Page 18 - Autumn 13
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The Herscu Method – a journey through Cycles and Segments by Beatrice Milleder, Germany
It was in spring of 2006 when I first attended one of Paul Herscu’s seminars. I had no idea whatsoever what to expect, and after it was over I had so many ques- tions I knew I would return for another time. I was just about to finish my studies with George Vithoulkas and it was there when I first heard of Paul Herscu.
Paul Herscu, born in Romania, raised in Israel and the USA, lives and works in New England (USA). He is a Doctor of Natural Medicine (ND) and he and his wife have a specialised practice for classical homeopathy, where they (mostly, but not only) treat a lot of children with severe disabilities. He also treats animals now and then and has given seminars to vets in the US. He is a speaker all over the world and has pub- lished several books.
Paul’s method of analysing and repertorising a case is unique and very different from, what I was used to. For him each remedy defines as a logical sequence of, what he calls “Segments” that will ultimately lead to a closed “Cycle”. While taking the case and repertorising it, he concentrates on the “essence” of a case or – to use Paul’s words - on “what needs to be fixed”. For me as a veterinary practitioner that holds the huge advantage that I don’t have to concen- trate on things like preferences in food or other things like that, which is always so difficult to collect. That doesn’t mean I will ignore them. In fact, I always collect the totality and might use that to differentiate between remedies that are similar.
The idea is that in the end, we find a cycle in a patient that will be in congruence with one a remedy presents us. The more those two fit together, the better our result will be. The method has a very clear structure and everyone can learn it. There is no mystery, no secrets how to prescribe, no “feeling” of remedies the way some other teachers tell us.
Paul also has a much more multi-dimensional view of the remedies than most Materia
Medicas want to make us believe. A remedy has more than one picture. For one, it is impor- tant how far into the pathology of the remedy a patient has developed. I still remember him talking about Argentum Nitricium, a remedy I always associated with a major destructive process in the body, which it is, once the pathol- ogy has reached that point in a patient, but in the beginning such a patient might almost look like a Phosphorus – at least at first impression. Just as open, just as companionable – so you need to look more closely, find more clues to help you solve the case. All of the big poly- chrests for example have diarrhoea somewhere in their Materia Medica. The question we have to ask ourselves is: why do our patients have that particular symptom? And how are they dealing with it?
Which brings us to the first point Paul talks about in each and every seminar I have attended.
Stress and Strain
All of us, each individual, experiences stress. Be that pollution, be that an insult or whatever we encounter. And we all deal with stress on a daily basis. The question we as homeopaths have to ask ourselves is: how do we deal with stress? Or in Paul’s words, how does the body react? This is where the word “strain” comes in.
The stress can be the same for ten people, yet the strain (the reaction) of their organisms is different in all of them. And that is what is important for us; it is what tells us the tale of the patient and in consequence shows us the rem- edy that is needed.
Segments and Cycles
Segment
To make this easier to understand I’m giving you an example:
You have a patient – say a dog – that has dis- charge from his eyes, that bleeds easily and profusely and that barks a lot. Of course, you can use the flat repertorisation and find all
these things as separate points. Or you can see them as what they are – discharge. So you cre- ate a segment called “Discharge” and put all these things in that segment. Discharge isn’t just a physical symptom it can also be emo- tional or mental. And you can combine all those and put them under one ‘segment’.
So in short, a ‘segment’ is a main point of a remedy/a patient. And a main point is only a main point, if something fitting that main point will repeat in our patient time and again. Then, and only then the symptom is important. Of course, we will ask about the main complaint, but the main complaint on its own will (almost) never give us a remedy. We need more to find it and to find it we have to know, what symptoms to choose from. Otherwise we will get lost in a vast sea of information – or to use a well-known phrase: we won’t see the forest for all the trees.
An example for a segment: It shows very clearly how a segment is understood.
Obstipation
Rectum-constipation-ineffectual urging Rectum-inactivity of rectum Nose-obstruction Mind-thoughts-persistent Generals-tension-internally
That you avoid dominating your repertorisation with certain aspects of the case is a nice side effect of this method, as you usually will collect all the same aspects in one segment.
Cycle
When we have found our first segment, we then need to ask ourselves, how we got to that seg- ment. Let’s stay with the dog, we were just talk- ing about before. The question we now have to ask ourselves is: why does that particular dog bark so much, or why does it have that kind of discharge? So we try to find the answer to that. Is it weakness? Is it overexertion? Is it fullness and the need to discharge? We ask the owner, we study the patient and maybe we will find out that it is a result of overexertion; that after stressful days or after the dog has been through
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