Case Quizes Clinical Cases

Revisiting: What Remedy is Hank Hill?

Hank Hill
Written by Elaine Lewis

What is Hank Hill’s constitutional remedy in homeopathy? Another in our series of “famous persons” Quizzes. Scroll down for the answer.

Mom?

I planned to talk about things that turned 30, but we have a famous person quiz this month!

Are we finished with Things That Turned 20?  And now I’ll never know what turned 30!  Listen, important announcement!  Videos from Daily Motion are now playing spontaneously!  If your video started all by itself, just click on it and it will go into “pause” mode. 

And by the way, this is Daddy’s birthday month.  Isn’t there a video of you singing happy birthday to Dad?

Mommmmm!!!  You’re embarrassing me.  Again!  I was only 2 years old!  Or 3 maybe?  No, 2.  OK, let’s get it over with.

It’s a great video!  This is for you, Richard Lewis!  Happy Birthday!

OK, and now back to our Famous Person Quiz!  We kind of hit a snag, I had planned for us to guess the constitutional remedy of Eric Cartman from “South Park” but I had trouble syncing up the sound to the video; so instead, our Famous Person Quiz this month will be a famous Texan–Hank Hill of  “King of the Hill”.

“King of the Hill” was created by Greg Daniels (“The Simpsons”) and Mike Judge who is also known for a show on MTV about two morons who shall remain nameless.

You mean “Beavis and Butthead”?  Yes, please let’s, quick, change the subject!

The show turned 20 on January 12th of this year.  So in honor of “King of the Hill’s” 20th anniversary, we will be showcasing propane salesman, Hank Hill, as this month’s quiz.  The episode we will be showing is Season 2, episode 6 titled “Husky Bobby”, originally aired November 9, 1997.

Shana, I seriously doubt that anyone cares!

Mom, I have to get a certain amount of trivia out of my system!  Now, if you can please give our readers from India and Pakistan an explanation of Hank Hill and the show?

OK, I’ll try!  Well, ladies and gentlemen, here’s the story.  Hank wants very much to “fit in” in his conservative Texas suburb and not make waves and draw attention to himself for all the wrong reasons, and that basically means Not appearing to be GAY or LIBERAL!  

To play it safe, one should hang out with other men, talk about football and drink beer!  If you slip up with this protocol, you risk becoming the butt of jokes and ridicule!

Well, the problem is, Hank is walking a very fine line because, on the one hand, he is surrounded by his conservative “yahoo”, “red neck” friends and neighbors that he went to high school with and needs to fit in with, while at the same time, as a family man, he is required to occasionally be emotionally available to his wife Peggy, son Bobby and niece Luann, which he does rather awkwardly, and who are a constant source of embarrassment to him!  In fact, if I had to pick a word for this episode, it would be “Embarrassed”!  

Hank’s son, Bobby, is not at all athletic, not interested in sports; in fact, Bobby is FAT!  And Hank himself, when he was in high school and captain of the football team, used to mercilessly tease boys who were overweight!  Now his son is one of them!  Hank is very embarrassed by this!

So, as the episode starts out, Hank and Peggy are taking Bobby out to shop for clothes, but Bobby is too fat to fit into any of the pants.  The salesman sends them over to an over-sized boys clothing store.  Already Hank is embarrassed to be seen in such a place; but it gets worse!  The store owner thinks Bobby looks so cute in his new clothes that he signs Bobby up to be a model for the store’s clothing line!  In fact, the first photo-shoot will be in Sunday’s Paper!  Hank says, “No way, we’re going to be too busy for that, we’re very busy, we’re so busy, we don’t even have time to have this conversation, that’s how busy we are!”

Due to the fact that Hank wouldn’t take Bobby to the photo shoot, Luanne took him!  His picture is all over the insert in the Sunday Paper!  Hank is so embarrassed, he wakes up early Sunday morning and steals the insert out of every Sunday Newspaper in the neighborhood!

In the meantime, Bobby has gotten such a good response from the Sunday Paper ad that he is now booked for an Over-Sized Boy’s Fashion Show!!!!  As Hank is hanging out with his neighbors on the corner, Peggy walks by and says, “Hank we’re going to the photo shoot!”  Predictably, Hank’s homo-phobic friends start razzing him with, “Photo shoot?  What’s this about a ‘photo shoot’, Hank?”  They all start laughing derisively!

As Hank shows up at the photo-shoot, techno-dance music is playing, lights are flashing, and practically everyone there is gay!  Including the photographer!  Hank is mortified, horrified!  “Peggy, I feel like I’ve died and gone to New York!”  

He says to Bobby, “You can come quietly or I can carry you out baby-tantrum style!”

To understand Hank, it helps to know that his father was a Colonel in the US Army and fought in World War II.  I’m guessing his father was probably a Nux vomica type–very irritable, demanding, insulting, impatient and unsympathetic.  Hank is consequently fearful, rigid and repressed.  Having his son on a career track as the hottest male model in Texas is totally freaking him out!

Hank says no to the up-coming fashion show, but Bobby sneaks out and goes anyway.  Hank finds out and manages to get there just in time to save Bobby before the high school bullies (and 15 years earlier, Hank would have been one of them) start pelting the models on the runway with donuts and other food items!  Of course, the fashion show is ruined!  “Wow, Dad,” Bobby says, “How did you know that was gonna happen?  You saved me!”

How did I do, Shana?

You did good, Mom.

OK everybody, here’s the video.  Actually, to get around YouTube’s copyright rules, the “video” had to be broken up into 8 parts!  They’re all posted below, so, bear with me!

 

Write to me at [email protected] and tell me what remedy Hank Hill is.  The answer will be in next month’s ezine!

Votes:

Staphysagria

Nat-mur-3

 

It’s looking like a landslide for Nat-mur!  And that is somewhat understandable, but let’s see who’s willing to come to the microphone first.  Oh look, we have a new-comer today!  Elisabeth Fawcett, come on down!

Hi Elaine, Hank could be Staphisagria or Bryonia.

Thanks for voting, Elisabeth!  I was thinking more along the lines of Lycopodium.  They’re known to have low self-esteem, usually because of a domineering father; but they compensate by bullying others who are easy targets, like fat kids.  Hank was something of a bully in high school as you may have noticed.

Lycopodium is a 3 under “embarrassment”; in fact, whenever you hear the word “embarrassed”, you should probably think of Lycopodium right away!

Elaine, I was thinking about Lycopodium!  But I thought they were more intellectual.

There are 2 extremes of Lycopodium: shy/introverted and haughty/bullying.  Polarities.  But even with the shy ones, you might notice that they take a superior attitude with underlings while being respectful to superiors.  You know, there’s a joke I heard at a homeopathy conference 20 years ago, a Lycopodium joke:  A rabbi takes his place at the podium in an empty synagogue, and feeling unworthy despite all his achievements, he pounds his head on the podium lamenting, “I’m a nobody!  I’m a nobody!”  The cantor sees this, and thinking this might be some sort of “cleansing ritual”, stands at his post and proclaims loudly, “I’m a nobody!  I’m a nobody!”  Then the janitor walks by and upon observing this spectacle, feels compelled to join them on stage with his own rendition of, “I’m a nobody!  I’m a nobody!”  Suddenly the rabbi looks over at the cantor and says, “Who is he to say he’s a nobody????!” 

Ha-ha!!!!  You see?  Even at their lowest, Lycopodium can STILL manage to feel superior to “underlings”!  Remember Hank saying at the end of the episode, “See Peggy?  The father is usually right, while the mother, while well-intentioned, is usually wrong.”  Lycopodiums believe they are always right, and enjoy being told so.  But strangely, Lycopodium’s biggest fear is that despite all his medals, awards and promotions, he will one day be found out to be a “nobody”!  And do you know why this dichotomy exists?  Because Lycopodium is a kind of moss–very low to the ground, a real “nobody” of the plant world, you might say–but, originally, Lycopodium was the tallest of tall trees!  So they believe that they belong at the “top” always–the top of their profession, the captain of the football team, and so on; at the same time, they are only too well aware that they are, in reality, only moss!  And if they’re not getting the admiration and respect they crave, it’s easy for them to sink back into “moss consciousness”!  Even so, even when they are at their lowest ebb, they will still feel instinctively superior to others!  Thanks, Elisabeth, come back again soon!

Do we have anyone else with us today?  Oh look, it’s Sarah from Jordan!

 

Hi Elaine,

Hi Sarah!

I hope you and Shana are doing well.  That video of Shana was so cute!

I have my own 2.5 year old and she acts just like Shana did in that video!

Aww………..

The quiz this time, I tried to keep it short, repretorized Mind: humiliation agg, combined with Mind: embarrassment and Mind: mortification.

Good choices.

Also Mind: fixed ideas…

Yeah, I can see how you would pick that, but with there only being 3 remedies in that rubric, I passed on it.  I don’t think it refers to Hank’s closed-mindedness.  For example, Pulsatilla can have the fixed idea that she’s pregnant, and you can’t talk her out of it!

…and I picked Mind: concerned with social position.

That’s a good one!  I’m going to add that to my repertorization!

Nat-Mur came out strong.  I was thinking either Nat-Mur or Lycopodium because of his lack of self esteem, bullying in his youth, and his desire to keep a good impression with his friends.

Yes, very good!

I think Nat-mur might be the way to go.

Oh, Sarah, you were so close!  It is Lycopodium!  Nat-mur types aren’t bullies, Nat-mur is only a 1 under “abusive”, which Hank actually was in his youth, as you pointed out, just like his friends still are, only he’s married now, and has to see things from his wife’s and son’s point of view; so, you might say he’s a “recovering bully”.  I couldn’t find a rubric for “bullying” so I took “abusive, insulting”. 

Robin Murphy says, “Nux vomica fathers have Lycopodium sons.”  That’s why I threw in that part about Hank’s father being a colonel in the army.  You can surmise that an army colonel is probably a Nux vomica type, a no-nonsense kind of guy who wants things done now and wants them done right!  And if you screw up, he’ll let you know it!  You can imagine the pressure that put Hank under to live up to his father’s high expectations and demands; so, it’s very important to Hank that Bobby be “normal” so he won’t be bullied at school and won’t be a source of embarrassment to him, who, like all Lycopodiums, wants to be admired and flattered.  You can imagine, with a Nux vomica father, how little admiration and flattery Lycopodiums get in their youth; and hence, crave it throughout their adult life.  So, having a son who’s fat (and now a highly sought-after male model for over-sized boys’ clothing), is not going to win Hank a lot of admiration from his circle of idiot friends! 

I repertorized and Lycopodium comes out in first place with Nux vomica coming in second.  Oh wait, there’s another trait in Hank that goes for Lycopodium.  He’s not generous!  Peggy wanted to buy a pair of earrings, remember?  But Hank said they weren’t practical, wouldn’t keep her warm in winter.  Lycopodiums are known for being detached in relationships, keeping a cool distance, having an insensitivity to others’ feelings.  There are no really good rubrics for stinginess in the Repertory but I did find Lycopodium under “Ambitious For Money”.  Arsenicum is another remedy that won’t give nothin’ to nobody!

Thanks for voting, Sarah!  Oh look, it’s the gang from Slovakia!

 

Hello Elaine and Shana,

Hello Miroslav and Jitka!

we are sending our regular answers to your quiz.  Of course, without your accompanying description, we would not understand much of the story.  Besides, you even revealed the title of the rubric, so we hope that this time we could succeed .

Miroslav´s answer is: Natrum mur.

Through the whole case, there is running a strong self-control and hiding own identity.  A nightmare from the revealing what might happen if the hero shows his true face.  What he is afraid of and what sanctions he would have to undergo, if he remained by himself?  Perhaps his friends would condemn and reject him.  What could cover a rubric like:

Mind, rejection, ailments from; and, Mind, embarrassment.

I contemplated between two remedies: Lycopodium and Nat-mur.  Seeing that the hero of the story was a captain of the football team on high school, this would not suit to Lycopodium, which is more intellectual and I had a feeling that Lycopodium would not compensate so much as Nat mur.

Jitka´s answer is: Natrum mur.

Already by reading the description of Hill´s story, my first thought was that he could be Natrum mur.  I hesitated a bit when I looked at the rubric Mind; embarrassment, because there was  Lycopodium, with similar problems of embarrassments.

But I realized afterwards that Lycopdium wouldn´t mind opinions of “red necks”, but rather his superiors and VIP’s.  So Hank might be Natrum mur.  Also his appearance matches more to Nat m. than Lyco….:)

Best regards Jitka

Well, you were both very close.  It was Lycopodium!  Notice that Hank was a bully in high school.  Did you see that?  A flash-back to Hank’s football days where he’s heard making fun of a boy for being fat: “Hey, fatty!  You are fat!” he calls out.  That’s how he KNEW what was about to happen to Bobby!  That’s why he felt he had to rescue him, he knew bullies would be breathing down his neck! 

Nat-mur is not likely to be a bully.  Lycopodium, with his need to over-compensate for low self-esteem, can often be found bullying others–making fun of those who are too weak to fight back.  They also might feel that in order to win their father’s love, they have to be high achievers, like rising to the position of captain of the football team.  Lycopodium always rises to the top of wherever he is, whether it’s dean of the college, head of the math department, or partner in a law firm.  The more they achieve, the safer they feel: no one will ever accuse them of being a “nobody” if they’re surrounded by awards, diplomas and trophies, forever insulated from their greatest fear, that they’re totally inadequate and not up to the job.  In fact, “inadequate” is an interesting word since Lycopodium is one of our main remedies for erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation; so, being a “high achiever” is very important to Lycopodium and you will often find them at the highest positions.

At the same time, expect them to exhibit great fear and anxiety regarding any job promotion or public speaking…anything that puts them in front of the public where people are apt to notice that maybe they might really be complete incompetents.  They are acutely aware of the possibility of failure.  This is why they are always walking a thin line, craving adulation on the one hand, but having to keep a safe distance on the other, lest someone should notice what failures they really are.  This is why they have superficial relationships.  They get but so close to a woman, and then break it off (before she finds out that he’s really just a “nobody”). 

Of course!  D’oh!  How I could be so stupid that I didn’t realize that Natrum mur would not bully anyone?

(I have borrowed Homer Simpson from you.)

Yes, and you get points for that!!! 

OK, everybody, let’s talk a little bit about Lycopodium.  Here’s what Catherine Coulter says in her Portraits Of Homeopathic Medicines:  First of all, she says that Lycopodiums have high-domed foreheads and deep lines on their forehead from worry.  Look at the above picture of Hank Hill!  I rest my case!

What else?  When you think of Lycopodium, here are the words that should come to your mind: cool, diplomatic, composed, detached, unemotional, polite, reserved, restrained, temperate, distant, confident, pleasant, clean-cut, measured, moderate, self-assured, self-possessed, gracious, dignified, suave.  They are not the passionate types that will go off on a rant, like Sulphur and Lachesis.  They are measured and even-handed like a lawyer, judge, politician, psychiatrist, a rabbi… Masters of evasion, deflection, changing the subject, parsing of words, doesn’t admit to being mistaken, needs to be respected by all, tries to avoid arguments, unpleasantness, discord; desires flattery, lives for flattery, will happily accept flattery he doesn’t deserve; wants and needs to maintain a good image; he knows best (in his opinion) and wants others to defer to him; the longer you’re in a relationship with Lycopodium, the more arrogant and haughty he gets; in the beginning, he’s genial, witty and charming.

What is the Lycopodium stereotype?  Thin, weak, cold, gray hair, balding, wrinkles, sad, suspicious, irritable, hateful, cowardly, frowning… BUT, they CAN be the opposite: strong, attractive, pleasant, charming, handsome, clean-cut, assertive, ambitious, achieving…. 

You know who’s Lycopodium?  Have you read the poem, “The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock”? Prufrock is a Lycopodium!  It’s a poem about the unlived life!  “I’ve measured out my life in coffee spoons.”  “I grow old, I grow old…”  The unlived life, always so careful, so temperate, so moderate, so measured… “Do I dare eat a peach?”

But you might say, “Well, Elaine…how do you square this ‘unlived life’ with the Lycopodium who rises to the top?” 

Who asked that question?  Whoever you are, you’re fired!  OK, look at these Lycopodium rubrics:

Mind: delusions, fail, everything will fail

Mind: delusions, failure, he is a

Mind: fear, failure, of

Mind: fear, destination, of being unable to reach his (By the way, Lycopodium’s in bold, and the only remedy for that!)

And now, look at this:

Mind: ambitious

Mind: ambitious, employed every means possible

Mind: ambitious for money

Mind: confident, excessive self-esteem

What can we say here?  Clearly there are two different Lycopodiums; or, a Lycopodium can vacillate between the two types; or, he can be the first type while masquerading as the second type; or, he can start out as the first type, and mature into the second type.  In fact, here’s what Catherine Coulter says about Lycopodium:  Some have real self-esteem.  For others, it’s a facade–over-compensation, a covering up, a fear of inadequacy with a veneer of assertiveness, even bullying.  These youthful fears of inadequacy can resolve in adulthood, leading to an individual with self-respect and real self-esteem.

So, as you can see, Lycopodium is a complex character, not so easy to size up, not so simple; but, I hope I’ve shed a tiny bit of light on it!

See you again next time for another thrilling and endearing… Hpathy Quiz!!!!!

———————————–

Elaine Lewis, D.Hom., C.Hom.

Elaine takes online cases! Write to her at [email protected]

Visit her website: www.ElaineLewis.hpathy.com

About the author

Elaine Lewis

Elaine Lewis, D.Hom., C.Hom.
Elaine is a passionate homeopath, helping people offline as well as online. Contact her at [email protected]
Elaine is a graduate of Robin Murphy's Hahnemann Academy of North America and author of many articles on homeopathy including her monthly feature in the Hpathy ezine, "The Quiz". Visit her website at:
https://elainelewis.hpathy.com/ and TheSilhouettes.org

1 Comment

  • Hi Elaine, though it’s a long back quiz, I do keep reading your earlier quiz’es regularly…

    What an exhaustive write up on Lycopodium…excellent and you hit it right…Wonderful and hats off to your personification…

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