The Trauma of Losing Face Part 2
A homeopathic perspective
My previous newsletter extrapolated on a New Yorker (July 15-18 2024) short story by Haruki Murakami titled, “Kaho” that took the notion of losing face literally and in an enigmatic direction. There are a additional points I’d like to make about traumatic loss of face and a few other homeopathic remedies I want to bring into the discussion.
As was pointed our earlier, within such East Asian cultures such as China and Murakimi’s native country Japan, “face” is an intricate notion touching on embarrassment, proper behavior, conflict avoidance, societal status and speed bumps within personal relationships. Face can also be “gained” via acts that preserve an individual or a family’s dignity, honorability or social status. “Saving face” on the other hand, is a western notion registering the stress of anticipated mortification or humiliation. Over generations the extended presence of colonialist emissaries can foster a population’s loss of face. At the individual level the legacy can be undercut with homeopathy but also through a modality designed to address it, Constellation Therapy. Two superb practitioners of Constellation Therapy I am happy to recommend are Dan Booth Cohen and Emily Blefeld.
Repertorizing loss of face
For those of us unfamiliar with this homeopathic term, “repertorization” means to locate “rubrics” in a text called a homeopathic repertory. Each rubric encapsulates some symptom, behavior or trait referencing several remedies to it. Selecting multiple appropriate rubrics, the practitioner aims to "connect the dots,” meaning identify a remedy emblematic of the overall symptom picture that the rubric constellation encompasses. Before rendering a final verdict, the homeopath consults yet another text, the materia medica in order to compare the number one choice with its closest contenders before deciding.
“Loss of face” does not appear in any homeopathic repertory. Therefore, related rubrics such as “humiliation,” “embarrassment,” “mortification” and “chagrin” must be investigated. What follow are are thumbnail descriptions of “loss of face” implicsted remedies. A fuller understanding of these medicines can be gained by consulting a materia medica text.
Anacardium Orientale This remedy made from marking nut is famous for its “possessed of two warring angels” theme, a delusion of being possessed of opposing wills. The individual is tormented by an urge to be hard and cruel. But this compensates for an ingrained feeling of helplessness. His use of language is profane. The foul mouthed need to curse is paralleled in Anacardium’s materia medica where indications entered under “mouth” list fetid odor from the mouth; painful vesicles; bad breath and taste; white and rough tongue; and excessive saliva such as can provoke vomiting.
Assessing the damage
A loss of face fable appears in a “They trampled on my self-respect” case history-based about “Clyde” recounted in my book The Toxic Relationship Cure. What emerges is that Clyde’s rage and helplessness recapitulate a hot button incurred when as a child, his harsh parents alternately dominated and ignored him. A view that their son’s will is insignificant and an inconvenience to them subsequently crops up in Clyde’s own paralytic helplessness and hunger to retreat. In Stockholm syndrome fashion, Clyde is entangled with the toxic mindset of his parents. But holding radically opposed standpoints is both stressful and a torturous burden, indicating that life offers principally lose-lose options. Furthering frustration, this instills profanity and the delusion of being possessed by both a good and a bad angel.
Anacardium’s inner helplessness converts into gastric features such as lack of motility or constipation. As the personality inclines to bluntness, so too does the Anacardium remedy-state’s gastric system resort to a blunt manner of achieving bowel motility: rapid eating and a stuffing of oneself with food.
Treatment effect
Treatment with Anacardium will reduce the magnitude of Clyde’s polarity. Along with ameliorating his physical ailments this evicts his delusion of being possessed of two divergent wills. A junior version of the dominance-helplessness conundrum will emerges where a shift into one or another state typified by vacillation between a need to control and an avoidance of confrontation ensues. Remedies such as Lycopodium or Nux Vomica that also feature excessive control and ambition, but where irritability and impatience substitute for cruelty can come up. Or, Anacardium may instigate a pendulum swing in the direction of a Platina state. Should that happen, Clyde’s self-contempt would be supplanted by a superiority mindset and contempt for others that Platina would delimit.
Calcarea Silicata is a remedy whose trauma involves perceived injury to self image. A case history-based fable also recounted in The Toxic Relationship Cure, “Willa’s Story” expresses loss of face in terms of the a “Does my need for shelter expose my vulnerability?” theme. Willa’s complaint is summarized:
“He is dead but still holds me to his standards.”
Willa’s mother contacted me because in the year following her husband’s death, her twenty-year-old daughter has grown mentally unbalanced. Willa has lost ambition and thinks she has all sorts of illnesses, the mother reports. More disturbingly, Willa can sometimes be overheard serenely engaged in conversation with her deceased father. Willa appears in my office a slender, sensitive young woman, wan and with a rosacealike acne. Her handshake is damp and weak.
Assessing the damage
Her family’s reduced financial means has brought about heightened social scrutiny and a plunge in status. In response, the family members, especially the impressionable Willa, hunker down, finding refuge in their core values and good name. For Willa, escape into a protective cocoon instigates dangers both imaginary (hypochondriacal behavior) and real (defeatism and ill health).
Willa’s dilemma is described by the silicate of lime, Calcarea Silicata a remedy understood in terms of its calcium and silica, remedies in and of themselves. From Calcarea Carbonica Willa derives her jadedness, concern over shelter, sense of being observed, tendency to become chilled, and poor stamina. Silica accounts for Willa’s self-consciousness, hypersensitivity (especially to reprimand), timorousness, and brittle nails. Calcarea and Silica overlap with regard to ailments of the skin.
Treatment effect
Calcarea Silicata works to “evict” Willa’s deceased father from the household of his survivors. As the visitations decline, Willa finds herself relying on her father less and less. As her defeatism lifts and her ambition returns, Willa’s skin and general health improve. Her eventual shift into either a Calcarea Carbonica or Silica state would not be surprising.
Naja The number one loss of face remedy. Less so these days but in earlier times for sure, Naja would have received my vote for the constitutional remedy of Japan. Its core theme, “I must take responsibility even when not personally responsible” is a type of guilt that would require ritual suicide seppuku. A taking one's own life to restore honorability among the feudal Japanese samurai class seppuku retains a certain presence within Japanese society today. Consisted of stabbing oneself in the abdomen with a short sword to ensure a slow and agonizing death, seppuku’s agony is mirrored in the wretched emotional state associated with Naja, a wondrously, guilt assuaging remedy. Its emotionally dignified characteristis are so opposite those of another remedy with which it shares a “dueling wills” theme, Anacardium
Mercurius Vivus A hallmark of mercury poisoning is paranoia, a notion that the world is a dangerous place; that one is surrounded by enemies. Adolph Hitler, who thought that the terms of the Versailles treaty concluding World War I were a serious loss of face for Germany would likely have needed this remedy (as well as others!). One need not be an evil dictator to benefit from Mercurius whose features include, mercuriality, meaning changeability and impulsivity. In Greek mythology Mercury is the God of communication, so is the Mercurius patient is an excellent communicator. She is also mercurial in being emotionally changeable meaning quickly responsive to changes in atmospheric pressure (why mercury is used in barometers). Communicational skill notwithstanding the Mercurius individual is emotionally closed to the point of his being unknowable as a person (sorry, this is Hitler too). I suspect that his emotional suppression reflects a delusion that in suspecting something will happen it is destined to occur.
If the feeling is negative then the perception must be suppressed. If good, then it merits the status of being prophetic. Associated symptoms include tremor, weakness of memory; indecent or anarchic behavior; peculiar notions about food; dullness of the eyes and staring; suspicion and distrustfulness of those about him. The individual is sleepy during the daytime but sleepless at night. The pains of the Mercurius patient are aggravated at night. The face can be pale, the tongue and gums swollen, teeth are loose, saliva is profuse; the breath is foul; condition of the abdominal organs is sluggish; all the muscles; are sore; there are bone pains at night and in damp weather.
Nitric Acidum Acid remedies are given when a practitioner gets a feeling that “something’s eating you.” This acid remedy’s negativity can be transmitted across generations especially within perpetually warring zones such as the Balkans or in rigid, fundamentalist sects such as the Taliban where religious transgressions assume unforgivable proportions and tragically, “honor” killings to redress supposed loss of face are countenanced.
He who needs Nitric Acidum is a blaming, fault finding, pessimistic and grudge holding person. The remedy has an affinity for rectal symptoms such as hemorrhoids which explains why, upon encountering such a louse (the colorful Yiddish term for whom is farshtinkiner) you are tempted to mutter, “What an asshole!” Instead, take a deep breath, smile, and say, “It seems you espouse some rather negative opinions.”
In closing: May your face ever reflect well on you!
It’s an honor to have gained your attention
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