The California Homeopath
Journal of the California Homeopathic Medical Society

Healing is a word that evokes many different impressions.  It can be said that to heal is to love, or to love is to heal. The healing power of love as seen between two lovers, among the members of a family, or within a community or church is a liberating act that belongs to no one person and cannot be defined, measured or regulated.  It is free.  However, healing is also part of many models of medical/healing practices and as such it becomes a prescribed part of the relationship between healer/physician and patient/client.  It is a different aspect of healing than the simple yet profound expression of love, yet it is not fundamentally different.  It is defined by a similar impulse to help and to reach out.

Defining who has a right to heal becomes part of the dialogue about the role of the myriad forms of healing in our society, from physicians and hospitals to the complex and endless variety of physical and psychological therapies that we have available in modern society.  We find ourselves between the polarities of seeing healing as a free expression of love and the regulated and highly structured medical system we have today.  These are clearly not exclusive to one another but represent the spectrum in which healing takes place in our society

Physicians have always enjoyed a unique role in most cultures.  They have a certain authority, a form of knowledge and power given to them as determined by the personal, social and cultural needs of each society.  Often this knowledge is a privileged and private one, requiring complicated initiations for the practitioner.  This is equally the cases in industrial and more primitive societies.  However, at the same time, there has often been a powerful healing dynamic within the wider culture, often found with the women of a society and with other authorities such as priests and midwives.  They have often fulfilled the needs of their communities when physicians were not available, did not know what to do, or where the skill needed was beyond their domain.

By Richard Pitt

Richard Pitt | Homeopath and Educator

Richard has been practicing and teaching homeopathy in San Francisco since 1995.  He orginally trained in England and has been practicing homeopathy since 1984.  He is former Director of the Pacific Academy of Homeopathy in San Francisco and also teaches at many other schools in the United States and Canada.  He is a founding board member and past president of the Council for Homeopathic Certification, which has established professional certification for the homeopathic profession in North America.  He is in private practice in San Francisco.