Curing, Healing & Wholeness
by
Ian Watson
From my homeopathic training I became familiar with the
concept of a ‘direction of cure’. This set of
observations, originally attributed to Constantine
Hering, provide a useful guide to the progress of a
person undergoing homeopathic or any other form of
treatment. For the most part, the established criteria do
seem to be reliable indicators, although there are
certain situations where things are not quite so
clearcut.
What I noticed in my practice work over a number of years
was that another, parallel process was unfolding in the
lives of many of the people that I worked with, which
perhaps could be called ‘the direction of healing’. I use
the word ‘healing’ deliberately here because of its
original definition pertaining to wholeness.
Although the two terms - healing and curing - are often
used interchangably, they do carry different
connotations. Curing tends to imply something that is
done to a person, by the prescribing of certain medicines
and procedures, whereas healing is itself the unfolding
process through which a greater sense of wholeness or
one-ness is experienced.
One important characteristic of healing that
differentiates it from curing is that it is not directly
concerned with the removal of symptoms or disease states.
That is to say, healing (or a sense of wholeness) may be
experienced as a result of certain symptoms being
‘cured’, but this is not a necessary precondition.
There are many people who are free of symptoms but do not
feel theselves to be ‘whole’, and there are just as many
who are undergoing a radical self-healing process in the
very midst of suffering and disease. Also, it can often
be witnessed that the dying process brings the most
profound healing of all, and this is frequently the case
for those who have been proven to be ‘incurable’.
The direction of healing, then, is a movement towards
greater wholeness, which does not always coincide with
the direction in which symptoms and diseases are moving.
It is concerned with a much larger process than any
particular illness, a process which continues to unfold
gradually throughout a person’s entire life, through both
sickness and health. The Swiss psychologist C.G. Jung
coined the term ‘individuation’ to describe this lifelong
endeavour.
I found through experience, as do many practitioners,
that the reasons for which people come for treatment are
many and varied. A great number are clearly seeking a
‘cure’ for some ailment that has resisted the efforts of
orthodox medicine. These individuals will typically be
only too glad to hand over the responsibility for their
well-being to the homeopath, whose job it now becomes to
find the cure on their behalf. They are not particularly
interested in what the illness might mean or to what
effect their lifestyle may be contributing to their
suffering - they just want it to go away so they can
resume their normal life.
This group of patients (and they are known as patients at
this stage) will invariably respond best to what may be
described as ‘medical homeopathy’, and it is here that
the traditional ‘direction of cure’ guidelines will be
most applicable. The homeopath acts in a role which is
analagous to that of the general practitioner, and he or
she may find that they have become a kind of GP subsitute
for many of their patients. Having adopted this mode in
my earlier years of homeopathic practice, I can report
that it is the fastest route I know of to establishing a
busy practice with a large client base.
The downside of this mode of practice is that the
patients are relatively passive and may well feel
themselves to be be victims of their disease who are
unable to help themselves. The homeopath is now the
expert upon whom they feel dependent, just as the doctor
or consultant once was. The practitioner holds most of
the power in the relationship and will, over time, begin
to experience the burden of responsibility for others’
health and well-being to be an increasingly heavy load.
It is, in short, the best recipe for practitioner burnout
that I can think of.
Fortunately for those of us who have felt the limitations
of practising in this way, a second client group has
emerged in ever-increasing numbers during the past few
decades. This group consists of those individuals who are
no longer prepared to be the passive and helpless
patient. They may still tend to view their disease as a
nuisance and something to be gotten rid of, but they are
not content to hand that role over completely to someone
else. They want to participate. They ask a lot of
questions. They spend hours on the internet researching
their disease. They demand (quite rightly in my opinion)
to be told exactly what they are being given, and why,
and what it is supposed to do for them. And you can be
sure they will look it up in their materia medica the
minute they get home!
Now, depending on the consciousness of the practitioner,
this kind of client will either feel like a breath of
fresh air, or will feel like a ‘difficult case’. The
homepath, like the GP, who is used to being ‘the expert’
will find these clients challenging to say the least.
They may well find themselves struggling to get these
people to comply with some rule or other which the
practitioner deems crucial to the success of the
treatment. The patient, of course, has other ideas and
won’t be afraid to try them out.
What I noticed in my own practice was that the ‘normal’
rules of homeopathic engagement became increasingly
burdensome and less relevant as more of my clients became
interested in participating in their own self-healing
process. It didn’t seem to matter so much whether I
‘found the remedy’ or not. The emphasis of the interview
began to shift away from ‘taking the case’ and more
towards working with the client’s process directly at it
emerged there and then. There was less of a need for me
to ‘fix’ anything or to make it all okay , and more of a
recognition that we were sharing this journey together
and were both equally responsible for any progress that
was made.
My own instinct tells me that there is a growing movement
in consciousness, of which the emergence of this second
group described above is but a symptom. Medical
homeopathy, for all its successes, is beginning to look
increasingly outmoded as a model for practice in the
future. It is not that homeopathy ‘doesn’t work’ on this
level, but rather that the relationship between
practitioner and client, based as it is on the old
medical model, is not sustainable for either party in the
long term.
And it can only get worse. Or better, depending on how we
choose to look at it. As my own interest in prescribing
‘a remedy for everything’ has waned, I find myself now
working exclusively with ‘group two’ clients, together
with an increasing number who have outgrown this mode of
healing relationship as well. Let’s call them ‘group
three’.
This latter group consists of those who have a radically
different relationship to their disease process than the
former two groups. They are interested primarily in
understanding their dis-ease, rather than getting rid of
it. They tend to see it as an opportunity for growth
rather than as a curse, and will actively resist any
attempts to just make it go away. They want to learn from
it and to discover what purpose it serves in their life.
They may even want to explore the possibility that they
themselves have originated this problem in order to
promote their own growth and self-development.
As you can imagine or may already be aware, working with
clients who have this kind of consciousness is a very
different proposition, and the ‘direction of cure’ as
homeopaths normally understand it is a meaningless
concept in this situation. What I call the ‘direction of
healing’ however, comes into its own here, because there
are recognizable stages through which people typically
move on this journey of increased self-awareness.
One of the signs I’ve learned to pay attention to is
known as ‘the descent’, wherein a person begins to lose a
sense of what was formerly meaningful and valuable to
them, and they experience a kind of free-fall into
uncertainty. This will often be labelled as a state of
depression or a mid-life crisis, neither of which does
justice to what is really taking place. Psychologically,
it seems we need these times of introversion during which
our old identity falls away and we are left floundering
in the unknown until a rebirth of the self can take
place.
I’ve found that if I remain stuck in the mode of just
‘giving remedies’ to a person undergoing this kind of
transition, I am probably missing the point. The point
being, nothing needs to be fixed or taken away here,
despite appearances to the contrary. These transitions
are completely natural to the larger process of becoming
a whole human being, and delaying the inevitable is
generally less than helpful. What might be helpful is to
be a supportive partner in this process, who can hold the
space within which a person may find their own way.
Invariably, the most valuable things are to be found
within ourselves and remain unavailable to us for as long
as we seek outside.
What we are addressing here is the place where curing,
healing and self-development intersect, and its an area
that I believe homeopaths would do well to consider more
consciously. Homeopathy as a ‘medical system’ which is
practiced by experts will, inevitably, fall prey to many
of the afflictions suffered by the orthodox medical
establishment. Perhaps the time is ripe for homeopathy as
a tool for self-healing and the recovery of personal
autonomy to come into its own.
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This
article first appeared in
Homeopathy in Practice,
Journal of the Alliance of Registered Homeopaths, Spring
2007 edition.
For more information on the A.R.H., visit
www.a-r-h.org