Patients' fears

If I read Balint, or some other such navel gazer, I'm told that I must understand my patients' hidden fears in order to empathise and deal with them. Like so many of the observations in such books, it seems so self evidently true that to state it at all seems almost a redundant use of words.

I seem to be able to read books on consultation technique, agree with everything that is said, and have no recall whatsoever of what …