Understand one's own disease

 

SECOND LAW : THE TWO PHASES OF THE DISEASE

The first biological law taught us that the disease is a simultaneous disturbance on three levels – the psychism, the brain and the organs – the origin of which resides in an emotional shock. The "law of the two phases of the disease" is going to introduce the notion of reversibility in this triple disorder. As soon as the conflict is solved, the affected area of the brain is going to recover and normal cerebral activity is going to take over again, which will entail the restoration of the diseased organ. Consequently the second part of the disease is, in fact, the recovery phase. In the next paragraph we will see how the third law explains the major differences among the symptoms met in each of both phases. But let us first make a stop at the implications of this second law.

The solution of the conflict is thus the axis naturally toppling over the whole triad into a way of recovery. As in the first phase, following the appearance and the evolution of the conflict, this solution is, in first instance, a psychic change and its subjective colouring bears as much importance. Actually, it can be induced in various ways, seeing that it puts an end to the harking back, which keeps up the conflict. If one takes, for example, a conflict where one has to struggle, the solution might be victory, surrender, flight, negotiation, relativation or the factual disappearance of the stake, etc… what is important is that the individual does not feel this conflict of having to fight any more.
It is possible now to depict the general canvas of each affection. The first conflictual phase starts with the onset of the conflict. From a psychic point of view, the diseased gives evidence of his conflict by means of his thoughts, his feelings, his attitudes, in one word his painful and persisting experience. His nervous system is globally modified (phase of sympatheticotonia) and shows signs of what is called a stress situation: he will loose, in a more or less important way, sleep, appetite, joy of living, etc… and will have overall symptoms of irritability. Besides, the disturbance of a precise area of the brain will provoke the deterioration of the organ corresponding to that area. THE SOLUTION OF THE CONFLICT STOPS THE EVOLUTION OF THE DISTURBANCES AT THE THREE LEVELS, BUT THE COMPLETE DISEASE DOES NOT STOP FOR ALL THAT. At this stage, the organism goes through various degradations and it is even so spontaneously that the repairing processes, foreseen by nature long before the advent of medicine, will set in. The nervous system connects up with a recuperation rhythm (phase of vagosympatheticotonia also called vagotonia): feeling of fatigue and need to rest; recovering sleep and appetite if disturbed, a better blood circulation, etc… On the cerebral level, the centre previously affected is going to congest and this oedema can already explain several symptoms proper to this second phase. But all these cerebral alterations are temporary and the nervous tissue not only remains functional but regains its performance: it manages again the integrity of the corresponding organs that are going to repair. Finally, from the organic point of view, this auto curing will translate itself by a series of symptoms that have to be very well decoded.

This notion of spontaneous auto-curing after the solution of the conflict again questions the real extent of a medical treatment: the treatment does not aim at curing the disease anymore but at accompanying, encouraging, modulating, relieving this second phase which is often more uncomfortable than the first one. It is therefore essential to know in which of both phases of the entire disease we are to choose adequately the therapeutic measures. We will take up later these very pragmatic aspects of the "art of curing".

Let us again insist on the fact that the transition from one phase to another is not only realised in case of solution of the conflict and here all the scenarios are possible. A short and clearly solved conflict will utter in a so-called acute disease. But the solution can be progressive or delayed by re-stimulation of the conflict and there will consequently be fluctuating or relapsing affections. Or even chronic if the re-starting of the conflict takes place each time before the end of the recovery phase; and, in this case, the various symptoms will be fluctuating as psychic life itself. The conflict may be in a state of balance or latent meaning very little active or not active at all, but not really cleared up. The psychic state will always be the arbitrator as to the re-start of the damage or the initiation of the cure. Last but not least, the conflict may last over years, provided of course that there is not a gradually more serious accumulation of lesions. Paralysis for example may persist for over ten years and progressively disappear after the conflict is solved. But this kind of very delayed recuperation especially concerns the functional failures of the organs (cf. 3rd law). The complexity of a pathology is also often related to the fact that an individual will frequently face more than one conflict one of which being still active while the other is being solved. The approach is always the same: consider the three levels concerned, cross-check to evaluate the stage reached within the whole two-phase procedure and, by means of this overall knowledge of the disease, take coherent measures.

If the first phase was constant (i.e. without having been in balance or in latency) and the second one was not complicated by re-stimulation, the duration of both phases is equivalent: for example, a separation conflict lasting some weeks or some months will be followed by an eczema respectively lasting some weeks or some months. But let us not forget that the extent of a conflictual phase is not only determined by its duration but also by its intensity: two parameters to be integrated when talking of the "conflictual mass". If the intensity was very strong, even within a short interval of time, the second phase may last longer. At that moment, everything happens as if the brain programmed the "dumping" of a reparation that could be too violent if it were not.

We will end this second law by reconsidering the allusion to the limits of our capacity to live a conflict and by extending it to the second phase as well. This ends up in a sometimes dramatic reality but the comprehension of which is of capital importance. It concerns the extent of lesions accumulated during the conflictual phase that will, very logically, determine the extent of the natural reparation works. These works might not be completely ended for various reasons: re-stimulation of the conflict, "overdose" due to the appearance of new conflicts and, what is more, the eventual inability of the organism to restore too advanced lesions. This inability may arise from the three levels of the triad psychism-brain-organs: "disjunction" of psychism ceasing to maintain the second phase; too severe congestion of the brain (cf. start of the 3rd law); "material" insufficiency of the body to repair. We will understand this more easily when studying the third law on the nature of the symptoms with regard to the two phases. But we can already avoid a misunderstanding on the term "recovery phase". Beyond the use of words, sometimes subjected to criticism, recovery in the current sense – or simply curing – is of course the happy culmination of the second phase, when it is completely finished.

This most important precision is also a response to one of the principal misunderstandings of the work as a whole. Independently of all outside action, most of the deceases occur during the reparation phase, but most of the time when the count-down evoked higher has lasted too long when facing a heavy degradation in the first phase. It also enables to understand the stake of "tact" in all communication of the diagnostic type and the interest of various therapeutic techniques to help the patient in each phase of his disease. We will come back to this aspect of the medical practice.