The California Homeopath
Journal of the California Homeopathic Medical Society

The challenge of training homeopaths, or Who and What is a homeopath?

To explore this question, we need to look at the qualities, which are needed to be a homeopath: we need to look at the goal of what we want to achieve. What should a homeopath look like? Who is a good homeopath?  What qualities are important? What skills are important? How do we teach these skills?  Can they be taught?  Are homeopaths born, or are they made? 

We also need to question our ideas, assumptions and even prejudices of how we define a homeopath and homeopathy. Are we doctors, shamans, healers, artists, therapists, or a combination of a variety of these? How we define ourselves influences the ways in which we train students.  The style and content of training will reflect this image.

Also, what have been the undercurrent myths that support our view of homeopathy or that perpetuate a collective image of who we are. What is the experience of homeopaths through the years that informs our self-view?  One of the most obvious identities is that of homeopaths being physicians and the legal definition of homeopathy as medicine. This has been an intrinsic part of the development of homeopathy as a system and the political realities as part of medical practice. However, there have been challenges in its acceptance as medicine (as it has been defined within the mainstream ideology), both within and outside of our profession as the subjective nature of homeopathic practice has made the defining of homeopathic practice more difficult.  As each person is unique, so is each homeopath and therefore the process of homeopathic cure is experienced through the patient and homeopath in a unique way.  Another homeopath may do things differently, may provoke a different reaction from the patient, may find a different remedy to give and have a different analysis of what needs to be cured etc. At the same time, there is a common understanding of there being one objectively identifiable remedy needed at any one time.

By Richard Pitt

Richard Pitt, CCH, RSHom (NA) | 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.