Homeopathic Analysis

Here is the problems of analyzing amorphous data.  When you have a pile of anthropological data gathered from fieldwork, you have to organize it so others can understand it.

Homeopahthy is so much better. You have a pile of data taken from your patient interview.  Again, you need to organize that data, but the outcome is healing for the patient.  Not a publication, but real world change.  

I was always fascinated by how you organize that fieldwork data.  I had been doing fieldwork for about a year.  So I had a lot of data.  I had a high temperature and was slighlty dizzy.  I had my data printed out and it was sitting on the bed in a stack.  I think I had two print outs.  Anyway, I got a big scissors and began cutting apart the paper based on themes that I thought I saw, I threw them into separate piles.  Like Boenninghausen throwing rubrics into a shoe box, I was throwing data that symbolized themes for an unconscious level of understanding of my data.  I was just making piles.  

At that point, I should have begun writing about each pile, each theme. Instead, I began sorting each pile in linear fashion.  I did not write a wonderful dissertation because I had no analystical tools to decide what to throw out.  Also, as we discussed, no one around me had the ability to focus and to talk.  More accurately, listening was not a valued skill.

Now after I take a case, I do essentially the same thing.  I am a follower of Paul Herscu.  I throw his themes into piles.  It all seems arbitrary at the beginning.  Remember I had a fever and was dizzy.  That never changes.