Dr.
Edward Bach, pioneering naturopath and probably the founding father of modern aromatherapy, catalogued thirty-eight floral and herbal essences with potent mood and mind-altering effects.
A hard-minded scientist, Bach collected exceptionally detailed case studies, noting the essences' effects on every patient he treated, and scrupulously demanding corroborative information from his colleagues and apprentices.
We very strongly recommend you visit the Bach Center in England to see how Bach's theories and practices have evolved and how skilled naturopaths apply them today.
We expect that, when some ambitious graduate student finally writes an unabridged and unbiased history of psychotherapy, Bach will take his proper place among the greatest modern experimental psychologists and the twentieth century's finest clinical researchers.
Meanwhile, you can reap the benefits of Bach's research without a trip to England or a twenty-pound dissertation.
The formula for Bach's well-known Rescue Remedy appears on hundreds of websites, many of which include unsolicited testimonials to the formula's benefits.
Although Bach essences have found great acceptance and even wide use not just for people but among veterinarians and animal rescuers, a growing body of research and case histories documents' the Bach essences' benefits for children and adolescents.
We have good reason to predict the Bach essences will become psychiatrists' and psychologists "complementary" medicines-of-choice for adolescent depression and anxiety, because they have proven their effectiveness and they carry no risk of side effects.
The simple recipe for Rescue Remedy reveals not only Bach's amazing botanical knowledge but also his uncanny knack for astute, accurate observation and description of human emotions.
The Bach essences formula includes impatiens to mitigate, naturally, impatience, and also to reduce "agitation" resulting from pain.
The remedy also includes Star of Bethlehem to relieve fright, shock, and grief.
Although the combination, at first, seems vaguely contradictory, disciples of Elizabeth Kubler Ross will testify shock and fright precede "denial" in the stages of grief; most people react to life-changing loss, first, with shock, and subsequently with fright about the loss's ramifications and consequences.
These emotions, too, probably manifest as "agitation," but they require different treatment.
He also added clematis to combat feelings of being stunned and to guard against over-reaction.
Freud fans immediately will recognize disproportionate emotional reaction as the leading symptom of "neurosis.
"Bach's rescue formula does not really stand out as his greatest accomplishment here; instead, his insight into emotions and affects distinguishes his work.
Bach added cherry plum to the rescue mix, because it helps people control hysteria, and it restores the mechanisms of self-control, dissipating or dispelling people's fear of "losing it.
" Almost all of our most popular "happy and flirty" perfumes contain cherry plum, because it promotes optimism-clearly the antidote to abject fear of losing control.
Bach numbers among the first and still few to recognize the undeniable link between hysteria and self-conscious anxiety about compromising one's dignity.
Bach himself describes the state as "fear of the mind giving way.
" In the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, paralytic anxiety about public humiliation ranks high among the symptoms of what we now call "social anxiety," and the conventional wisdom holds it originates in exactly that fear of the mind giving way.
Complementing and supplementing cherry plum, rock rose relieves terror and panic.
Left untreated, anxiety easily escalates to panic.
Bach numbered among the first psychotherapists to acknowledge and act on progressive states of emotional distress.