, and there is plenty of space. The room is full of light. At the head of the table is Ron Whitmont, and to his left, his father, Dr Whitmont. I am seated across from them, at the far end of the table but facing Dr Whitmont directly. I am aware that I am taking notes with my favorite writing pen, an emerald green and black and gold Pelican. We are discussing the case, filling in Dr Whitmont, and, though I am dreaming, all of the case details are real.

It is my patient, Eve. She has suffered years upon years of miscarriage. Ron has sent her to me, although she is also his patient. I am remembering how surprised I was that Ron had referred her, because it is rather like sending her to the village healer. He and his wife are MDs, after all. And besides, I feel the remedy Ron has given her was correct. Ron is her homeopath, and my role is to give her acupuncture, and perhaps, some herbs.

I am secretly wondering if she might need, however, something else? I am recalling as Ron presents her case to us, that after many sessions with me, on a recent visit, Eve had sobbingly confessed that she felt her infertility was connected to an abortion which she had kept hidden from her husband, and her doctors, including Ron. Rivers of tears flowed during that session while I mirrored for her how many women of her generation had freely made the same choice, and still conceived. There was nothing to be ashamed of. It had not been the right time, or the right partner for her.

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‘Women have always had ways of dissolving conceptions that were ill-timed,’ I assured her, listing the many ancient herbs that had been utilized, such as wild carrot, Peruvian Bark, pennyroyal, and juniper. Juniper, I think to myself, inside the dream, as Ron is reciting the symptoms that led him to give Eve Sabina (Juniperus), 200c.

His father is nodding, “yes yes yes” to each of the physicals Ron enumerates. ‘Her flow is liquid, bright red, pains extending from sacrum to pubes, stabbing, aching, as if the bones would separate… and she cannot tolerate music…’ I keep thinking about how Sabina was used as an abortificant by ancient women, and how beautiful it is, alchemically, that what can abort in Galenic herbal form can cure miscarriage in homeopathic potency. I am silent. Lost in time. Somehow I cannot break her confidentiality.

Suddenly Dr Whitmont thunders, “Yes, yes, Ron has given the Simillimum, but YOU!” His gaze pierces my soul, ‘YOU gave her the ~~~.” A word is said in the dream that I cannot bring out… something outside of my vocabulary… What did I give her? I am aching to know! I am staring into Whitmont’s gaze trying to place the word. Something occurs that I must say,“Dr Whitmont, aren’t you dead?” I ask, still staring into his eyes, mesmerized. A golden luminosity surrounds him, and he breaks into a Cheshire Cat smile, chuckling on and on in that biting, ironic way he had, “Vat do you zink, darlink?” he asks me, reverting comically to his Viennese accent, eyes beaming with vitality.

I know, now, that there is no such thing, really, as death. I understand from him, as if in a mind-to-mind transmission, full of heart and humor and light, that reality is totally fluid, and that he has not, through his death, ceased to be a guide, a teacher, a being of light.

When I awaken, I am suffused with healing sensation. And yet, the word I could not decipher in the dream still plagues me. I share the dream with my partner, telling him that it had the sound, nearly, of the word albino, but with a long “e”, al-bee-no. Although

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intimately shared, the mysterious word remained veiled, left to obscurity amidst the lost tongues of dreamtime.

Some months later, I happen to meet Alex Grey, the visionary painter. We are old acquaintances, and I feel easy telling him the dream, as he has worked deeply in his art on altered states of consciousness. "What could he have meant when he said in the dream, ‘You have given her the albino/al/bee/no?'” I ask Alex.

After some time, Alex cocked his head and asked, “Could Whitmont have said ‘albedo’?”

“’Albedo!’ Why yes, Alex, that word is even closer in sound to the dream word! My God, I think that is it! What on earth does it mean?”

“Well, wasn’t Whitmont an alchemist?” Alex queried.

“Yes,” I responded, “He even wrote a book called the Alchemy of Healing…”

Alex explained how the albedo was one of several important stages in Alchemy, one which represented the process of washing clean, of purification.

Marie-Louise von Franz in her lectures on Alchemy has characterized the albedo as the process of taking back our projections:

“In alchemical literature it is generally said that the great effort and trouble continues from the nigredo to the albedo; that is said to be the hard part, and afterwards everything becomes easier…” [MvF, p. 220]

“Alex, that’s astonishing. Because the patient in the dream had confessed to me something she was very ashamed of, and I had worked with her to come to terms with it – yes, to purify it, in fact.” I remembered and shared now with Alex, “this patient did once again become pregnant. And this time, she carried to term.”

Von Franz continues, “The negredo – the blackness, the terrible depression and state of dissolution – has to be compensated for by the hard work of the alchemist and that hard work consists, among other things, in constant washing; therefore even the work of the washerwoman is often mentioned in the text, or constant distilling, which is also done with the object of purification, for the metal is evaporated and then precipitated into another vessel, thus removing the heavier substances… through this hard work the matter becomes white. Whiteness suggests purification, no longer being contaminated with matter, which would mean what we analysts call technically, and so lightly, 'taking back our projections'. That is not an easy thing to do; it is something very complicated and difficult, for it is not as though one understood that one was projecting and would therefore not do it any more. It needs a long process of inner development and realization for a projection to come back. When it has been withdrawn, the disturbing emotional factor vanishes.

“As soon as the projection is really withdrawn a sort of peace establishes itself - one becomes quiet and can look at the thing from an objective angle. One can look at the specific problem or factor in an objective and quiet way and perhaps do some active imagination about it without constantly becoming emotional, or falling back into the emotional tangle. That corresponds to the albedo… what the alchemist symbolized with the idea of whitening was that the material they had been working on had now reached a form of purity and oneness… the experience is consolidated, and finally the work holds.” [MvF, 222, 223]

“So, Whitmont was saying that his son gave the patient the right remedy. What did you call it?” Alex asked, sincerely curious.

“Sabina! Yes, it was what we call her simillimum.”

“But,” Alex continued, “Whitmont seems to have wanted you both to know that she also needed, and you had given her, the albedo.”

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The Simillimum: Sabina

Sabina, Juniperus Sabina, a conifer, a cypress, a small tree or shrub that is found all over Europe. An ancient plant that traces all the way back to antiquity, “Gossip records a miracle,” states Pliny the Elder, “that to rub the crushed berries all over the male part before coition prevents conception.” Another source of the same era advises the woman to place the crushed berries on the vulva prior to insertion. “One way or the other,” John Riddle notes, “juniper is inserted in the woman’s vagina and there it will act either as a contraceptive or an abortificant. Juniper was also taken orally… The abortive qualities of juniper generally are attributed to [the major component of]… its essential oil… sabinyl acetate.”

A plant demonized in the witch-hunting era, savin (sabina or juniper) was said to provoke “the courses”, “cause miscarriage” and to have the capacity to expel a “dead child.” For this reason, Oxford physician John Peachey, who well knew the medicinal aspects of plants, wrote in his 1694 Compleat Herbal of Physical Plants that savin was “ too well known and too much used by Wenches.” As recently as 1852 the Assize of Cornwall, Dr Pascoe was indicted for a criminal abortion by giving oil of savin (juniper, sabina) to a woman “with intent to procure miscarriage.” [Riddle].

Whitmont writes, in Psyche and Substance,“Complementation of two entities means that only both together represent the whole; the same road is travelled, the same ends are accomplished by what on the surface may appear as different or even opposite means and ways.” Sabina, healer and capacitor of miscarriage. Clearly, Ron Whitmont had identified the simillimum, regardless of what the patient, Eve, had left unrevealed.

The Albedo

And what of the albedo and the alchemical purification? What happened in the therapeutic encounter the day that Eve was able to reveal her grief, her shame, her shadow? In the Alchemy of Healing, Whitmont wrote about the ways in which the healer as field, is catalytic: “… by virtue of his attunement to the Self-field and to the implicate-order essences hidden in outer-world substance dynamics… [the healer] also serves as transmitter and mediator of the symbolic similie of the new pattern. Through this the renewing consciousness of the entelechy, the Guiding Self, may emerge.”

This, Whitmont concludes, is what has been: “concretized in myth and alchemy as the process of creating or refining gold and the lapis, the philosopher’s stone.” [AH, 214] “The alchemists held that the transformation of base substances into gold constituted the bringing forth and purifying of an innermost divine essence that lies dormant in earthly existence. This process was considered tantamount to a ‘healing’ of a ‘diseased’ substance… Transformation, purification, and generation of this Lapis or eternal Self on a psyche-substance level was a quasi-cosmic healing. [AH, 48]

“By analogy to the “purification” rites that restore the “gold” to its divine source, the status-quo resistance submits itself to the essence of the entelchy. It allows itself to be ‘shaken up’ by therapeutic modalities that mediate an influx that is ‘similar’ and corresponding to the nature of the impasse-provoking intruder on vital, emotional or spiritual levels.

“In this category belong also the approaches of ‘specifics’: homeopathic medicine, acupuncture, and the insight method of depth-psychotherapy, as well as the activity of the shaman who calls upon the ‘helping spirits’ or ‘extracts’ the illness from the body… all restore the vital flow and can also ‘unfreeze’ and bring to awareness emotional tensions and memories that were ‘buried’ in the physical body and modified the vital field.” [AH, 214]

Had, then, the field itself sent Eve to be “shaken up”, to be witnessed and administered the albedo by the very witchly healer, the alchemical “washerwoman,” in whose Self-field Sabina, the plant so long demonized for its abortive qualities, or revered for its contraception, could mystically complete its homeopathic dynamic, bringing to bear its secretively fertile, generating, life-sustaining action?

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“It is an awesome feeling to realize that in this way, disturbed, conflict-trapped organic or psychic functioning is, by virtue of the resonance of similarity, connected instantaneously (or at least atemporarily) to macrocosmic form analogues in some other person or in some plant, animal or mineral substance.” [AH, 215]

The dream gift

Whitmont’s dream wisdom transmission, his directive, was to consider how both the simillimum and the albedo (or the alchemical principle) were necessary for healing. Anima/Animus, Yin & Yang, Substance & Healer, One without the Other is simply not effective. “Alchemy ostensibly concerned itself with the transformation of substance. But it held that for the work to be effective, there must be no separation between soul, spirit, substance and body… any transformation depends upon and includes the interaction of body, soul and spirit of both subject and object. Even for substance to be transformed, its body, soul and spirit must be interacted with the body, soul and spirit of the laborant.” [AH, 49]

This dream was, indeed, a Portal to the Source – a potent, metaphysical encounter with the energetic, lapis-golden-brilliant sage-presence of Whitmont, whom the alchemical Taoists would surely call Immortal.

References

John Berger, ‘Twelve Theses on the Economy of the Dead,’ Hold Everything Dear: Dispatches on Survival and Resistance, Pantheon, 2007.

Ione, Listening In Dreams, I Universe, 2005.

Marie-Louise von Franz, Alchemy, An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology, Studies in Jungian Psychology, 1980.

Namkai Norbu, Dream Yoga and the Practice of Natural Light, Snow Lion Publications, 1992.

John Riddle, Eve’s Herbs, A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West, Harvard University Press, 1997.

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Edward C. Whitmont M.D., The Alchemy of Healing: Psyche and Soma, North Atlantic Books & Homeopathic Educational Services, 1993.

Edward C. Whitmont M.D., Psyche and Substance: Essays on Homeopathy in the Light of Jungian Psychology, North Atlantic Books & Homeopathic Educational Services, 1980.

Sylvia Brinton Perera & Edward C. Whitmont, Dreams, A Portal to the Source, Routledge, 1989.

Photo: Wikimedia CommonsJuniperus sabina; H.ZellSplendor Solis; Women washing; public domain