Year: 2012
Type: dissertation
Abstract: After twenty years of practising and teaching homeopathy, I am concerned that research into \ntreatment by professional homeopaths has become stifled by evidence based medicine \ndiscourse. Homeopathy’s distinguishing features are obscured by erroneous assumptions that a \nhomeopathic prescription is subject to the same biochemical pathways as pharmacological \nmedication. Homeopaths are urged by external parties to ‘prove homeopathy works’ on \nbiomedical terms. This reflexive inquiry is an attempt to redress the balance. From postmodern \nand pragmatic perspectives I reflexively engage with professional experiences (Smith, 2009) as \na means of articulating practitioner based knowledge (Freshwater and Rolfe, 2001, Rolfe et al., \n2001). The subjectivity of the practitioner researcher is transformed from a research problem \ninto an opportunity to critically examine practitioner experience (Lees and Freshwater, 2008). \nThe research process is a focus for the inquiry itself, with the intention of creating an open text \nthat invites participation from the reader (Denzin and Lincoln, 1994). I ‘take the case’ of my own \npractice and its wider context, and enact a synergy of homeopathic practice and research \nmethodologies. The thesis is organised around the eight principles of homeopathy. Case \nvignettes and homeopathy’s visual iconography (Cherry, 2008) are used to integrate clinical \nexperience into the thesis. Multiple analytical strategies evolved, including discourse analysis, \naction research, narrative analysis and writing as inquiry. These are not applied to pre-existing \nprofessional experiential data (Lees, 2005), but engaging with these strategies has shaped data \ncreation and the inquiry itself. Use of multiple methods is not an attempt to triangulate, rather \nthe dissonance between them is essential to achieving competing and multiple perspectives on \nprofessional experience. There is no intention to present a discrete set of findings. The inquiry is \nframed through the inquiry process, creating an innovative approach to practitioner based \ninquiry as a collage of reflexive, experiential interpretations and interactions with professional \npractice. I redefine evidence as being the inquiry process itself and the practitioner as integral to \nknowledge creation and application in practice. The open dialogic text invites practitioners to \nadapt this model of practitioner based research in their own practices. The self-critical iterative \ndialogue gives voice to the practitioner researcher in discourses that are congruent with \nhomeopathic practice. I make original contributions to knowledge by examining homeopathic \npractice from different theoretical and experiential perspectives, including observations on the \nconnections between homeopathy’s enduring popularity and how the patients’ own belief \nsystems about health and illness are still influenced by the old humoural system of medicine.
Author: Juliet Louise Smith
Language: English
Subfield: Complementary and alternative medicine
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2125234182