Understand one's own disease

 

FIRST LAW : RELATIONS BETWEEN PSYCHISM, BRAIN AND ORGANS; PSYCHIC ORIGIN OF DISEASE

Psychism, brain and organs are in a constant interrelation and this perfectly synchronised "triad" is always modified in various affections, from the smallest to the severest ones. But it is by means of this psychism that the individual tackles the reality of existence and of its difficulties: it consequently concerns his own reality, the way he experiences the events of his life. As long as he can mentally "manage" these difficulties – e.g. by anticipating them or by disposing of enough resources acquired in his former history – he will not be ill. He will perhaps experience more or less hard and disagreeable emotions that will, however, rapidly resolve with, as sole consequence, some functional and temporary disturbances. It can e.g. show as a period of insomnia due to a surplus of preoccupations; a tied up stomach after a banal argument; a more frequent need to urinate, perspiration or palpitations when apprehending an encounter, etc… Nothing but "jerks" around a stable centre of gravity, but already involving repercussions via the nervous system and, consequently, a "body language".

If, though, the painfully experienced event puts on the aspect of a psychic shock, which can be that brutal that it leaves the individual in a durable mental state of dwelling, of obsession, it means the immediate onset of what can be qualified as a conflict, herein included the ambiguous and reducing sense of words. In order to have a real conflict; there should be a process of rupture – an opposing effect, an unavoidable aspect - where we can not react in a usual and sufficiently efficacious manner. Dr. Hamer named this shock "DHS", being the initials of the Dirk Hamer Syndrome, after his dead son’s name, consequently to which he himself developed his cancer. Finally, the conflict can be engendered by association or identification to someone else: fear to die of a mother having witnessed her child almost being ran over; taking for one’s own account the devalorisation lived by a relative, etc…

The conflict is always something very personal and consequently "involving". In other terms, it does not concern the events we only qualify as strikes of destiny, but situations in which we feel directly concerned and, more exactly, torn apart. It may be appreciated according to various parameters: its importance, its duration and its "subjective content". The importance and the duration of a conflict determine the extent of the damage within the body , the damage starting as soon as the conflict installs and accumulating as long as the conflict is not solved. There is a difference between a banal cold, bronchitis or a large pulmonary tumour. By subjective content we understand the personal way one feels the shock, and that is going to lead us to specify the role of the brain.

The nervous system includes the brain, which can be conceived as the supercomputer managing the whole of the body and its multiple terminals being the nerves. For all the automatic functions – i.e. independent of our conscious will – the nervous system has two large circuits, the sympathetic one and the parasympathetic one (also called vagosympathetic), the sum of which is called the neurovegetative system. The sympathetic system stimulates everything that is biologically foreseen to keep us alert and in a potential combative state. It is consequently predominating in the active daytime. As to the parasympathetic system, it stimulates our resting and recuperation functions and is thus predominating in our sleeping phase. Health implies an optimal and harmonious alternance of this fully fundamental rhythm in our entire organism.

As soon as the conflict sets on, there are two consequences on the nervous system. First of all, a rupture of the neurovegetative balance with a sympathetic predominance which already implies a whole series of symptoms: loss of sleep, appetite, weight; rise of the arterial tension, suprarenal secretion; restlessness and "irritability", etc… The complexity and the intensity of this symptomatic image are, of course, in proportion with the extent of the conflict. It may be a light state of insomnia and irritability even associated with a "compensatory bulimia"; but a very serious conflict may drag the patient in a stupor making him loose some ten kilos in a few weeks. This rupture of the nervous balance is the so-called stress situation, the profound nature of which must be understood. Its manifestations can be extremely disagreeable, but they have a sense: they are the expression within our body of a surplus of awakening necessary to solve the conflict. Without stress, mankind would certainly not have survived its manifestations in existence. But there is always a reverse side to a medal, which is the start of a countdown: the neurovegetative imbalance has its limits, those corresponding in fact to our ability to live a conflict. We will take up this important subject further on.

In parallel with the neurovegetative imbalance, a precise area within the brain is affected and it is this cerebral disturbance, by modifying the information transmitted by the brain, that will lead the disease into the organs, the right functioning of which being dependent on this information. This is the subjective resent, the colouring of the conflict that will determine the exact area within the brain and thus the diseased organ. This colouring may be reduced to fundamental emotions, beyond the anecdotal content of the event: fear, disgust, rejection, impurity, fight, rivalry, dispossession, devalorisation, etc… Here can be said already that, during the patient’s questioning (anamnesis in the medical jargon), if it is necessary to find the initial event which determined the shock, it is only to situate the origin of the conflict in time. Next, its importance must be seized, this colouring, and the evolution up to the day of the consultation. Let us take two examples for the comprehension of this capital point in the first biological law.

An individual had to endure a very offending reflection that he was not able to face and that he is going to hark over some days, weeks or months. Between all possible resents, let us take three. It could be a feeling of rejection by the other – what can be called a kind of separation conflict – and, in this case, the affected area of the brain is the sensorial cortex managing the functioning of the upper layer of the skin: it is therefore this organ that will be affected. But the individual could as well take this offending reflection for him and start a self-devalorisation process. The cerebral area is consequently the cerebral marrow and the diseased organ will be the bone structure. He could, finally, experience this as an unacceptable situation and make it an indigestible type of conflict having a repercussion on the corresponding cerebral and organic zones: affection of the throat, the stomach, the colon, etc… (according to the multiple shades proper to this kind of conflict).

A woman learning about her conjugal misfortune may be hurt in her hope for a home and this nest conflict will affect the lateral part of the cerebellum with, consequently, an affection of the breast. The wound may be a sexual frustration and the temporal part of the left cerebral hemisphere will bring about a lesion of the uterine cervix. It may be experienced as a self-devalorisation ("I am worth less than the other since my husband is going towards her") having a repercussion on the bone structure. Or what is more, this woman, considering her social and material conditions, may feel plunged into an unsustainable situation she can not escape; and the disease, via the peri-rolandic cerebral cortex, will be multiple sclerosis. The complete list of eventualities would be very much longer. This woman might not have any organic affection if she overcomes the shock right away. She might also experience more impacts caused by the same shock. Some, being feebler, will leave fewer marks, while one or the other will lead to a heavy pathology labelled cancer. ONLY THE SUBJECTIVE COLOURING OF A CONFLICT COUNTS TO UNDERSTAND THE CEREBRAL AND ORGANIC IMPAIRMENT.

This biological law is the first to be stated by its author, christening it the "iron law of cancer". Law because it concerns verifications of necessary and constant interactions between facts (cf. dictionary). Iron allusive to the solidity of its verifications never eluded… when used. And cancer for historical reasons because it is this type of disease that made him start his research. It is the core of the entire explanatory system: by relating the psychic experience to the multiple symptoms of the body , it makes disease, not the fruit of hazard or external aggression, but a personal history with a chronology and a sense at human scale. This approach excludes, of course, those cases where our organism has experienced evident external aggression (traumatism, intoxication, irradiation,…), a faulty fabrication (genetic diseases) or a serious nutritional deficiency. But even with an evident external cause, it does not prevent from considering how an individual will feel the aggression and, thus, the consequences proper to his resent.

"A science, only preoccupied by quantity and founded exclusively on the taking of measures is intrinsically unable to treat experience, quality and values"

Fritjof Capra