CARCINOSINUM - LACK OF CONFIDENCE - CANCER, A DEEPER UNDERSTANDING

The most important fears of Carcinosinum are: FEAR of cancer; fear in a crowd; fear in narrow places;
fear in high places; fear of spiders, mice, snakes; fear of failure in examinations; fear of failure; fear of
thunderstorms. When we really understand the essence of a remedy it is possible to build up the whole
picture in accordance with this essence.

THE ESSENCE: WEAK EGO AND ITS COMPENSATION MECHANISMS

To discover the essence of Carcinosinum we should understand the basic problem of the cancer patient
and what exactly is a tumor, because Carcinosinum is made from the materialization of the cancer
problem. The cancer patient has permitted cells that are 'not him' to grow in his body without activating
his defense mechanisms sufficiently to destroy them. The tumor is a foreign entity that does not respect
him and finally destroys him, without even respecting structures such as blood vessels, muscles, lymph
nodes. It grows by transgressing every structure, every border. We can easily understand what happens
when we compare the patient to a country that has borders and an army to defend its integrity as a
country. If an enemy soldier crosses the border and establishes himself inside the country and the army
is not well-trained enough to capture the enemy, to imprison him or to kill him, the enemy will call his
friends and other soldiers will pass the border and settle down. Their base will be stronger and stronger.
Without any respect for the original people, they will destroy everything around them which is not to
their own advantage and will take all the food that was intended for the indigenous people. They will
send soldiers to other places in the country (metastasis) to take over all the power of the country. The
only possibility the country has finally is to ask other countries to help it and to attack the enemy with
heavy weapons (surgery, radiation and chemotherapy). But such a massive fight greatly weakens the
country and the outcome is very uncertain.

On the cellular level, the same process takes place. The membrane of the cell is unstable and weak and
the cell is ingesting toxins, not able to defend its integrity. These ingested poisons damage his normal
functioning, creating anarchy and estranging himself from his own essence. But the entire process had
already started long before on the emotional and mental level. What happens the most on the
emotional/mental level to a patient having taken Carcinosinum is that his self-confidence grows and that
he starts to listen more to his own needs and to defend himself better. He fortifies his borders and gets
into a process of more awareness of what is ‘him’ and what is ‘not him’, no longer allowing the
poisonous energy from outside to settle within his borders. He takes more care of himself, being
attentive to his own needs and desires. A process of cleaning out at all levels takes place, poisonous
relationships are broken off or corrected, a consciousness of being someone that deserves respect and
love blooms gradually, and a marked influenza or inflammation with high fever for the first time in
twenty years cleans the poison from his body. All this means that the reactivity is increasing.
MEDICAL INFLUENCES

Influences from outside that are experienced as attacking him or weakening him without giving him the
possibilities to defend himself can stimulate the same process: first of all, massive vaccination. I once
asked a lady during regression therapy to go to her first vaccination and to tell me what this vaccination
meant to her and without hesitation she said: ‘It took away an opportunity to defend myself.’ With
massive vaccination in early childhood we give the message to the child and his immune system that his
own defense mechanism is not reliable and that he has to be protected from outside. This not only
weakens his immune system but also gives his personality the feeling that he is not strong and good
enough and that he has to rely upon other people rather than upon his own force and vitality.

Also, the suppression of fever, a defense mechanism par excellence, the use of antibiotics and
corticosteroids can lower the defense mechanisms. If during every infection the parents suppress the
reactivity of the child by giving aspirin and penicillin, how can he still believe that he is able to defend
himself against his invaders (bacteria, viruses, etc.)? This practice engenders a lack of reactivity and the
development of severe illnesses in childhood as pertussis, pneumonia, chronic inflammation (otitis,
bronchitis, rhinitis, etc.).

The Carcinosin patient has a tendency to place strength outside himself and to feel weak and vulnerable
inside. That's also what happens when he finally gets a tumor and he has to be operated on, radiated
and treated with chemotherapy. He is helpless, desperate and completely dependent on his doctor. I
always insist with cancer patients that they have to decide for themselves and feel what is good for
them and what they want and do not want. You have to give them back their strength and they have to
take it back. Dr. Bernie Siegel, an American surgeon, insists in his excellent book Love, Harmony and
Cure, that as a patient you have to be assertive, to ensure that when hospitalized you have a room with
a view, to ask for your favorite music during the operation, etc. To stand up for yourself and to fulfill
your own needs is of primary importance in cure.

The Carcinosin personality has a tendency to let others violate his own space. He doesn't take sufficient
space for himself, but his space is invaded by others and he is too weak to throw them out. The
Carcinosin personality has to learn to take his destiny in his own hands.

RESTORATION OF HOPE

Part of the allopathic damage is unfortunately often the complete annihilation of any hope for cure for
the patient. To be sent away without any hope for better, without any support, leaves the patient in
despair. But the patient needs hope. In hospitals, this hope is often killed completely, because of some
curious thinking of the doctor and the use of inexorable statistics. Leave any hope for cure to the patient
is often considered by allopathic doctors as giving ‘false hope’. But what is false hope? False hope is
saying to your patient that you will surely cure him, that he will not die, etc. But no patient can cure if
he, himself, does not decide to survive and for that he needs hope. Hope that he will not necessarily die,
that his doctor will sustain him in his effort to find a solution to his life-threatening illness and that he is
also capable to do so. He has to be respected in his attempt, knowing that his doctor will give the best
treatment that is available. Not statistics are deciding how many chances he has to cure, but the patient
himself. He has to reconnect with his inner force, even if during the operation, radiation and
chemotherapy, he felt completely delivered to the authority of his doctor. He has to be helped to take
up again responsibility for his own life and he has to be guided to do more than only wait and hope that
there will not be any relapse. I have a patient that reacted wonderfully on chemotherapy and had
almost no side effects and after 7 cures her doctor decided to give her two more cures to see if even
more progress was possible. But she didn’t have a good feeling to do so and decided herself not to take
more cures and to wait to see if the tumor would shrink without further chemotherapy.

Dr. Bernie Siegel gives us a clear vision on false hope. "The concept of false hope is one of the most
ridiculous things I know of. Why should we try to authorize hope according to the statistics? Hope is a
variable that can change the statistics. If only 99% die of a condition, then let’s stress the fact that that
person has a chance of not dying. If you tell a group of those people that they are the 10% who will
survive, you may find that 30% or 40% or 50% get better."

Take one’s own destiny in one’s hands and discuss the treatment as someone who is completely
responsible for his own health and life is very important and enhances the possibilities to cure. The
patient has to be strong to face remarks from her doctors and other people who don’t believe in any
possibility to cure.

RESTORATION OF REACTIVITY, from the tumoral stage back to the infectious stage

Reactivity can be defined as the capability of a person to maintain his mental, emotional and physical
integrity by an efficient system of protection against perturbing influences from outside. On the mental
level, the person has to be equipped with reinforcing ideas about himself, his life, and about the
surrounding world, i.e. that his life is meaningful, that he came on earth with a purpose, that what he is
doing is good for himself, for others and for the world, -namely a positive look. On the emotional level,
he needs joy, feeling of love toward himself and other people, to nature, to the earth and the universe.
He needs the capability to express his emotions, even those that are commonly labeled as negative:
anger, grief, irritability, for example. On the physical level, he needs a good immune system, capable of
cleansing his body of indisposing bacteria, viruses, toxins, etc. Surely the best reaction of our organism
to activate our immune system when our equilibrium is in danger is fever. Therefore, it is hard to accept
that anyone who really understands this mechanism still considers that fever is an enemy to be
suppressed. For most people and doctors this is even common practice nowadays. Children often have
sudden high fever for only one or two days, and this is in fact a sign of good reactivity. But when again
and again such reactions are suppressed by antipyretics and antibiotics or in more serious illnesses with
corticosteroids then slowly but surely the reactivity is broken down and there is a slide from infectious
disease to tumoral disease. The infectious stage is a more reactive state (with fever) than the tumoral
stage (without fever). In the tumoral stage the organism is weaker than the tumor, whereas in the
infectious state our energy is mostly strong enough to overcome an infection or can be fairly easily
activated by a well-chosen homeopathic remedy.

In the infectious stage, the energy of the person organizes everything to overcome the disease: high
fever which enhances the metabolism of the body enormously, an increase of white blood cells,
acceleration of blood circulation, vascular dilatation in the affected area or all over the body, loss of
appetite to give our digestive system the possibility to concentrate on the elimination of toxins,
diarrhea, sweating, a running nose and eruptions, all elimination mechanisms. These kinds of
elimination processes occur frequently after the administration of a homeopathic remedy. But also, an
infection can be a sign of a curing process. I remember this man, 45 years old, who got a double otitis
with running ears after a dose of Saccharum officinale 200K. He never had otitis since his 5 years and
had no ears problems. But shortly after this inflammation and elimination process joint pains
disappeared completely and his general condition was much better.

It is not by coincidence that children go through a certain number of eruptive diseases, as Rubella,
German measles, Scarlatina, fifth or sixth disease, etc. and that they have easily a running nose or
infections with high fever. Everybody who is aware of these facts knows that vaccinations, antipyretics,
antibiotics and other suppressive drugs that are so largely used in routine modern medicine practice
have also their reverse. It pushes the human being already at a very premature age in the direction of
the tumoral stage. This fact was already described by Hahnemann 200 years ago. Therefore, it is not
surprising that we have to face cancer and all kind of internal diseases as one of the widest spread
diseases on this earth and that the number of cancer patients increases still every year.

The tumoral stage is a low reactivity stage. There is not an acute phase, no fever, no eruption, no
accelerated or enhanced evacuation of toxins. There is no acute outbreak followed by a restoration of
balance as in the infectious stage. There is a chronic unbalance sometimes even without any visible or
noticeable physical expression. Cancer can grow without any perceptible sign that something is wrong.
Sure, for the holistic doctor there are already a lot of symptoms not only on the mental and emotional
plane but also on the physical plane, which he can interpret as a precancerous stage. He is able to help
his patient to return from this insidious tumoral stage to the infectious stage and can prevent that his
patient slips down to chronic internal diseases as heart diseases, cancer, etc. In But such preventive
treatments are still more exception than daily practice. The majority of patients are suddenly confronted
with cancer and often wondering that this happened to them, because they were almost never ill, had
no influenza, no fever, no major health problems for decades and believed to be in excellent health. It is
as if cancer manifested suddenly in the body, but we know that tumors grow slowly for years, even
decades before they attain sufficient volume and invasive power to become a major health problem.

In ageing, there is a spontaneous shift from infectious to tumoral diseases enhanced by vaccination and
other suppressive treatments. So, reactivity is an important quality not only of our physical but also of
our mental and emotional body. If a person has a tendency to let himself be suppressed by others, then
the immune system does the same thing on the physical level. In the USA, they found out that the
immune system of optimistic people was about 60% stronger than that of pessimists. Therefore, it is of
great importance that cancer patients believe in their cure, that they feel stronger than their tumor(s)
and that they ‘go for it’. It is a bad sign that cancer patients are so often robbed of any hope of cure. One
of my cancer patients had this experience several times. I saw her for the first time five years ago,
completely desperate after two breast amputations in one year followed by metastasis in the spine,
lungs and liver. The first physical signs of cure were the calcification of the metastases in the spine about
six months after the beginning of the ‘alternative’ treatment. Seeing this she expressed her joy and the
radiologist said: ‘Oh Madam, you surely don’t believe that you can still be cured?’ Now all her tumors
are almost completely gone and she is in an excellent state, convinced that it is only a matter of time
before she is cured completely. But her surgeon said at her last visit, perturbed by her enthusiasm and
that of her husband: ‘Madam, are you well aware that you have an incurable disease?’ These kinds of
experiences have taught me to make an appointment as soon as possible after hospital check-ups,
because a depressive state weakens the immune system and has to be repaired as soon as possible.

THE FATHER PRINCIPLE

The father takes an important place in this remedy, or rather the father principle. The father is the
symbol of self-confidence, of strength, of social position and realization of the possibilities of the child.
The basis for the Carcinosin problems lies therefore in childhood. The father has to confirm the child in
his capabilities and encourage him when things seem to go in the wrong direction. If he is criticizing the
child and never gives any praise when he has done well, or when he is simply not there to stimulate and
approve him, or if he is too demanding, the child will feel incapable of fulfilling his father’s expectations
and feels too weak to do anything. By being given too much responsibility, or being punished too
severely when he has done something wrong, or by being given the impression that whatever he does
it's never good enough, his self-confidence is slowly but surely undermined. Then he will try hard to
please his father, mother, teacher, etc. by being very industrious, being fastidious in his work, being the
best in his schoolwork and being a nice, good boy or girl to have the approval or praise of his father. He
will be afraid to make mistakes and will be anxious before examinations. He will avoid every criticism by
being on time, doing what others ask him to do and accepting whatever people inflict on him to avoid
quarrels and to please the other person. So, he hasn't learned to defend himself and to watch over his
boundaries. Already as a child he is teased by his school mates, who feel his weak defenses. All this
doesn't mean that the father is the only person that is responsible for the weak defense mechanisms
and the fear of failure of the child. Every authority can contribute to this situation, the mother, a priest,
a nun, an older sibling or a teacher, saying for example in the class that he is a stupid and that he will
never learn anything. The fundamental lack of self-confidence is a universal problem and everybody in
some way has to work this out. Many people have completely compensated for it by working hard and
performing on a high level, this earning the praise and esteem of everybody. Often the baby is already
born with this fundamental lack of self-confidence and in his early life this problem is only activated, so
that the father is not always to blame for it.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE CARCINOSINUM PICTURE FROM THE ESSENCE

The Carcinosin patient has a very low self-esteem and fundamental lack of self-confidence combined
with weak defenses. Therefore, he is very sensitive to everything that can undermine his self-confidence
(see causations), and is not able to stand up for himself. One way to survive is adaptation and avoidance
of criticism as much as possible. He is very fastidious in his work, but not especially when he does not
have to perform, e.g. at home he can be rather untidy. He adapts to the demands of others trying to
regain their approval.

There is also a tendency to escape this demanding, critical and unfriendly world by entering a world of
fantasy, dreams and harmony by reading for hours, being in nature, playing with animals, being
transported by music and dancing, thus giving expression to the emotions that have been suppressed as
part of his survival strategy. Often, he weeps with the music. Also traveling is a way of escaping the
harsh world he lives in. The outer world is threatening and he has a strong need to escape this
threatening world. So, horrible things affect him profoundly, because he has weak boundaries. In
situations that he cannot flee from he becomes anxious, as in narrow and high places and in a crowd.
But reading, music and dancing can also harmonize his energy and help him to get rid of perturbing
energies.

Because of his weak self-confidence and his fear of failure this person can also try to nourish his
confidence by seeking approbation by being brilliant. He feels ill-at-ease with people that are as good as
him. This can make him arrogant with a tendency to talk just a little bit too much about his
achievements. He is critical about the achievements of others and is very sensitive to criticism. He needs
to be admired. This can push him to very great heights, working continuously to stay on top and having
no other interests in life. We feel the big ego problem that he is manifesting, but what manifest itself as
a big ego outside, is in fact a weak ego inside. In a more passive person feeling less talented the
projection on to a master can be very helpful. He knows that he is less brilliant, but he likes being in the
shadow of the master trying to do as he does and approach his excellence, even while knowing that he
will never attain that.

It is true that all this compensation can in some way calm the weak ego, but it's like taking sweets when
you need love and affection: you never feel completely satisfied. Here Carcinosinum can be very helpful,
because it can resolve the ego problem from inside. After treatment for one or two years with this
remedy people are really more confident in themselves and their ego is satisfied and can sleep
peacefully like a cat on the sofa.

There is still another way to escape from this weak feeling, namely by refusing to do whatever is
required and say ‘No, I cannot do this’ without even trying. These kind of children, are very uncertain,
shy and every negative experience confirms their incapacity. They are very easily offended, sensitive to
reprimand, very obstinate, incapable of admitting their errors, sometimes refusing to obey their parents.
They are very afraid to have to perform and avoid every disappointment. This makes them very unhappy
and easily angered and aggressive at home, but weak and yielding at school, so they are teased a lot.
Another way to resolve his problem of feeling weak and worthless is to prove that he is capable by
controlling everything. So, he becomes very persevering, extremely well organized, plans everything,
leaves nothing to chance. This attitude is known as the Cuprum metallicum picture that exists in so many
Carcinosin patients. Cancer patients very frequently have high copper concentrations in their blood and
the copper concentration of tumors is higher than that of normal tissues. I have already said in my
publication about the mental picture of Cuprum metallicum (Homoeopathic Links 2/92) that Cuprum is
the closest remedy to Carcinosinum. We often see in the same patient both the Carcinosinum and the
Cuprum picture. That's why I now use frequently a combination of both, called Carcinosinum cum
Cuprum from Dolisos in Holland, that was potentized from C5 to 30K and upwards. This gives really
marvelous results. I will publish this later, but will stay now with the Carcinosinum picture.

WHAT CARCINOSIN PATIENTS TELL US BEFORE THE TREATMENT

If we have understood well what Carcinosinum is all about, it is interesting to see how patients express
this. I noted carefully what they told me and give here, some examples.

I am not allowed to fail, to make mistakes; everything has to be beyond reproach

I didn't get praise, rather my father used to tell me I was not capable of doing this or that; I let myself be
suppressed easily; there is still a lot of suppressed anger in me

I feel less worthy than other people, I am the black sheep; my father criticized my appearance

I cannot say no, I accept everything otherwise I feel guilty; I always avoid conflicts

I easily agree with everything and everybody, I cannot stand up for myself

I cannot remember that I ever had fever

WHAT CARCINOSIN PATIENTS TELL US AFTER THE TREATMENT

I feel that I am someone; I don’t feel less valued than other people anymore; I am more confident

I can take time for myself without feeling guilty; I can help others’ problems without taking them on my
shoulders; I feel more clearly what is mine and what is theirs

I can more easily say no and defend my own space; I don’t feel guilty any more when I take time and
care for myself

I allow myself to be angry when anybody shows me a lack of respect

I express now what I think and what I feel; I do my best and then it is okay, it doesn’t have to be perfect

I now do what I want to do myself

I keep at a distance from my father, I also have my own life

I set boundaries for my children and satisfy my own needs

PHYSICAL SYMPTOMS

Physical complaints are most of the time not our best guides to finding the correct remedy, but can be
sometimes especially in acute illnesses of great value and confirm the remedy or help us to think about
a special remedy. In my opinion, every physical problem can be helped by Carcinosinum if the mental
and emotional symptoms indicate it. Nevertheless, some physical signs are often seen in this remedy:
the blue sclera, the moles, cafe-au-lait spots, the blinking of the eyes, the nails too short from biting, the
warts on palms and soles, molluscum contagiosum, acne, cysts, fibromas, all kind of tumors, sinusitis,
coryza, swollen and painful breasts before the menses, painful menses. Certainly, it is possible to add
other symptoms. I selected only the symptoms that seem to me of some importance.