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December 2006. The Pure Science and Art of Homeopathy: A Study of Proving Methodology (Vol. 11, #2)
Weaving Proving Material into a Whole
A discussion of proving methodology.
The presentation of proving material
In deciding how to present proving material, a proving coordinator is forced to make certain decisions. The main issue is to decide how much to structure, organize and schematize the data created. The two main methods used are to create a broad schema based on the same structure as the repertory and put all the data chosen of all the provers into the requisite fields. The second method is to list all the data of each prover separately, giving the reader a feel of the unique “whole” effect of each prover. Some provings utilize both methods.
For busy practitioners, reading through large provings becomes a challenging task and it is hard to “see” what is really characteristic in the proving. Some provings have very little structure, apart from being of the mind, head, throat, etc.—and are basically one long list of symptoms. This can make it very difficult extract anything substantial from the proving, but even then some significant work has been done to extract and compile data attributed to the proving.
One of the challenges for proving coordinators is to create themes for the main symptoms produced in the proving, especially in the mind and dreams section of the remedy. Writers who have published provings have spent much time organizing data to make it accessible to readers. For all those doing such work, the challenge is to categorize the disparate symptoms accurately, and to choose words/themes that most accurately reflect the language in the proving. Even with extreme care, this is still a difficult task, running the risk of being too interpretative. However, some categorization has to be done if a proving is to be accessible to the reader. It is my opinion that it is the obligation of the proving coordinator to do this task.
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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.