Pamela [name changed], a girl of 16; she lives in Belgium. The girl has a history of blind rage, which has caused her to be suspended and ultimately barred from several schools. She says she gets into a blind rage, using brutal, coarse language. She says she is not proud of herself; she doesn’t want to fight, but cannot stop, and has to say what she wants to.
“I was cruel to my mother, who was crying. I was yelling ‘I hate you and hope you will die.’ While I was doing it, I realised it was so nasty and yet I couldn’t stop myself. I have to win an argument, to bend her and be above her. It gives me satisfaction.”
“I like shopping with my mother; really love it. But, when she refused to buy me more clothes I wanted, I would make a horrible scene.”
She feels that, figuratively, she could kill with rage, at the least idea of opposition, or of not getting her own way.
If she is in school, and she wants to go outside, she will push the others out of the way, thrusting her way through the crowd to get to the door.
In school, she feels she is picked on; persecuted. “They have their eye on me: it is always me, why always me? Why pick on me all the time? Why can’t I do things like others?” She is gradually enraged and says, “Let me go out of the room, or I will explode.” When this is refused, she will fight. She goes out anyway, and runs to the door and the teacher gets in her way, and the girl says, “Now you have asked for it,” releasing a torrent of abusive language. Each week she gets a warning that she will be suspended from school. It is not the first school from which she has been excluded.
She says her rages happen at least once, or twice, a day.
Trapped. Caught. Imprisoned
Her parents are afraid she will ruin her future.
They punish her by preventing her from going out — it is the worst punishment they can give her. They take away her mobile ’phone, her computer, and prevent her from watching television. For her the worst thing is that she has no contact with her friends and she has to stay in. “To stay in the house for more than one day is unbearable. I get depressed.”
Once they kept her in for a week as she had stolen for kicks from a shop.
She does anything for kicks — her thought being “Can I get away with it?” As long as something is dangerous she will do it. She is attracted to danger, or to that which breaks the rules.
When told to line up to file into school, she lines up at the back, and then disappears, moving backwards and out of the school gates. “Will they spot me, and catch me?” Most of the time, they do not.
The theft she did, she’d not get away with, and her parents confined her to the house. However, she quickly became depressed, cold, she stopped washing and dressing. “I was trapped, caught, imprisoned. My friends were there in town and I was in prison.” This is her worst punishment, being locked up and having her freedom taken away.
Homeopathic Remedy
Falco peregrinus 1M was prescribed on the basis of Bird Kingdom; rage, the need to beat, or be above others, the need to be outside in the open air, the need for danger. Uncontrollable behaviour. Feeling, as if she is ‘picked on.’
If Falco peregrinus experiences the least opposition, they become enraged, and possibly violent, although their external demeanour is often timid.
The idea that they could be hindered in anyway, is so extreme and unreasonable that their behaviour, their attempt to escape the trap, is similarly extreme.
Her stepmother said ‘she is a bit better, but not enough yet.’
I treated her father, and he was given the same bird remedy. They fight tremendously. I wanted to give him Falco peregrinus 15M, but the girl took it instead, and cancelled her next appointment. Her stepmother said she wanted no help, but to do things on her own.
In the summer, she had good marks in school; she was calm, had a quiet semester and a good end result. The school wrote to her parents saying she could not behave as she had for the first two semesters, and then behaved well for the third. It was much too disruptive for the teaching staff and the pupils. They believed she was behaving badly on purpose.
The girl said, “I am calm, I don’t have the aggression any more. I don’t need to throw things, scream, shout and curse any more. I have a boyfriend and even with him I can talk, and if he says ‘Don’t do it, calm down,’ I can accept it. I do dispute, but I am not exaggerating my behaviour.”
She tells about going out with her mother to a festival where they had a good time.
There is a problem for her in that her boyfriend is not allowed to come to her home, and so she stays with him. He has a history of drugs and alcohol, so her father has banned him. She and her father had different ideas. The relationship is almost a year old now, and she says, “I made a good one of him.” He is no longer drinking, or using drugs.
About the letter from the school she said “I understand it is a warning — I have to behave and do my best.” She was cool about it, more so than her father.
In her language the vital sensation is still there. In the quarrel with her father she said, “I will not bend. I will not lose the fight.”
She is calmer; she used to be easily provoked. “Now I can think over things logically. I no longer have this urge to go out. Less urge to prove myself. If I don’t dare do something, I don’t do it. Before I would have to do it. I feel more intelligent than I used to be — like I am grown up.”
She is tired of going to school [she is 17 now], would like her own car, and no rules in the house. She still has to obey parental rules, and is looking forward to being independent, living on her own with no rules.
Remedy: Falco peregrinus 1M to take in case she feels picked on.
Her father said “This is a completely different daughter.”
Depth Of The Pattern
It is good to treat children and young people before the vital pattern is set too deeply. The young girl patient is quicker to heal in comparison with a particular male Falco peregrinus patient.
John [name changed] was employed in a garage to repair cars. If anyone made a chance remark to enrage him he would jump in a car and drive to Switzerland at 200kph [Switzerland is two countries away]. He said that he had smashed more cars than he had ever repaired. He was obsessed by speed, and took out his rage in fast driving.
His pathology was much deeper than the female patient and he was older, twice her age. At 21, he was living on the streets and ready to end his life. He had left home as a result of an extremely strict and limiting religious upbringing.
His circumstances were more difficult and his pattern more ingrained than the female, younger Falcon peregrinus patient. But, the pattern was similar — a need to be free, to be unconstrained. The inability to bear any opposition, or criticism; extreme rage, and for him, his need for speed matched her need for danger.
Living 250km away from his homoeopath, rather than wait for a remedy to be sent in the post, he would jump in the car and drive there, arriving in a trice, and driving back just as fast. In four years of treatment his behaviour had mellowed a lot, but it would take longer than the younger patient to bring him into balance. His treatment started with low potencies, but he has done a lot better on higher prescribed potencies, such as 50M. Perhaps, the potency better matched his state, and certainly the energy of his state. It may be coincidental, but there are animal remedies that may work best in high potency.
Although there are rubrics which cover rage and anger, cursing and desire for danger in the homeopathic repertory, the bird remedies are not particularly well represented. In the past, remedies such as Anacardium orientale, Lac caninum, Lyssin and the Solanaceae family have served us well.
The unique part played by the bird remedies in our homoeopathic understanding is that they become enraged at the merest opposition. Anything which hinders, or traps, the bird patient, and stifles their freedom, will lead to the feeling of being picked on, humiliated, caught, hunted, trapped and suffocated. Their need is to break free, and this is often accomplished with violence and speed, whereas the snake remedies accomplish the same with venom and cunning, deceit and trickery.
Falco peregrinus has a particular theme, or dreams, which include speed, free fall, and the bliss of freedom and being the fastest, whereas Haliaeetus leucocephalus needs to be above others, away from the trap of humanity. Buteo jamaiciensis can be abusive to others and extremely impatient as they feel exploited by their family and sees their life passing by. In recognising the attributes of the sub-kingdom we easily narrow the choice of remedy.
Falco peregrinus rubrics that are suitable for the two cases are —
- Cursing: contradiction, from
- Cursing: rage-in
- Danger: lack of reaction to danger
- Danger: no sense of danger
- Delusions: flying — rushing towards the stars
- Ailments from: domination
- Ailments from: domination — others, by a long history of it
- Ailments from: humiliation
- Ailments from: mortification
- Ailments from: being scorned
- Delusions-horses: she is a reined-in wild stallion that desires to be free
- Driving-fast: with recklessness and indifference to consequences
- Driving-speed: desire for
- Escape, attempts to: run away
- Escape, attempts to: wants to get out of house after fright heedless
- Indifference, apathy: conscience, to the dictates of
- Indifference, apathy: danger, to
- Indignation: rage, with
- Rage, fury: biting, with
- Rage, fury: cursing, with
- Time: obsessed by how long everything would take
- Time-slowly: appears longer; passes too.
Bibliography
- The Charm of Homeopathy: About Life in General and Homeopathy in Particular, Anne Vervarcke 2006 [The White Room, Belgium].
- Postgraduate Annual 2006: Life and Video Cases, Anne Vervarcke 2006 [The White Room, Belgium].
