A repertory of mental themes for the case where the patient’s state is clear but no single rubric holds it: Jeremy Sherr’s Q Rep, the Repertory of Mental Qualities.
Sherr’s observation is that a theme such as caring for others or money can be spread over hundreds of rubrics, and that themes such as feeling trapped or divided are often fragmented into smaller rubrics or missing. Q Rep gathers each theme into one inclusive rubric, so the theme can be taken into an analysis as a single rubric. Sherr built it rubric first rather than remedy first: two or more experienced Homeopaths drew up the remedy lists separately and compared them, and every entry was then checked against its source in provings, materia medicas or cases. Degrees follow the quality of the information rather than how often a symptom appears; Lac-f. gets four points in “Fear of sharp things” because the symptom is so marked in the remedy, although a single prover produced it.
Beside each main rubric sits a Primary rubric, which lists remedies that have the theme as a major and essential characteristic, small remedies included. Sherr says to use it only when the issue is intense and essential to the case. Sherr says the idea rests on Bönninghausen’s concept of generalisation, and that the Primary rubrics set beside it the Boger-Phatak approach of listing only the most prominent remedies.
The multilingual edition shows English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and German translations side by side. New in this version: four further qualities, more remedies in existing rubrics (lanthanide salts, gemstones and noble gases among them), and adjusted degrees. Marks run from four (primary remedies, in red capitals, underlined) to one (experimental, in black).
Luke Norland: “Q Rep makes sense of this muddle by joining together fragmented rubrics that have overlapping meanings.” See the Q Rep page on radaropus.com for Sherr’s own account.
