Further Analysis of Hiccup Case

July 2, 2003

Dear Group,

I am providing the following additional analysis of the hiccup case. After the marijuana cured the hiccups, a trusted colleague and former teacher of mine interviewed and examined the patient at my request, and she came up with an interesting view of the case.

The patient, whom I will name Karl, was the caretaker of his father, an alcoholic, during his teen years. At the close of my one and only session with him, he mentioned to me that his college degree took him a long time to achieve, because his father had committed suicide when he was young. That is all he said to me about it. Remember: the hiccups started the very day after his graduation from college (age 31). The fact that he connected these two events in his speech (his graduation and his father's suicide) is, I feel, very significant in retrospect.

My colleague who interviewed him, discovered that Karl had not been able to have a normal adolescence, where the liver energy would naturally express itself in rebellion or exuberance. He had had to care for his father. The stifling of the liver energy during its normal time of assertion began a slow and steady attack upon the earth energy of the stomach/spleen.

Why did the hiccups come when they did? I don't know, and I admit openly that the following is a guess and a speculation, but Karl's remark to me about his graduation, the struggle to finish college and his father's death make me wonder if the graduation itself brought up intense feelings and memories of his father (sadness that his father wasn't there for his big day? anger at his father for depriving him of a normal growing-up time?), and these intense feelings triggered the long-repressed liver energy to rise and assert itself.

One final question: why did the marijuana do the trick when acupuncture did not? My colleague, upon examining Karl, found his abdomen so reactive that even her gentle palpation triggered a gagging retching response. So she decided not to do any further acupuncture. And to this day, his symptoms still have not returned.

Julie Chambers