British HomceopathicJournal

January 1990, Vol. 79, pp. 36-38

Staphysagria in psychiatry
JACQUELINE BARBANCEY, MD

The various materia medicas give us several

quite different images of Staphysagria, which
may surprise and puzzle the students and new
practitioners of homeeopathy.
Staphysagria is sometimes given as similimum
with people who show a very sad outward
appearance and the following features:

veratrine or curare, causing excitation followed

by a succession of depressive symptoms.
T h e r e is therefore no contradiction in the
apparently
paradoxical
indications
of

Staphysagria:
--susceptible, irascible, hot-tempered people, some features of whose character are reminiscent of Lycopodium, who are unable to express the stress repressing
them, but, inside are full of an impotent rage.
~:lepressive, apathetic people, whose memory is failing,
having obsessions of sexual nature (either from lack of
satisfaction or from painful memories), suffering
(sometimes for a long time) from humiliations, vexations and from unhealed moral injuries.

--surly, verminous children with prematurely decayed

teeth.
--thin, sad, asthenic, impotent men,
--nymphomaniac women with irritating and foul
secretions,
-----old men with prostatism, with urinary frequency and
incontinence and weak memory,
~depressed patients with bone pains at night, with chalazae, and scabby, itching, oozing dermatitis,
--and, above all, a common and characteristic feature:
erotic obsessions, masturbation, sexual indignation
which are responsible, more or less openly, for the
complaints.

In both cases the psychic strongly affects the

physical, especially in the thorax and a b d o m e n ;
it is correct to say that Staphysagria is a typically
psychosomatic medicine and that the image
which has been given of it, for too long, as the
medicine of 'sexual repression' has distorted the
understanding of it and reduced its use.
A long time ago, I verified the extreme frequency with which Staphysagria is indicated in
psychiatric pathology; not usually as a result of
any kind of 'excessive onanism' (a far less
reliable symptom than in Rana bufo) or 'sexual
sins' as Boericke has it. I wonder what a new proving of Staphysagria would produce upon the
healthy individual of 1989 with his erotic reactions very different from those of the doctors of
1850. I underline: 'erotic reactions' and not sexual physiological reactions, that is to say, behaviour towards sexuality and abilty to integrate
impulses, or the way in which they are repressed,
the l a t t e r being particularly relevant in this
context.
It may be of help in people who suffer sexual
obsessions (they still exist!) but it should now be
given much less frequently on the basis of this
traditional indication and rather on the basis of
careful observation and attentive listening to the
patient, her complaints, ailments and the biography which presents and expresses that which
he cannot spontaneously express; his truth, the
real cause of his state, leading to the prescription

A n o t h e r image of this medicine is that of sensitive and irritable individuals, heavy smokers,
with a canine appetite:
--irascible to such an extent that they may throw things in
the face of any opponent, or throw objects into the fire
out of spite, having lost all self-control,
--prone to gastro-intestinal colic after having felt themselves attacked or when they believe it has been so--sad
and apathetic after injury to their self-respect,
--with an easily upset, disturbed mind and with such
indignation that they may suffer thought disorders or
confusion, walking and talking restlessly.
--whose psycho-sexual excitability is only mentioned
secondarily.
It is possible to integrate the first image (which
is almost exclusively given by Boericke, Duprat,
Lathoud and a few m o d e r n authors) with the
second (found in Jahr, Kent, H o d i a m o n t and in
some recent materia medicas) resulting in a synthesis which is very useful for dynamic understanding of the patient and more accurate
prescribing.
Both aspects seem to originate in the biphasic
effects of delphinine, the active alkaloid of Staphysagria, which can be compared with those of
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