Whether or not Bryan Kohberger is guilty of an apparently, motiveless crime, the murder of four women college students he did not know at the University of Idaho, finding out what makes someone like him tick is worthwhile. To a certain extent this is possible. Emerging details about Kohberger’s mental, emotional and physical state encourage me to weigh in with a homeopathic assessment.
The opportunity to treat Bryan Kohberger is obviously not at hand. But a teaching moment presents itself in that he can be scoped out through the lens of an indicated remedy. My choice is the homeopathic, Plumbum Metallicum, a medicine derived from the heavy metal, lead. The clinical “picture” of Plumbum offers a suggestion of a precious, peculiar and uncommon symptom from which it is known that Kohberger suffers: white snow in the visual field. Other features pertaining to Kohberger’s state that are in conformity with Plumbum Metallicum serve to confirm the aptness of his prescription.
Depersonalization and depression
Kohberger has reported suffering from extreme emotional depersonalization. In May 2011 he posted about having “depression, no interest in activity, constant thoughts of suicide, crazy thoughts, delusions of grandeur, anxiety, poor self-image, poor social skills, NO EMOTION.” The post concluded, “When I get home, I am mean to my family. This started when visual snow did. I felt no emotion and along with the depersonalization, I can say and do whatever I want with little remorse.”
In a July 2011 post, Kohberger is reported to have written, “I have had this horrible depersonalization go on in my life for almost two years. I often find myself making simple human interactions, but it is as if I am playing a role-playing game. … As I hug my family, I look into their faces, I see nothing, it is like I am looking at a video game, but less. … I am blank, I have no opinion, I have no emotion, I have nothing.”
Note: The Plumbum state features this “deadness” characteristic. In accordance with homeopathy’s “like cures like” principle, what the medicine treats reflects the fact that lead is a neurotoxin. Exposure to a gross amount (not the extreme homeopathic dilution) of the metal inactivates (deadens) the nerves.
What non-homeopaths may find amazing is that the symptom of “not recognizing his family” is explicitly referenced in Plumbum’s materia medica description.
Suicidal and grandiose
Kohberger wrote in May 2011 that he has depression, no interest in activity, constant thoughts of suicide, crazy thoughts, delusions of grandeur, anxiety, poor self-image, poor social skills. Conjecture: If Kohberger has in fact, committed the murders we can suppose that his mastering of criminal psychology as a doctoral criminology candidate fueled in him a grandiose “Leopold-Loeb thrill killer” certainty that he could get away with such a crime. The tortured mindset preceding his act is also reminiscent of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment protagonist Rodion Raskalnikov. The Plumbum state is consistent with such extreme thoughts.
Ambitious and heavy
In April 2011, in a thread by another user about possible benefits of visual snow syndrome, Kohberger wrote, “I have become very deep and determined on goals. It made me smarter.” The heaviness of a plumb bob provides a measure of verticality. Individuals needing Plumbum are “heavy” in that their mentality involves “downwardly directed” thinking, that is, inclined to a form of reasoning tending towards reductionism and dire conclusions.
Paranoia and emaciation
Two high school friends of Bryan Kohberger’s, Casey Arntz and an unnamed young woman, say Kohberger was overweight and was bullied a lot in high school, until his senior year, when he lost about one hundred pounds. (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/idaho-murders-bryan-kohberger-accused-killer-friends-overweight-bullied-high-school/). Note: A well-known keynote of Plumbum is a paranoia that homeopathic literature likens to “fear of assassination.” The remedy is also prominent in rubrics, that is, its recommended use in the treatment of emaciation, wasting away or loss of weight.
Addictiveness and secrecy
Kohberger was a loner who, according to a high school friend, was also addicted to heroin. Note: addictiveness, which is also sometimes reflected in the Plumbum state, can extend to sexual delirium and excessive masturbation. Kohberger’s selection of female victims in relation to this cannot be ruled out.
Visual snow syndrome
Evidence of such a unique, peculiar, and uncommon symptom such as “visual snow” is a gift to the homeopath as it narrows the diagnostic search. Regardless of any other reason why a patient might visit a homeopath, the medicine he or she chooses will need to cover this specific symptom. When looking to understand or treat someone like Bryan Kohberger, the additional information matters because it provides context for a symptom as significant as visual snow.
Visual snow syndrome involves someone’s visual field being saturated with static. According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO), it is “a form of visual hallucination characterized by the perception of small, bilateral, simultaneous, diffuse, mobile, asynchronous dots usually throughout the entire visual field… present in all conditions of illumination, even with the eyes closed.” Its neurology is akin to that of migraine headache.
The AAO adds that that patients experiencing visual snow appear to have both cortical hyperexcitability and loss of inhibition of visual processing in the thalamo-cortico circuitry within the primary visual cortex. The thalamus is the body’s information relay station. Apart from smell, all sensory inputs are processed within the brain’s thalamus before being sent to the cerebral cortex for interpretation. Irregular function in the thalamus disrupts sleep, wakeful consciousness, learning and memory, all problems Kohberger has reported having.
A “Plumbum” painter, George Seurat
Courtesy of Top Doctors of the UK, the right side of the image below provides an example of visual snow syndrome in the optic field. Seeing this brings to mind the Post-Impressionist paintings of the French painter George Seurat, in particular his painting of the Eiffel Tower, shown below.
The Eiffel Tower by George Seurat
The “Yin and the Yang” of Plumbum
The similarity may not be coincidental. What is known of Seurat’s life, art, philosophy, and the common presence of lead in paints of his era suggests that an affinity with the Plumbum remedy is not out of the question. In that case, he may well have been propelled to paint according to how he visually perceived his surroundings.
Seurat was highly ambitious and hard working. He died at the age of 31 from an exhaustion-related illness. He was secretive, hiding the existence of a mistress from his friends. In 1884, based on a reductionistic philosophy, Seurat produced a breakthrough in his painting technique known as Divisionism or Chromoluminarism defined by the separation of colors into their least common denominator–individual dots or patches. The optical interpretation that results in the dots being combined into colors occurs in the brain, as opposed to beforehand, when the colors are presented to the eye via pigments that have been physically mixed.
For homeopaths, principally
With regard to art, the reductionist perspective of the remedy Plumbum is diametrically opposite that of another remedy closely associated with Impressionism. This would be Phosphorus whose purview includes connectedness, fuzziness, sensitivity to impressions and a “permeability of boundaries” theme.
Analysis of Bryan Kohberger’s symptoms and features (known as repertorization within homeopathy) led me to select Plumbum utilized the following rubrics:
- Vision spots
- Vision snow
- Suicidal
- Mind secretive
- Emaciation
- Violent ideas
What might we expect from treating Bryan Kohberger with Plumbum?
Please note! Not every individual needing Plumbum is murderous or suicidal. Most typically the remedy is called for in cases of cognitive dysfunction as with lead-poisoned children, or to treat various kinds of dementia. Still, on the basis of “see something, say something,” it might have been beneficial had Bryan Kohberger been directed to a homeopath. Prescription of the remedy may have rendered his depression less extreme, helped him overcome his depersonalization and diminished the severity of his visual snow symptom and related distress. We will never know.
Homeopathy and the assessment of other murderers
For a homeopathic assessment of the Unibomber, Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski, the reader is encouraged to read Sane Asylums, The Success of Homeopathy Before Psychiatry Lost Its Mind. There, Kaczynski is looked at through the lens of the remedy, Anacardium Orientale. The reader will also learn that prominent homeopathic physicians Selden Talcott and Samuel Worcester were called upon to provide expert testimony regarding the sanity of Charles Guiteau who, in 1881 assassinated President James Garfield.
Homeopathy and the assessment of other murderers
For a homeopathic assessment of the Unibomber, Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski, the reader is encouraged to read Sane Asylums, The Success of Homeopathy Before Psychiatry Lost Its Mind. There, Kaczynski is looked at through the lens of the remedy, Anacardium Orientale. The reader will also learn that prominent homeopathic physicians Selden Talcott and Samuel Worcester were called upon to provide expert testimony regarding the sanity of Charles Guiteau who, in 1881 assassinated President James Garfield.
For more about the psycho-pharmaceutical industry’s shenanigans see:
- Psycho-Pharm Humbug Lures PT Barnum Back from the Dead
- When History has been Hijacked, the Narrative Must Be Seized or Else Choice is Forfeited
- New York City information pertaining to Mayor Adams’ new policy is drawn from from this link: