Up The Swanee To Atlantis Part 3 by Mike Bridger CCH Principal
15 February 2026 | by Mike Bridger
Continuing directly on with the final reference to the ‘unprejudiced observer’ that ended Part 2 of “Up the Swanee to Atlantis”, Mike Bridger examines the numerous ways in which we, as practitioners, can so easily become hopelessly lost within the quagmires of self-delusion.
Up The Swanee To Atlantis (Part 3)
The unprejudiced observer realises the futility of metaphysical speculations that cannot be verified by experiment, and no matter how clever he is, he sees in any given case of disease only the disturbances of body and soul which are perceptible to the senses.1
Even where causations exist, as Kent points out2, the patient is likely not to know them, or at least withholds them. If we are compelled to prescribe always at this psychic level, we will find ourselves in trouble. The best we can do is speculate and disguise our speculations with self-assurances that we are prescribing 'intuitively', as if somehow we had picked up vibes from the patient's unconscious mind. The next stage is to confirm the unconscious or inner manifestations with a few fragments of the patient's speech, dreams, gestures etc. until we have convinced ourselves of an appropriate prescription. We can even feel proud that we have perceived the unconscious mind which only a very few are capable of seeing.
I speak from experience. I have boggled at my own brilliance in spite of the implausibility of my interpretation. I have become hypnotised in wonderment at the poetry of my analysis. Above all, I have confused intuition with desperation. The result of such self-deception is inevitable failure. There is a taint of something like this in some 'master classes' I have seen or heard about. One is left with a feeling of inadequacy, and also determination that, one day, we will be able to prescribe with the same kind of psychic ability. However, while it may be gold dust to the power freak, it is fool's gold for those of us who wish simply to heal our patients. Beware the wolf in guru garb.
Trying to prescribe on the inner source of disease with little regard for symptoms is prescribing with your feet on the ceiling; this results in the normal means of analysing cases becoming horribly distorted. The elimination of symptoms becomes a process whereby the symptoms that are eliminated are those which do not correspond to the practitioner's fantasy about what is at the core. Meanwhile symptoms which can be persuaded to fit the prescriber's theory become corner stones for the case, however trivial, common or virtually meaningless they really are. In fact, the more apparently meaningless and trivial the symptom, the more the audience will gasp when what seemed insignificant (according to the law of common sense) is revealed in all its newly found splendour.
This kind of elimination is not based on a hierarchy of symptoms2 as expressed by the patient, but a circus act, where the symptoms are like jigsaw pieces which, thrown into the air, fall to the floor forming the picture of the patient as defined by the conjurer. Actually, you are in the Hall of Mirrors. Look closely at the picture and you cannot see the patient at all, only the reflection of the conjuror. It is easy to do. I know because I've done it myself when classes become tedious. Most people laugh then they realise it is trickery at work rather than genius. Some people do not laugh though, because it is so seductive, it is believed. The point is that there is a magician in all of us. We can fool ourselves some of the time; we can fool each other for perhaps a little longer. We can even fool our patients for a while, until they find they get no better.
Even those who do not participate in such self-delusion can suffer a similar, if milder, form of the same malady. The compulsion that some have for digging out mental and emotional symptoms even when the patient is perfectly happy and content on these levels, is neverending. The perfectly happy and contented patient is only so because they suppress some negative emotion which is visible to the practitioner but not to the patient. However, if we accept the model of an unconscious, then it is unlikely to be daft enough to be unconscious to the self but conscious to the practitioner. The delusion in these kinds of cases is the delusion that the practitioner somehow has insight into what is unconscious.
If my homoeopath decides I am suppressing anger, on the basis of what they perceive in my unconscious, then I am powerless to argue otherwise. In fact the more I might argue that I do not suffer from suppressed anger then the more evident it becomes that I do, otherwise why would I so vehemently deny it? Theoretically, it would be possible to give me a prescription based on the notion that unconsciously I think I am an omelette and theoretically I would not be able to argue it.
It is impossible only through the efforts of the intellect to recognise the spirit-like force itself... it is only through its effects on the human economy that we may experience and clearly perceive it.4
This power of 'perceiving' that Hahnemann talks of is through the use of the senses5, and is not an intellectual exercise, or worse, an exercise in fitting the patient into our own model of how things are, or should be. I have observed the consequences when the practitioner delves in all the wrong places because they insist on digging out what they believe might be within the inner depths of the patient. It is as grim a spectacle as watching any knife-happy surgeon. While the case presents an abundance of characteristic symptoms, the practitioner, determined not to stay with the obvious, chooses instead to paddle up the proverbial creek in the endless search for mental and emotional conflict. (How did you feel when your whole family was wiped out in a car crash?) The patient gets upset by the provocative and invasive nature of the questioning, but undeterred the homoeopath triumphantly announces the centre of the case as 'irritability when questioned' or some such. Where no such conflicts are detected then the practitioner invents one, and so our poor patient pays not for the remedy that matches their pathology, but the remedy that represents the lunacy of the practitioner.
Although this happens under the banner of homoeopathy it has nothing to do with the homoeopathy that I understand which is mild, gentle and curative. The beauty of homoeopathy is that I may not understand the nature of a patient's grief but if I know that the patient loves salt, is thirsty and suffers other symptoms characteristic of Nat Mur6, then I do not need to clumsily delve into the patient's interior, slicing here and there where I think I should go. Nat Mur will do what it has to do. Just because I prescribe on physicals, it does not mean that it is a superficial prescription. It is as psychically and as spiritually profound as any other prescription, and will have such psychic and spiritual consequences as that patient needs to have.
Check back in a fortnight’s time for the concluding part of this controversial original article, in which Mike Bridger reflects on the vital importance of recognising potential tyranny as well as establishing boundaries in our approach to the art of homeopathic prescribing, in Part 4 of “Up the Swanee to Atlantis”.
References:
1Künne, R. (2017). Aiming at the unprejudiced observer. Homœopathic Links, 30(01), 009–013. https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0037-1598179 [cited 2026 Feb]
2Kent, J. T. (2019). The Unprejudiced Observer - James Tyler Kent - HomeopathyBooks.in. HomeopathyBooks.in. https://homeopathybooks.in/lectures-on-homoeopathic-philosophy-by-james-tyler-kent/the-unprejudiced-observer/ [cited 2026 Feb]
3Organon 140-159. (n.d.). http://homeoint.org/books/hahorgan/organ140.htm#P153E5 [cited 2026 Feb]
4Organon of Medicine (6th Ed.) by Hahnemann | Homeopathic Books. (n.d.). The Homeopathic Book Company. https://www.homeopathicbooks.com/product/organon-of-medicine-6th-edition-by-samuel-hahnemann-translated-by-w-boericke/ [cited 2026 Feb]
5Patil, B. K., & Gandhi, M. A. (2024). The Life and Legacy of Samuel Hahnemann: founder of homoeopathy and his medical philosophy. Cureus, 16(9), e70489. https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.70489
6natrum muriaticum from Materia Medica Keynotes by Henry C. Allen. Homeopathy. (n.d.). https://www.materiamedica.info/en/materia-medica/henry-c-allen/natrum-muriaticum [cited 2026 Feb]