Cases (5) five Dreams - Guides to the Similimum

Dr Sujit Chatterjee.
` Zinc / Stram / Verat / Aur
In the last few years I have been able to use dreams quite successfully in treating. I first got this idea from Dr. Jurgen Becker of Germany. He has a very interesting way of practice. He proves many remedies during his seminars. The participants (mostly healthy doctors) are required to write down the dreams and the feelings generated by the dreams. From these feelings he prescribes the remedy. Dr. Becker also tells the patients interesting stories, He correlates the feelings of the stories with the patients situation and gets beautiful results. Last year during his seminar in Bombay, many participants proved Naja, and this experiment impressed us all with the importance of dreams and their correlations with patients life situations.
I hardly use the chapter on Dreams in the repertory, because we do not get the feeling of dreams in it. But in many cases I have used the chapter Delusion for the feelings in the dreams, as the feelings and the delusions correspond with each other. Let us discuss this subject with actual cases.
Case 1:
An accounts officer 35 years old had a constant fear that he had done something wrong and the police would arrest him. Actually he was an honest man, yet he had a terrible fear that he would be accused by others.
His chief complaints was terrible jerking during sleep. In his childhood he had terrible skin eruptions, which were suppressed by ointments. During childhood he loved to play cricket, football and plenty of outdoor games. For me it was a sure case of Zincum-met because of the following rubrics -

1. Jerks, sleep during (Kent 859).
2. Delusion, thinks he is accused (Synthetic Vol I 232).
3. Delusion about to be arrested (Synthetic Vol I 238)
4. H/o suppressed skin eruptions.

But where was the characteristic restlessness of Zincum? So I asked the patient about his dreams. He said that he used to get dreams of playing cricket, football and other outdoor games. I interpreted that because of his profession (Accountant) his natural desires were suppressed or compensated, but in his subconscious state ie in his dreams he was very active. He improved dramatically with Zinc-met 1M one dose. Case 2:
A child of one year was suffering from constant cough since birth. Previously she was treated with homoeopathic remedies without avail. But I observed one characteristic symptom! the child was clinging (3+) to her mother. The history of mother during pregnancy was that she used to get dreams repeatedly that a dead body was coming to her bed room in the darkness of the night and calling her to come. She was terribly scared of this dream. the feeling of the dream was fright and terror. So I took the following rubrics -

1. Fear, delusion from (SR 402)
2. Child awakes terrified, knows no one, screams, clings, to those near (SR I 142)
3. Ailments from fright (SR I 18)

The childs cough was cured with Stramonium 1M one dose. Case 3:
A lady, 30 years old was suffering from Amoebic dysentery. She was suppressing all her emotions while narrating her history. Her intellect was very strong and she was not allowing me to understand her emotions. In her day to day life she used to do everything with her reasoning faculties. She was sensitive and was easily hurt. Her saddest incident in life was when her paternal grandmother harrassed her mother. I was trying to understand this case, so I asked her to tell me about her dreams; she told me that almost every night she dreamt about her grandmother's harrassment. I understood the case in the following way: This patient was very emotional and she was suppressing all her emotions by reasoning about them, and because of this her strong suppressed emotions were coming up from the subconscious into her dreams. I did not refer to the dreams chapter, but got this state of mind in the following rubrics -

1. Emotions predominated by intellect (SR I 493).
2. Activity, emotional (SR I 9).

The lady did very well with Viola odorata 1M one dose. Case 4:
I had a case of a gentleman suffering from hypertension. He used to get repeated dreams that God was talking to him and he used to discuss many matters during dreams with God. After taking the whole case my impression about him was that he cared very much about his status in society. He did very well with Veratrum-alb. The rubrics were -

1. Delusion he is in communication with God (SR I 293).
2. Despair of social position (SR I 396).

Case 5:
Recently I was treating a case of multiple sclerosis. I was quite confident of the remedy I was giving her, but the dream she reported was very funny. I was giving her Aurum-met in LM potency because she was industrious, duty conscious, high sense of responsibility etc. She was doing well but inspite of that she had the dream (before and also during treatment) that a big man with a stick was beating her husband and she was telling the man to beat her instead. As I was confused about its interpretation, one day I asked the patient straight away as to how I could correlate the dream with reality. The patient said that her brother-in-law was very strong, rude, and rough. Once he had beaten her husband, and since then she feels that it was her responsibility to protect her husband from him. She asked me "Don't you agree with me doctor?" So again in sense of responsibility and how she answers with questions came out very strongly. I became more sure of Aurum-met being the remedy. She now is much better. Sometimes I feel it is better not to theorise but to ask the patient to relate the dream with reality and he will give better clues.