Oxytocin in practice: the endless search for mother loveby Danièle Joulin, Deborah Collins
My homeopathic training, following Dominique Senn’s method, made me, together with our study group of that time, realise that Syntocinon® has become almost standard treatment during birth, and even during caesarean sections and abortions, where it is injected intrauterine.
The importance of
Oxytocin in my practice has grown from the well-known question: “When did your complaints start?” Often, when the answer was “since birth”, or “in my first weeks of life”,
Oxytocin has provided a solution. I have seen many sorts of complaints rising from post-partum depression (much more severe than a few days of ‘baby blues’), allergies, joint pains or back pains, digestive complaints, and of course, anything in the gynaecological sphere.
My most remarkable case was that of a woman who had used voluntary abortion as a means of birth control about fifteen times. She had a dental abscess that was resolved within 24 hours after taking Oxytocinum XM.
My view of
Oxytocin, the hormone of attachment, is that it can also lead to detachment; the relationship mother-child can have become so fusional that there is no place for the father anymore. He feels rejected by his wife, who has no libido at all. I have come to call it the “hormone of divorce”, after having seen many such cases in the past twenty years.
The second aspect of this intense mother-child attachment is the digestion: a mother who is afraid that her child is not drinking enough, or who refuses to eat.
I have also noticed that children who continue to be exclusively breastfed past six months receive, like their mother, a boost of oxytocin, which makes weaning off more difficult. It is as if mother and child find themselves in a bubble together, where the mother puts herself at the complete disposition of the child.
In my practice,
Oxytocin has helped to unravel this overwhelming and too demanding tie, but I have always followed it with another remedy. I have used it as an intermediary remedy, an aid to find a more flexible bond with the mother, even in adults long after being weaned!
Research into
Oxytocin and male infidelity
Oxytocin, known as the “cuddle hormone”, turns out to have a remarkable effect on men who take it: it would seem that they have less desire to start a relationship outside their marriage.
Oxytocin is especially known for its role in the bond between mother and child, helping to create a blissful feeling feeling similar to the one women experience when they are with their partner or when they experience an orgasm. In men, this hormone creates a strong sense of emotional attachment, which, according to research, prevents them from infidelity.
Israeli researchers discovered in 2012 a positive relationship between oxytocin and the success of new couples. The level of oxytocin in the blood proved to be a reliable indicator for the future of the relationship.
Recently, German researchers at the University of Bonn took this a step further, and discovered that oxytocin not only reinforces the emotional bond between people, but also prevents men from undertaking extra-marital relationships.
Case by Deborah Collins
A man in his sixties comes for treatment of his increasingly severe cough – it has become so bad that he fears that he will die coughing. He has been treated homeopathically in the past, and has responded well to Staphysagria, but this does not touch his cough.
The line running through his history seems to be his relationship – or rather lack of relationship – with his mother. Although he has done much therapeutic work around this great lack in his life, his difficult relationship continued to affect many aspects of his life, especially regarding women. He has been married four times, and divorced four times. Each time, he felt that he had finally find the unconditional love that he had always lacked, but when his new partner could not provide him with that, he would look elsewhere.
It would seem that his mother was not ready for motherhood at all when she was pregnant with him. She carried many problems from her own distressing childhood, including a hard mother, who could not manage financially when her husband left her. She tells many different versions of his birth, including a caesarean section, although she bears no signs of this. All that she says only reinforces my patient’s feelings of having been too much for her, and of never having been welcomed. In fact, he was so thoroughly ignored for the first three years of his life that an elderly neighbour woman finally took charge of him, and he spent most of his days with her during his youth. She became much more of a mother for him than his biological mother.
This “lack of welcome”, combined with a tendency to reach out for love at any opportunity, pointed towards Oxytocinum.
Prescription: Oxytocinum 200C, then later 1M.
Follow-up: The cough diminished almost immediately to about 5% of what it had been. He could go for long walks again and was no longer afraid that he would die coughing. More importantly, however, was his relationship to his now deceased mother. “Even thinking of her used to fill me with rage and frustration. I could not stand to even hear the music that she used to love – I would turn it off if I heard it on the radio – but now I choose to listen to it, and it fills me with warmth.”
The mother-child bond, lacking during their years together, seems to be healing. It is never too late.
Keywords: post-partum depression, gynecological problems, detachment, fusional mother-child relationship, infidelity, weaning
Remedies: Oxytocinum