Repertory › Remedies in the repertory

Natrium muriaticum (Nat‑m.)

Natrium muriaticum (Nat‑m.) appears in 2,554 rubrics in the Repertory. Of these, 101 are single-remedy rubrics in which only this remedy is listed, and 232 are small rubrics with at most two other remedies. The emphasis lies on Children, Fear, Ailments from grief and disappointment, Delusions, Anxiety, Sadness, and Weeping. From these emerges the picture of a person who does not let go of hurts, rejects consolation, withdraws, and keeps the feelings under strict control, while they come forth at night and in half-sleep.

Grief and Disappointment

The core lies in the after-effects. The ailments from grief, death of loved ones, mortification, punishment, and disappointed love are recorded in great number, and a single-remedy rubric records that even a long-past disappointment still brings on ailments: "Ailments from – disappointment – old, past disappointment." The person cannot get free of it. The person dwells on past disagreeable occurrences, on disappointments, and on his own childhood, and does so for the purpose of grieving: "Dwells – past disagreeable occurrences, on – grieving, to grieve over them." The grief acts on the body, on hair, oral mucosa, legs, voice, and sensitiveness to light, and one bereavement after another is also recorded. The rubrics suggest that what counts here is less a single event than the way it is kept inwardly.

Consolation, Pity, and Suffering as Possession

The person resists consolation. The person rejects kind words about his own misfortune, and becomes even angrier or sadder from consolation ("Consolation – refuses – misfortune, about his own"). Pity is feared, and the person has the delusion of being pitied and therefore weeps. The sadness is enjoyed, it is unending, persists at the seashore, in chronic diseases, and after exertion. From this grows a peculiar dignity: single-remedy rubrics name pride in one's own suffering ("Pride – suffering, in his own"), power exercised through suffering ("Power – exercise through suffering"), and the passion for the path of suffering. One can read in this an attitude in which suffering has become a possession that no one is to touch.

Withdrawal and Closeness at a Distance

The relationship is marked by distance. Only this remedy has the rubric of keeping relationships at a distance, and alongside it the longing for relationship; entering into a bond becomes impossible. The person avoids glances. When spoken to, he looks at the wall ("Looking – wall, at the, when spoken to"), and children respond to being addressed morosely and dejectedly. The person likes solitude, wants to be left alone in fever-free periods, creeps about like a ghost, feels unnoticed, and has aversion to being photographed and to fuss and ado. And yet many people confide in him; he is loyal in relationships and persistent in love.

Control and Its Price

The feelings are held back. Anger cannot be expressed, the weeping is controlled, some are never angry, and the hatred is persistent but not acted out. What accumulates comes out otherwise: in pinching in children who want to show feelings this way ("Pinching – children, in – to show feelings"), in loud, stormy grief, in paralysis from anger, and in the rage that arises only from consolation. The small rubrics show a tendency to punctuality and planning ahead, to procrastinated work, and to impertinence of subordinates toward superiors. In the mind, beside the grief stands silence from obstinacy.

Anxiety and Fear

The fear is widely scattered: of insanity in the evening in bed, of death in bed, of thunderstorm, which drives out of bed at night, of bees, of long work, of being pitied, and of hurting others. The anxiety has a coloring of conscience, in dream as in grief, and revolves around the question of what is to become of her or him. The rubrics on thieves are striking: the person dreams of burglars, on waking takes the dream for true and believes the opposite only when the house has been searched; at night he looks for them. The king-pin symptom reads "Anxiety – alternating with – indifference": the anxiety about what may become alternates with an indifference in which no effort to improve the situation is made any longer. This alternation shapes the picture: one who was just worrying does nothing in the next moment.

Children

With 360 rubrics, the Child is the largest main rubric. The child is morose when spoken to, screams sobbing as a newborn, thrives poorly with deficient nourishment or with emaciation of the buttocks, and desires serious, classical music. The child is angry with the parents, is afraid in water of sharks and toads, and puts off work. A child that cannot show feelings pinches so that they will be shown. This fits the control of the adults.

Night, Falling Asleep, and Sexuality

The night brings forth what was repressed. On falling asleep verses, rhymes, and poems arise, vivid fancies, and in half-sleep a flood of thoughts. At five o'clock at night comes anxiety, at midnight restlessness, and in the evening the person is lascivious, in bed voluptuous; the rubrics also record, however, a feeling of distance during coition, painful coition from dryness, and ailments from sexual abstinence in men. The wish for the ideal woman or the ideal man stands beside it.

Summary

Natrium muriaticum appears in the Repertory as a person who keeps a mortification and draws dignity from keeping it. He rejects consolation and pity, keeps closeness at a distance, and controls his feelings until they break forth at night, in dreams, in poems, and in the behavior of the children. The anxiety about the future alternates with an indifference that undertakes nothing more.

A reference work for professionals; it does not replace diagnosis or treatment.