May 14, 2026
Some of the most important things don't fit into any university curriculum. You can graduate with top grades and still not have learned what truly determines the quality of an encounter with another human being in the consulting room.
I recently came across a passage that captures this well — from Thierry Janssen's book "Does illness make sense?". I leave it here without commentary, because no commentary is needed.
"About ten years are enough to acquire the competence of a doctor-technician; sometimes an entire lifetime is needed to become a doctor-healer. The same rule applies to all health-care professionals: »playing the role of caregiver« does not necessarily mean »being a caregiver«.
The difference lies in a small addition of soul that life undertakes to teach us through the crises we go through, the disappointments we experience, the humility we learn. It takes time to understand the laws of life. All the more time because we often resist, we refuse to accept reality as it truly is; we are afraid and we defend ourselves.
»Being a caregiver« demands the sensitivity, attention, listening and empathy that only beings somewhat less frightened — and therefore developing fewer defense mechanisms — can place at the service of their healing intention.
This is not spoken of in medical faculties, nor taught in nursing schools, in physiotherapy institutes, in training centers for alternative or complementary therapies. It is also forgotten in some schools of psychotherapy. Unfortunately."
— Thierry Janssen, "Does illness make sense?"
In daily therapeutic practice I keep returning to this thought. Every medical profession has its technical side — anatomy, physiology, protocols, manual techniques. All of that can be mastered in a defined period. But there is also a side that no textbook teaches: the quality of presence.
A patient recognizes the difference immediately. They sense whether someone is really listening, or just waiting for their turn to apply a technique. Whether they are seen as a person, or as a case. That difference is not abstract — it translates into therapeutic outcomes, into trust, into whether the patient's body is willing to open up at all during the session.
That is why the practice of integrative therapy demands that I keep returning to the question: am I playing a role right now, or am I really here? Do I have enough attention to perceive what is subtle? Are my own defense mechanisms not closing me off from what the patient is trying to communicate — often without words?
These are questions that accompany me in the consulting room every day. And it's good that Janssen writes about them so plainly.