Case 5.20
By Mareguerite Pelt
A young man born in 1962 came in march 1998 because of complaints of dyspnoe since a pneumothorax at the age of twenty. After this event he didn’t get out of his chair for a full year. Later on the diagnosis Sarcoidosis or M. Besnier Boeck was established and he felt an armour around his chest.
Other complaints were psoriasis guttata on arms, legs and back since the age of sixteen. And weariness with a heavy sensation. He says ‘life isn’t easy’. He feels shut. Once he experienced a sensation of light, a light in which he dissolved, but afterwards everything closed off again.
Generals:
Aversion: sauerkraut
Desire: coffe, alcohol
Fingers: osteo arthropathy, hypertropic
The young man sits stiff and closed in his chair, leaning backwards, his face expressionless and parkinsonistic. He must be very frightened to put up such a mask of rigidity. He tells me he cannot express emotions and he cannot show his vulnerability. He doesn’t accept himself, but most of all he doesn’t accept being on earth again. In a previous life he was a monk and did everything he was supposed to do and he had thought the reward would be that he would never have to come back and live another life on earth. But now he is here again. That is to say, it seems to me that he is on a cloud watching earth, not really participating in life, in work, in emotions…all that earth stuff. He confirms he hasn’t had a job for years, although he was good at his work as bookkeeper and software writer. He used to solve problems in this field for more educated people than he is. He is very clear in the head and mentally overdeveloped. ‘There is no free will. I don’t trust God so I isolate myself.’ ‘I don’t want to participate’. On the other hand the patient is very religious, meditating and praying every day, in search of a suitable method, trying Greek-orthodox prayer and the ‘Course in Miracles’, for example. He is gentle to others (I think) but can be self destructive, smoking and drinking too much alcohol. He even jumped in front of a car once after an excess of alcoholic beverage.
In his youth he felt he didn’t fit into his family. On the materialistic level his parents took care of their children, but there was no warmth or love. His mother sacrificed herself: she did everything for the children, but did not enjoy them. He felt no contact and no warmth, no connection to his family and now no connection to the world. His mother used to say: ‘when you have children, your own life is over.’ So now he is scared of making a woman pregnant, or procreating. Together with a fear of contagious diseases this doesn’t add up to a very active sex life. On the physical level he finds it difficult to maintain a good erection. But deep down he misses a relationship.
He didn’t talk much in the beginning, so it took some consultations to get the full picture. In his youth he also kept his mouth for example when his father teased him. A brother and sister had a bigger mouth, but he and his second sister were silent. When he picks Tarot cards the Hermit always comes up. ‘I am a double Hermit’.
Treatment:
Magnesium muriaticum 200K had little effect. The patient seemed to open up a little, but he also began to know me better. The physical complaints hardly changed. After the proving with Angelica archangelica I recognised similarities with this remedy, triggered by the resemblance with the Tarot card Hermit. A colleague whom I presented the case saw themes of the Umbilliferae and thought of Conium.
Themes of the Umbilliferae in this patient are:
• No love from the mother
• Very mental, no real connection to people
• Dryness of chin
• Problems in the breast region
• Alcoholism
So in July 1998 I started Angelica archangelica 30K once a week. After two months the psoriasis was less thick, the energy better and the oppression of the chest less.
In December the amelioration seemed to stagnate and I tried Psilocybe which had no result at all. So I returned to the initial remedy Angelica in a higher potency 200K and slowly the patient descended from his cloud to earth. In June 1998 he drinks less alcohol, his chest complaints have dissolved for 80%, his psoriasis is nearly gone and he has just had the most romantic evening with a girl. It is still difficult for him to maintain an erection during coition, because he feels it would still be to intense for him to have children.
He remains very conscientious but is so much more open and relaxed that it is a joy to see that homeopathy acts on such a fundamental level. I’ll gladly report on this patient after another year or two.