Psychology in the First Year — the study of mind, for homoeopaths

Homoeopathy gives the mind an unusual place in its study of the person. The materia medica records mental and emotional states among the features of its medicines; the repertory opens a whole chapter to the mind; and case taking asks the physician to understand a patient’s thoughts and feelings as carefully as their physical complaints. Fundamentals of Psychology in relation to Homoeopathy — HomUG-FPH in the NCH curriculum — is the First Professional subject that prepares a student for that work.

The title matters. This is not a general psychology course placed inside a medical degree. Nearly every chapter of the CBDC syllabus ends by asking where its subject appears in the materia medica and the repertory. The subject has twelve chapters.

**Mind in homoeopathy.** The course opens with the concept of mind in the contemporary schools of psychology, set beside the concept of mind in Hahnemann. Everything that follows is read in the light of that pairing.

**The architecture of the mind.** The second chapter studies psychological organisation: the interrelationship of thought (cognition), feelings (affect) and behaviour (conation), with their conscious and unconscious elements. It defines emotions, thinking and behaviour and their types, studies their effects on mind and body and on each other — and then asks how each is represented in the materia medica and in the repertory.

**Behaviour, emotion, intellect.** Three chapters then take these faculties one at a time. The physiological and evolutionary basis of behaviour covers instincts, conditioned and unconditioned reflexes, conscious and unconscious behaviour, the scientific and evolutionary study of behaviour, and its expressions in the repertory and materia medica. The chapter on emotion covers the scientific study of emotions and their types, their effects on mind and body, including on sexual behaviour, and their representation in the two books of homoeopathic practice. The chapter on intellect covers attention, memory, thinking and its types, intelligence and its measurement, and again the representation of thought in materia medica and repertory.

**Motivation and learning.** Two shorter chapters study motivation and its types, and why it matters to homoeopathic physicians; and learning — its definitions and types, its relevance for the physician, its disturbances, and adaptation, with its dynamic nature and its successful and unsuccessful forms.

**The mind across a lifetime.** The developmental chapter studies growth from birth to maturity, physical and psychological, the deviations of growth and their effects on later behaviour, and the bio-psycho-socio-cultural-economical-political-spiritual concept of evolution. It closes by naming why this matters here: to understand materia medica drug proving.

**Personality and conflict.** The personality chapter covers its definition and types, its constituents such as traits and temperament, the theories of personality given by psychologists, and the measures used to assess it — with its relationship to temperament and its representation in the materia medica. The chapter on conflicts studies their types and their genesis, their effects on mind and body, and the materia medica images related to them.

**Applied psychology and practice.** The eleventh chapter surveys applied psychology — the psychological basis of clinical conditions, and psychology in education, sports and business. The twelfth, and last, names the purpose of the whole course: psychology and its importance in homoeopathic practice for the holistic management of the patient.

The links to the rest of the first year are tight and deliberate. The Organon syllabus studies Hahnemann’s concepts of life, health and disease, and the individualistic, holistic and dynamic approach. The Repertory syllabus asks students to find the rubrics for emotions, intellect and memory in the Mind chapter of Kent’s Repertory. The Physiology syllabus covers the limbic system, higher intellectual function and sleep. Psychology is where these threads are gathered and given a vocabulary.

It is worth being clear about what this subject is not. It is not training in psychotherapy or psychiatric practice; psychiatry is studied, at a different level, elsewhere in medical education. The first-year subject gives the student a disciplined way to observe and describe mind, and the habit of connecting what they observe to the literature of homoeopathy.

As this room fills, a student will find pieces written to this syllabus: chapter orientations, explainers on the distinctions students find hardest — cognition, affect and conation; traits and temperament; the kinds of conflict — and pieces that trace one psychological concept through the materia medica and the Mind chapter of the repertory, as the curriculum asks. Everything here carries the first-year tag and the Psychology category. The room fills as the writing is done, and the syllabus above is its plan.