Some time ago a patient happily told me, “I have never been able to have a sexual relationship with someone I have a mind [emotional] connection to.” I thought how curious. It makes me wonder about the inner “deals” we humans make with ourselves. They are important for the homeopath, because all such “deals” come out of a conflict in the deep consciousness of the individual, that is, the 4th level realm of the homeopathic remedy.
One way to understand the homeopathic dictum, “like cures like,” is to see the conflict in the remedy substance as matching the deep conflict in the patient. To take a remedy that mirrors this inner conflict is to be confronted and thereby spurred towards resolution. My problem in this instance was to understand what this patient’s inner conflict was.
She lived apart from her husband most of the time. Often I heard her emphasizing her independence, her ability to go it alone. One other thing I felt was key to her inner dilemma: she made references to “dying,” as if she would dissolve or fade away in situations of high intensity. How, I wondered, did this “dying” relate to her inner “deal”?
I was certain she needed an animal remedy from the sea. All of the key elements of her state pointed this way. Which sea animal took some thought. In reading about some possibilities, one thing jumped out at me when I was reading on Sepia, the Cuttlefish.
The male & female cuttlefish die of exhaustion following the sexual act. Parental care thus is not a part of the life history of the cuttlefish.
Sepia is known for its ink, which it releases to escape from predators. It often strikes me that the most “well-known” remedies in homeopathy are some of the least understood. Sepia, the most well-known of the sea animals, classically is said to be the worn out, dumpy housewife, indifferent to her husband, her children, and sex. Could be. Yet in my experience, rarely do Sepia patients present this way. Closer to the inner truth might be a “sepia-toned,” pre-Raphaelite painting of some gorgeous, white-skinned maiden, frozen in time with parted lips, a blank look of passion on her face. The women in these paintings give the impression that they either died of passion or are about to.
Always there is duality. For every panic there is the corresponding calm. For every dark there is the corresponding light, and for the indifference of Sepia, there must be the corresponding passion, the excitement of mating and sex. Yet, how would it be for you, if your next sexual encounter was so over-the-top that you died of exhaustion? Now that would be a sexual encounter worth talking about…if you only could. You would see it in the tabloids: MAN DIES FROM GREAT SEXUAL EXPERIENCE.
Any good sexual encounter probably should bring with it the feeling you died a little bit. For the healthy Sepia patient, a good sexual encounter should feel like death and rebirth. Yet for most Sepia patients, I suspect the contradiction is simply too much. Easiest to seek distance, stay alone, brown out, sink into a numbness. My patient resolved her conflict—at least to some degree—by simply limiting sexual experience to those she felt disconnected. As far as I could see, it was the same pattern.
Unfortunately, right after the dose of Sepia, I lost her to follow-up; yet, maybe she will turn up in the future. Stay tuned.
