A Homeopathic Guide to Partnership and Compatibility

Taal
English
Type
Paperback
Uitgever
North Atlantic Books
Author(s) Liz Lalor
Niet op voorraad
€ 17,95

From a homeopathic 'constitutional analysis' standpoint, a true romantic partnership is only possible through an understanding of self and what makes one fulfilled. This unusual guide analyzes the personality types and emotional dynamics of 50 different film characters to show readers how to discover themselves and their ideal partner. Drawing on her vast film knowledge, Liz Lalor uses examples ranging from Bogart and Hepburn in The African Queen to characters from American Splendor to demonstrate how self-knowledge is the key component in finding lasting love.

Meer informatie
ISBN1556435282
AuteurLiz Lalor
TypePaperback
TaalEnglish
Publicatiedatum2004-10-27
Pagina's274
UitgeverNorth Atlantic Books
Recensie

This book review is reprinted with the permission of the National Center for Homeopathy
801 North Fairfax Street, Suite 306
Alexandria, VA 22314
(703) 548-7790, Fax (703) 548-7792

Reviewed by Melanie Grimes, RSHom(NA), CCH

Liz Lalor has written an interesting book that provides a unique view of homeopathic materia medica. Using classic constitutional typology, she predicts one individual's compatibility with another. Her remedy pictures are taken from homeopathic materia medica as well as from movie characters, so as to better explain the remedy types to non-homeopaths.

As a tool to better understand homeopathic philosophy and the aspects of personality and sensations that homeopaths look for when prescribing constitutionally, this book is an asset to the practitioner. For the same reason, it would also be an interesting book for a patient who wishes to learn more about homeopathy.

This book is a delight and a great read. It opens up a Pandora's box of ideas. The movie character references are charming and insightful. Lalor's concept of considering two people, two remedy types, and their effects on each other, is one that has not been properly explored, and she is to be commended for taking this step toward deepening our understanding.

I like to conceptualize the range of action of a remedy as a line. The line has a trajectory, that is, a pathway from one point to another. It is not, as we have thought in the past, that a Calcarea carbonica type is cold, and a Sulphur type is warm. Instead, if a remedy has an action on temperature, it can treat both aspects-symptoms of heat or cold. If we limit ourselves to only prescribing for the static picture of materia medica, we miss many cases that could be treated. Lalor's remedy descriptions create a static picture of a point along the trajectory-not the whole view of all aspects of a remedy's action. However, her pictures are broader than keynote descriptions and do include the dynamic action of the remedy as well. Her living pictures of people in relationships adds a dynamic not seen before, furthering our understanding of a "living" materia medica.

The book's paper is of the high quality we have come to expect from North Atlantic Books. The book is well laid out, with enough white space to make it an enjoyable read.

I would recommend this book to homeopaths as well as patients, with the caveat that we keep expanding our insights into materia medica and not regress to think that all Pulsatilla types have to be blonde!

Whether we can find love through homeopathy remains to be seen, and I personally, will be standing by to find out!

 

This book review is reprinted with permission from Homeopathic Links.
URL: http://www.antenna.nl/homeolinks

Reviewed by Jay Yasgur, R.Ph., M.Sc., USA

"...the first book of its kind. A serious and entertaining exposition of how homeopathic types interact in relationships. ... Few partners could be more dissimilar than Lycopodium and Pulsatilla, yet Liz provides us with a rich and realistic picture of why they would want to be together, and what each can give to the other. In doing so, she sheds light on all our relationships, and why they are worth the trouble they entail." (from Philip Bailey's foreword, p.xi,xii).

How can people link up? How can compatibility be assessed by being aware of constitutional types? These were some of the thoughts that initially put me off and delayed this review. But it was an e-mail from Dr. van der Zee that reminded me to 'get to it'.

This 275-page quality paperback consists of three sections; an introduction (14 pp), constitutional summaries (70 pp; 19 polychrests), and partnership combinations (150pp). This last section is the meat of the book and consists of six subsections delving into six remedies (Carc., Lye., Natm., Sep, Staph., and Sulp.) and their relationships with several other polychrests. The ensuing discussions are based on the author's clinical practice. In the Staphysagna partnerships section, for example, Ms. Lalor provides an eight-page general discussion of Staphysagria before commenting on its relationship with Graphites and Mercurius. This is the most engaging part of the book as she makes points by enlisting homeopathic portraits from film and literature. Quite a number of movies are mentioned and a three-page film/literature index is thoughtfully included.

To be sure, one cannot employ constitutional homeopathy to find a mate or partner but the ideas presented in Ms. Lalor's book can be used to gain deeper insights into oneself, compatibility issues and the polychrests. There is always something we can learn about ourselves, that is, if one is open: if one has some capacity for self-reflection.

An example of how Ms. Lalor handles the compatibility of constitutional types is the effect a Graphitis will have on a Staphysagria. Since Graphites has nothing in the constitutional picture that would be emotionally or sexually stimulated by the role of abuser s/he can help a Staphisagria to break the pattern of feeling repressed.

Now you have some idea of content and writing style. There are both good and poor insights. Usually the poor appear when Ms. Lalor offers sweeping and bold comments which tend to mislead:

"Mercurius is able to adapt and change quickly but Mercurius is also constantly reacting and unable to maintain order over emotional reactions. The mind of Mercurius is equally weak and unstructured and as reactive as the emotional" (p. 221)

Ms. Lalor provides much didactic material (some of it repetitious) as well as copious examples drawn from the world of film. By providing life 'cases' these are in helpful in exemplyifing her points.

This volume is well laid out, with one page of bibliographical resources, an index of film and literature references and fifteen pages of endnotes. Contained within these endnotes are a number of gems. There is a brief six-page index; I make a point of mentioning this because to be truly effective, to be truly useful, an index needs to be much larger. An index should be ten percent of the total page count yet very few books published today (in any field) possess such powerful indices.

I leave you with these brief quotes from page 124:

"If Calc-curb is crippled by fears and anxieties, then Lycopodium could also run the risk of being crippled by Calc-carb doubts and fears."

"Perhaps what's really required is a party with some Medorrhinums! Fueled by booze, smoke and music, they should all be able to work out any lingering inhibitions and enthusiastically coordinate future consciousness-raising activities."

 

This book review is reprinted from No. 24:2, Autuman 2005 edition of The Homoeopath with permission from Nick Churchill of The Society of Homoeopaths.

Reviewed by Nigel Summerley

This original book is cleverly conceived and excellently written, but, sadly, it also has its flaws. It is based on the premise that people in particular 'constitutional' states will get on better in relationships with people in some constitutional states than they do with those in others.

For example, it suggests, a Carcinosin will do well with an Ignatia, but not so well with a Silicea; a Lycopodium can be happy with a Calcarea Carbonica, but a relationship with a Lachesis is likely to be doomed. This would be all well and good - but for the fact that people don't always fit neatly into one or other remedy, and certainly not always into one of the polychrests, which is what Lalor mainly concentrates on here. So, if her hypothesis is correct, the information in the book would have a limited application, and much more work would have to be done on many more remedy pictures.

As she points out, all relationships have the potential to be successful. So why then do so many of them fail? Can it really be just a matter of working out that you're a Natrum Muriaticum and advertising for a Causticum? This almost takes us into the territory of matching star signs to one another - which is itself, arguably, not a totally satisfactory approach to the complexity of relationships. .

Another major problem with the book is that Lalor almost exclusively uses relationships from movies to illustrate her case for the importance of remedy connections. It's not the fact that a few of the movies are obscure - most of them are well-known films such as 'Hannah and her Sisters', 'High Fidelity' and 'Kramer vs. Kramer'. No, the problem is simply that movies are not real life. They may be reflections of life, or projections of what people think life is or should be. But on the whole, they are primarily neat packages of entertainment.

Many of the films here are what Lalor admits are 'romantic' movies, often films with engaging stories and tidy endings. Relationships - and homeopathic practice - are rarely like this. And does 'romance' have more to do with the success of real relationships or with their failure? That question is not addressed.

The failure of relationships, it might be argued, is so often down to general human failing rather than mismatched 'constitutional' types; or to the failure of men and women to understand each other's differences, as chronicled at laboured length in the Venus and Mars books of John Gray (who endorses Lalor's book).

Most humans can suffer from romanticism (ailments from 'love'), can project images of desire onto others, and can make the mistake of thinking that another person holds the key to their happiness. This is surely where the real potential for homeopathic work lies: in restoring individuals to balance, so that they have a chance of a balanced relationship with another balanced individual rather than yet another clash of egocentric misapprehensions.

What this book does which is useful is to raise the issue of how potent homeopathy can be in the healing of individuals and through this in the healing of their relationships. When we are fortunate enough to treat a couple or a family, the results of homeopathic success, as many of us know, can be far-reaching. .

The book does an excellent job of looking at a select number of remedy types and getting us to learn more about them by seeing them in relation to, and in comparison with, other remedies. It also gets us to concentrate especially on their mental/emotional components and their healing possibilities in this sphere.

Catherine Coulter, of whom Lalor is reminiscent, not only in the welcome clarity of her writing, but also in her use of film characters, has provided similarly excellent remedy pictures. But at least Coulter refers also to real-life cases. Does Lalor have a wealth of real cases that she is holding back? Or does she think that movie cases alone are enough? She says the book is based on many years of clinical experience - so, one is tempted to ask, where is it?

One cannot avoid the criticism that there is a lack of rigour in the approach she has chosen; it is fine as far as it goes, but I feel that if she wants to be taken seriously in suggesting that constitutional homeopathic types have a bearing on whether relationships succeed or fail, surely she needs to give some flesh-and-blood examples, rather than ones based on characters from modern-day fairy tales.

This book review is reprinted from Volume 99 Number 1 Spring 2006 edition of American Journal of Homeopathic Medicine with permission of the American Institute of Homeopathy

Reviewed by Mitchell A. Fleisher, MD, DHt, DABFP

This is an interesting little book about the comparative materia medica of partnership relationships, reminiscent of the style of Dr. Philip Bailey, author of Homeopathic Psychology: Personality Profiles of the Major Constitutional Remedies, who curiously enough wrote the forward, and wittily regretted not having seized the opportunity to write it himself, though he is generous with praise for a job well done. I can second that opinion.

Ms. Lalor has done a nice piece of work of summarizing the portraits of the essential elements of nineteen homeopathic polychrest remedies. It was clever, and thoroughly useful, to enumerate the "Key Mental and Emotional Characteristics" and "Key Physical Characteristics" of each remedy, an excellent review for novice and 'long in the tooth' practitioner alike. She takes poetic license with some of her descriptions; e.g., Arsenicum's desire to "surround themselves with objets d'art," Sepia's "love of space and freedom is often expressed in a love of dance, movement, or exercise;' but again, these are intelligent and utilitarian.

It might have been helpful to include the corresponding key mental, emotional and physical clinical rubrics; however, since that information is readily available from other sources; e.g., Frans Vermeulen's Synoptic Materia Medica, Roger van Zaandvoort's Repertory in ReferenceWorks, etc., she cannot really be faulted for its absence in this text.

The "Partnership Combinations" section is a veritable homeopathic horoscope of personality typologies, extrapolating upon the sometimes perverse, and often poignant, pros and cons of their intimate intertwinings. One such 'born under a bad sign' combo is Mercurius and Carcinosinum. It is a wonder how these two widely divergent types could ever come together, except in a Hitchcock movie or, perhaps, 'Friday the 13th' serial. On the other hand, it is very common to see, in America at least, the relatively stable marriage of Calcarea carbonica women and Lycopodium men. The former dependent upon the security and comfort supplied by the latter, and the latter reliant upon the admiration provided by the former.

Another heart-rending, rare marital pair, that Liz's book does not borrow the space to embrace is that of Carcinosinum and Aurum sulphuratum, which I've observed twice so far in my career. This is the very portrait of malignant codependent psychopathology; Le., CarcVlOsinum seeking to define herself through excessive, selfless, self-destructive caretaking, amalgamated with the self-inflicted, driven, immense burden of responsibility for family carried woefully on the shoulders of Aurum sulphuratum. The need for perfection and control in both remedy types leads to much interpersonal torment and existential angst.

I found Liz's employment of film character analogies in the narratives of the remedies quite intriguing and colorfully rich. She has certainly imbibed a broad repertoire of international cinematic art, enriching her portrayal of homeopathic material medica. She must've eaten tons of popcorn sitting through all those flicks. Film connoisseurs will definitely be envious.

There is a subtle danger, though, in portraying what appear to be fixed characteristics of a remedy type. Nature is far more vague and malleable, and often frustrates the prejudices of intellectual simplification. The manner in which a given remedy expresses itself may fall on the far ends of the spectrum of its diverse constellation of possible psychological and/or physical symptomatology, denying the homeopathic practitioner a ready grasp of the commonly anticipated typology. An open mind, actually an empty mind in the Zen sense, is requisite to capturing the refined essence of the unique representation of a constitutional homeopathic remedy in a given individual. The modern works of Sankaran, Chhabra, Scholten, Mangialavori, et al., have made us more aware of this reality.

That being said, I believe A Homeopathic Guide to Partnership and Compatibility is a constructive introduction to practical, homeopathic social psychology, as well as enjoyable reading for the voyeur, the lover and the seeker of truth in us all.

About the reviewer: Mitch Fleisher, M.D., F.A.A.F.P., Dc.A.B. C. T., practices classical homeopathic medicine, nutritional therapy and c;helation therapy in Nelson County, Virginia. Formerly an Assistant Clinical Professor of Family Practice at the University of Virginia Dept. of Family Medicine and Medical College of Virginia, Dr. Fleisher currently is involved in clinical teaching programs with the National Center for Homeopathy and teaches introductory-level homeopathy to students at the Medical College of Virginia and University of Virginia medical school. AfFj

Recensie

This book review is reprinted with the permission of the National Center for Homeopathy
801 North Fairfax Street, Suite 306
Alexandria, VA 22314
(703) 548-7790, Fax (703) 548-7792

Reviewed by Melanie Grimes, RSHom(NA), CCH

Liz Lalor has written an interesting book that provides a unique view of homeopathic materia medica. Using classic constitutional typology, she predicts one individual's compatibility with another. Her remedy pictures are taken from homeopathic materia medica as well as from movie characters, so as to better explain the remedy types to non-homeopaths.

As a tool to better understand homeopathic philosophy and the aspects of personality and sensations that homeopaths look for when prescribing constitutionally, this book is an asset to the practitioner. For the same reason, it would also be an interesting book for a patient who wishes to learn more about homeopathy.

This book is a delight and a great read. It opens up a Pandora's box of ideas. The movie character references are charming and insightful. Lalor's concept of considering two people, two remedy types, and their effects on each other, is one that has not been properly explored, and she is to be commended for taking this step toward deepening our understanding.

I like to conceptualize the range of action of a remedy as a line. The line has a trajectory, that is, a pathway from one point to another. It is not, as we have thought in the past, that a Calcarea carbonica type is cold, and a Sulphur type is warm. Instead, if a remedy has an action on temperature, it can treat both aspects-symptoms of heat or cold. If we limit ourselves to only prescribing for the static picture of materia medica, we miss many cases that could be treated. Lalor's remedy descriptions create a static picture of a point along the trajectory-not the whole view of all aspects of a remedy's action. However, her pictures are broader than keynote descriptions and do include the dynamic action of the remedy as well. Her living pictures of people in relationships adds a dynamic not seen before, furthering our understanding of a "living" materia medica.

The book's paper is of the high quality we have come to expect from North Atlantic Books. The book is well laid out, with enough white space to make it an enjoyable read.

I would recommend this book to homeopaths as well as patients, with the caveat that we keep expanding our insights into materia medica and not regress to think that all Pulsatilla types have to be blonde!

Whether we can find love through homeopathy remains to be seen, and I personally, will be standing by to find out!

 

This book review is reprinted with permission from Homeopathic Links.
URL: http://www.antenna.nl/homeolinks

Reviewed by Jay Yasgur, R.Ph., M.Sc., USA

"...the first book of its kind. A serious and entertaining exposition of how homeopathic types interact in relationships. ... Few partners could be more dissimilar than Lycopodium and Pulsatilla, yet Liz provides us with a rich and realistic picture of why they would want to be together, and what each can give to the other. In doing so, she sheds light on all our relationships, and why they are worth the trouble they entail." (from Philip Bailey's foreword, p.xi,xii).

How can people link up? How can compatibility be assessed by being aware of constitutional types? These were some of the thoughts that initially put me off and delayed this review. But it was an e-mail from Dr. van der Zee that reminded me to 'get to it'.

This 275-page quality paperback consists of three sections; an introduction (14 pp), constitutional summaries (70 pp; 19 polychrests), and partnership combinations (150pp). This last section is the meat of the book and consists of six subsections delving into six remedies (Carc., Lye., Natm., Sep, Staph., and Sulp.) and their relationships with several other polychrests. The ensuing discussions are based on the author's clinical practice. In the Staphysagna partnerships section, for example, Ms. Lalor provides an eight-page general discussion of Staphysagria before commenting on its relationship with Graphites and Mercurius. This is the most engaging part of the book as she makes points by enlisting homeopathic portraits from film and literature. Quite a number of movies are mentioned and a three-page film/literature index is thoughtfully included.

To be sure, one cannot employ constitutional homeopathy to find a mate or partner but the ideas presented in Ms. Lalor's book can be used to gain deeper insights into oneself, compatibility issues and the polychrests. There is always something we can learn about ourselves, that is, if one is open: if one has some capacity for self-reflection.

An example of how Ms. Lalor handles the compatibility of constitutional types is the effect a Graphitis will have on a Staphysagria. Since Graphites has nothing in the constitutional picture that would be emotionally or sexually stimulated by the role of abuser s/he can help a Staphisagria to break the pattern of feeling repressed.

Now you have some idea of content and writing style. There are both good and poor insights. Usually the poor appear when Ms. Lalor offers sweeping and bold comments which tend to mislead:

"Mercurius is able to adapt and change quickly but Mercurius is also constantly reacting and unable to maintain order over emotional reactions. The mind of Mercurius is equally weak and unstructured and as reactive as the emotional" (p. 221)

Ms. Lalor provides much didactic material (some of it repetitious) as well as copious examples drawn from the world of film. By providing life 'cases' these are in helpful in exemplyifing her points.

This volume is well laid out, with one page of bibliographical resources, an index of film and literature references and fifteen pages of endnotes. Contained within these endnotes are a number of gems. There is a brief six-page index; I make a point of mentioning this because to be truly effective, to be truly useful, an index needs to be much larger. An index should be ten percent of the total page count yet very few books published today (in any field) possess such powerful indices.

I leave you with these brief quotes from page 124:

"If Calc-curb is crippled by fears and anxieties, then Lycopodium could also run the risk of being crippled by Calc-carb doubts and fears."

"Perhaps what's really required is a party with some Medorrhinums! Fueled by booze, smoke and music, they should all be able to work out any lingering inhibitions and enthusiastically coordinate future consciousness-raising activities."

 

This book review is reprinted from No. 24:2, Autuman 2005 edition of The Homoeopath with permission from Nick Churchill of The Society of Homoeopaths.

Reviewed by Nigel Summerley

This original book is cleverly conceived and excellently written, but, sadly, it also has its flaws. It is based on the premise that people in particular 'constitutional' states will get on better in relationships with people in some constitutional states than they do with those in others.

For example, it suggests, a Carcinosin will do well with an Ignatia, but not so well with a Silicea; a Lycopodium can be happy with a Calcarea Carbonica, but a relationship with a Lachesis is likely to be doomed. This would be all well and good - but for the fact that people don't always fit neatly into one or other remedy, and certainly not always into one of the polychrests, which is what Lalor mainly concentrates on here. So, if her hypothesis is correct, the information in the book would have a limited application, and much more work would have to be done on many more remedy pictures.

As she points out, all relationships have the potential to be successful. So why then do so many of them fail? Can it really be just a matter of working out that you're a Natrum Muriaticum and advertising for a Causticum? This almost takes us into the territory of matching star signs to one another - which is itself, arguably, not a totally satisfactory approach to the complexity of relationships. .

Another major problem with the book is that Lalor almost exclusively uses relationships from movies to illustrate her case for the importance of remedy connections. It's not the fact that a few of the movies are obscure - most of them are well-known films such as 'Hannah and her Sisters', 'High Fidelity' and 'Kramer vs. Kramer'. No, the problem is simply that movies are not real life. They may be reflections of life, or projections of what people think life is or should be. But on the whole, they are primarily neat packages of entertainment.

Many of the films here are what Lalor admits are 'romantic' movies, often films with engaging stories and tidy endings. Relationships - and homeopathic practice - are rarely like this. And does 'romance' have more to do with the success of real relationships or with their failure? That question is not addressed.

The failure of relationships, it might be argued, is so often down to general human failing rather than mismatched 'constitutional' types; or to the failure of men and women to understand each other's differences, as chronicled at laboured length in the Venus and Mars books of John Gray (who endorses Lalor's book).

Most humans can suffer from romanticism (ailments from 'love'), can project images of desire onto others, and can make the mistake of thinking that another person holds the key to their happiness. This is surely where the real potential for homeopathic work lies: in restoring individuals to balance, so that they have a chance of a balanced relationship with another balanced individual rather than yet another clash of egocentric misapprehensions.

What this book does which is useful is to raise the issue of how potent homeopathy can be in the healing of individuals and through this in the healing of their relationships. When we are fortunate enough to treat a couple or a family, the results of homeopathic success, as many of us know, can be far-reaching. .

The book does an excellent job of looking at a select number of remedy types and getting us to learn more about them by seeing them in relation to, and in comparison with, other remedies. It also gets us to concentrate especially on their mental/emotional components and their healing possibilities in this sphere.

Catherine Coulter, of whom Lalor is reminiscent, not only in the welcome clarity of her writing, but also in her use of film characters, has provided similarly excellent remedy pictures. But at least Coulter refers also to real-life cases. Does Lalor have a wealth of real cases that she is holding back? Or does she think that movie cases alone are enough? She says the book is based on many years of clinical experience - so, one is tempted to ask, where is it?

One cannot avoid the criticism that there is a lack of rigour in the approach she has chosen; it is fine as far as it goes, but I feel that if she wants to be taken seriously in suggesting that constitutional homeopathic types have a bearing on whether relationships succeed or fail, surely she needs to give some flesh-and-blood examples, rather than ones based on characters from modern-day fairy tales.

This book review is reprinted from Volume 99 Number 1 Spring 2006 edition of American Journal of Homeopathic Medicine with permission of the American Institute of Homeopathy

Reviewed by Mitchell A. Fleisher, MD, DHt, DABFP

This is an interesting little book about the comparative materia medica of partnership relationships, reminiscent of the style of Dr. Philip Bailey, author of Homeopathic Psychology: Personality Profiles of the Major Constitutional Remedies, who curiously enough wrote the forward, and wittily regretted not having seized the opportunity to write it himself, though he is generous with praise for a job well done. I can second that opinion.

Ms. Lalor has done a nice piece of work of summarizing the portraits of the essential elements of nineteen homeopathic polychrest remedies. It was clever, and thoroughly useful, to enumerate the "Key Mental and Emotional Characteristics" and "Key Physical Characteristics" of each remedy, an excellent review for novice and 'long in the tooth' practitioner alike. She takes poetic license with some of her descriptions; e.g., Arsenicum's desire to "surround themselves with objets d'art," Sepia's "love of space and freedom is often expressed in a love of dance, movement, or exercise;' but again, these are intelligent and utilitarian.

It might have been helpful to include the corresponding key mental, emotional and physical clinical rubrics; however, since that information is readily available from other sources; e.g., Frans Vermeulen's Synoptic Materia Medica, Roger van Zaandvoort's Repertory in ReferenceWorks, etc., she cannot really be faulted for its absence in this text.

The "Partnership Combinations" section is a veritable homeopathic horoscope of personality typologies, extrapolating upon the sometimes perverse, and often poignant, pros and cons of their intimate intertwinings. One such 'born under a bad sign' combo is Mercurius and Carcinosinum. It is a wonder how these two widely divergent types could ever come together, except in a Hitchcock movie or, perhaps, 'Friday the 13th' serial. On the other hand, it is very common to see, in America at least, the relatively stable marriage of Calcarea carbonica women and Lycopodium men. The former dependent upon the security and comfort supplied by the latter, and the latter reliant upon the admiration provided by the former.

Another heart-rending, rare marital pair, that Liz's book does not borrow the space to embrace is that of Carcinosinum and Aurum sulphuratum, which I've observed twice so far in my career. This is the very portrait of malignant codependent psychopathology; Le., CarcVlOsinum seeking to define herself through excessive, selfless, self-destructive caretaking, amalgamated with the self-inflicted, driven, immense burden of responsibility for family carried woefully on the shoulders of Aurum sulphuratum. The need for perfection and control in both remedy types leads to much interpersonal torment and existential angst.

I found Liz's employment of film character analogies in the narratives of the remedies quite intriguing and colorfully rich. She has certainly imbibed a broad repertoire of international cinematic art, enriching her portrayal of homeopathic material medica. She must've eaten tons of popcorn sitting through all those flicks. Film connoisseurs will definitely be envious.

There is a subtle danger, though, in portraying what appear to be fixed characteristics of a remedy type. Nature is far more vague and malleable, and often frustrates the prejudices of intellectual simplification. The manner in which a given remedy expresses itself may fall on the far ends of the spectrum of its diverse constellation of possible psychological and/or physical symptomatology, denying the homeopathic practitioner a ready grasp of the commonly anticipated typology. An open mind, actually an empty mind in the Zen sense, is requisite to capturing the refined essence of the unique representation of a constitutional homeopathic remedy in a given individual. The modern works of Sankaran, Chhabra, Scholten, Mangialavori, et al., have made us more aware of this reality.

That being said, I believe A Homeopathic Guide to Partnership and Compatibility is a constructive introduction to practical, homeopathic social psychology, as well as enjoyable reading for the voyeur, the lover and the seeker of truth in us all.

About the reviewer: Mitch Fleisher, M.D., F.A.A.F.P., Dc.A.B. C. T., practices classical homeopathic medicine, nutritional therapy and c;helation therapy in Nelson County, Virginia. Formerly an Assistant Clinical Professor of Family Practice at the University of Virginia Dept. of Family Medicine and Medical College of Virginia, Dr. Fleisher currently is involved in clinical teaching programs with the National Center for Homeopathy and teaches introductory-level homeopathy to students at the Medical College of Virginia and University of Virginia medical school. AfFj