60 of the Most Important Constitutional Types with Photographs
After the great success of his work Children's Types, we are pleased to announce Dr Frans Kusse's book of adult types. He has an uncanny ability to portray homeopathic types in a lively and straightforward manner such that we can see them in our mind's eye – and so recognize them more easily in practice. He focuses on the psychological characteristics.
A total of 60 of the most important homeopathic types are described in this book. Together with well-known remedies such as Aurum, Pulsatilla, or Staphisagria, there are also descriptions of lesser known remedies such as Lithium or Lac delphinum, which are increasingly used nowadays.
To give the types a vivid pictorial quality, 28 remedy descriptions are supplemented with 60 reliable photographic portraits by Dr Hellmuth Beuchelt. Together with the finely judged descriptions, the result is a unique insight into the most important remedies.
“Homeopathy is now over 200 years old. To begin with, diseases and symptoms were described. In recent decades, we have discovered other and more profound aspects of homeopathic remedies.
Vithoulkas described the essences of the remedies. Think of the open Phosphorus type who can easily get to know people, and is sympathetic to the feelings of others. The next step of this development was to ask ourselves the question “why?” Why is the Phosphorus type so sympathetic? It turns out that behind this behavior there is a fear of losing contact with others, so the person ends up all alone in the world.
Homeopathic literature has not kept pace with the developments of the last few decades. The old works just describe complaints and constitutions. Frans Kusse has filled this gap. In this book, we can find descriptions of homeopathic remedies that reflect the current state of knowledge.
Frans Kusse writes grippingly and with refreshing clarity. He has always been keen to spread his knowledge of homeopathy widely. And this is exactly what he has achieved here – after we have read this work, his portraits will remain engraved in our memory. I can recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the current developments in homeopathy.” From the foreword by Jan Scholten
- Author: Frans Kusse
- ISBN: 9783941706590
- 248 pages
- Hardback
- Published in 2010
- Printed in Germany
Reprinted with the permission of The Alliance of Registered Homeopaths. From the Journal 'Homeopathy in Practice', Autumn 2011 edition. Reviewed by Elizabeth Adalian.
I was keen to review this book because of the good reputation of the author's earlier book Children's Types. Narayana, the publisher of both books, is not only prolific in its range of book titles but also much valued, by reputation, for its professionalism. The author is a Dutch homeopath who is closely connected to Jan Scholten, among other internationally recognised colleagues. In fact, Jan Scholten writes a very encouraging forward to the book. Tribute is paid to these colleagues as well as family members who spurred Frans on to create this work.
The author's writing style is lively and insightful - very much along the lines of other homeopathic writers such as Catherine Coulter and Didier Grandgeorge. I would suggest that this text is geared to homeopaths at any stage of their development. All that is needed is a keenness to penetrate beneath the surface when grappling with an understanding of the remedies.
Among the 60 constitutional types discussed in the book are ones based on lesser-known remedies such as Lac delphinum and Lithium metallicum. Chronic pictures of remedies normally known for their acute function, such as Belladonna, Cantharis, Carbo vegetabilis, and Ruta graveolens, are well explored and the trajectory from the acute picture to the chronic one is well portrayed. Another useful adjunct to the text is the description of different derivatives of remedies, such as the various Aurums, and the Magnesiums. This is very helpful to the practitioner, as well as to any student reading the book.
The author uses the doctrine of signatures as a base for describing the action of the remedies and whether they belong to the animal, mineral, or plant kingdom. He then expands on this, to elicit the nature of the matching patient. The lesser-known relationship of remedies is well covered, such as Borax and Carbo vegetabilis with Calcarea carbonicum. The author sees Carbo veg types as comparable to the farmers of former times. This links the remedy to the very grounded Calcarea type. He includes a brief portrayal of children's types under each main description. There is some unlikely information, such as Ferrum metallicum being a useful remedy for food allergies. When describing the action of Cannabis indica, he takes the opportunity of warning against the use of cannabis as a pleasure drug.
There is an index at the back of the text where the remedies are broken down into mostly emotionally-based rubrics. This is an eye-opener, as different aspects of the remedies are illuminated in this way. The translation from the Dutch stands up well but, on occasion, there are flaws. An example is where we read that a certain type of patient 'freezes easily'. At first glance, I conjectured that this means the patient readily panics; however, it actually refers to the patient's body temperature!
The text is so rich and diverse that I found the photos to be almost redundant. In fact, this is my only criticism of the book: the photos are quite stark and haunting in their imagery. I would go so far as to say that they only demonstrate the specific remedies according to the author's subjective viewpoint.
In conclusion, this is an insightful text which can be dipped in and out of with ease. The remedies were proved in a former era, but their application in a modern-day understanding is exposed within this small volume.
