homeopathy and the search for meaning[1]
By Joseph Zarfaty

Introduction

We all know that when homeopaths meet to discuss a case, they rarely come out with the same remedy. An article I read in The Homeopath (Boulderstone 1994) suggested an inspiring explanation. Boulderstone said that two or more observers, albeit unprejudiced, cannot be the same. For this reason, different analyses of a case will exist with their different accompanying remedies. What causes the cure, is not the actual remedy given but the whole process of taking the case and understanding the patient.

I believe that the act of understanding is closely linked with the notion of meaning. In this paper I will discuss this concept briefly and will then introduce the work of David Bohm, a preeminent 20th Century physicist and philosopher. His theories of Wholeness and the Implicate Order and Unfolding Meaning can provide a platform on which a better understanding of homeopathy's magic action becomes possible.

What is meaning?

Grasping the term 'meaning', or worse than that, understanding what is the 'meaning of meaning' is no easy task. There are various levels in which meaning can be defined, starting with the simple, day to day use of the word and ending up with deep linguistic and philosophical questions.

The word 'meaning' is derived from an old English word denoting to 'recite, tell, intend, wish'. In today's English it implies 'that which is conveyed' but also 'a significant quality'. Without meaning, there is nothing to tell or wish. Without meaning, anything, including human life, loses its quality, its significance, its value. As Dossey (1991) puts it bluntly, without meaning, we are as good as dead.

Two examples that illuminate some aspects of meaning are worthwhile mentioning here. The first, given by Bohm (1992), is about a person who walks back home in a dark alley. He sees a suspicious shadow. His adrenaline starts to flow, preparing him to fight or flight. He then realises the shadow is actually that of his friend who offers him a lift home. The physical symptoms subside. Now the same shadow has a totally different meaning, invoking a different reaction.

The second example demonstrates the complexity of meaning. It was given originally by Reuben Hersh in his book 'What is Mathematics, Really?':

When you need to see a doctor, his secretary finds a gap in his schedule. What is the gap in your doctor's schedule? Is it a material object - a blank space in a book, say? Not at all. If the secretary doesn't write down an appointment, there can be a blank space, but no gap in the schedule. Is it a mental object? If so, in whose mind does it reside? the doctor's? no, because he may think he has a gap when his secretary knows better. The secretary's, then? No, she just writes down appointments, she doesn't remember them. ...These are coherent thoughts shared by many minds, through communication. You, the secretary and the doctor all have to have the same idea about that gap, before it has any meaningful existence (Stewart 1997).

Meaning has a major influence on people's health. One example of its bodily manifestations can be found in the Multiple Personality Disorder. MPD is an abnormal condition in which two or more well-developed personalities exist within the same individual. Each may take over at a particular time, and each bears a different meaning to the patient. When a person with MPD shifts from one personality to another, his body shifts too. One personality might have diabetes, for example, and the person will be insulin-deficient as long as that personality is in force. Yet the other personalities may be completely free of diabetes, and the person then will have a normal blood sugar level.

Chopra (1989) talks about the 'intelligence that is present everywhere in our bodies. It is more important than the actual matter of the body, since without it that matter would be undirected, formless and chaotic. Intelligence makes the difference between a house designed by an architect and a pile of bricks'. Kent calls it 'Simple Substance' (Zarfaty 1997).

Intelligence and meaning are experienced in the mind. Without mind, there can be no meaning, and meaning itself is inseparable from thoughts, feelings and emotions. When we see a bridge, for example, we absorb through our eyes hundreds of bits of bricks, cement and iron. At each step from the sensory nerves to the brain, the world becomes more organised. We start to see now a structure made of pillars and arches, and the bridge acquires its simplified and coherent meaning. The brain is always searching for meaning (like in Bohm's example) and the body reacts accordingly.

Sometimes the meaning is not as obvious as when we see a bridge. For example, when musical notes are played on their own, they have no (or limited) meaning. Only when they are joined together a meaning is created and we have music. A different combination will create a different meaning. Or take a person who walks in a foreign city. She observes all kinds of things happening around her, but she doesn't assign any specific significance to them. Then she realises that her purse is gone, and suddenly she knows she had been robbed. All the small little pieces which had no specific meaning become now part of a bigger totality and acquire new significance.

The biologist Rupert Sheldrake developed the theory of morphogenetic fields. According to his model, each new event in nature creates a morphogenetic field, which makes a similar event more likely to occur. A subsequent event, in turn, intensifies the morphogenetic field; a memory is acquired by each and every event, strengthening and evolving the 'meaning' of the field with time. This may explain why when something is learnt by one group, it becomes available quickly to other groups without any direct contact. It also gives us a hint why when many people believe a certain drug works it actually does.

Sometimes a person responds to a comment with an immediate reaction, without thinking. It is as if there is an intuitive knowledge within the person. A similar situation happens when a person wakes up from a dream and knows its meaning instantly. This response may be explained as coming from a few possible sources such as creativity, morphogenetic fields or unfolding meaning. The last one will be dealt with in the next section.

The work of David Bohm

David Bohm was born on 20th December 1917 and is one of the most well-known and respected physicists of the 20th century. His main areas of work were plasmas, theory of metals, the Bohm diffusion, quantum mechanics and elementary particles. Later on he concentrated on theoretical physics as well as on basic philosophical questions concerning mind, thought and language. He died in 1992.

Bohm was intrigued by the radical differences between the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. In relativity, movement is continuous and there are strict causality (or determinism) and locality, while quantum mechanics requires non-continuity, non-causality and non-locality. Yet, both theories seem to hold their ground well and are valid in various conditions. Bohm (and others) thus saw that a new theory was needed which will encompass both views. There was, said Bohm, a higher level of reality which we could call the implicate order.

As an example for the necessity of such a reality Bohm (1980) uses an aquarium. When a person looks through one of its walls, he can see a fish swimming from left to right. If another person looks at the same time through the neighbouring wall, which is at a right angle to the first one, she will see the same fish swimming towards her. These two images are different, yet they are closely related and the movements of the fish as seen from each angle are correlated. The images are a different reflection or facet of the same, multidimensional, reality - a fish swimming in the aquarium.

Relativity and quantum mechanics have one thing in common - wholeness. Bohm (1992) develops the notion of wholeness versus fragmentation. He argues that 'wholeness is what is real, and fragmentation is the response of this whole to man's action, guided by illusory perception, which is shaped by fragmentary thought'. The limited scope of this paper doesn't allow a discussion of Bohm's perception of thought and its structure.

In Bohm's implicate order theory, the whole is contained in each of its parts. Bohm (1980) compares the universe to a hologram. The key feature of a hologram is that each part contains information about the whole object; the form and structure of the entire object may be said to be enfolded within each region of the hologram. When one shines light on any region, this form and structure are then unfolded to give a recognisable image of the whole object once again. Similarly, in the implicate order ('implicate' comes from a Latin root meaning 'to enfold' or 'to fold inward') everything is enfolded into everything. This contrasts with the explicate order (as in classical physics) in which things are unfolded in the sense that each object lies only in its own particular region of space and time and outside the regions belonging to other things.

It will be easier to understand the implicate order theory if we look at the following device suggested by Bohm (some technical details are omitted):

The device consists of two concentric glass cylinders, with a highly viscous fluid between them. A droplet of insoluble ink is placed in the fluid, and the outer cylinder is then turned slowly, with the result that the droplet is drawn out into a fine thread-like form that eventually becomes invisible. When the cylinder is turned in the opposite direction, the thread-form draws back [due to the physical laws governing viscous fluid] and suddenly becomes visible as a droplet, essentially the same as the one that was there originally (1980:179).

When the ink particles have been drawn into a long thread one can say that they have been enfolded into the fluid. By reversing the motion, the droplet have been unfolded and reappeared. If we now add, continues Bohm, a second ink droplet of a different colour (say red) next to the first one and turn the outer cylinder, each of the two ink droplets and the fluid around them will be drawn into a thread-like form. After a while, the two thread-like forms, while remaining first separate and distinct, will weave into each other, intermingle and then 'disappear'. When the motion is reversed, each thread-like element of fluid will draw back into itself. If one could watch the reversing process with a microscope, one would see red and blue particles that were very close to each other begin to separate, while particles of a given colour that were far from each other would begin to come together, as if they 'know' they have a common source. In this analogy, one can say that even when the particles from the two droplets intermingle, each set (or 'ensemble' as Bohm calls it) is still distinct from the other by its necessity.

Now Bohm suggests another trial. This time many ink droplets will be inserted into the fluid one after the other, with a certain interval between them. Since the outer cylinder rotates at the time of insertion, each droplet will be in a different stage of enfoldment. If we move the cylinder rapidly in the reverse direction, ink droplets will appear and disappear, creating an optic illusion of a particle moving continuously and crossing space. Such an enfoldment and unfoldment in the implicate order may provide a new model of, for example, an electron. Contrary to the beliefs, that an electron exists in a specific place which changes with time (classical physics) or has a certain probability of existing in a specific place (quantum mechanics), in this model the electron can be understood through a total set of enfolded ensembles. At any given moment one of these may be unfolded and therefore localised, but in the next moment it enfolds to be replaced by the one that follows. In a similar way, one can say that meaning can enfold and unfold. The importance and implications of this view are discussed below.

Another theory which was developed by Bohm (1985) is called Soma-Significance, 'soma' meaning body and 'significance' stands for 'meaning'. In this theory, meaning is clearly being given a key role in the whole of existence. Each somatic form, such as a printed page, has a significance which is more subtle than the form itself. There is a clear interaction between the soma and the significance, both being part of the same whole; a change in one always brings about a change in the other.

After a detailed discussion of his theory, Bohm comes to the conclusion that everything, including ourselves, is a generalised kind of meaning. Physical bodies and physical action are the different levels of unfoldment (or manifestation) of this meaning with varying degrees of subtlety. There are actually three aspects in Bohm's model: soma, significance and energy. The latter is the connecting medium of the former two, but as we know from modern physics, energy can also be viewed as another aspect of matter. Hence we can say that each of these three basic notions really enfolds the other two, thus creating one unity (1985:91):

[pic]

Any fundamental change in meaning is a change in being for us. We can actually say that we are the totality of our meanings. Meanings come from the society as a whole, and they change as human beings live, work, communicate and interact. These changes are based for the most part on adaptation of existent meanings, but it is also possible for new meanings to be perceived and realised. In this creative act, the new meanings contribute to the reality in which we live and actually change it, in both aspects of significance and soma. When one sees a new meaning to be true, his or her intention will change, except if there is a blockage. In such a case they will have to see the meaning of the blockage in order to effect a change. And Bohm concludes:

The mental and the physical are one. A change in the mental is a change in the physical, and a change in the physical is a change in the mental. ...The perception and realisation of the new meaning in our intention is already the change (1985:95).

Meaning and disease

Meaning can cause disease and even death. This can be seen in what Dossey (1991) calls the Black Monday syndrome. More fatal heart attacks occur on Monday around nine am - the beginning of the workweek - than at any other time of the week. This coincides with the fact that the best predictor of a first heart attack are not hypertension, high cholesterol level, smoking or diabetes but rather job dissatisfaction. So if going back to work on Monday morning means another week of suffering, a heart attack may be produced to 'prevent' it.

There are ample examples in the literature of the influence of negative events on the human body. One such an event is separation. When one's spouse dies, it means they will never see each other again. If the person cannot tolerate this idea, his mind and body will strive to join the diseased and death will occur in a short time. We can see a voodoo death in a similar way; the cursed person wills himself to death out of the belief that he had been completely separated from his society.

Hahnemann (1921) says that disease is produced by an 'inimical spirit-like (conceptual) agency'. He later on calls it a kind of 'infection' (meaning influence) and 'evil spirit'. Bohm's soma-significance model helps us understand better Hahnemann's words. The body (soma) is influenced by the spirit-like (significance) agency. This is true both for causing a disease as well as curing it. In another place Hahnemann speaks about the symptoms of the disease and says that 'all these perceptible signs represent the disease'. Again, using Bohm's implicate order, we can see how the symptoms are enfolded in the disease which in turn is enfolded in the significance (the 'spirit-like agency'). The significance unfolds itself to produce a disease, and the disease unfolds itself to create symptoms.

Kent says similar things. Disease is the result of disorder. All diseases known to man are in the form of simple substance, an invisible something that cannot be detected by the chemist or by a microscope. And he concludes:

The images of sickness are continually being formed, and only wait for a man intelligent enough to observe them, to understand their meaning to translate them (1900:99).

Meaning and health

Many researchers talk about the link between 'health' and 'wholeness' (e.g. Harvey 1983). Fewer, however, talk about the positive effects that a certain meaning or a change of meaning have on the patient.

Chopra (1989) reports that research on spontaneous cures of cancers have shown that just before the cure happens, almost every patient experiences a dramatic shift in awareness. It need not necessarily come in a flash, but there is always a change in perception. The patient comes to know that he will be healed, because either his body or the universe around him develop a new meaning. Later on Chopra reports on a patient who, using visualisation technique, defeated terminal cancer. In this case, the patient managed, with the power of his thought only, to change the meaning of cancer, from a dark, incurable disease to one that can succumb to 'a blizzard of white particles [the immune cells] covering it like snow burying a black rock'. Chopra concludes that for such a cure to take place one needs to go deep, to contact the 'blueprint of intelligence' and change it.

Sullivan (1993) says that the therapeutic encounter alters the physiology of the body. It does so not only by physical means. In placebo mediated healing, for example, knowing and healing are directly linked. A shift in belief can by itself be therapeutic. In the relationship between the physician and the patient, the former changes the meaning of the illness to the latter. This view is in a sharp contrast to orthodox medicine which denies the notion that knowledge can itself have a real therapeutic action. Placebo effects are evidence that physicians can manipulate physiology by manipulating meaning.

Other researchers support these views. Siegel (1986) writes that the first step of the healing process is understanding how the mind has contributed to the body's ills. This understanding can show the patient how she must change to be in peace with herself. Ornstein and Sobel (1988) share Sullivan's view that part of the placebo response relates to the meaning of the disorder or illness to the person. When studying the reactions of wounded soldiers in World War II, Henry Beecher found that only a quarter needed medication for the pain. This was a much lower ratio compared to civilians with similar tissue damage. The explanation Beecher gave was that the meaning of the pain was totally different for the people in the two groups. For a civilian, being injured meant loss of work and hospital bills. For the soldier it meant the end of fighting and a ticket home.

Other disciplines demonstrate similar approach. It has always been a basic tenet of psychoanalytic theory, for example, that insight is therapeutic. Segal (1986) defines psychoanalytic insight as 'the acquiring of knowledge about one's unconscious through experiencing consciously'. To be of therapeutic value, it must be correct and it must be deep enough. The analyst's role is then 'to understand sympathetically and to communicate to the patient such relevant knowledge'. The moment the patient realises how she has split herself, she's already integrating. Whitmont (1991), a psychoanalyst and homeopath, says that in psychotherapy the healing process is initiated when one's life events and painful difficulties can be given meaning through being structured and ordered in terms of a story or drama. Connection with meaning thus can open the informational channels that maintain and restore health.

And lastly, in his introduction to the Organon of Medicine, Hahnemann talks about the human intellect bringing about cure by altering the vital force:

The true healing art is that reflective work, the attribute of the higher powers of human intellect, of unfettered judgement and of reason selecting and determining on principle in order to effect an alteration in the instinctive, irrational and unintelligent, but energetic automatic vital force (1921:67).

As is shown in the next section, homeopathic treatment and cure are both enfolded within meaning.

Homeopathy and meaning

Hahnemann was a great believer in the mind over body concept. In the introduction to the Organon of Medicine he gives examples of the grave effects that an irritating word, superstition or bad news have on the human body (1921:47). Disease itself is 'never anything material, but a dynamic - spirit like - (conceptual) affection' (1921:§45:128). The physician's task is 'to perceive what is to be cured' and to notice changes in the patient's health, as these changes represent the disease. Hahnemann deliberately doesn't use simpler words such as 'see', 'check', 'examine' or 'note'. He chooses the much deeper word 'perceive', as he wants the physician to go deep down and understand what is there to be cured. As Kent said years later, to perceive 'is not merely to look upon with the external eye, but to clearly understand, to apprehend with the mind and understanding' (1900:35). It is not only the physician who has to 'perceive'. The vital force itself is described as 'instinctively perceiving and regulating dynamis' (Hahnemann 1921:§15:103). The organism and the vital force together form a unity, similar to Bohm's soma-significance model.

Once the case is perceived correctly, a corresponding remedy has to be prescribed. Here again Hahnemann talks about the concept (meaning) of the remedy which he calls 'the pure, freely-developed, conceptual medicinal energy'. He then says:

It is not in the corporeal atoms of these highly dynamised medicines, nor their physical or mathematical surfaces ... that the medicinal energy is found. More likely, there lies invisible in the moistened globule or in its solution, an unveiled, liberated, specific, medicinal force contained in the medicinal substance which acts dynamically (1921:f/n 7:101).

Triturating a medicinal substance and succussing it develop the medicinal powers hidden within (Kent: in potentisation we enter the world of thought). The material substance is spiritualised, and by the process of proving, it acquires its meaning. When the meaning of this substance is similar to the meaning (or totality) of the patient, the healing power of the remedy can effectively act on the patient. As Kent said, the totality of symptoms that we perceive in the patient is only a representative of its cause, and there is no cause except in the interior. Simple substance is endowed with a formative intelligence. The change to simple substance may be observed or even created by man himself who can cause it to flow in disorder.

To achieve cure, the homeopath has to find the similimum. In practical terms it implies that the homeopath has to find the meaning of the patient's illness and to select a remedy with the most similar meaning. Finding the patient's essence is not a straightforward or merely a technical task. It is a creative act, in which the homeopath, even after following Hahnemann's instructions on being an unprejudiced observer, reveals the meaning in his or her own way. Since homeopaths A and B are different people and will probably conduct the homeopathic consultation in a different way, a different meaning may be created or revealed, thus requiring a different remedy. The meaning of the disease may also change with the same homeopath, depending on the time or circumstances of taking the case, as we know that meaning continually unfolds and enfolds. All of the above explain why when a group of homeopaths analyse a case together, they don't usually come to the same remedy. Yet, when these homeopaths practice on their own they get good results. If a homeopath fails to find a deep enough meaning in the case, or once a meaning has emerged he fails to match it to the right remedy, a cure won't be achieved.

Lastly, when we prove a remedy, we reveal and sometimes create the meaning of the substance we are proving. It then becomes part of a morphogenetic field, which gains strength the more we use the remedy and the more people know about it. With time, the remedy gets a deeper and wider meaning - it enfolds. When prescribed, the meaning of the remedy unfolds to bring about a cure.

The importance of homeopathy in the search for meaning

As has been shown above, meaning plays a major part in health and disease. It is one of the premises of this paper that homeopathy is an ideal and effective tool by which meaning can be grasped and help to cure the sick.

The value of homeopathy in perceiving meaning starts in the case taking process. This process as taught by Hahnemann is geared towards understanding the disease by observing and examining its unfolding symptoms. There is a perfect order in every disease which presents itself, and it rests with the homeopath to find out that order. The patient's symptoms are the best reflection of herself and her disease. They are not important per se unless they point to the core meaning of the problem or the patient. This is maybe the biggest difference between the classical and symptomatic approaches of homeopathy. In classical homeopathy, one is looking for the greatest possible totality, because finding the totality equals finding the meaning. In symptomatic homeopathy, remedies are prescribed based on artificial, single symptoms, without looking for a common thread which could give them any shared meaning. Many times, the results of such a prescription lead merely to the suppression of symptoms, rather than to a real cure.

Another contribution of homeopathy to meaning is the discovery and creation of more than 2,400 remedies. The qualities of these remedies were investigated and their action upon living organisms was studied and recorded. During the years, these remedies have became pregnant with meaning, thus giving us something which is bigger than what is in the crude substance itself. The process of potentisation, by repeated dilution and succussion, has enfolded this meaning in the somatic forms. In dilutions higher than 12C, we can't find any matter. There is only meaning left, enfolded in a sugar pill. It is important to stress here that this view is different from the 'memory of water' theory. It is found in the realm of meaning, rather than that of matter or energy.

The healing process itself takes place in the perception, in thought. The meaning of a sick person is matched with that of a remedy, and this is where homeopathy excels. It is the most valued contribution of homeopathy towards meaning. When this happens, the homeopath can be assured that the remedy will cure. Similarity, then, can be seen as identity of the implicate order, as matching up of the meaning in patient and remedy, based on explicate manifestations - the symptoms. When we give a similar homeopathic remedy, it intensifies the meaning so the patient can see it and get cured.

As Chopra (1989) said, intelligence is present everywhere in our bodies. Maybe the process of 'understanding' touches this intelligence. The placebo phenomenon and healing in general also tap this intelligence, but it seems that homeopathy does it in the most subtle and efficient way. By understanding the meaning of the patient and his condition, the homeopath becomes the main agent to cure and the remedy she chooses completes the healing process. If thoughts can heal, as demonstrated by the placebo phenomenon, curing agents have to be as similar to thoughts as possible. Highly diluted homeopathic remedies are just that.

How to harness the power of meaning?

If one acknowledges the importance of meaning to the healing process, and notwithstanding what has been said about homeopathy's role in achieving meaning, it is vital to investigate how can one harness the power of meaning in general and in regards to homeopathy in particular.

In the introduction to his Organon of Medicine, Hahnemann advises the physician to use the disease's products to "discover the nature of the disease, and to form an accurate portrait of it" (1921:51). Healing demands, according to Hahnemann, intelligence, reflection and judgement, so that the nature of the disease can be fully understood. Likewise, the physician has to know the "real significance" of the remedies available (f/n 99:197). Similar views are reflected in the teachings of contemporary homeopaths. Sheilagh Creasy believes that one has to examine the meaning of the case when order is lost, because this is where the image can be found. Rajan Sankaran talks about finding the meaning of the pathology to the patient, not the pathology itself[2].

One way to harness the power of meaning, is to move from the crude path of treatment, from invasive surgery and potent drugs, to the more subtle aspects of healing. Dossey writes:

Whatever external approaches we choose, disease has another side, which can be approached not through doing but through understanding. Illness contains an inner code by which it wants to "say something"... [symbolising] a variety of invisible meanings (1991:251).

The intelligent practitioner will then become a better one if she would dedicate a bigger part of her attention and time to a careful, detailed and comprehensive case taking. She should be receptive and open to meaning not only in illness but also in other aspects of life. The key word here is empathy, which is defined as "the ability to imagine oneself in the position of another person, and so to share and understand that person's feelings" (Longman 1987). In a way, showing empathy to people when they suffer is homeopathic to their grieving, thus helping to cure them. Love and compassion are also important ingredients in the healing process. Seeing the meaning is not only intellectual; it's a moment of grace, of creativity.

Some practical advice on how to better perceive a case is worth mentioning here. Cartwright (1996) suggests that the practitioner should ask 'why' and not 'how' (as in allopathy). She should pay attention to whether a symptom is of meaning (spirit) or of mechanism (body). Dreams can also be a very good tool to get the meaning of a case. Jung is quoted as saying that when the analyst is stuck in a case, the unconscious and the dreams it produces are there to help (Fordham 1966). Siegel says that the physician "must ask patients what they think caused the problem, what threats and losses (or gains) it represents to them, and how they believe it should be treated" (1986:55). In another place he suggests to ask the patients to draw a picture or to write a story reflecting themselves, the disease and the physician, so a comprehensive meaning can be perceived. Creating shared understanding between the patient and the practitioner is a good basis for treatment. For some patients, gaining new perspectives which could help them make sense of their illness is all that is needed to tackle it (Mitchell 1995).

It is appropriate to end here with some words of wisdom from Paracelsus:

The cure comes from the medicine, and the art of medicine originates in charity. Hence, to be cured is not a work of Faith, but one of sympathy.

Conclusion

We live in a very materialistic world. The long standing debate between the vitalists and the materialists of the West has been in the last century in favour of the latter group. Most people think of the human body as nothing more than a sophisticated machine. There is no place in their view for a vital force which is outside the realms of matter or narrowly defined energy. Patients are looked at as a production line: they spend few minutes with the doctor and are then prescribed active drugs. The idea behind it is purely aggressive and mechanistic: let's physically fight the disease and overpower it with our potent weapons.

In my view, healing is actually a process of understanding the meaning of a disease, rather than actively fighting it. It is a process of enlightenment and grace. It can happen with homeopathy or with any other subtle therapy which resides in the realm of meaning. To borrow from Bohm's shadow example, when a person is ill (walks in the dark and sees a shadow), he will stay so until the meaning has been changed or at least understood (until he realises the true nature of the shadow). How can the meaning change or be understood? In both illness and example, it may happen when an unprejudiced observer lights up a big projector which illuminates the dark alley. The man sees the figure and recognises it as a friend. The practitioner's job is to illuminate, to shed light on the disease, to understand its causes and what it means to the patient. Once it is understood and recognised it can be coped with by the patient himself, even if the homeopath says nothing. Like a dark figure which can actually turn out to be a foe, some diseases can't be cured. Even in such cases gaining understanding and finding out the truth is important and of a real significance and value to the patient.

Considering the above, one can safely see homeopathy as an ideal tool for utilising the infinite potential of meaning. It is gentle and subtle. Its method of case taking is geared towards acquiring the full meaning of the patient as a whole by seeking to find the biggest possible totality. Once this is done, it employs homeopathic remedies that acquire their own meaning by ways of proving and potentisation. Matching the meaning of the remedies with that of the patient brings about cure.

Lastly, while this paper hopefully managed to draw attention to the connections between homeopathy and meaning, it didn't attempt to answer any of the more fundamental questions. Future research should try to understand issues such as why does the understanding of meaning bring about health, or why, in order to be healed, the patient needs to see a practitioner? Why does he need that someone else will 'understand' his problem, instead of him doing it on his own? A fair amount of research is currently done in homeopathy, but its emphasis is on trying to prove that homeopathy is not a placebo. We need to get one step further and examine instead the nature of meaning and homeopathy's association with it.

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[1] This article is based on some parts of a final year thesis for the London College of Classical Homeopathy titled 'Homeopathy, the Placebo Phenomenon and Meaning' (1998).
[2]Society of Homeopaths Newsletter, September 1997:28.