The Work of Masi

Homeopathy as taught by Dr. E. Masi is no different from any other homeopathy. Dr. Masi proposed a new look at Hahnemann’s writings and a new way of reading proving results. He showed us how one could extract the essence from a pathogenesis and put this essence to its best use. Everything he said and wrote was present in Hahnemann’s work but his view has allowed us to discover these aspects of Hahnemann’s work.

We call it the noumenal homeopathy of Dr. Masi. The noumenon is the deep reality of things, the intelligible part hidden behind the phenomena accessible to our senses. It is the essence of things. Dr. Masi has showed us how to discover the noumenon of each symptom, the noumenon of the substance that has become a remedy through the pathogenesis, the noumenon of the person we are treating, or in other words, the person’s soul.

This will of course engage the homeopath into the spiritual dimension of man.

This is in full agreement with what Hahnemann wrote about healing: it is to render to man the well- being in sensation, the dignity in action and orientation towards reconciliation with the Great spirit adored by all the solar systems.

Dr. Masi brought to the homeopathic community the following:

1) A realistic philosophical approach.

Marcello Gerstner wrote the following: “He gave the homeopathic community the tool of the Aristotelian-Thomism philosophy, not to impose a particular philosophy, but on the contrary to open the interpretation possibilities, to be freer.

If, for instance, a person dislikes philosophy, at the same time this person subscribes to a certain philosophic opinion. This is necessary to live a human life. People need a certain view on the totality to establish an organisation in all of the things that they experience.

Thus, the philosophy people use to organise the totality of their experience in a certain way, even when it is not perceived in a critical and or conscious way, in general, acts in the subconscious. Life is reduced by reductionist philosophies. It is necessary to open the philosophic question to liberate the interpretations. In philosophy, there exist illnesses of philosophy, a sclerosis of philosophy when it loses its liberty.”

2) The concept of miasmatic dynamism

3) A rational and organised methodology to study pathogenesis and case records.

Masi’s miasmatic dynamism is the result of the interaction between the environment and the suffering patient. A mental symptom of suffering called primary psoric, like being incapable, not being loved, being fragile, etc., creates a handicap against which the patient will fight with the energy and help available through the obstacles of the surroundings.

Three types of reaction are possible:

1. The egotrophic reaction:

The first effort of the person is to ignore the handicap. For instance, if the person’s suffering is to feel incapable, he/she will do whatever possible to increase and prove his/her capacity in a compulsive way. The whole life energy goes into this effort because the internal painful sensation persists. There is a need to always be alert to compensate and prove to oneself and others, one’s capacities. This is the reaction of egotrophy of the 1st degree.

In the 2nd degree the patient does not care about this poor human faculty one can only acquire through hard labour and experience. He/she knows better and disposes of a superior, superhuman, divine faculty which is innate, intuitive and perfect capacity.

2. The egolytic reaction:

When the surroundings oppose or discourage the egotrophic reaction of the individual (e.g.: comments like “he is just like his uncle, he will come to nothing”), the patient may ease the suffering by abandoning the struggle to acquire the quality in question through a process of self destruction or egolysis. I am an incapable, I cannot help it, that is how it is. Anyway: encouraged or discouraged, the erroneous sensation is still the same: the sensation of being incapable.

3. The alterlytic reaction:

This is the defence reaction where the individual accuses the other(s) of being the cause of his/her suffering. (e.g.: a patient may say: “it is because my dad did not push me that I did not study”) In other cases, the patient makes the other(s) feel as if the handicap is theirs (don”t you notice then that you are incapable). The same suffering is projected onto the others.

A few examples of the miasmatic dynamism.

Example 1: Thuya

The central sensation in Thuya is fragility, the fear of being put to pieces, to lose their connections.

Case: A child cured of Celiac disease with Thuya. In car parks, he used to verify the solidity of the connection between cars and their trailers.

This is a case of Psora : fear of being fragile. (It is important to make sure it is absolutely fundamental in the case.)

In egotrophy of the 1st degree: He underlines his solidity: he cannot be put to pieces because he submits to a certain kind of restraint (which maintains the connection of various elements), or he proves his intellectual capacity of realizing a coherent synthesis of all the known notions, or his own capacity to maintain the cohesion of a group of persons or things.

Case: A patient cured of rheumatoid poly-arthritis. He spoke with passion about his past professional occupation: assembling pieces. “It is a lack of modesty of my part but I have to tell you this because it enthralls me to see that what I had thought out the day before and had written down in numbers, I can realise the next day: I pick up the wooden pieces and they fit perfectly, exactly how I worked it out beforehand. That is when I feel like God. I wrote the numbers for myself and the others, I did all the preparation. One day I had 1100 pieces of wood and they all fitted together. I am sure that any other modeler would say “he is a liar”. I can tell you it is the truth, it was exactly like that.”

In egotrophy of the 2nd degree: he has no need for restraint to keep his parts in union, he surpasses all the limits. He is the central point around which everything should turn coming from his creative intelligence. He has no need for the human desire to participate in the cohesion of a group. He is the central thought which creates a unity and maintains the cohesion just as God keeps the elements of His creation in order through His creative intelligence.

Case: a case of chronic depression. “It feels like I have a tumour on the back of my head which breaks all the connections. Sometimes I feel a chill as if a connection created itself and the brain started to work again and I feel full and can be myself again but it is usually only temporary. I stop razing the walls and I have more energy and presence. The rest of the time the connections do not create themselves”. Conclusion: the depressive state is caused by the connections not creating themselves. The patient cured with one dose of Thuya.

This is a situation of Egolysis: Thuya lost its connections, he/she is in bits.

In heterolysis, Thuya will highlight the fragility of others.

Example 2: Nitric acid.

The remedy tolerates no mistakes and will not forgive other people’s mistakes.

The patient is torn between inflexible justice and mercifulness. The same goes for his opinion of himself: pities himself but is horrified if others pity him. He loses his capacity to think. Masi says Nitric acid is a judge who is incapable of delivering exact merciful justice.

In heterolysis, he pities nobody.

In egotrophy he can be either the inflexible judge or, on the contrary, the dispenser of all mercifulness. These are the extremes that allow him to deny his difficulty, being the intelligible capacity to find the right measure between justice and mercifulness.

In psora, he will continuously hesitate between the two choices:

Case: A primary school teacher lived in permanent fear of making mistakes when checking the pupils” work. It drove her to depression: “I spend endless time on my corrections to make sure I am as just as I possibly can be, I keep re-checking, I never finish.” It was an obsessive compulsive behaviour problem; four doses of Nitric acid freed her from her depression.

Example 3: Nux Moschata.

In this remedy, there is a dynamic miasmatic reaction in relation to ridicule. (It is a major theme of Nux mochata but not the central theme.) The three attitudes are well expressed in the pathogenesis:

Psoric suffering : being ridiculed. “She did and said numerous things as if she was an idiot, and then was saddened about her behaviour but said that it was not possible to control herself“. Nux moschata sees himself to be ridiculous, parts of the body are too small or too large, has two or three heads, etc.

Egotrophy: He uses the ridicule to be noticed: “after I made them laugh till 1 pm I went to bed.” The patient used the ridicule to deny his infirmity by showing off his capacity as a comic.

Egolysis: He became ridiculous, he acted ridiculously and extravagantly. He appeared infantile and idiotic. He made strange gestures and used improper language, he had ridiculous illusions.

Case: A dancer suffering with osteophytes which endangered her career. Cured with Nux moschata. “When I cannot make a particular step while practising, I inflate the ridicule, I see myself from outside, I make myself and the others laugh (egolysis). Before I had the impression that the others were ridiculous (alterlysis) and now it turns upon myself; I see myself dancing with large thighs and limited joint movement, I found myself ridiculous.” (egolysis)

Example 4: Drosera.

Drosera has 2 important egotrophic symptoms:

– Good conscience: “I am not afraid of misfortune because I am conscious that I acted appropriately.”

– Mistrusting others: “full of distrust as if others around him are all liars”

This gives rise to the following psoric basis: Am I capable of acting appropriately followed by the alterlytic projection: the others are not able to react appropriately. In the pathogenesis it says: “extremely disappointed by those whose intentions are full of deceit. Depressed because of the life difficulties caused to man by man.”

Case: Cured from glomerulonephritis raging for over a year, on the brink of a kidney transplant: She was afraid to act wrongly (morally) with a compulsion to do her duty and even more than she should, to appease her constant fear of her anticipation of being punished. She had an exaggerated leitmotif: she felt culpable because rich countries exploit poor countries.

All these thoughts were imaginary, she wasn”t exploiting anybody, she was raising a family of 5 children on a small budget.

Methodology for studying materia medica.

Dr. Masi showed us a new way of studying the materia medica to refine and deepen our understanding of their dynamics;

1) We study the materia medica only in its original language. We make our own translations and study the most important words through their translations using a number of different dictionaries.

2) Symptoms are sorted into themes: for instance, the theme of connection. Then we will place all the symptoms which contain this word or its opposite (de-connection). Then we put aside the most striking, unusual, strange themes that emerge. (Organon §153)

3) Then we classify the themes according to the major human functions:

Spiritual level: Intellect, willpower, intellectual memory.

Sensitive level: of knowledge: senses, imaginations, sensitive memory of affection: love, hate, desire, aversion, joy and fear, audacity, hope, despair, anger.

Vegetative level: nutrition, generation, growth.

The most affected stage in the human condition.

4) Then we classify all the mental symptoms according to whether they belong to the suffering or the miasmatic reaction (egotrophy and its 2 degrees, egolysis and heterolysis)

5) Then the pure symptoms of suffering are analysed according to 5 central themes:

– sensation of loss of a human faculty
– nostalgia of the time when this faculty wasn”t lost
– sensation of culpability about a more or less imaginary mistake that may have caused

the loss of the faculty
– fear of punishment because of the mistake made
– justification of the mistake.

This leads us to formulate the central hypothesis of the personal handicap of the remedy or the patient which lies at the origin of all the symptoms, whether psychological or physical.

From the loss of the particular human faculty of the remedy, we deduce the “divine” faculty. This is the same faculty brought to the infinite dimension which is so much desired by the sub – conscious (or sometimes the conscious) of the patient that he/she despises the corresponding human faculty. Because of this, he/she lost this faculty because it was not put into action. This is what we call the “envied Divine attribute” which is at the top of the pyramid where all the symptoms of the pathogenesis can be locked in and reasoned to be related to the hypothesis of the remedy. The “Divine attribute” as much as the loss of the human faculty, allows us to imagine all the different modes of expression of the remedy inside the pyramid of which the tip is the “envied Divine attribute”.

On the subject of the Divine attribute and Dr. Masi, Dr. Nora Caram (Buenos Aires) wrote the following: “The method of Dr. Elizalde Masi is difficult to understand when we haven’t answered the following question: What is man? What is matter and what do they both claim in the context of nature in general?

From an Aristotelian position we can see that matter, and especially living matter, is not without form, signification and finality, i.e. we can see it when searching for something. Matter strives to be something specific. This is why Dr. Masi considered the various symptoms to be the meaning of a metaphysical conflict from which we can understand the multiplicity of the information in the pathogenesis, emanating from a singular form.”

——————————————-

Dr. SML Fayeton

Medical studies in Paris, doctor in 1960
1965-1967 Homoeopathy in Region of Toulouse, urgency city
1968-1969 Rwanda, homoeopathy in Bush Health Centre
1971-2008 Practice in Le Puy-en-Velay
1977-1983 Teaching of Homoeopathy for the “Groupe Lyonnais d’etudes Medicales Lyon
1984-2008 Founder and President of AFADH (AFADH ; Association Française pour l’Approfondissement de la Doctrine Homoeopathique ( French association for the profound study of homeopathic doctrine)

First teaching in homeopathy: pluralist technique, CHF in Paris, 1959

“I found that pluralist prescription was irrational and always used only one remedy at a time.”
Further homeopathy education:

1969-70 Unicist technique, Dr. Mureau in Belgium
1970-71 With Dr. Schmidt in France2003 meeting with Dr Masi.