FIRST PART : THE BIOLOGICAL LAWS
In this first part, we will study the four fundamental biological laws. But the works have not stopped growing since the first book in 1981 concerning the relation between cancer and psychism and the reader will find the usual bibliographical references at the end of the text. At the present time it goes beyond 2000 pages (a large part of which has been translated into French and the rest is ongoing) and 15,000 observation cases. This four-law basis is sufficient to understand its contribution to medicine. We will, however, rapidly see some of the other discoveries, even so necessary if one wishes to deepen the subject: hormonal status, role of right / left polarity, succession of conflicts, epileptoid crisis, comprehension of the sense of symptoms (5th law). As a conclusion, we will also resume the consequences out of a diagnostic and therapeutic point of view, insisting amongst others on the impact of medicine itself.
Psychism, brain and organs are in a constant interrelation and this perfectly synchronised "triad" is always modified in various affections, from the smallest to the severest ones. But it is by means of this psychism that the individual tackles the reality of existence and of its difficulties: it consequently concerns his own reality, the way he experiences the events of his life. As long as he can mentally "manage" these difficulties – e.g. by anticipating them or by disposing of enough resources acquired in his former history – he will not be ill. He will perhaps experience more or less hard and disagreeable emotions that will, however, rapidly resolve with, as sole consequence, some functional and temporary disturbances. It can e.g. show as a period of insomnia due to a surplus of preoccupations; a tied up stomach after a banal argument; a more frequent need to urinate, perspiration or palpitations when apprehending an encounter, etc… Nothing but "jerks" around a stable centre of gravity, but already involving repercussions via the nervous system and, consequently, a "body language".
If, though, the painfully experienced event puts on the aspect of a psychic shock, which can be that brutal that it leaves the individual in a durable mental state of dwelling, of obsession, it means the immediate onset of what can be qualified as a conflict, herein included the ambiguous and reducing sense of words. In order to have a real conflict; there should be a process of rupture – an opposing effect, an unavoidable aspect - where we can not react in a usual and sufficiently efficacious manner. Dr. Hamer named this shock "DHS", being the initials of the Dirk Hamer Syndrome, after his dead son’s name, consequently to which he himself developed his cancer.
Finally, the conflict can be engendered by association or identification to someone else: fear to die of a mother having witnessed her child almost being ran over; taking for one’s own account the devalorisation lived by a relative, etc…
The conflict is always something very personal and consequently "involving". In other terms, it does not concern the events we only qualify as strikes of destiny, but situations in which we feel directly concerned and, more exactly, torn apart. It may be appreciated according to various parameters: its importance, its duration and its "subjective content". The importance and the duration of a conflict determine the extent of the damage within the body , the damage starting as soon as the conflict installs and accumulating as long as the conflict is not solved. There is a difference between a banal cold, bronchitis or a large pulmonary tumour. By subjective content we understand the personal way one feels the shock, and that is going to lead us to specify the role of the brain.
The nervous system includes the brain, which can be conceived as the supercomputer managing the whole of the body and its multiple terminals being the nerves. For all the automatic functions – i.e. independent of our conscious will – the nervous system has two large circuits, the sympathetic one and the parasympathetic one (also called vagosympathetic), the sum of which is called the neurovegetative system. The sympathetic system stimulates everything that is biologically foreseen to keep us alert and in a potential combative state. It is consequently predominating in the active daytime. As to the parasympathetic system, it stimulates our resting and recuperation functions and is thus predominating in our sleeping phase. Health implies an optimal and harmonious alternance of this fully fundamental rhythm in our entire organism.
As soon as the conflict sets on, there are two consequences on the nervous system. First of all, a rupture of the neurovegetative balance with a sympathetic predominance which already implies a whole series of symptoms: loss of sleep, appetite, weight; rise of the arterial tension, suprarenal secretion; restlessness and "irritability", etc… The complexity and the intensity of this symptomatic image are, of course, in proportion with the extent of the conflict. It may be a light state of insomnia and irritability even associated with a "compensatory bulimia"; but a very serious conflict may drag the patient in a stupor making him loose some ten kilos in a few weeks. This rupture of the nervous balance is the so-called stress situation, the profound nature of which must be understood. Its manifestations can be extremely disagreeable, but they have a sense: they are the expression within our body of a surplus of awakening necessary to solve the conflict. Without stress, mankind would certainly not have survived its manifestations in existence. But there is always a reverse side to a medal, which is the start of a countdown: the neurovegetative imbalance has its limits, those corresponding in fact to our ability to live a conflict. We will take up this important subject further on.
In parallel with the neurovegetative imbalance, a precise area within the brain is affected and it is this cerebral disturbance, by modifying the information transmitted by the brain, that will lead the disease into the organs, the right functioning of which being dependent on this information. This is the subjective resent, the colouring of the conflict that will determine the exact area within the brain and thus the diseased organ. This colouring may be reduced to fundamental emotions, beyond the anecdotal content of the event: fear, disgust, rejection, impurity, fight, rivalry, dispossession, devalorisation, etc… Here can be said already that, during the patient’s questioning (anamnesis in the medical jargon), if it is necessary to find the initial event which determined the shock, it is only to situate the origin of the conflict in time. Next, its importance must be seized, this colouring, and the evolution up to the day of the consultation. Let us take two examples for the comprehension of this capital point in the first biological law.
An individual had to endure a very offending reflection that he was not able to face and that he is going to hark over some days, weeks or months. Between all possible resents, let us take three. It could be a feeling of rejection by the other – what can be called a kind of separation conflict – and, in this case, the affected area of the brain is the sensorial cortex managing the functioning of the upper layer of the skin: it is therefore this organ that will be affected. But the individual could as well take this offending reflection for him and start a self-devalorisation process. The cerebral area is consequently the cerebral marrow and the diseased organ will be the bone structure. He could, finally, experience this as an unacceptable situation and make it an indigestible type of conflict having a repercussion on the corresponding cerebral and organic zones: affection of the throat, the stomach, the colon, etc… (according to the multiple shades proper to this kind of conflict).
A woman learning about her conjugal misfortune may be hurt in her hope for a home and this nest conflict will affect the lateral part of the cerebellum with, consequently, an affection of the breast. The wound may be a sexual frustration and the temporal part of the left cerebral hemisphere will bring about a lesion of the uterine cervix. It may be experienced as a self-devalorisation ("I am worth less than the other since my husband is going towards her") having a repercussion on the bone structure. Or what is more, this woman, considering her social and material conditions, may feel plunged into an unsustainable situation she can not escape; and the disease, via the peri-rolandic cerebral cortex, will be multiple sclerosis. The complete list of eventualities would be very much longer. This woman might not have any organic affection if she overcomes the shock right away. She might also experience more impacts caused by the same shock. Some, being feebler, will leave fewer marks, while one or the other will lead to a heavy pathology labelled cancer. ONLY THE SUBJECTIVE COLOURING OF A CONFLICT COUNTS TO UNDERSTAND THE CEREBRAL AND ORGANIC IMPAIRMENT.
This biological law is the first to be stated by its author, christening it the "iron law of cancer". Law because it concerns verifications of necessary and constant interactions between facts (cf. dictionary). Iron allusive to the solidity of its verifications never eluded… when used. And cancer for historical reasons because it is this type of disease that made him start his research. It is the core of the entire explanatory system: by relating the psychic experience to the multiple symptoms of the body , it makes disease, not the fruit of hazard or external aggression, but a personal history with a chronology and a sense at human scale. This approach excludes, of course, those cases where our organism has experienced evident external aggression (traumatism, intoxication, irradiation,…), a faulty fabrication (genetic diseases) or a serious nutritional deficiency. But even with an evident external cause, it does not prevent from considering how an individual will feel the aggression and, thus, the consequences proper to his resent.
The first biological law taught us that the disease is a simultaneous disturbance on three levels – the psychism, the brain and the organs – the origin of which resides in an emotional shock. The "law of the two phases of the disease" is going to introduce the notion of reversibility in this triple disorder. As soon as the conflict is solved, the affected area of the brain is going to recover and normal cerebral activity is going to take over again, which will entail the restoration of the diseased organ. Consequently the second part of the disease is, in fact, the recovery phase. In the next paragraph we will see how the third law explains the major differences among the symptoms met in each of both phases. But let us first make a stop at the implications of this second law.
The solution of the conflict is thus the axis naturally toppling over the whole triad into a way of recovery. As in the first phase, following the appearance and the evolution of the conflict, this solution is, in first instance, a psychic change and its subjective colouring bears as much importance. Actually, it can be induced in various ways, seeing that it puts an end to the harking back, which keeps up the conflict. If one takes, for example, a conflict where one has to struggle, the solution might be victory, surrender, flight, negotiation, relativation or the factual disappearance of the stake, etc… what is important is that the individual does not feel this conflict of having to fight any more.
It is possible now to depict the general canvas of each affection. The first conflictual phase starts with the onset of the conflict. From a psychic point of view, the diseased gives evidence of his conflict by means of his thoughts, his feelings, his attitudes, in one word his painful and persisting experience. His nervous system is globally modified (phase of sympatheticotonia) and shows signs of what is called a stress situation: he will loose, in a more or less important way, sleep, appetite, joy of living, etc… and will have overall symptoms of irritability. Besides, the disturbance of a precise area of the brain will provoke the deterioration of the organ corresponding to that area. THE SOLUTION OF THE CONFLICT STOPS THE EVOLUTION OF THE DISTURBANCES AT THE THREE LEVELS, BUT THE COMPLETE DISEASE DOES NOT STOP FOR ALL THAT. At this stage, the organism goes through various degradations and it is even so spontaneously that the repairing processes, foreseen by nature long before the advent of medicine, will set in. The nervous system connects up with a recuperation rhythm (phase of vagosympatheticotonia also called vagotonia): feeling of fatigue and need to rest; recovering sleep and appetite if disturbed, a better blood circulation, etc… On the cerebral level, the centre previously affected is going to congest and this oedema can already explain several symptoms proper to this second phase. But all these cerebral alterations are temporary and the nervous tissue not only remains functional but regains its performance: it manages again the integrity of the corresponding organs that are going to repair. Finally, from the organic point of view, this auto curing will translate itself by a series of symptoms that have to be very well decoded.
This notion of spontaneous auto-curing after the solution of the conflict again questions the real extent of a medical treatment: the treatment does not aim at curing the disease anymore but at accompanying, encouraging, modulating, relieving this second phase which is often more uncomfortable than the first one. It is therefore essential to know in which of both phases of the entire disease we are to choose adequately the therapeutic measures. We will take up later these very pragmatic aspects of the "art of curing".
Let us again insist on the fact that the transition from one phase to another is not only realised in case of solution of the conflict and here all the scenarios are possible. A short and clearly solved conflict will utter in a so-called acute disease. But the solution can be progressive or delayed by re-stimulation of the conflict and there will consequently be fluctuating or relapsing affections. Or even chronic if the re-starting of the conflict takes place each time before the end of the recovery phase; and, in this case, the various symptoms will be fluctuating as psychic life itself. The conflict may be in a state of balance or latent meaning very little active or not active at all, but not really cleared up. The psychic state will always be the arbitrator as to the re-start of the damage or the initiation of the cure. Last but not least, the conflict may last over years, provided of course that there is not a gradually more serious accumulation of lesions. Paralysis for example may persist for over ten years and progressively disappear after the conflict is solved. But this kind of very delayed recuperation especially concerns the functional failures of the organs (cf. 3rd law). The complexity of a pathology is also often related to the fact that an individual will frequently face more than one conflict one of which being still active while the other is being solved. The approach is always the same: consider the three levels concerned, cross-check to evaluate the stage reached within the whole two-phase procedure and, by means of this overall knowledge of the disease, take coherent measures.
If the first phase was constant (i.e. without having been in balance or in latency) and the second one was not complicated by re-stimulation, the duration of both phases is equivalent: for example, a separation conflict lasting some weeks or some months will be followed by an eczema respectively lasting some weeks or some months. But let us not forget that the extent of a conflictual phase is not only determined by its duration but also by its intensity: two parameters to be integrated when talking of the "conflictual mass". If the intensity was very strong, even within a short interval of time, the second phase may last longer. At that moment, everything happens as if the brain programmed the "dumping" of a reparation that could be too violent if it were not.
We will end this second law by reconsidering the allusion to the limits of our capacity to live a conflict and by extending it to the second phase as well. This ends up in a sometimes dramatic reality but the comprehension of which is of capital importance. It concerns the extent of lesions accumulated during the conflictual phase that will, very logically, determine the extent of the natural reparation works. These works might not be completely ended for various reasons: re-stimulation of the conflict, "overdose" due to the appearance of new conflicts and, what is more, the eventual inability of the organism to restore too advanced lesions. This inability may arise from the three levels of the triad psychism-brain-organs: "disjunction" of psychism ceasing to maintain the second phase; too severe congestion of the brain (cf. start of the 3rd law); "material" insufficiency of the body to repair. We will understand this more easily when studying the third law on the nature of the symptoms with regard to the two phases. But we can already avoid a misunderstanding on the term "recovery phase". Beyond the use of words, sometimes subjected to criticism, recovery in the current sense – or simply curing – is of course the happy culmination of the second phase, when it is completely finished.
This most important precision is also a response to one of the principal misunderstandings of the work as a whole. Independently of all outside action, most of the deceases occur during the reparation phase, but most of the time when the count-down evoked higher has lasted too long when facing a heavy degradation in the first phase. It also enables to understand the stake of "tact" in all communication of the diagnostic type and the interest of various therapeutic techniques to help the patient in each phase of his disease. We will come back to this aspect of the medical practice.
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Article taken from "Understand one's own disease"
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