6.11.1 Aurum sulphuricum, Case 1
A 35 year old woman suffers from pre menstrual syndrome. Before the menses she feels tense, but finds it difficult to explain what is wrong. She feels unreal, as if she isn’t her old self anymore. She is irritable and frightened of noises. Sometimes the menses don’t come. It started when she was 35. Her boyfriend had died of a heart attack the previous year. The night he died it felt as if she was dying herself, she felt so desperate, frightened and angry. She is still very upset and can hardly talk about it. She cries when she is telling me this. She has found a new partner and she would like to have children but she hasn’t been able to conceive so far. She had some hormone therapy, without results.
She is a psychiatrist and she works very hard. She is good at her job, very sympathetic. She even takes on other people’s problems. She never had any problems at work. But she did notice herself working more and more and eventually she started to wake up at night overwhelmed by sadness. She lies awake from 2 to 4 am and feels she is going mad. Last year she felt very suicidal.
When she was little she felt very responsible for her youngest sister who was mentally handicapped and very restless and who would often scream for no apparent reason. Her mother told her that she was responsible for keeping her little sister quiet and when she did not succeed her mother would beat her with a stick. Another sister who was slightly younger was quite cruel and would laugh at her when her mother beat her. She also teased the little sister so she would scream even louder.
All these problems made her feel different from the rest, the responsibility she felt for the wellbeing of the whole family became heavier and heavier. She is fastidious and has high expectations of herself and others. She has a high level of tolerance.
Since the age of 23 she went into therapy because she did not feel anything. She can work it all out in her mind, as she did during the consultation, but she can’t control her feelings.
Generals
Time: < 3 am.
Desires: vegetables (2), fruit (2), meat (2).
Aversion: milk.
Menses: absent; premenstrual syndrome.
Analysis
The suicidal tendency, the desire for work and the sense of responsibility are all classical Aurum keynotes.
It is interesting to see that the group analysis will lead us to the same remedy: the responsibility is a symptom of the Gold series as a whole, and the desire to maintain continuity in the present situation is typical of Stage 11, so this also leads us to Aurum.
Now we should decide which Aurum is the most appropriate in this case. It might be Aurum phosphoricum because of the responsibility towards her sister from an early age onwards. But the Phosphor element doesn’t fit her heavy moods and the reasoning mind. The task she was given as a little girl was to maintain the harmony otherwise she would be beaten. Maintaining (Aurum) the harmony (Sulphur) brings us to Aurum sulphuricum. The ‘never well since’ factor of the death of her partner fits with Sulphuricum.
Other Aurum symptoms: meat, <- milk.
Other Sulphur symptoms: -> vegetables, -> fruit.
Reaction
After Aurum sulphuricum 1M she cried for almost two days. It seemed as if it would never stop. After that she began to feel better, did not evade problems so much, was able to get angry. She had a dream in which she stood up for herself. She had another dream in which she was in a room with two other people but she felt very lonely and excluded. Suddenly the whole situation changed and the feeling went away.
Her work used to be the most important thing in her life, but since she has got other priorities in life her work is going better too. She feels warmer, more open and more whole.