Instead, what appears to be of greatest benefit to patients is the genuineness and persuasiveness of therapists - qualities neither of which are especially flexible in professional training. But as counselling psychologist Paul Moloney points out, if warmth and confidence are the calling cards of successful psychotherapists, then it is worth observing that this principle - and I quote him with some reluctance - “applies equally to politicians, salespeople and prostitutes”.

The wish for recovery, in other words, is not the same as the will to be analysed: among other things, psychological mindedness means working with the idea of an increase in self-knowledge generating relief from psychic pain. Similarly, in the much more formidable case of a nation on the couch, the prospect of psycho-social improvement begins with an act of faith - specifically, faith in the value of understanding. I am referring to a process of understanding that begins in the unlikeliest places: to understand where it all went wrong for human beings - not just South Africans - we have to go back to the start of civilisation, the start of violence, and the start of deep compassion.

This wound we call ‘apartheid’ will continue to be picked at compulsively. In both mind and practice, empathy has its limits; the relational pathologies of shame, envy and impasse are here to stay. The shame-filled violence, the envious value delusions and the ambivalent-avoidant attachments will persist long after we are gone. No matter the reparative attempts: there is a brokenness at the heart of our nation that cannot be wished away. If one considers the matter at the level of the individual, when the parent, teacher, or psychotherapist succeeds in providing optimal conditions for empathetic connection with a child, student or patient, it is hardly unusual for the latter to collapse the frame with enactments derived from still-active complexes.

By learning to pay attention to what’s happening in front of us, we gain more than the sensations of life; we also increase our ability to act. We’re not thinking about what’s already happened, about what might happen, about what we have to do later; we are alert to the moment, which is where any action must take place. If our intention is to connect with other people, being present is what makes that possible.

Thousands of stories from the Harvard Study show us that the good life is not found by providing ourselves with leisure and ease. Rather, it arises from the act of facing inevitable challenges, and from fully inhabiting the moments of our lives. It appears, quietly, as we learn how to love and how to open ourselves to being loved, as we grow from our experiences, and as we stand in solidarity with others through the inevitable string of joys and adversities in every human life.