Perfect Repertory of Mind
Author: Dr. Yogesh Sehgal
Publisher: Indian Books & Periodicals
Edition: 1
Pages: 1580, Hardbound
Price: Rs: 1200 INR
Reviewed by: Dr. Manish Bhatia
As lifelong students of Repertory, we have all struggled to understand the correct meaning of a rubric, or failed to understand what the patient is going to say, for us to reach that rubric. The language of rubrics is very different from the language of patients and it needs a lot of skill to convert the patient’s words into appropriate rubrics. You choose the wrong rubric and you will often get the wrong remedies.
This book by Dr. Sehgal tries to address this need of understanding the rubrics from the patient’s words. To write this book, Dr. Sehgal has used the Mind chapter of Kent’s repertory as a base and has then made additions from Hahnemann, Knerr, Allen, Boenninghausen, Gallavardin, Jahr, Schmidt, Kunzli, Clarke, Boericke, Phatak and M.L. Sehgal. Except for Gallavardin, all these sources are considered reliable. However, Gallavardin’s work is often used in Sehgal method, hence the inclusion.
After having made these corrections and additions, the author then adds descriptive meanings of several key rubrics along with examples of what the patient might say, for us to consider that rubric.
The author has highlighted the difference in the same rubric in different repertories. For e.g., Kent’s repertory has a rubric
Anger, mistakes, over his
The same rubric in Complete 2016 and Synthesis repertory is given as
Anger, mistakes, about his
The author feels that this difference is significant. However, he fails to tell us how he decided which version is right.
The focus of the book is to provide the language of the patient and the meaning of words, right where the rubrics are. However these explanations are according to the Sehgal Method only and those who do not follow this method, might not agree with all the explanations. Also, not all the rubrics have been explained. My estimate is that only around 20% of the rubrics are explained. For the rest, it is like any other repertory, however with useful additions from other sources.
We also need to be cautious about the sources mentioned, because repertories usually list the proving source or clinical source for any addition. Here the author is giving the ‘book’ as the source. So for all the remedies with a (k) next to them for “Kent”, it means the source is Kent’s repertory but it doesn’t tell us what was the actual source of that addition and whether it is reliable enough or not.
This is a useful book, especially for those following the Sehgal Method. However, it has scope for improvement:
- The book has too many grammatical errors and it leaves a bad taste in the mouth of an editor like me. When an author has such a large following, as Dr. Sehgal does, he should at least take help of professional editors before bringing a book out.
- The book is very large at nearly 1600 pages. With just the mind chapter alone, it is bigger than the whole Kent Repertory. And the reason for it is the very large font size used. The book size could have been easily reduced by 30%, without affecting the readability, if the font size and line spacing were reduced by 2-3 points.
- The rubrics have been explained according to the Sehgal method and as per the understanding of Dr. Sehgal. The work would have become much more useful, if the author had actually gone back to the provings to see what the provers had said. If that information were added, this book would have become universally useful.
Despite these shortcomings, the book is very useful in its current form and will be very helpful for students and practitioners to understand and use many new rubrics.
