The Emotional Roots of Chronic Illness

How to change the subconscious patterns underlying chronic conditions. In addition to working well for purely physical ailments, homeopathy offers remedies for engaging directly with the subconscious mind and ameliorating embedded, existential causes of chronic illness—called “miasms” in classical homeopathy. Presenting diagnostic insight, specific homeopathic remedies, and successful case study examples about the profound connections between emotions and their physical manifestations in illness, Jerry M. Kantor correlates the five classical miasms and their core existential quandaries with the Five Elements and Phase Theory of Chinese Medicine. He likens inborn foundational emotions to tools, each one designed to solve a stress-related problem. Self-sabotaging imbalances—energetic and physical—can occur when an emotional tool is excessively used, such as when a once-familiar stress is no longer present, or underused, as when a stressful input is inadequately managed. He explains how identifying a default emotional response—such as anxiety or anger—along with its accompanying physical symptoms can determine the core existential stress or heredity pattern underlying a chronic condition. For each of the five classical miasms and their associated physical and emotional conditions, the author presents homeopathic remedies that mollify the impact of specific existential quandaries and explains their indications through detailed examples from his practice. Revealing that the subconscious mind is amenable to change, Kantor shows how to accurately select remedies to defuse the energetic charge of unresolved existential stress and thus quell the root causes of chronic illness.

Jerry M. Kantor, L.Ac., CCH, MMHS, is a faculty member of the Ontario College of Homeopathic Medicine and owner of Vital Force Health Care LLC, a Boston-area homeopathy and acupuncture practice. The first acupuncturist to receive an academic appointment at Harvard Medical School’s Department of Anaesthesiology, Kantor is the author of Sane Asylums, Interpreting Chronic Illness, The Toxic Relationship Cure, and Autism Reversal Toolbox. He lives in Dedham, Massachusetts.

Foreword by Begabati Lennihan, RN, CCH Acknowledgments Preface Introduction PART ONE A Homeopathic Framework Contextualizing the Law of Similars Psychic Excavation Our Inborn Toolkit of Five Emotions PART TWO Five Existential Questions And Their Corresponding Miasms, Sense Dimensions, Phases, Emotions, and Organs 1 Am I alone in life or do I act in synchrony with nature and with others? Tubercular Miasm • Touch • Fire Phase • Joy • Heart–Small Intestine 2 Is my presence in the world sustainable? Psoric Miasm • Taste • Earth Phase • Worry • Spleen–Stomach 3 Am I oriented in space and time? Sycotic Miasm • Smell • Metal Phase • Sadness • Lungs 4 Can the boundary between life and death be abided? Syphilitic Miasm • Hearing • Water Phase • Fear • Kidneys–Urinary Bladder 5 Will the insurrection of my birth prove fruitful? Cancer Miasm • Sight • Wood Phase • Anger • Liver–Gall Bladder In the Strait of Messina Navigating between the Scylla of Cancer and the Charybdis of Chronic Illness APPENDIX A Modeling Explanations APPENDIX B Resources for Other Existential Perspectives on Homeopathy Notes Bibliography Index