A unique competition was held between a hefty wrestler and a small child. In the competition the wrestler was supposed to completely imitate the child and do everything that his little competitor did. The wrestler should run if the child ran, play as the child did, make faces like him, say what he said, and do exactly what he did. And guess what? The wrestler dropped dead from exhaustion within five hours, but the child continued with his antics and mischief. This shows that the child is a storehouse of energy.
While witnessing the child, 90% of case witnessing is observing every pattern, move and action, gestures and energy of the child, 9% is listening to what the child says and 1% is listening to what the parents say. The whole case witnessing process should be such that it brings out PQRS symptoms of the child not only at physical level and mental level but at the holistic level.
To make the whole process scientific and reproducible the case witnessing process has been divided into three steps: Passive, Active and Active-Active.
- Passive is about collecting all the out of place information from the child as it is. We allow natural flow of the case and passively listen to the fragmented individualistic expressions. It helps to highlight the most important characteristic expressions at every level. That which gets repeated at every level is the focus of the case.
- Active is where the flow is directed inwards, towards understanding the whole focus to get the whole phenomenon. The surety of the focus is established in this step. The aim here is to make the journey from the patient’s conscious to sub conscious self and beyond.
- In Active-Active the whole alteration in the vital energy of the child is unfolded. Complete innermost altered energy pattern comes to surface when the patient touches the inner most core in its totality. Here the homoeopath zooms in on the focus and does not allow the patient to drift away into conscious areas.
Children say and do amazing things because their sub conscious is pure and uncompensated. It is not a big mystery as to how children express their inner world. In children the gap between the conscious and sub conscious is minimal, since children are intimately in touch with their sub conscious. When the potential raw points of the sub conscious, like fears, dreams, art, etc. etc. are tapped into, the whole energy unfolds itself.
A major portion of the sub conscious is comprised of fears/ phobias/ nightmares. Children vividly express their fears in a unique manner. The fears can be explored holistically using the case witnessing process.
In the following case illustration, of Master U.B, 10 years who came to me in June 2009, with the complaint of hypo pigmented patches and recurrent upper respiratory tract infection, I have depicted the whole process of exploring the fears at the holistic level through case witnessing process.
PASSIVE CASE WITNESSING PROCESS:
D: Feel free and tell me everything about you
P: I like to play. My hobby is playing cricket (Pause – looks up) and I have many friends (Pause) and nothing more.
D: What else? Tell more about you. The more you tell me about you the better I will be able to help you out with all your problems.
P: (Pause) I don’t know, more about me. I hate math. I like English. (Pause - looks up). And I hate insects. And I hate to drink milk. I like electronic things. (Pause) nothing more.
D: What else? Just go on. You are doing really well.
P: (Pause – looks up) I hate spider the most. (Pause) And I like video games. And nothing (Pause)
(In cases of children, most of the times they talk only about the area they are in close touch with like fears in this case. In order to let the child go into different areas, we ask him open-ended directing questions. In cases where patients by themselves go into different areas, we remain passive and non-directional.)
D: What else about you, your fears, dreams, interests and hobbies?
P: (Pause) in my dreams I always see bad things in my dreams.
D: What else about you?
P: (Pause) nothing.
D: And what fears you have?
P: I am scared of insects.
D: What else you are scared of?
P: (Pause) Nothing. (Pause) and nothing
D: You said you get bad dreams?
P: Yes.
D: What you get?
P: (Pause) I don’t remember.
D: Just try to remember.
P: (Pause) I can’t recollect.
(In passive the most peculiar thing that got repeated again and again is the fear of insects especially spiders. We become active with this fear and explore it completely.)
ACTIVE CASE WITNESSING PROCESS:
D: You said you are scared of insects? Tell about it.
P: (Pause) nothing.
D: What about insect?
P: Insects scare me.
D: Which insects scare you?
P: Spider, (pause) only spider.
D: Which spider scares you?
P: All the spiders.
D: All the spiders? Can you tell me about them?
P: Every kind of spiders.
(In order to explore the whole fear we become active-active. Now we shall not let the patient drift until we understand the whole process of the fear at each and every level. Since fear is only one area, we need to confirm the whole process in other areas like imaginations, dreams etc to be sure of our prescription.)
ACTIVE – ACTIVE CASE WITNESSING PROCESS:
D: Describe spider, which you are scared of.
P: I am scared of every spider, every kind of spider.
D: How they look like?
P: How they look like? That I can’t recollect.
D: Just try to recollect.
P: (Pause) I can’t recollect. (Pause – looks up) when I see them I get scared.
D: What do you think they will do to you?
P: 
They will bite me aaaa… And take my blood.
D: Can you draw that spider, the one which scares you the most?
P: Ok. I have to colour it also? (Continues drawing) I think it was like this… (See adjoining figure)
D: Hmm. What is that red color?
P: Its, its body color.
D: Since when you are scared of these spiders?
P: When I was in third grade.
D: What had happened during that time, in third grade?
P: When I was walking by, a spider came. Means it just came in my front, like that (shows with hands) and he made a web and he came down. That’s why I got scared, and I am scared of him.
(The fear is since childhood, hence it is very important. As we have explored the whole fear of spiders, confirmed it through drawing, we confirm the same through the area of imaginations. Just because the child talks about fear of spider, we shall not prescribe a spider. All the qualities of the spider should also be there to make such a prescription.)
ACTIVE – ACTIVE CASE WITNESSING FOR CONFIRMATION (in area of imaginations)
D: Right now if I tell you to make one story of a spider, which story you will make?
P: I don’t know to make the story on a spider
D: Just make one.
P: I can’t make one.
D: Whatever comes in your mind and then you talk about it.
P: Once there was a cruel spider, who liked to scare everyone. Once a boy was roaming around, the spider came and scared him, and spider always did bad things with him, and then the boy got irritated, and again the spider came to trouble him. Then the boy took and crumpled him. And the spider died.
D: What does this cruel spider do?
P: Make a web on someone’s hand and just put it in front of anyone’s face, then the cruel spider sits on some one’s shoulder and irritates him (HG), by moving like that, irritate them. He can break any electronic thing. It’s a story that’s why. (Smiles) then he can bite….and nothing
D: What else the spider can do?
P: He goes in every body’s dreams and does bad things. If a nice dream is coming, it will make it a bad dream; if a bad dream is coming it will make it a worse dream.
(Animal qualities of spider like cruelty, trouble, irritate, crumple the spider, spider doing bad things, making bad dreams come up. This whole process confirms that we are on right track and hence we further explore it completely using the sub-conscious imaginary faculty of the child.)
D: Like what? Give me an example.
P: Like someone is very happy in the dream then the spider will come in the dream and change the dream and make that man crying, Like that, like that.
D: What you mean by it will make a very bad and a very bad dream?
P: 
Like there are 2 pencils, aaaa, there are 2 pencils and they both are fighting in the dream, that spider will come and it will put one more pencil, like that and make all three fight. Like that, it’s a bad dream, very bad dream.
D: What else this spider can do?
P: And nothing.
D: Ok. If I tell you to imagine the color of the spider…which colors you can imagine?
P: The spider is fully red with black curvy stripes.
(This color is peculiar of the spider Latrodactus Hasselti – above picture)
D: If I tell you to imagine the type of the web they make, what kind of web they will make?
P: White color web.
D:
Can you make it for me?
P: (Draws adjoining figure)
D: Ok. Suppose this spider comes in your dream, in your fears, what will happen?
P: I will have to crumple it. I will have to kill it.
D: How will you kill it?
P: I will take my shoes and put it on it, put it on the spider. The spider will be crumpled.
D: What else you will do to kill this bad spider?
P: I will take one match box and fire it and put it on the bad spider. He will burn.
D: What else you will do?
P: I will take something, a wood piece and put the spider on it and throw it and aaa, throw that wood piece with the spider.
Case Verbatim ends…
(Spider qualities are there in the patient himself too. This confirms the centre of the patient.)
ANALYSIS OF THE CASE:
In the passive process the focus obtained is fear of insects especially spiders. In active and active the whole fear is explored in detail. All the animalistic qualities of the spider come up and get confirmed through the imaginations of the child. The drawing confirms the physical features of the spider.
REMEDY GIVEN:
Latrodactus Hasselti (Red-back spider)
POTENCY:
Since the whole process of the spider is experienced by the patient at the sub conscious level of imaginations, fears and dreams, 1M potency is prescribed.
One dose
SUMMARY OF FOLLOW-UPS:
After three months of starting treatment, the skin patches got cured to never re-appear again. Upper respiratory symptoms like cold, discharge through the nose increased for a while during first month of treatment, (exteriorization) and reduced after a month. The episodes of bad dreams and the intensity of the fear of insects reduced considerably. His concentration in studies improved a lot.
We see that the whole case witnessing process helps in understanding the unique diseased energy of the child and find the perfectly matching similimum for it. Once the child is free of his disease and his immunity enhances, it also improves the attitude of the child towards life. The child’s energy is channelized in a proper direction where he can explore his potential and creativity to maximum. With homoeopathic treatment the child experiences more energy, clarity in mind, sharp memory and balanced emotions.
For further details on child-centric case witnessing process refer
“A wander with a little wonder – child centric case witnessing” by Dr Dinesh Chauhan.