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Case of a Sexually Abused Woman Who Hates Herself (3): Diagnosis and Prescription

This is Part 3 of the series begun with the case of Janice, a sexually abused woman (Part 1) and continued with my homeopathic case analysis of her case (Part 2).

Today I will complete the case analysis by completing the diagnosis and revealing the prescription that Janice received, and in subsequent articles I will present her progress over time. The case history and analysis are summarized below, or you may review them by following the links above.

Review of the case and analysis thus far

Janice grew up with a cold, uncaring mother. Craving love, she accepted her father’s perverted attention which was lavished in the form of ongoing sexual abuse. The need for attention through sexuality combined with a tempestuous character (which may have been caused by, or pre-existed, the abuse), resulting in great anger toward those who had hurt her. Her violent, revengeful thoughts occasionally resulted in outbursts of violence, but most of the time these were directed against herself — specifically against the ugly, hateful child within herself who was both the victim of abuse and somehow responsible for it. Nowadays she functions reasonably well within society but enters repeatedly into abusive relationships and suffers from debilitating depressive episodes that are kept in check by anti-depressive and anti-anxiety medications.

I identified three main themes in Janice’s case — her history of sexual abuse, violence, and sensation of duality — which were translated into repertory rubrics. The resulting repertorization revealed the following 8 remedies as most likely to match Janice’s clinical picture:

1. Anacardium
2. Calcarea phosphorica
3. Lycopodium
4. Natrum muriaticum
5. Sepia
6. Stramonium
7. Thuja
8. Petroleum raffinatum

To understand what these rather esoteric names refer to I will briefly summarize the main features of each remedy, focusing on the psychological symptoms:

1. Anacardium: Lack of self-confidence with need for external authority, alternately aggressive and dependent. Easily offended. Unfeeling, hard-hearted. Feeling of separation from the world. Two contradictory wills, one good, one bad.
2. Calcarea phosphorica: Restlessness and inner discontent with desire for change and travel. Mental slowness, lack of motivation, sensitivity to hearing bad news. Problems with physical growth in children.
3. Lycopodium: Feels weak and inadequate, afraid of responsibility. Strong intellect, weak body. Compensates by acting boastfully, arrogantly. Dictatorial towards those who can be controlled, yet timid and passive towards superiors.
4. Natrum muriaticum: Introverted, emotionally vulnerable. Keeps a wall between the self and the world to avoid being hurt. Serious, loyal, responsible. Dwells on past disagreeable events and disappointed love.
5. Sepia: Often indicated in ambitious, career-oriented women with hormonal problems. Conflict between work and motherhood: e.g. indifference to family due to exhaustion from overwork, or following childbirth.
6. Stramonium: Fear of being attacked leading to intense outbursts of anger and violence. Strong fear of dark, deep water, animals. Claustrophobia. Mental illnesses with mania, psychosis.
7. Thuja: Secretive, deceitful, prone to dogmatic beliefs. Sensation of being made of glass (fragile and transparent). Feeling of worthlessness that has to be hidden from others.
8. Petroleum raffinatum: (This remedy, made from refined oil, is a ‘new’ remedy about which there is very little information to date.  However, the closely related remedy Petroleum or crude oil, whose picture is better known, can give us a clue about whether this remedy is a likely candidate despite this limitation.) Quick, excitable temper, irresolution. Complaints made worse by motion. Strong affinity for skin problems, especially in winter.

From the above information (which is but a snippet of the information available for each remedy) we can see that there are hints of Janice’s picture in the remedies Anacardium, Lycopodium, Stramonium, and Thuja, of which I chose Anacardium for Janice. But to strengthen our conviction that this is a correct match we now need to turn to the detailed picture or materia medica of the remedy.

The homeopathic remedy Anacardium

The remedy Anacardium (Anacardium orientale or Semecarpus anacardium in its full botanical name) is made from the marking-nut tree. It is indigenous to India and closely related to the cashew-nut tree Anacardium occidentale.

The following are selected quotes from various sources of materia medica, again focusing on the psychological aspect relevant to Janice’s case:

Outbursts of extreme anger, with cursing, from slight causes… Goes wild; feels like a wild animal, roaring like a lion.

Imagines himself double, or that someone lies beside him.

Division between a normal, sensitive personality and a sharply contrasting perverse or ‘demonic’ subpersonality, which attempts to possess the individual and prompt him to commit obscene acts.

His external voluntary [will] is continuously excited by external influences, but his real will, in which is his conscience, restrains that and keeps him from carrying the impulses into effect.

Excessive anger at slight offence, breaking out in personal violence.

The situation of Anacardium is that of a kind of child abuse. Overstrict parents impose all their desires on the child… If he starts taking his own decisions or does not live up to the expectations placed upon him, he will be punished cruelly. So he tries to live up to these expectations by being obedient and angelic in his behaviour, and by being excellent in his work. If the domination persists and he is compelled to put up with it, he starts reacting with cruelty, malice, want of moral feeling, and antisocial behaviour. Here he may also develop a tremendous overconfidence with contempt for others… On the one hand he is good, angelic, obedient from fear of punishment… The other part of him is hard, malicious, violent, devilish, disgusted with himself. He becomes immoral, develops suicidal or homicidal tendencies, is abusive, stubborn and avoids the company of people. These two sides of Anacardium are constantly in opposition to each other: should he be an angel or a devil.

(Sources: Vermeulen, Prisma Materia Medica; Bailey, Homeopathic Psychology; Kent, Lectures on Homeopathic Materia Medica; Sankaran, The Soul of Remedies)

If you’d like further detailed information about the remedy Anacardium please visit here.

Next: The prescription and treatment

The themes identified as most characteristic of Janice’s case recur in the above quotes, strengthening our conviction in the correctness of the selection. But the whole diagnostic process thus far is still a hypothesis: the validity of the homeopathic prescription still has to be shown clinically.

The homeopathic treatment phase proper, following the diagnosis, proceeds as follows: the selected homeopathic remedy (i.e. Anacardium in Janice’s case) is given on a specific schedule and regular followup appointments take place every few weeks.

In Janice’s case I gave the remedy once a day for 3 consecutive days, in the 200c potency, followed by an indefinite waiting period during which the remedy is allowed to act before further doses were given based on information gathered at the followup appointments. (The reasoning behind my selection of this specific dosage regimen is beyond the scope of this series of articles.)

To summarize, Janice’s prescription (remedy + dosage regimen) is: Anacardium 200c, single daily dose for 3 consecutive days.

I hope that the articles about Janice thus far have given you a glimpse into the mysteries of the homeopathic diagnostic process. In subsequent articles I will share with you Janice’s clinical progress through an inside view of her followup appointments with me.

Speak your mind: Share your thoughts on this article by publishing your comment below.

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Read related articles:

• How to Measure Treatment Success Through Sleep and Dreams
• Why Dreams Are Valuable in Homeopathic Diagnosis and Treatment
• Case of a Sexually Abused Woman Who Hates Herself (4): Followup at One Month
• Case of a Sexually Abused Woman Who Hates Herself (2): Homeopathic Analysis of Main Themes
• Case of a Sexually Abused Woman Who Hates Herself
• The Homeopathic Treatment of Allergies
• The 7 Essential Factors in Forecasting the Length of Homeopathic Treatment of Chronic Diseases
• Medical Suppression of Symptoms and Its Homeopathic Cure
• Diving Into “The Spirit of Homoeopathy”
• The Followup Appointments

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