Jeremy Sherr has created a new repertory, ‘The Repertory of Mental Qualities’. Here he introduces the repertory and talks about its philosophy and underlying methodology. ——————————————— I will introduce this new repertory with a short case: A woman feels she is ‘falling apart’. ‘I am broken into
Jeremy Sherr has created a new repertory, ‘The Repertory of Mental Qualities’. Here he introduces the repertory and talks about its philosophy and underlying methodology.
———————————————
I will introduce this new repertory with a short case:
A woman feels she is ‘falling apart’. ‘I am broken into tiny fragments, I can’t get the pieces together. I feel totally stupid and have low self esteem’. She has dreams of water and falling from high places. She also hates being in water. There are problems with menses, with diarrhea during menses and bad premenstrual tension. She gets headaches in the forehead, worse for tension. Generally when she is not down she is bubbly and happy-go-lucky, feels graced. Her family calls her ‘the Queen’.
Naturally, there are several ways to approach this case. You can dig deeply into the psychology, feelings, history etc, and you may find gold. Or you may not, in which case it will be ‘fools gold’. I understand the essence of the case to be a ‘broken vessel, high water flowing downwards’. This includes the dreams of water and falling from heights, the low self esteem, the broken up feeling and the diarrhea during menses.
Having identified the main issues of the case, I choose four rubrics from the Repertory of Mental Qualities to represent these ideas:
Water (318 remedies)
High and Low (327 remedies)
Low self esteem (199 remedies)
Divided (140 remedies)
Although each rubric is quite large, the end result is only 40 remedies!
Adding ‘Diarrhea during menses’ leaves 12 remedies.
Now I need to choose the most appropriate remedy to the center of the case. I select Iridium (see the proving in ‘Dynamis proving Vol I’)
Rx: Iridium-metallicum
Within 2 minutes of the remedy she is smiling, ‘I feel more together, it’s like my whole body is coming together physically’, ‘I feel happy’ ‘amazing’, a state which continued for quite a few months.
I compiled the Repertory of Mental Qualities because I needed it in my practice. This work took me 4 years, yet it has only 26 main rubrics and 26 sub rubrics. But I can honestly say it is the most useful tool I have for prescribing since I purchased my first computer repertory in 1984.
This repertory has been even more useful to me since I have been working with AIDS in Africa, because most cases have very few strange, rare and peculiar symptoms, and this is where the Repertory of Mental Qualities becomes even more useful. It has also been a great help in finding the ‘genus epidemicus’. In short, I am very grateful I have it!
To use this repertory successfully, you need to understand some of the principles behind it.
The reason there are so few rubrics is that this is a repertory of Quality and not Quantity. By Quality I mean 3 things:
- Quality means a person’s mental or emotional characteristics.
- Quality means that it is about the main concepts of a remedy, rather than just a numerical totality of symptoms.
- Quality means the greatest attention to accuracy.
The following is a discussion of the philosophy behind this repertory, the methodology of its creation, instructions on using it and other useful information. If you understand this repertory and use it correctly, I have no doubt you will solve more cases, often with remedies you may not have considered previously.
You can also watch the demo video on following link:
http://www.wholehealthnow.com/homeopathy_software/sherr-repertory.html
What led me to develop this repertory
How often have you seen a case where too much caring about others was a major issue?
Have you had difficulties finding the most appropriate rubric to represent this idea? I certainly have. Should I use “Cares, full of, others about”, “Sympathetic“ “Nursing the sick” or perhaps “Anxiety others, for”?
How often do we see a case where the patient presents a variety of issues related to money, resulting in a dilemma if to use “Fear of poverty”, “Avarice”, “Ambition, increased money to make” “Extravagance” etc.
How many times have you tried to repertorise low self esteem, victim or obsessive compulsive disorder, but found that the rubrics are too small, inappropriate or just not there. Many of our patients have major issues, which don’t always represent well in the current repertories.
I remember many cases where I had to combine “Fear of snakes”, “Dreams of snakes”, “Delusion of snakes” and then add a materia medica word search for ‘snakes’ and still add all the snake remedies. It was repetitive work and a waste of my time.
For many years I have been continually combining rubrics, or being frustrated over ones I could not find. I decided to solve these issues by creating ‘The Repertory of Mental Qualities’.
What is the ‘right’ rubric?
My definition of the right rubric is ‘The rubric that has the right remedy in it’. This might seem obvious, but it is certainly true. Holding this guideline in mind has helped my students and myself choose the most appropriate rubrics. If all the rubrics we use in the case have the right remedy in them, then this remedy MUST come out in the final result. Simple logic I know, but one worth focusing on while repertorising.
Whenever I choose a rubric I ask myself this question: ”What is the chance of the best remedy being in this rubric’. Bearing this in mind, it is easy to understand why larger and more inclusive rubrics are more likely to lead you to the right remedy. The smaller (or ‘newer’) the rubric, the more precise the remedies in it must be, and this is often not the case. Hence with small rubrics you decrease your chance of finding the right remedy.
For example, take the rubric “Desire to be in the country”. Depending on the repertory you are using, there are between 7-16 remedies. Assuming we have 3000 remedies in the repertory, that represents approximately a 1/3 of 1 %. Yet a much larger percent of the general population has this symptom. Many people like to live in the country. Hence it must be used with care, as a possible indication, and certainly not to eliminate.
It is for this reason that so many homoeopaths prefer the Boenninghausen method. Using large rubrics where the remedy has a higher chance of being included is more certain, more fail proof. The price you pay for this certainty is more remedies to wade through. This is a small price.
There are too many uncertainties in choosing rubrics and too many inaccuracies in the repertory to take chances on this!
Any slight mistake could lead to the loss of the remedy. As a result I much prefer to have more remedies in the end result, but I want to be sure the right remedy is there. I can then go through the final repertory result, remedy by remedy, and choose the most appropriate one according to the totality of symptoms, strange rare and peculiar symptoms, and my perception of the case.
You may be familiar with my statement “The Mind is a mine field”. There is much room for mistakes in understanding the patient’s mental issues or choosing mental rubrics. There is no point using a fancy delusion or keynote that looks artful but does not deliver the solution. It is better to narrow down from a bigger and more certain list of issues and remedies, then to try to narrow down by choosing small and dubious rubrics. It is like the difference between walking a tightrope and walking on a safe road, and when it comes to my patients, I prefer the road.
Therefore I favor the Boenninghausen approach to repertorisation, using bigger generalized rubrics, where I am as certain as possible that the right remedy is included. If I am not sure of a rubric I combine all the possible rubrics representing the morbid quality of the patient, and if I need to I add materia medica searches. I also tend to combine similar rubrics from ‘Synthesis’ and ‘The Complete’ repertories. As the Irish say: ‘To be sure, to be sure’. After this I choose the best remedy according to the essential features of the case and the peculiar symptoms.
A bit more work, but more certain results. This method is particularly useful in one sided cases or cases lacking well defined symptoms.
However, the current repertories are deficient in this regard. While the Boger/ Boenninghausen repertories are well developed in the Physicals and General sections, they are lacking in the mentals. Kent developed the mind section, but he put more of an emphasis on particulars and modalities, and less on big generals. Most new repertories are based on Kent, and therefore do not always have modern mental themes.
Furthermore, because of my many provings and my exposure to new provings conducted by others, I wanted to include this new information in the repertory.
A new repertory
I decided to compile a new repertory that would address all these issues, a repertory that would save time, be simple to use, and increase the chances of finding the right remedy.
In order to make sure the right remedy would be in each rubric, I put great emphasis in being as accurate as possible, by personally checking every entry at its source to evaluate the quality of information. I did not simply combine rubrics and materia medica searches. With a team of homoeopaths we checked every remedy individually, going back to the original references, checking each proving, cases and author.
The result is accuracy you can rely on.
Another aspect was attention to the quality of the symptoms, rather then the quantity. For example, in the rubric ‘Knives and Points’ in my repertory, Platina, Alumina and Silica are well known as major remedies of the highest degree. But I have included Lac-felinum and Crotalus-cascavella in the same degree, because knives are major issues in these remedies as well, even if they are small remedies. Likewise, while we all know Baptisia or Thuja for ‘divided’, I have included Zirconium-met and Phytolacca in the highest degree, because this quality is a major issue in both. This data is often derived from new provings, some of which are not yet published. The result is that you should be finding more small remedies to fit your case. Because you are using larger rubrics, these remedies won’t ‘vanish’ in the repertorisation.
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Jeremy Sherr
