Remember what you know of human beings, and the first virtue of doctors, humility, will be yours automatically; for you know how little you know. Of course you might say here is somebody who is neither chair nor carpet, neither animal nor flower, neither stone nor wood. Yes is what you are saying true? No. This person is in reality animal and flower, stone, wood, carpet, and chair too. Beware, if you attempt to pry him away now from his connection with the universe, do not forget how many mistakes this attempt at isolation brings about and must bring about, mistakes which, perpetrated thousands of times, have heaped up so much debris around you that it requires all your strength and all your greatness to lift up your eyes over the pile. If you isolate man and deny that he is animal and flower, stone and wood, then you are like a person who does nothing else during his whole life but look through a microscope; he is in danger of denying heaven, earth, the stars, since he cannot look at them through a microscope. Remember that the human being in front of you is an arbitrary figment of you lack of imagination...

The mistakes of the expert – and our kind of diagnosing constitutes an expert´s mistake – continue long after they have been recognised as such by experts; they are tough, inert masses and difficult to get rid of. This is why the doctor who takes his profession seriously and enjoys it will have to repeat himself again and again: to diagnose an illness of little use, can often be dispensed with and is often very, very damaging.

Georg Groddeck, The Meaning of Illnes