Dr Vibhavari Vinayak Pande.
Abstract-Mind is the man and man in his mind and one’s personality is the result of all the characters of his mind. Mind is expressed as to think ,spirit, force, memory, recollection and rememberence, which thinks ,perceive feels, will etc.
Keywords-Mind,will,Emotions,Memory,Intellegence
Introduction-Mind is the faculty of memorising ,understanding and reasoning, preserving and final deserving. Mind is the product of matter, functioning in a special way and all psychological events are determined by mind. Mind is also stated as seat of subject of consciousness.In Homoeopathy,derangement of vital force or the consciousness is called disease. Dr.Hahnemann says-“It is not too much to say the mental symptoms of a patient often form the determining factor in the choice of medicinal counter force.
Mind is seated in the consciousness so the orderly functioning of mind, seated in consciousness is health. It means life force ,functioning harmoniously with the purpose of life, is health and if functioning otherwise ,it is ill health or disease. Mind is the parent of all desires.Psychological and emotional factors that lead to the development of physical or mental disorders. we should realise that both these approaches are limited, although an illness may be primarily physical or psychological ,it is always the disorder of the whole person-not just the lungs or psyche. fatigue or bad cold may lower our tolerance foe psychological stress, an emotional upset may lower our resistance to physical disease. In short, the individual is Psychobiological with the environment.
An interdisciplinary approach to all disorders considering the biological, psychological and socio-cultural data is referred to as psychosomatic approach. Landers Dundar ,Pioneer in the field of psychosomatic medicine says “more important to know what kind of patient has the disease than what kind of disease the patient has.
Modern psychology broadly views the mind or the mental state of an individual in the following categories-
A]Emotions
B]Will
C]Understanding
A]Emotions-
Emotions are basic to human beings. Being emotional is a part of being human.Emotion is a strong feeling, aroused mental state or intense state of drive or unrest directed towards a definite object and evidenced in both behaviour and in psychological changes, with accompanying autonomic nervous system manifestations. “Emotion” occurs when the will is swayed or hindered. Darwin said that emotion have an evolutionary basis.First 18 months of life are very important as to how the newborn was given care ,warmth and secure feeling by the mother and how they have been brought up. Experiences since childhood are registered by the child in the memory and every time he reacts on the basis of previous experiences which have left an impression on him. A belief system is formed and perception of an individual about his environment starts becoming linear. For example-hyoscyamus has the delusion of being injured by his surroundings ,as in the past he had experiences of betrayal, so he starts behaving in any situation with suspicion, doubt and caution.
Emotion is an instinctive natural state of mind that prevails on an individual. Emotions can however be controlled by the will and understanding of the individual . Emotions lead to goal –directed activity so every fundamental motive has an emotion corresponding to it, example -escaping fear. Emotions have constructive and destructive effect. Emotions decide our motives, interest, attitudes and perception.Emotions are expressed through our postures ,gestures and speech. Tone of the speaker tells us about the feeling. The basic emotions of fear ,anger ,love pleasures blend with each other to give us hundreds of other emotions. Some rubrics of emotions are-Anger,Love,sadness,Fear,nxiety,Guilt,Joy,Displeasure,Irritation.
Emotions can be divided into 3 stages-
1]Feeling
2]Mood
3]Affect
1]Feeling-a kind of conscious experience of sensation, the mental perception of sensory stimulus, a quality of any mental state or mood ,whereby it is recognised as pleasurable or the reverse. The extreme of feelings are termed as pleasure and pains. Pains are represented on the extreme by love and on the other by hate. Feeling is a present state .For example-I feel happy, here happy is the present feeling of that person. A feeling usually last for short time and passes away within a short time.
2]Mood-The pervasive feeling, tone and internal emotional state of an individual which, when impaired, can markedly influence virtually all aspects of a person’s behaviour or his or her perception of external events. Mood is sustained feeling. For example-A melancholic mood ,the boss is in bad mood today.
3]Affect-The emotional feeling, tone, mood attached to a thought ,including its external manifestations. Affect is the expression of the emotion. The behavioural or physical reaction to the feeling or mood is the affect. A person may get violent or sad or breakdown because of his emotional upheaval. This reaction to the emotion is the affect.
Will-The word has originated from the old English “Willia” and from Old saxon “Willio” which means “be pleasing”. Will is the power of determination upon final action and upon the will human achievements largely depends.Will is the capability of conscious choice and decision and intention. Will is as defined above the conscious choice of taking a decision and acting upon it. One may give way to his emotions and not be able to control himself .this is usually taken as lack of his will power. His will took a conscious of not controlling his emotions or his will could not control his emotional outburst. In many cases , the emotion of a person is controlled by his will and the person is able to behave himself in spite of emotional upheaval.The actions which fall under will are behaviour, character mannerism, tics, gestures, gait, facial expressions etc.
3 types of will symptoms-Some of the symptoms are so sanguine , so fixed, so true, and so deeply rooted in the patient that these have made concrete pillars in the field of mind. These may be named as concrete will symptoms. These are of greatest value amongst will symptoms according to Dr.Bidwell. E.g. Anger, Irritability, Indifferent, Sad, etc.
Some symptoms in the mind are not so firmly concrete but their roots can easily be made loose and can totally be uprooted by mental exercise ,meditation and medication. These are called Composed will symptoms. Example- Fear of people, fear of solitude, fear of darkness.
The third type of will symptoms are disturbance in instinct of life preservation and disturbance of social instinct of which the first one shows love and hates to his own life and second one shows loves and hates to others. E.g.-Loathing of life. To know these types of symptoms physician are required to apply their proper knowledge of reasoning and judgement and hence may be termed as Judicial will symptoms.
Some rubrics related to will are-Rage,Violent,malicious,cheerful,affectionate,caressing,aversion,loneliness,aggressive,timid,clinging,dictatorial,impatient,cautious,abrupt,remorse,contemptuous,impulsive,ardent,censorious,childish,fastidious,frivolous,obstinate,weeping,courageous.
Understanding-To know and comprehend the nature and meaning of; to perceive (an idea or situation)mentally, to empathize. An individual registers and interprets only those parts of the world having relevance for its needs. Example-Supposing, we ask a group of people to describe what they saw while travelling by a car, an artist will say the beautiful green hills, a fastidious person will describe the condition of the roads or traffic , hungry person will only see all restaurants and food joints.E.g.-Some rubrics of understanding-Consciosness,delirium,alertness,coma,stupor,thoughts,memory,perception,delusion,illusion,judgement,stupid calculating, etc.
Intelligence-Is defined as the global capacity of the individual to act purposefully, to think rationally and to deal with environment effectively, by using its capacity to acquire and apply knowledge. Intelligence is the ability to learn, understand and power to reason, acquire knowledge, recall, mobilise, and constructively integrate the previous learning in meeting new situations. The power of perceiving and comparison is called intelligence. The intelligent mind symptoms are divided into concrete, composed and judicial. Concrete symptoms are-delusion, hallucinations, imaginations.
Dr.Salden H.Talcott in his book Mental Disease state that-Brain works during evolution of thoughts. Memory is simply a retentive attribute or power of mind. The first condition is that the mind accepts readily only what it most needs or wishes to use. The second is to associate them carefully with things already remembered in such a manner that they may be recalled. The third condition is fixing attention to the subject. Thus we can see brain and mind are so interrelated that we cannot think one without the other. Memory is the power or functions of reproducing and identifying what has been learned or experienced. This function includes learning, retention, recall and recognition.
Concrete memory symptoms are absentminded, forgetful, mistakes etc. Composed memory symptoms are errors in answers, power of concentration, etc. Judicial memory symptoms are capacity for work ,order of speech, difficulties in finding out appropriate words or phrases etc.
Dr.Vithoulkas explains-“Man can live with disturbance in physical plane but if there is disturbance on the mental plane, the person’s very existence is threatened”.
Bibliography/Reference–
1] Dr.Subhash Singh -Mind-A Simplified Study-B.Jain Publishers.
2]Dr.Pallavi Gijare-Aude Sapere-Psychology and Homoeopathy- Vol.5 ,Issue 2,Jan-Feb 2008
3] Tarafdar, D: Repertory Explained.
Dr.Vibhavari Vinayak Pande. MD(Repertory).
Assistant Professor, Repertory Department,
Vamanrao Ithape Homoeopathic Medical College, Sangamner.
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