Emotional and mental symptoms in homeopathic case-taking

In homeopathy, mental and emotional symptoms are of paramount importance not only when prescribing for mental and emotional conditions specifically, but especially when prescribing for physical symptoms.

Why should the mental/emotional aspect be so important when the patient only complains of physical symptoms?

The first reason is that no matter what the physical symptoms may be, it is rare that they ever occur in isolation from any mental/emotional symptoms. The patient may not recognise this until their attention is drawn to it, but will always see the connection once it is made.

In chronic conditions the association between the physical and the mental/emotional may be less obvious and require sensitive investigation to reveal, whereas in acute conditions it is usually very evident. Commonly though, even in chronic illness the patient is aware that their physical suffering is accompanied by a change in mood, or that it originated from a time of emotional stress or truama.

The mental/emotional aspect may be really obvious (e.g. anxiety with asthma, or the delirium of a fever, the whinging or screaming of a teething toddler) or it may be clear, but not understood to have a role in differentiating the remedy (e.g.dysmenorrhoea with jealousy, or weepiness, or anger) or it may be covert (e.g. IBS from long held indignation, or high blood pressure from chronically unexpressed anger). It may be that the physical symptoms appear have no direct relation to a change in the mental/emotional sphere, then it is the mental attributes discernable from the patients overall character which are used, (e.g. prostate enlargement in a man with a shy personality)

The second reason is that even for patients with a clear preponderance of physical symptoms, more often than not, it will be the mental/emotional aspect which decides the homeopathic remedy, in fact the remedy is less likely to be homeopathic without this information.

Homeopathy however is not the same as psychoanalysis, for although it needs to divine the mental/emotional dynamic in any casetaking, and although psychological insights may be revealed, this information is used to find a homeopathic remedy not to provide a psychoanalytical solution. Also unlike some schools of thought which insist on a psychological (or 'psychospiritual') causation behind every physical ailment, homeopathy doesn't automatically assume this psychosomatic dynamic, though it does recognise such aetiology when it is evident (e.g. fainting caused by a fright, or ulcers from anxiety). It is the chosen remedy's homeopathicity which rights the problem, not a psychoanalysis.

It is often assumed whenever a psychological componant is suspected in an illness that the patient must be an hypochondriac, a term with perjorative overtones and hence the British patient's reticence to reveal their feelings; but this emphasis in homeopathy on the mind in no way implies hypochondria. The homeopath's recognition of the mind's qualities in illness has less to do with specifying its role than its consideration as a concomitant, used purely to match the remedy characteristics to the characteristics of the patients suffering.

Thus homeopathy uses the mental/emotional componant to connect the full picture of the patients suffering to the attributes of a remedy - the more complete the picture, the more likely the chosen remedy will be homeopathic, and therefore curative.