Portraits of Homeopathic Medicines: Psychophysical Analyses of Selected Constitutional Types

In this rich, textured study of the characters of 9 homoeopathic medicines, C.Coulter has revived a much-neglected archetypal science: the study of mind-body types upon which healing by similars is based. While most psychologists and doctors either avoid or oversimplify the issues of inherited constitutional dispositions and psychophysiological unity, Coulter presumes the existence of dynamic fields around which each creature is formed and energized. "These fields are intrinsic to the very organismic process," writes Edward C. Whitmont, a homoeopathic physician and a founding member of the C.G. Jung Training Center in NY, "our own as well as the planet's." Every mineral, plant, and animal embodies discrete patterns and thus has the intrinsic power to call forth the disease of these patterns and then to heal through them. Unless we recognize these fields and constitutional types and learn to diagnose in terms of the phenomenological totality of living beings, we cannot hope to realize the potential of a medicine of similars. Dr. Whitmont goes on to write: "A child's personality is then not only structured by parental and environmental influences, but also, selectively, in its own individual ways, evokes and responds to "like" or corresponding parental and environmental influences. In its own way it will also constellate and call forth environmental factors that a child of a different makeup will not. A Natrum muriaticum or Lycopodium child may stoically withdraw, even sever communication, where a Sulphur child may respond with overactivity or a Hepar or Arsenic type with fury or anxiety respectively. It is also to be considered that environments that encourage anxiety or withdrawal may help produce corresponding Arsenic or Hepar constitutional states. In either case the somatic indications for a particular remedy can alert the experienced prescriber to the potential presence of specific psychological predispositions as yet dormant and unrecognized."