Hamer

Thoughts on Dr. Hamer’s 'German New Medicine'

positing a purely emotional genesis of cancer

On the impact of environmental toxins, nutritional deficiencies, energetic and spiritual influences

I am fascinated by Dr. Hamer's novel approach to the causation of cancer and other diseases and believe that it contains some ground-breaking truths. Dr. Hamer in my eyes is an outstanding genius and pioneer who has broken major new ground in the field of medicine, health, disease and healing. That said, I do have a number of serious objections as to the soundness of what seems to amount to a claim of having found absolute truth ...

What strikes me from the outset is the following puzzling observation: if the sole true cause of cancer indeed lies in unresolved (unexpected) shocks and conflicts etc., why then is there so much more cancer and other illness than before, such as cancer rates which have increased fiftyfold over the last 100 years.

It seems highly unlikely that this increase in malignant disease incidence should correlate with a corresponding fiftyfold rise in unexpected stress, shock and trauma levels, especially since the increase observed has been happening gradually, regularly and continuously.

Nutritional & environmental factors

What seems more likely in my eyes is that this increase is directly related to (at least) two factors:

(1) rising overall environmental toxicity levels on the one hand (e.g. there have been c. 100,000 new chemicals introduced into our environment and living space over the last 86 years) and

(2) soils and food supplies becoming more and more denatured, demineralized, devitalized and processed on the other,

both leading in their turn to internal toxic pollution and a number of nutritional deficiencies both of which weaken the human body and its cellular terrain’s capacity to uphold homeostasis and healthy functioning in the face of toxic aggression.

To give an example of the former connection, there is a strong correlation between water fluoridation and rising cancer incidence: a few years after the introduction of fluoridation cancer rates increased in the affected areas.

Another example (among many possible ones) would be the observed link between breast cancer incidence and chest exposure to ionizing radiation (fluoroscopy / mammography / medical X-rays) and the vast amount of novel electromagnetic fields (EMFs) and their suspected link to cancer and/or other health concerns.

For powerful illustrations of the highly probable contributing role of nutritional deficiencies and dietary cellular toxins in cancer causation, I would point the reader to the article The importance of minerals and trace elements for health and cancer prevention as well as Dr. Johanna Budwig’s diet & protocol.

So while stressful emotional factors would continue to play a role in negatively affecting normal cellular functioning and health as studied and elaborated on by Dr. Hamer, their "cancer-causing potential" would be highly magnified by assaultive environmental and nutritional factors.

These latter, both in themselves and in combination, constitute stressful and weakening influences for the cells of the human body and render them less able to naturally resist deleterious (and possibly disease-causing) influences such as conflicted emotions.

In fact, Annette Stahel’s interpretation of New Medicine elegantly incorporates these environmental and nutritional factors into a very “holistic” view of Dr. Hamer’s German New Medicine.

Beyond DHS^[1]: additional factors that decide on health or disease?

To start with, several people have observed that a “death wish” is a cancer cause or common trait found in cancer patients, see for instance Dr. Zimmermann’s observations and those of a spiritual healer who healed himself of lymphoma.

Following is an “inverted example” showing that it can’t be true that disease (and particularly cancer) invariably arises from unexpected and unresolved DHS shocks and conflicts, with “conflict resolution” [or spiritual acceptance] providing the sole saving grace: a real-life story of someone who experienced multiple DHSs without resolution but who didn’t develop illness.

This true story also points to additional (healing) factors playing a part in whether illness ensues or health is maintained (or reestablished):

A person I know (I will call her Grace) experienced something in early adolescence which literally "ended her world". The following years, she thought of killing herself a thousand times (and also made a real suicide attempt with hospital stay, and another half-hearted attempt to take her own life).

She never talked about this devastating event to anyone until undergoing primal therapy ten years later. She was too ashamed and shocked by it (no, it wasn't a rape, it was worse and purely experienced on the emotional plane [she experienced rape as well, but much later]).

Many years afterwards, she still psychologically grapples with its aftermath. She is enormously assisted in this by her vastly expanded outlook on life which includes insights into the deeper meaning of suffering as a teacher of higher qualities, the concept of ‘karma’, simultaneous time, probable realities etc.

Additionally, this adolescent "DHS event" had mirrored the devastating "end of her world" which she already experienced when her beloved father (whose pet she was) died when she was only two, with her family "turning into hell" as a consequence.

After neither of these classical DHS events (defined as "totally unexpected, taking the person on the wrong foot, experienced in utter hellish loneliness and sensed as the most serious, dramatic and devastating shock they had ever known") did she develop cancer or other noticeable health effects or illness as she "should" have according to the findings of Dr. Hamer.

So what happened? Are there additional factors and mechanisms involved before a body develops a manifest case of cancer, beyond the factors Dr. Hamer discovered and observed? What could they be?

What immediately springs to mind in the above case is the following: about two years after the event, Grace read about a starvation catastrophe that had recently killed 1.5 million people. For the first time in those two years, she broke down and cried, thinking how truly insignificant her own suffering seemed compared to the suffering of millions that nobody appeared to have cared about...

She made a pledge to herself then and there to devote her life to abolish suffering in the world ... and she has stayed true to her pledge. Now a c. two-year timespan is what it takes according to Dr. Hamer for illness to manifest. Could it be that by turning her life over to service to others, she made space in herself for an infusion of energies of a healing nature?

In fact, this tallies with Edgar Cayce’s statement from Reading 3121-1: "... as the body may dedicate its life and its abilities to a definite service, to the Creative Forces, or God, there will be healing forces brought to the body."

Now I am not saying that this is what happened in this case since I evidently do not know (nor will Grace herself, save perhaps on a subconscious level). What I am trying to convey is that there are other possible highly influential factors besides those so briliantly researched by Dr. Hamer, and that these factors can make or break a person’s health independently of emotional impacts.

In fact, there are those (such as regression therapists and spiritual healers/teachers) who maintain that there is self-chosen “karma” - experiences we choose to balance our soul’s overall “balance sheet" and/or to help our spiritual learning and growth, and experiencing cancer can be among these (for an example see for instance Breast cancer case with bleak diagnosis healed after a single session of regression therapy). (Incidentally, this is also Edgar Cayce’s contention, compare Cancer is sometimes a karmic pattern.)

In any case, it is unclear how two-year-old Grace could survive apparently unscathed her father's death and the childhood hell that ensued unless there are "repair mechanisms" at work not described by Hamer...

Summary

None of the above is meant to say that some or many or even all cases of cancer are not exactly due to (or at least co-created or accompanied by) and possibly even resolvable via the mechanism described by Dr. Hamer. In fact I consider it highly likely that the observed correlation DHS-Hamer focus-disease is absolutely correct and true for most or in fact all people who have developed manifest disease (cancer).

What I don't think correct is

to conclude that there is virtually no other (deeper or different) cause of cancer apart from the DHS (as mentioned above, the dramatic increase in cancer incidence over the last 100 years in itself refutes any such notion)
to conclude that unexpected abysmal shocks always lead to illness and that their effects can’t be buffered, neutralized or healed by means other than their being personally resolved or spiritually accepted.
to widely ignore or downgrade any naturopathic nutritional/lifestyle/environmental approaches which have amply proven that cancer is often, to all intents and purposes, healable via simple natural/naturopathic means, such as dietary upgrades, inner and outer detoxification and environmental clean-ups.
to largely ignore the impact of other healing influences, particularly from the spiritual/energetic realm (see for instance the above example, Non-Hodgkin lymphoma healed thanks to healing stream, Terminal liver cancer healed via prayer and Terminal Cancer Healed through Love, Will, Determination and the Power of the Mind).

I do wonder if Dr. Hamer would wish to expand his concepts if he started (for instance) researching people like those in the above-referenced examples who do not fall ill or who recover after a DHS (in spite of their conflict remaining unresolved, or not having found a way to come to terms with it spiritually) thanks to other healing influences.

Is German New Medicine right or wrong?

Much of the debate seems to center around this question. As can be seen from the above, I consider it both right and wrong. It seems to be right as to the correlation and causative links observed, it seems to be wrong as to its claim to have found the final and total answer to everything related to health and disease.

And by this insistence on the latter, it may indeed be coresponsible for those who have died after trusting that this was the way for them to proceed, blithely ignoring that there are more determinants of a person’s health than the status of their emotional conflicts (such as diet, toxicity status, will to live, power of the mind, spiritual life purpose etc. etc. - even baking soda has been successfully used to cure cancer, presumably in persons having the will to live).

So what is the best way to heal cancer?

I do not pretend to know where anyone’s particular problem may, at its most basic causative level, originate from, nor what anyone’s best path to healing should look like. (Though my personal preference goes to believing that fundamentally we are spiritual or energetic beings, and that the most fundamental root cause of everything in our lives can be found and addresssed in these ‘areas’ [whatever that means in detail, largely yet to be scientifically explored].)

To address the concrete issue of the most efficient manner of healing cancer with respect to Dr. Hamer’s approach: What I have observed, is at least one person who seemed to overly concentrate on the emotional/"Hamer" aspect of her breast cancer while the cancer got increasingly worse (I will spare the reader details, also I do not know her current health status).^[2]

On the other hand, I have read many stories of cancer healings achieved in all manner of “alternative” ways, with attitude, determination, intention, life purpose and/or belief often seemingly a central factor, I also have seen people on the simple Budwig protocol get better and even apparently fully healed, without doing mental/emotional work (as far as I know)^[3].

Hence to both ensure healing of any current health issues, "remaining healed" in the long term and forestalling any new health crises, I recommend embracing a truly holistic approach which neglects neither the physical, nor the emotional, nor the mental, nor the spiritual (in particular). In other words, in healing, it's balancing and addressing every aspect of our being that seems ideal, "holistic" and most promising to me ...

Addendum: Quantum physics: the observer’s expectation determines the outcome

It’s likely that at some level, we all see and attract what we focus on and "want" to see. In fact, someone commented on Dr. Hamer’s findings to the effect that due to this "mechanism" in place, he attracted the particular patients which indeed mirrored the pattern he had previously observed & discovered (while “shutting out” from his experience those that would not).

To conclude these thoughts: beyond black and white and a thank you to Dr. Hamer

As implied in the foregoing, one of my favourite quotes "search the truth with all your heart but run like mad from anyone pretending to have found it" (to my mind applicable in ALL areas where different opinions and views exist...) has a measure of applicability for Dr. Hamer’s German New Medicine as well. But after all, great (and lonely) pioneers have often been observed to lay claim to the possession of absolute truths, in which to my mind they blatantly err...

That said, I am grateful to Dr. Hamer for his breakthrough contribution to the knowledge about healing available to humankind and about his open opposition to what can justly be called profitable poisoning of those afflicted with various dis-eases that more often than not could be naturally healed (compare On Drugs, On Chemotherapy, Nature Heals etc.).

I encourage those in search of healing from cancer who feel intuitively attracted to Dr. Hamer’s insights to use and learn from them to hopefully benefit their own permanent healing of this and other dis-ease.

Recognition is also due to the fact that rather than following the mainstream and making an excellent living from it (conventional oncology is among if not the most profitable branch of medicine), Dr. Hamer has been ready to brave the cancer establishment and face hardships few would likely be ready to face, in defense of what he believes to be the truth and of benefit to suffering humanity. Let’s not forget that this pioneer just recently languished in a French prison for c. seventeen months of psychological torture (his words).

And finally, may those who choose to indict Dr. Hamer as a simple “murderer” one day be able to see that there is more to any story than a simple black and white, good and bad, right and wrong. I hope my above words will contribute to such an understanding, if in a small measure...

For many examples showing the influence of various factors leading to the healing of cancer, see particularly Nutrition, Testimonials, Real-Life Healing Stories, Mind and Spirituality.

... and for the best, easiest, and least expensive ways I know to heal cancer

after studying the subject for some twenty years, click here.

Footnotes

1 DHS = Dirk Hamer Syndrome, a central concept in German New Medicine, see Dr. Hamer’s Revolutionary Brain-Emotion-Disease Studies ff.

2 In fact, Dr. Willibald Stangl, a long-time loyal and vocal supporter of Dr. Hamer’s German New Medicine, writes: ‘...the resolution of the conflict increases the chance of healing considerably. However, from my practical experience I have to admit that the majority of patients cannot, or are no longer able to resolve their conflicts because they either can’t get out of their conflict situation or they have a relapse and die.’ Dr. Hamer himself claims a 92% success rate.

3 For second thoughts concerning the completeness of their healing, see Budwig protocol & life energies blockages: On the question why the cancer always/sometimes will come back when the Budwig diet is abandoned.

Related section

Dr. Hamer's German New Medicine