The Crisis Generators

Interview with Dr. Jutta Hübner and Dr. Curt Kösters

You have both intensively followed the IBA process in Köthen and participated in the interdisciplinary work group on the Coethen method. Based on your knowledge of its anamnesis, how would you describe the condition, even the clinical picture, of the city of Köthen?

Jutta Hübner: We have actually moved on from making a direct comparison between the city and an invalid. However, our conversations with many of the town’s residents have shown us what the shrinkage process means to the people in intellectual, corporal and spiritual terms. When friends leave the city, for example, or when staying on is coupled by a fear of compromising the children’s future. These are complex problems. In the work group with the planners, we eventually focused on the so-called test areas.

Curt Kösters: Our work in Köthen is also motivated by self-interest. To a certain extent, we hope for knowledge, which will inform our own medical research. In what context does a method – or a stimulus – work and in which context is it ineffective? For us therefore it’s a great opportunity to apply our rules within another system. What remains the same in each system and is therefore fundamental?

Homeopathy is generally associated with a gentle form of medicine. Turning off the lights in Ludwigstraße however seems to have been a relatively rough stimulus …

Jutta Hübner: Essentially, we are crisis generators. In places where nothing has worked, as homeopathic doctors we put our faith in the artificial crisis as a momentary stimulus for activity. We generate a stimulus, which can cause a crisis and therefore the possibility of a reaction. In homeopathy, our doses are so diluted that the crises are very brief and are barely noticed by the patient. That’s why homeopathy is perceived as a gentle medicine. It isn’t a suppressant however.

Curt Kösters: Planners are supposed to avoid crises, anticipate them and prevent them from happening. As homeopaths we say that a healthy system can cope with crises and that we must sometimes even provoke them in order to strengthen the system. In the right place and with the correct dose, but one has to engender them.

Jutta Hübner: The stimuli allow new movement in places that were previously blocked. The positive development in Ludwigstraße took us by surprise, too. In the Friedenspark test area, we are in the middle of the process right now.

Curt Kösters: The classical form of citizens’ participation, in which we would question the people, they would tell us how it is and we would put their words into action, is not what’s required. The central issue is to understand the city, the streets and the citizens as a system. Maybe we can contribute to an understanding of protest or contradiction as more than just a disruptive influence, even as a creative potential.

What are your personal expectations and hopes for Köthen?

Curt Kösters: As an association, we hope that we can establish a new spiritual home here. With the library, the Masters’ course and possibly also a science association, which will continue to work on the application of homeopathic principles in other systems.

Jutta Hübner: The science, the freedom of thought and to serve the exchange of ideas … I would love to have the spiritual scope for development Hahnemann experienced in Köthen in his day. That can’t be initiated from the top down. It would be great if a place for open exchange could be created in the hospital, for instance. For Ludwigstraße, I would hope that the development continues. One can make a comparison with a patient: I hope, for instance, that my patient’s need of medical help diminishes over time; that self-regulation works and balance is returned. For the street, that means – and it has happened – that dynamism is created, that there are possibilities beyond reconstruction; that loss also opens up new opportunities.