title: Toward a topological description of the therapeutic process: part 2. Practitioner and patient perspectives of the "journey to cure".
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The discourse of quantum theory has been used to describe (1) the homeopathic therapeutic process (in terms of three-way macro-entanglement between patient, practitioner, and remedy, called PPR entanglement), and (2) the homeopathic concept of the vital force.
  
  
  METHODS
  Combining these two approaches leads to a semiotic (i.e., pertaining to the theory of sign systems in language) geometry that illustrates the nature of this entanglement and how it could facilitate the patient's journey to cure. Here, this geometry is extended further to gain insight into both practitioner and patient perspectives of the process.
  
  
  RESULTS
  From the practitioner's perspective, the semiotic geometry predicts PPR entanglement, generating a number of distinguishable therapeutic outcomes that depend on the various patient-, disease-, and remedy-based "contributions" to the overall symptom picture of the remedy arrived at holistically. Furthermore, these outcomes may be seen as different facets of a more generalized PPR entangled state whose semiotic geometrical representation is hyperdimensional. Likewise, the patient's perspective of the journey to cure can also be represented semiotically, this time as a series of cross-sections through a hyperdimensional figure of similar symmetry, entering and leaving the patient's notional "dis-ease" space.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The semiotic geometries representing practitioner and patient experiences of the therapeutic process ultimately converge. Where they differ is that in elaborating the patient's journey to cure, the practitioner's perspective may be seen as from the outside of a whole process. As it is the patient who ultimately is traveling this journey, the patient's perspective is necessarily from the inside, of stages or cross-sections of the whole process.
authors.affiliation: Program for Advanced Homeopathic Studies, London, UK. Lionel.milgrom@hotmail.com
authors.forename: Lionel R
authors.initials: LR
authors.lastname: Milgrom
mesh_terms: D006694:Holistic Health; D006705:Homeopathy; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008419:Materia Medica; D019365:Metaphor; D011369:Professional-Patient Relations; D011789:Quantum Theory; D014799:Vitalism
chemical_list: D008419:Materia Medica