Dreams Materia Medica (RadarOpus):
preface

1. By Frederik Schroyens, M.D.

From the early days of homeopathy there have been dreams. The first dream of the first remedy, China, was: 'Anxious dream: he has to go perpendicularly down into an abyss'. Yet this dream was not in the repertory of Kent. Mere coincidence? Or does it mean that at that time not so much attention was paid to dreams?

Meanwhile a lot of things have changed. Barthel and Klunker promoted the dreams to a separate chapter in there 'Synthetic Repertory'. Nowadays homeopaths have been publishing specific books about dreams (Agrawal, Master, Panda, Sivaraman, Vakil, Wilsey, etc.). Kent's repertory contained 3192 dream-additions; Synthesis 9.1 has 13905 with 18871 author references.

The work of Filip Degroote adds a dimension to this evolution. He has gathered about 130.000 additions, which is a very impressive figure. Yet , there is more. The materia medica describes dreams often in detail. By the time they get to the repertory they have been cut enormously. So often we only find the keynote of the dream and not the context, not the whole story.

Filip Degroote did keep all these details, both in his notes as in his transcription to repertory language. This he has done both for the materia medica information as for his own cases. It is a logical evolution: our patients tell about their dreams in great detail; why shouldn't we use this information as it is?
As a consequence this book holds a never encountered treasure in information about dreams, written down with an impressive accuracy.

There is another fascinating aspect about this work. A dream only becomes real when we can attach a remedy to it. Therefore several authors proposed to use other parts of the repertory, e.g. the delusions, the delirium rubrics, the fears etc. (Bronfman, Grégoire, Masi, etc). The unknown dream is being translated in known rubrics.
With a fascinating creativity Filip Degroote time after time explains how he derives a remedy from very complex dreams.
For years he has been perfecting this very precise dream-analysis. Thus he transcends his predecessors.
Numerous examples in this book teach us how to look at dreams from a different perspective.

I am delighted that my colleague Filip Degroote, after years of labouring as a monk, is putting this information at our disposal. Let me conclude by referring to the 'first homeopathic dream' of this introduction: our knowledge and the use of dreams is through this work 'going perpendicularly up'!


Frederik Schroyens, M.D.
Gent, 26 May 2004


2. By Kees Dam, M.D.

Filip Degroote is a true pioneer in homeopathy. First he developed, from his knowledge of the Weihe pressure points , an extensive and refined energetic search system to arrive at the simillimum or to confirm it (Physical Examination and Observations in Homeopathy, 1992). Now you are holding his dream book in your hands. It is the result of years of keeping up with and writing down of the dreams of his patients. As you go through the book you can hardly imagine that one man has been able to successfully prescribe such an enormous amount of new small remedies. We should consider ourselves lucky that Filip Degroote in a fulltime general practice has been able to spend time and discipline to document all this with such diligence and accuracy. This book (and also the electronic dream repertory) is an excellent and very powerful tool to access a remedy which otherwise we might have never thought of.

This book and repertory rehabilitate the dream in homeopathy. By definition the dream is a paragraph 153 symptom, unique, special and characteristic and above all a direct translation of the 'state' of the patient. It is the 'state' of the patient that according to paragraph 211 of the Organon by excellence determines the choice of the remedy. This is classical homeopathy 'pur sang'. With this combination of dreams and their energetic confirmation Filip Degroote is able to take care of a fulltime general practice in an entirely homeopathic way; he hardly ever has to refer his patients to a specialist or a hospital. A bigger evidence of efficiency is hardly thinkable.


Kees Dam, homeopathic doctor
Amsterdam, March 29th 2004.