Boron

2.3 Boron, Case 1A 40 year old woman suffers from depression and multiple personality syndrome. She feels that she has slipped away, she can’t feel the ground under her feet anymore. She thought she was whole, but now she is not sure anymore. She feels that everything she does is false, unreal. She is tired and desperate. She is ashamed to admit that she was working as a prostitute, although she did not know it herself. Her neighbours alerted her to the fact that they had seen her at night prostituting herself.
She feels dirty and imagines that everyone looks down on her. She is afraid she may try to kill herself, that she’ll decide to walk in front of a bus one day. She feels worthless and ungrounded. She feels she isn’t good enough to give the lectures she is supposed to give soon. On the one hand she wants to be strong, but this is only an act, so that other people won’t see what is going on inside her. On the other hand she would like to be weak, like a little girl, so that other people will take all the decisions for her. She likes to hear from others that she is doing things right.
Her life has been one long tale of misery and abuse. When she was still a baby she was ill treated by her mother because she cried so much from the many ear infections she had. From her 10th to her 18th year she was abused by her father and other men. When she was 18 she got pregnant but she miscarried. She was very upset, because she would have loved to have had a little child to care for. Her fiancee committed suicide three weeks before their wedding. The boyfriend she had after that forced her to work as a prostitute for 7 years. After all these miseries she ended up in a psychiatric hospital for 2 years. Afterwards she had many years of psychotherapy. She thought she had dealt with all her problems and got on top of them. She had a good job and got a grip on her life again, until she heard that she was seen working as a prostitute at night.
During the psychotherapy treatment she discovered that besides having a prostitute personality, which is the most prominent, she has 5 other personalities.
For several years she had been hearing voices when she was attending a meeting. These voices told her that she is a fake, that she makes a fuss, that she should keep her mouth shut, or leave the room. It feels as if there is a war going on in her head, that she has to fight a battle with all these opposing personalities. It makes her feel out of control, there is no integration inside her. In the past she used to mutilate herself, because ‘pain provides control’.
As a child she used to sleepwalk and wake up somewhere else in the house, totally confused.
She is afraid of snakes and spiders. She likes cats and dogs. She is afraid of women. She doesn’t have a relationship a the moment, she can’t imagine that anyone would like to share their life with her. She dreams that her mother is fighting with her therapist, because her mother doesn’t want her to start a relationship with this therapist; she tries to stop them fighting but doesn’t succeed. In another dream she wants to murder everybody, even her best friends. She follows them in her car and tries to run them over.
She generally feels very tired; this feeling starts in her stomach. She feels as if she is dragging herself through life, but she would love to be strong. She had an operation on her right ear when she was 18 and one of the nerves was cut. Now she is deaf in that ear. She wears a hearing aid in her left ear because the violent abuse of her father damaged this ear too. She suffers from hayfever in June and July, and is allergic to animals, dust and tomatoes.GeneralsWeather: cold, cold feet; -> sun; -> inside; -> and > sea.
Time: < 7 am; < June and July.
Desires: spices (3), cheese.
Aversion: meat (2), olives.
Food: < cucumber, tomatoes, strawberries, hazelnuts.AnalysisOne remedy that springs to mind straight away is Lac caninum: she feels dirty, worthless, has been abused, is afraid of snakes, -> dogs, -> spices. When I gave her Lac caninum there was an improvement on the emotional level, she felt much calmer, but it did not touch the problem of the multiple personalities.
We could call this symptom ‘confusion of identities’ and we can find it in remedies such as Alumina. In the Complete repertory of Zandvoort we find under ‘Confusion of identity’ and ‘Delusion, identity, errors of personal identity’ the following remedies: Alum, Anh, Androc, Ant-c, Aur, Bapt, Camph, Cann-i, Cann-s, Cic, Gels, Kali-br, Lac-c, Lach, Lil-t, Med, Mosch, Myric, Naja, Nat-m, Ol-j, Petr, Phos, Plb, Pyrog, Pyrus, Raja-s, Stram, Sulph, Syph, Thuj, Val, Verat. However, none of these remedies really fitted this case in my opinion. Alumina is the only remedy that comes near it. In a group analysis Alumina would seem to fit, but the problem in this case goes even deeper. Alumina does have the confusion about who did what, but in this woman it is the whole personality that has been affected. This fact leads us to the Carbon series, and in particular to the third stage, the stage of confusion, being Boron.
Boron also has the very characteristic feeling that he has no firm ground under his feet.ReactionAfter Boron metallicum 1M she feels very well for a few days but then she has a relapse. She comes running for another dose which she takes four days after the first one. One month later she feels more secure; her suicidal thoughts don’t run away with her anymore. The voices and different personalities are still there. She is working on the ‘prostitute personality’ a lot during psycho-therapy sessions.
The following months she takes a double dose of Boron metallicum 1M every two weeks.
She writes a letter to her therapist saying good-bye and after that the prostitute personality disappears. It feels a little bit strange and empty inside, but there is also a feeling of relief. She feels more stable, she realises that her personalities are there for a reason, so she is not so afraid anymore.