Repertory › Remedies in the repertory

Platina (Plat.)

Platina (Plat.) appears in 1,855 rubrics in the repertory. Of these, 124 are single rubrics in which only this remedy appears, and 190 are small rubrics with at most two other remedies. The emphasis lies on Delusions, Fear, Sadness, Laughing and Contemptuous, plus religion, sexuality and the rubrics on Children. Together they yield the picture of a person who exalts herself above others, secures this exaltation morally and aesthetically, and whose mood beneath the surface shifts without hold between elation, despair and fear.

Exaltation of the self

At the center of the Delusions is one's own greatness. The repertory lists the feeling of being an extraordinary person, chosen, noble, all-powerful and of aristocratic descent, up to the idea of being the queen or of belonging to a noble family and not fitting into one's own family. Greatness is experienced spatially: everything in the room appears diminished while the person herself is tall and sublime, as in the rubric "Delusions – diminished – everything in the room is diminished while she is tall and sublime." After a walk, on entering the house, the people seem mentally and physically inferior, while her own body seems too large. Only Platina is assigned the idea of a mission: "Delusions – mission, has a." Matching this self-assessment are the demands the rubrics list: on her own person, on the partner and on the surroundings, plus high-set goals and the expectation that her opinion be respected.

Contempt and the king-pin symptom

From the exaltation follows contempt. It is directed against society, mankind and relatives, against women and against men, and it can be racially or religiously colored. One single rubric records that everything is beneath her own level, another that she looks down on everyone else. The attitude is not subject to her own will: contempt in attacks, contempt against her own will and a contemptuous look at people that she herself does not want are listed. The king-pin symptom sums up the attitude in a rubric that also shows its two faces: "Contemptuous – harsh toward subordinates and amiable toward superiors or people of whom she/he is afraid." A small rubric on impertinence of employees toward superiors corresponds to it, and it fits that authorities are only sought out. The whole relation to others seems to follow a rank order: those below are devalued, those above are courted.

Correctness and bearing

The exaltation needs a facade. A single rubric, recurring in several wordings, names a person who shrinks from "everything vulgar and coarse, excessively moral and correct." Beside it stand pedantry in trifles, fastidiousness about her own appearance, decency, extravagant taste and controlled gestures. On the other side of this bearing there evidently stands the fear of social decline and of falling. Part of the demarcation toward the outside are the feeling of being separated and disconnected, the excluding of persons against her own will and reserve in the open air. In action, by contrast, the repertory lists little sense of order as a source of squandering and a busy absent-mindedness without effect.

Laughing, weeping and sadness

The mood is seldom stable. Laughing appears frequently in the wrong place: in inappropriate places, spasmodic, at serious matters in the open air, contemptuous, during the menses and between convulsions. It alternates with taciturnity, with weeping and with fear of death, and ends in sadness. The rubrics on Sadness and tenderness are built on the same pattern: sadness alternates with loving behavior, with mildness and with tenderness, irritability with mildness, morose mood with affection. Sadness is linked with midnight, with entering the house, with betrayal and with sexual excitement; sunshine ameliorates it. Finally there are mental symptoms that appear when physical symptoms disappear, and the reverse. This can be read as a mood that replaces a bodily ailment and is replaced by it.

Fear

Fear concerns death, reason, cancer and violent events: being hanged, strangled or throttled, the proximity of knife and gun with the desire to kill, orgasm and rape. The fear of death is particularly finely articulated. It occurs after a fright, in anger or with the loss of reason, and one rubric names it alternating with laughing and weeping: "Fear, phobia – death, of – alternating with laughing and weeping." Only Platina also knows anxiety precisely about the pleasant: "Anxiety – pleasurable things, from highly." It is also listed as anguish from excessive joy. One who is threatened by the beautiful evidently experiences enjoyment as loss of control. Fear of serious thoughts and fear of excitement fit with this.

Religion, morality and sexuality

An unusual number of rubrics run between piety and eroticism. Religious affections combine with haughtiness, lasciviousness and cruelty, with taciturnity, with the desire for penance and with sexual excitement; a single rubric names anxiety about salvation: "Anxiety – salvation, about – hell, of." On the other side stand religious egotism and religious haughtiness. Sexuality includes an erotic and a strong charisma, lewdness at every touch, nymphomania, hysteria at the climax, a conflict about one's own sexuality and uncertainty of sexual identity, but also platonic love. The contradiction lies in the fact that a strict self-image tries to monitor a strong drive that only hints at itself in attacks, in fear and in contempt.

Children and childbirth

Among the rubrics on Children (134) are stinginess, avarice and envy, increased sexual desire in little girls and hysterical erotomania. The attitude toward children is not untroubled; a single rubric describes the aversion to having children because they would impair life and the world is too bad. Around pregnancy and delivery are grouped puerperal mania with dancing, singing and indecent talk, puerperal fever with anxiety and sensitivity to terrible stories during delivery.

Summary

In the repertory Platina shows an exaltation that does not hold up inwardly. The person places herself above others and fortifies this gradient through correctness, distance and entitlement; beneath it remains a mobile, easily tipping state of mind in which laughing, weeping and fear replace one another. The fear concerns the fall and the loss of control, even in what is pleasant, and contempt downward and eager attentiveness upward appear as two sides of the same order.

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