Schroyens F. - The Essential Synthesis - Foreword

Foreword for the Essential Synthesis
by Dr. Frederik Schroyens
The Essential Synthesis is a repertory offering that information which has proved
to be essential.
The homeopathic community has for a long time been demanding to include
new information in the repertories as fast as possible. While we have not been
yielding uncritically to that request, our primary dedication has always been to
offer quality. Of course, each edition of Synthesis did offer more new information
and countless corrections.
In that evolution, it has been our goal to add more classical, verified information
as well as more contemporary information. Throughout this has been a very
difficult balancing act, because no two homeopaths would agree about what
needs to be done.
Especially after the publication of edition 9.1 (2004), homeopathic colleagues
requested me to put more emphasis on reliable information. Teachers were
strongly voicing their opinion with their students in mind. This edition of
Synthesis is the reply to that demand.
Back to basics?
Before explaining more, let me point out an interesting coincidence in the
evolution of our community. Over the last few years, a new motto is appearing,
which could be summarized as "back to basics". If you look at the themes of
upcoming congresses, you cannot miss it:
 The annual LIGA Congress in Mexico is held with the slogan "Returning to
Hahnemann" (August 2007)
 In Ettlingen (Germany) a international congress is being organized,
reviving the pioneer's association "International Hahnemann Congress" to
"advance the scientific development of homeopathy on the basis of its
founding principles." (September 2007)
 The North American Academy of Veterinary Homeopathy holds its annual
conference around the theme "The Legacy of Hahnemann" (October 2007)
 The journal Homeopathic Links has been the voice for most of the
progressive ideas and is celebrating its 20 years with a Congress, end of
October 2007. I am entranced that a goal of this congress is to "clarify how
the different strands of development are linked with the fundamentals of
classical homeopathy".
I believe that the better slogan would be "back to essentials" as basics are those
elements which are easy, evident and not in need of explanation. Essentials on
the other hand tend to be forgotten, but need to be focused on again and again if
we want to remain successful.
This is exactly where the name Essential Synthesis comes from: a repertory
offering that information which has proved to be essential.
The Essential View

How did we achieve that?
You may know that Synthesis, as a software, offers different views of the
Repertory. Depending upon your repertory view you may see more or less
information, with more or less reliability. The Quantum View displays more
conservative information and therefore excludes two types of information:
 hypothetical information such as based on theoretical approaches and also
dream provings and meditation provings.
 more recent provings or contemporary information which has not yet been
repeatedly confirmed in the clinic.
We have carefully reviewed the Quantum View so to adhere very strictly to these
criteria. So carefully that we decided to give it another name: the Essential View,
basis for the Essential Synthesis.
In other words: to obtain the Essential Synthesis, information has been removed
from the Full Synthesis. The Essential Synthesis offers you those author
references, those remedies and those symptoms which have proven their value
and reliability repeatedly.
Full Synthesis comes with information from 905 author references, the Quantum
View still considers 662 and the Essential Synthesis selects the 583 most reliable
author references. Full Synthesis describes 2.375 remedies, the Essential
Synthesis assists you to prescribe any of 1.990 remedies.
For the fine tuning of this concept, I relied as usually on a whole team of people
and I want to thank especially: Dale Emerson (Belgium), Erik Van Woensel
(Netherlands), Kim Elia (USA), Nishant and Kuldeep Jain (India), Peter Vint
(Germany), Phil Edmonds (England), René Otter (Netherlands) and Reinhard
Rosé (Germany) for the hard work and the following colleagues for the inspiring
communications: Anthony Bickley (England), Barbara Turk (England), Bernhard
Bloesy (Germany), George Vithoulkas (Greece), Jochen Rohwer (Germany), Marc
Brunson (Belgium), Mike Andrews (England), Misha Norland (England), Nick
Avery (England), Rob Willemse (Netherlands) and Robert Schore (USA).
The Treasure
Even if there is less information now, there is some most important new
information compared to Synthesis 9.1. The Essential Synthesis contains Kent's
Treasure, as it is really a trimmed down version of the Synthesis Treasure Edition
(version 9.2 for those who prefer numbers).
The Treasure of Kent indicates the information J.T. Kent annotated in his
personal copy of his own Repertory. The story of how this information became
available can be found in an article further in this Textbook. Let me summarize it
by stating that I believe that this is probably the best clinical information of one
of the best homeopaths ever which now becomes available in print.
The author references related to the Treasure are k1a1, k1b1, k1b2 and k9. You
will find the precise explanation on the CD. More important is to honor Ahmed
Currim (USA) for his persistence and generosity to share this work of excellence
with us. A long time has elapsed between our initial conversations in Toronto
(Canada) and at his home in Fairfield, CT (USA) and the final set up of the job
during the LIGA Congress in Berlin (2005). But now, with the help of Paul
Debruyn (Belgium) the job has been done with accuracy.
Some 11.368 additions and corrections noted by Kent in his personal copies of
different editions of his Repertory have been integrated as well as 333
handwritten additions as noted by Kent in his copy of Hering's "Guiding
Symptoms" .
Content of the Textbook

We have printed a separate Textbook in order to make the Repertory part as
small as possible. The users of Synthesis 8.1 very much appreciated this in the
past.
The actual textbook contains:
 The foreword by the editor
 For the first time, we have a chapter with veterinary information printed. It
contains all veterinary interesting symptoms and all remedies of a
veterinary origin. There is also a list of veterinary concepts leading to the
related symptoms. This list has proven most useful for the beginning
veterinary homeopaths in the software and becomes now available in the
printed format.
 A limited list of remedy abbreviations (only those remedies present in the
book). There is no list of author abbreviations as the book does not contain
any.
 An index of keywords referring to page numbers in Synthesis
 Then again something new: we have added a very extended list of
localizations. In the alphabetical list you can search for a localization and
you will find in which chapter symptoms of this localization can be found.
Sometimes the answer will be more than one chapter, which will help you
to not overlook the symptoms you need.
 Finally, an article by Dr. Ahmed Currim explaining in detail the history and
the value of the Treasure.
Content of the CD
The CD offers a read only version of the Essential Synthesis with all author
references and all cross references.
We printed a maximum of 3 cross references, referring to the biggest rubrics, so
that the book gives the most practical proposals first.
What will strike you is that no author references have been printed. I have
always stated that, as in any scientific publication, source referencing is a must.
In fact I did not change my opinion. The CD brings you all the source referencing
you can possibly want.
All authors in the book have a minimum reliability so that immediate checking
of the source becomes less needed.
In this regard I want to emphasize that we printed the remedies copied to the
superrubrics in the pain sections and in the mind section, as we did in Synthesis
9.1. Therefore the Essential Synthesis will offer you instant access to the hitherto
hidden times, sides, modalities, localizations, etc. which became visible because
of restructuring the Repertory1.
We did not print rubrics which contain only Boger Bönninghausen remedies,
such as "Mind - Morning". Similarly, we did not print the typical Boger
Bönninghausen chapters “Neck”, “Male and female genitialia/sex” nor “Urinary
organs”. We printed the b-bg remedies in other rubrics if they were completing
an existing rubric.
1
You find a more detailed explanation of this major advantage in the Editor's foreword to
Edition 9.1.
The CD also contains the usual "Textbook for Repertory Language", including
an explanation of 1.500 key symptoms, full catalogues of remedies and author
references, a families database, a relationship of remedies database, etc.
A Repertorization grid can be printed as many times as you wish to facilitate

your manual repertorizations.
Content and form

I did not yet mention another concern which the Essential Synthesis addresses.
As the different editions became larger, so did the number of people requesting a
lighter repertory.
With edition 9.1 we addressed this among others with a smaller font, which
made the book harder to use for a number of homeopaths. Now we have
increased the font again one step and also the removal of the author references
will make the remedy abbreviations more readable.
Still the concern is there to have a manageable book: one the student can easily
take to school, the homeopath can take to the bedside or to the seminar.
By addressing the first concern, we do have a smaller and lighter book. In
addition, we have further fine tuned our lay out with the help of Peter Vint
(Germany) and Emmanuel Warnier (who has been working with us since
Synthesis 5).
Synthesis 8.1 was weighing 2,020 kg (4,45 lb), Synthesis 9.1: 2,330 kg ( 5,14 lb).
Now we are proud to offer you a very manageable book of a smaller size and yet
weighing just about 1,300 kg (2,9 lb).
The care that has been taken to optimize the form is also illustrated by the size of
our test chapter "Chest". The first version counted 104 pages, the final one 91
pages.
Thank you very much to the B. Jain family for the nice printing work and for
making a thumb index affordable. Many thanks also to the proof reading team
with An Aerts and Gerd Van Brandt (Belgium) for the tedious but crucial work.
At last, but not least, I want to say that the Essential Synthesis is an additional
version to the Full Synthesis 9.1 which has been printed already. The software
users have had this choice for a long time. It seems that now the time has come
that also book users can choose to either use the Full Synthesis or the Essential
Synthesis.
You will choose the Full Synthesis if you want to use modern provings and
contemporary clinical experiences.
For a long time an increasing part of the homeopathic community has been
pushing the repertory editors with a "the more, the better" cry. Fortunately, it
took only a mouse click to remove unwanted information from the software
version.
Now the Essential Synthesis book comes with the "less is more" motto: a
repertory stripped down to its essential information!
We wish you a good reception of our work and efficient results in your practice.
Dr. Frederik Schroyens

Gent, August 4, 2007

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Foreword for the Essential Synthesis

by Dr. Frederik Schroyens

The Essential View

Content of the Textbook

A Repertorization grid can be printed as many times as you wish to facilitate

Content and form

Dr. Frederik Schroyens

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