For those studying naturopathy and psychosomatic medicine the name Ruediger Dahlke opens up a world, a new philosophy regarding the disease and its value.

Dahlke is a German doctor who, after having studied in depth in India, came into contact with wider realities that influenced his approach to medicine and how to apply it in synergy to the conscious maturation of his patients.

He founded some research and study centers in Germany, Austria and even in Italy, where he holds seminars focused on listening to his own body, psychosomatic reading of the main disorders that each of us experiences, the interpretation of illness, fasting and its regenerating virtues.

He wrote manuals to read and reread and consult, such as Illness Language of the Soul-Meaning and interpretation of diseases, Disease and Destiny-the value and the message of illness, Fasting and Awareness, Sleep, the best part of life, Food weight and psyche: psychosomatic interpretation of eating disorders, these are just some of his essays, many written in collaboration with other professionals like Thorwald Dethlefsen.

Illness, language of the Soul

It is not just a title, it is the synthesis of a conception of the individual included in a "great whole", a microcosm made of body, psyche and soul that compares and fuses into a macrocosm made up of multiple dualisms : night, day, summer, winter, spring, autumn, north, south, sun, moon, air, water, earth, fire and we could go on forever, in a process of continuous integration.

" A complete man is made up of Io and Ombra . Together they give life to the Self, that is to the integrated, realized human being. The acceptance and elaboration of the shadow elements that are embodied in the symptoms is consequently the way leading to the discovery of oneself. Diseases are manifestations of the shadow that, emerging from the depths of the soul to the surface of the physical world, become easily accessible "*.

This excerpt reported by Illness, Language of the soul, is the synthesis of psychosomatic thought, which seeks the why of symptoms in depth, going to investigate also those places of shadow of the psyche that may have triggered the pathological path.

Analogy and Symbolism

Dahlke is much more than a doctor in the classical sense: he has investigated in the world of esotericism, of the analogical thought of ancient medicine, Paracelsus and his Microcosm equal to Macrocosm, of the concept " as above, so below, as inside so out " .

To understand the disease, its symptoms, its causes and their levels, the disease must be contemplated according to Dahlke and symbolism and analogy are approaches that contemplate the disease . Symbol derives from the Greek symballein which means "to unite ": to connect putting together all the impressions one receives.

The analogy is the comparative thought through which we activate a measurement process, in which the symbols, the elements we have joined are put in relation. Even traditional medicine, science uses analogical thinking as well as analytical thinking, when you compare and compare with scales, calibrations, just think of body temperature, blood pressure, cholesterol.

Disease fields

" Diseases are fields : each symptom does not only correspond to a bodily form, but also a relative field consisting of models of behavior and strategies of life and survival. In the disease a certain amount of energy is transformed into a fixed structure, which is deeply rooted in the unconscious as a model ”* .

It's the concept of the iceberg: if you see the tip, the Titanic tries to dodge it, but it doesn't deal with the submerged part that prevents it from being maneuvered and makes it vain.

Therapies that do not address the model rooted in the unconscious and approach only the symptoms can certainly lead to a result, but a temporary one . Other scholars like Ménétrier speak of " soil ", to be corrected to cure the disease that develops there.

According to Dahlke's vision, to make a lasting influence on illnesses one must arrive at compensation, because the model does not easily disappear, on the contrary it is an element of balance that is actualized over time . The medicine must therefore take this aspect into account to find a correct therapeutic response that integrates the sick subject, with his manifest illness, his hidden disease and the model from which the tip of the iceberg is manifested.

Also in psychology with Jung we speak of models, or rather of archetypes, vertical models that do not adapt to horizontal scientific reading, made up of logical-causal and chronological aspects. The archetypes move in a synchronic and analogical world, and Jungian psychotherapy seeks the awareness of the whys.

Illness as a possibility

Dahlke states that illness must be considered both as a condition that makes us sincere because it reveals to us what we do not want to accept, and as a condition rich in meaning to which a function is attributable . " From the first point of view there is a painful model and a course of the illness of which we have no conscience. Acceptance of this model and its message can lead us to the second level and transform a painful experience into a ritual that makes growth possible "*

(*) Language Language of the Soul, Ruediger Dahlke