Alchemy Healing Psyche Soma

Review

This book review is reprinted with the permission of the Homeopathic Academy of Naturopathic Physicians
P.O. Box 21488, Portland, OR 97212
FAX:(503) 795-7320

Reviewed by lain Marrs

In his new book Whitmont summarizes various contemporary developments in different fields of knowledge, and thus offers, firstly, as good a summary as any of such areas as the new physics, the Gaia hypothesis or Jungian studies. Such syntheses do not usually include homeopathy, and in truth it only has a small role to play in this book as well. Homeopathy is cited here mostly as a metaphorical truth, the existence of which substantiates the theories propounded. Whitmont's alignment together of scientific evidence and esoteric evidence is broadranging though not, particularly innovative. That said, if the reader still believes that a choice for one against the other must be made, then the author's constellation of issues should persuade otherwise. It is, however, the addition of a study of the scapegoat in relation to the role of the healer,- themes important within the Jungian tradition, - that adds something special to this synthesis. The themes treated, - holism; gestalt [pattern] awareness, for example - are all testimony to the shift in western thinking. Homeopathy at last has company; a paradigm shift has begun towards a position which could include it. As a background to understanding this shift, we may cite the following quotations, both selected by Whitmont:

"Most philosophers have agreed, that to account for what is observed, it is necessary to infer entities that are not observed. An unseen universe is necessary to explain the seen."
(L. L. Whyte, Essay on Atomism - from Democritus to 1960; Wesleyan, 1961, cited: p. 62)

Restating, but expanding on, the above:

..True without error, certain and most true; that which is above is as that which is below, and that which is below is as that which is above, for performing the miracles of the One Thing; and as all things were from One, by the mediation of One, so all things arose from this One Thing by adaptation."
(The Emerald Tablet of Hermes, cited: p.51)

I should add as a preliminary that the reason I have used quotations chosen by Whitmont is that, in this reviewer's opinion, these writers state the issues more clearly than does Whitmont himself. The bundle of different terminologies used in this book, all slipping and sliding between each other, appears to be intentional. This is because (one of) his aim(s) seems to be giving a demonstration of the equivalence of various terminologies, for which purpose he makes parallel statements in different terminologies, and, more, often, combines together in one sentence terms from the different terminologies. This makes for a writing style that resists easy passage. In the rest of this review it will be understood that only sentences with a low jargon count have been chosen, regardless of the apparent and opposite intention of the author, which is to enlighten the reader by the combining of these different terminologies.

The substance of the quotations above is that there is such a thing as an order behind what we perceive and experience, and secondly that the reality behind is in the relationship of a progenitor, or parent, to that which we perceive and experience. It is clear that the form of such a relationship is a potent one, and that homeopathy is founded upon just such a power. Whitmont acknowledges its "virtually paradigmatic" status (p. 10) while, on various occasions, stating that its proper and preferred sphere of action and modus operandi is at a more gross level than, for example, psychotherapy which latter may conclude, or indeed achieve, work that homeopathy may not. While this could originate in Whitmont's personal predilection, homeopathy can thus tend to be seen as holding a position at the body or somatic end of a continuum running from somatic to psychic. More damagingly, homeopathy could be interpreted as playing the lesser role in a residual dualism; Whitmont's bias towards the talking cure as a higher form of healing echoes this. Such comments, in the book, make up only a small element, but will inevitably stand out to the homeopathic reader.

It falls to the work of Sylvia Brinton Perera, which Whitmont discusses, to bring alive the numerous parts of the elephant that he collects. As mentioned above, the key to this book comes in the discussion of the scapegoating mechanism. A discussion of the victim whose sacrifice heals frames the author's concern with the healer. In the Jungian paradigm, the healer's status combines wounded and wounding, sacrifice and destroyer. Whitmont pinpoints the conjunction of these two themes, - the potency of pattern and the potency of sacrifice, - two-thirds of the way through the volume:

"We can now recognize the analogy between the psychological and the somatic dynamics earlier described in terms of the puzzling paradox of healing through assimilation of the patho-genetically similar potentized medicine in homeopathy. As we can see now, in both instances healing occurs through reconnecting by means of a sacrificial bridge-building (via symbolic analogy or similarity) to those implicate patterns that, while unassimilated, created the disorder out of a creative capacity that could not yet be utilized.

Now the question presents itself as to why and how similarity and symbolic dynamics manage to serve as a means of sacrificial offering and thereby mobilize a restructuring of order. We need a clearer understanding of the underlying principle and dynamic significance of similarity." (p. 177)

The use of homeopathy here is representative of its role throughout the book: homeopathy underwrites by its practical efficacy the theories proposed by Whitmont. It is not exactly that homeopathy is clarified by the book; rather that the use to which homeopathy is put is that of clarifying the theories and ideas presented. (For example, one important insight which Whitmont derives from homeopathy is that potentization is equivalent in its function, its efficacy and its intent, to the process of symbolization.)

The general psychotherapeutic approach that is referred to in the passage above leads the author to the following overview of illness and healing:

"When impulses from a newly emerging implicate order arise from the field of the Self, and encounter resistance from the explicate status quo, a dramatic conflict is created. When the tension results in an impasse, this manifests as illness. Healing follows when elements of this resistance can be sacrificed and thereby make "space" for the new form to enter. A subsequent synthesis is thereby established, by virtue of which the life force, the Qi, can flow freely again. The process of healing occurs via the enabling action of similars that, by connecting with archetypal essence, helps integration and resolves the dramatic crisis. This process is symbolized alchemically as the destruction and rebirth of the king (sacrifice of status quo) and the conversion of dross (impasse) to gold (new synthesis)." pp. 213-4

The central point for this reviewer is that the process so well described here by Whitmont represents the movement of this very book. That is, the book is itself largely an 'impasse,' in that it consists of an indigestible collection of different terminologies (the status quo), a state of illness which does not as yet shed light (in book blurb, he 'takes a daring plunge into paradoxes' and 'hints at the unknown principles...'; see back cover). This state of affairs only changes when Whitmont sacrifices the false security that these multiple languages offer (the resistance of the intellectual mind) and makes space for a new form to enter in: the principle of sacrifice, as explicated particularly by the work of Perera. It is this connection with a study of archetypal essence that delivers the book from being just another intellectual synthesis. The change in the book comes only with the penultimate chapter, 'The Healer' (the final chapter is a summary and conclusion and sadly it reverts to the previous style). The resolution of the book's crisis is in its consideration of the personal and archetypal dilemma of the healer; it offers a sensitive and mythologically inflected portrayal of the issues around power, fear, hope, vulnerability and invulnerability, and various other aspects of the relationship between the healer, the patient and the healing impetus. This is, indeed, the gold that the book has to offer. (Which provides as good an opportunity as any to mention that alchemy, along with homeopathy, often comprises as significant an exclusion from the current paradigm. Whitmont, however, in this as in his other books, and the book's publisher, Richard Grossinger of North Atlantic Books, have both done a great deal to bring alchemy and homeopathy back into vision.

The success of 'The Alchemy of Healing' is that it goes beyond the contemporary western rediscovery that there is such a thing as patterned knowledge, by pinpointing the principle of sacrifice as that which may organize a discussion of pattern. That which brings Whitmont's discussion of pattern alive, and rids us of the impasse, is that which brings pattern itself alive: the principle of sacrifice. Thus the reader again observes the workings of the law of similars. Whitmont, though, is not the first writer on matters of health to invoke the principle of sacrifice:

What the vital force does in these so-called crises, and how it does it, remains a mystery to us, like all the internal operations of the organic vital economy. One thing, however, is certain: that in all these efforts more or less of the affected parts are sacrificed and destroyed in order to save the rest.

(Samuel Hahnemann, Organon, footnote 18, Introduction, p. 55, Boericke translation, 6th edition, Jain, New Delhi, 1990.]

Perhaps the last point can go to a teaching story that Whitmont cites, - The Blind Ones and the Matter of the Elephant, from Idries Shah's retelling (cited pp. 60-61). The original story, bearing out the two points above (L. L. Whyte; the Emerald Tablet of Hermes), is told of those who, blind, rush to investigate the elephant of a visiting king, and then return to their fellow citizens, each of whom is anxious, misguidedly, to learn the truth from those who are themselves astray. The story shows how each "investigator" imagined something incorrect, - knowledge is not the companion of the blind. Ile "blind" here stand for humanity, the elephant for the divine; the ordinary intellect does not show the way in such matters. Just so do the terminologies presented here by Whitmont read as so many imaginings about the elephant. Perhaps the outcome of the healer's dilemma as presented by Whitmont, concerning as it does the sacrifice of the self, is the sole way beyond the dilemma.

The most important aspect of Whitmont's latest book is that the nature of the healer's self and roles with regard to himself/herself and to the patient, is clarified by the use of an archetypal analysis of those interactive roles. This aspect of Whitmont's 'Alchemy of Healing' surpasses any static synthesis of its constituent parts. If one seeks the place where the vital force is most present, Whitmont's chapter on 'The Healer' will take the reader to the heart of the case, though, in so doing, much theorizing will necessarily be sacrificed. As the I Ching says, there is no blame in that.

Dr. Edward Whitmont, MD has lived in the United States since 1938. He maintains a private practice in New York City in analytical psychology. He is a founder member and former chairman of the C.G.Jung Training Center in New York. He has lectured widely on psychosomatics, homeopathy, alchemy and psychology. He is the author of Psyche and Substance, Essays on Homeopathy in the Light of Jungian Psychology, (1980)

Iain Marrs is co-editor of Simillimum.

SIMILLIMUM / Spring 1994 Volume VII No. I