Praxis: A NEW APPROACH
TO HOMEOPATHIC MEDICINE:
METHOD OF
COMPLEXITY:THE SEARCH
FOR COHERENCE IN CLINICAL
PHENOMENA, VOLS. I AND II
By Massimo Mangialavori.
Reviewed by Sybil Ihrig,
What is the true Holy Grail for us classical homeopaths?
Is it finding the Simillimum for a given patient? Or could
it be something even more recondite—a soulful depth of
insight into remedies so penetrating that it verges on
the mystical?
Over the past two decades, this quest for profound
insight has led a succession of international
homeopaths to develop elegant, meaningful new
systems for understanding remedies and classifying
groups of remedies into families. As notable examples,
we’ve seen the Sensation method from Rajan Sankaran
and the periodic table classification system from Jan
Scholten.
Another homeopath who has made equally significant,
yet less widely recognized, contributions to our
knowledge base is Dr. Massimo Mangialavori of Italy.
Massimo (as he is known by colleagues) has been
teaching internationally for a long time and
semiannually in the U.S. for more than a decade, but
until recently, publication of his findings in English has
been piecemeal and not always of the highest quality.
Dr. Betty Wood (New England Homeopathic Academy)
and a group of close associates took over the
publication efforts several years ago, and since that
time, the professionalism of the resulting work has been
increasing steadily.
Now, after nearly three years of work, Massimo’s long-
awaited magnum opus is finally seeing daylight in
English. Praxis presents, in the first two volumes of
what will likely become a four- or five-volume set, a
comprehensive overview of the conceptual methodology
that underlies Massimo’s practice and teaching.
Massimo has long been known for his emphasis on
clinical cases—the live patient—as the most stable
foundation for enlarging our knowledge of homeopathy.
His body of work also enlarges our understanding of
many “small” remedies that polychrest prescribers
seldom hear about or use. Such “small” remedies are
probably better characterized as “underrepresented.”
Historically, he maintains, our repertories were
developed in such an inconsistent fashion that rubrics
rarely represent either the symptom grade or the
“phase” (the evolutionary point on the compensated-
decompensated continuum) of a given remedy reliably.
Further, the decontextualized organization of most
repertories tends to encourage a misleading
reductionism in our clinical thinking. Rather than trying
to simplify homeopathy, we should include in our sights
the enriching perspectives of natural history, traditional
medical uses, myths and legends, toxicology, and
pharmacology, among others.
Some of the methodological concepts that are clearly
elucidated for the first time in Praxis , Vol. I, include:
Symptoms —Symptoms are phenomena that can be
expressed either verbally or nonverbally, subjectively or
objectively. Massimo differentiates among several
categories of symptoms and their relative usefulness in
case analysis. Not all symptoms recorded in the
repertory are coherent in terms of a given remedy’s core
themes. The most important types of symptoms are
structural symptoms , which reflect the core structure
and adaptive strategy of the patient. Structural
symptoms may or may not correspond with the
traditionally known “strange, rare, and peculiar”
symptoms in our literature; in any case, they go deeper
than SRPs.
Structure, corpus—The term structure as used by
Massimo reflects his construct of the corpus as the full
body-mind complex of a human being, which cannot be
dichotomized neatly into “Mind” symptoms vs. physical
ones. To better understand the idea of the corpus,
consider the distribution of symptoms found for a
remedy such as Colocynthis; we see relatively few Mind
symptoms, but a great preponderance of Abdomen and
Extremities symptoms. Does this mean that the
Colocynthis patient has no emotions or thoughts?
Hardly. Rather, it suggests that for patients needing this
remedy, the corpus expresses the mind through other
body systems. This brings into question our
assumptions that Mind symptoms must always be
given precedence in repertorization. Is that heresy
according to Hahnemann? Not necessarily so.
Themes —Massimo feels that themes are a more reliable
basis for remedy classification than symptoms. He
differentiates between characteristic themes, which are
often present in a case as a polarity (e.g., cold/heat)
depending on whether a patient is compensated or
decompensated, and fundamental themes , which are
strongly reflective of a remedy’s adaptive strategy (the
way in which a person interacts with the challenges of
her or his environment) and persist over time in any
remedy phase.
Homeopathic families —Unlike his colleagues Sankaran
and Scholten, Massimo’s concept of homeopathic
families crosses genus and even kingdom boundaries. (I
recently took a case for which Rhus glabra was
curative. The chief differentials were between Rhus
glabra and Lac caninum , a comparison that would have
made no sense using Sensation method but which made
perfect sense using concepts derived from Massimo’s
thematic approach.) Volume II of Praxis comprises case
studies of “Drug family” remedies ( Anhalonium,
Psilocybe, Agaricus, Bovista, Convolvulus, and Nabalus),
which come from different botanical plant families but
share similar characteristic and fundamental themes
linking them together.
A future volume of Praxis will
contain case studies of Drug family remedies from other
kingdoms as well.
The full title of the Praxis series gives us a hint that
these tomes are no light bedtime reading for the faint of
heart: “Complexity” in the subtitle refers both to the
complexity theory and systems thinking that inform
Massimo’s understanding of homeopathic similitude and
to the full-on encounter with real, complex human
beings that we must encourage in order to understand
remedies in clinical context. That being said, Praxis is a
treasure trove of key concepts that will greatly enrich
any homeopath’s understanding of the depths to which
our art/science can reach.
For more information on Massimo’s seminars and
publications, e-mail Dr. Betty Wood at NEHA,
bw@bettywoodmd.com .
Fri, 7 Aug 2015, 5:51 PM - Murali Castro: Massimo Mangialavori
born 1958
Mangialavori comes from Naples and grew up in Milan
and Modena.
In 1984 he completed his medical studies. His eventful
search for the best method of healing took him from
heart surgery to the shamans of South America. Then
he stumbled on homeopathy, which has since cast its
spell over him.
Together with three other doctors, he set up a practice
outside Modena, where he now treats patients from all
over the world.
Mangialavori has an astonishing knowledge of the
materia medica and is regarded as one of the best
homeopathic physicians in the world. Based on his
successfully healed cases, he has developed his own
system of classifying homeopathic remedies.
He regularly holds seminars in Europe and the USA, and
leads further education courses for homeopaths in
Modena and Boston.
Fri, 7 Aug 2015, 7:43 PM - Murali Castro: Homoeopathy for anger &mortification
Massimo Mangialavori is known for his graphic remedy
descriptions in which he brings out the essential
nuances of homeopathic remedies in a concise and
vivid way. This handy booklet is a great opportunity to
get to know the working methods of Massimo
Mangialavori in this important area
Description
Complaints due to anger and mortification an everyday
issue in homeopathic practice. Mortification can be
expressed as a feeling of shame, wounded honor, or
loss of self-confidence. The famous Italian homeopath
Massimo Mangialavori describes in this work the most
important homeopathic remedies that have proved
particularly useful for these problems in his practice. He
highlights especially the less well-known and often
forgotten remedies. He presents impressive cases of
Ipecacuanha, Senega officinalis, and Magnetis polus
australis, differentiating these in detail from other
remedies such as Ferrum magneticum, Antimonium
tartaricum, Chelidonium, Ignatia, the Bromine, and
Chlorine salts, Paris quadrifolia, Chamomilla,
Staphisagria as well as the Scrophulariaceae and
Liliaceae.
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