So that we can really engage with the otherness encountered in each of our patients we need to maintain an open mind. But how do we achieve this when our minds tend to be filled (in our training and subsequent reading) with what we are expecting to find? The author tries to engage with this paradox, emphasizing the need to restore a position of noncertainty in our thinking in order to counteract the imprisonment of too much sureness in our clinical work. Over against that he also considers some of those times when we need to be more sure than tentative.