Kate Womersley

Beyond the call of duty: the kindness of strangers is a pleasing mystery

Larissa MacFarquhar’s fascinating history of extreme selflessness

issue 17 October 2015

When I applied to medical school, an experienced doctor offered me some advice: ‘Don’t give them reason to think you’re a “wounded healer”. They’re suspicious of that.’ The term is Carl Jung’s, by which he meant that personal difficulty is a powerful spur for joining a caring profession, but the results of such motivations are not always constructive.

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