Dutch journalist and writer Stevo Akkerman recently interviewed member of the Ethics of Care webteam and care ethicist Jeannet van de Kamp for the national Dutch newspaper Trouw about her PhD thesis Disguised Suffering.
The caption of the article reads “We have to face the reality that being vulnerable is our common ground.” Akkerman puts the focus in his article on only a small portion of the encompassing dissertation of Van de Kamp, e.g. her description of a contemporary hospital.
As even there human suffering is being disguised in manifold ways, this fact by itself illustrates in her opinion a wider phenomenon in our Western society.
In the current (neo)liberal ‘ideal of a successful life’, this reality of suffering is unwanted. Whenever it presents itself, it comes down to ‘exercising selfcare’ in the form of practicing either the ‘art of living’, the ‘art of dying’ or the ‘art of baring loss’.
Van de Kamp takes the myth out of this ideal, which so many believe in.
Care ethicist: ‘Being vulnerable is what we all share. One moment we’re thriving, the next we fall apart’
Vulnerability is what all people have in common. In our pursuit of a successful life, we risk forgetting that, says Jeannet van de Kamp.
Stevo Akkerman. Published February 15, 2026
For the dissertation that recently earned her a PhD in the humanities ((1)), Jeannet van de Kamp didn’t just turn to books. She examined how suffering is undercut in our success-oriented society, and, for example, looked at what she encountered when visiting hospitals, either for personal or professional reasons.
What immediately struck her upon entering: how little ‘illness’ is visibly present in these places. She saw restaurants, hair salons, pedicures, indoor fitness spaces, play areas, gift shops with balloons and uplifting cards (‘There is a CAN in cancer’). Alongside that, brochures speaking of ‘autonomy and control’ over body and mind, about ‘getting the best out of yourself’, about ‘being in charge of your symptoms’.
We push away the suffering
It illustrates how we deal with the harsher realities of existence, Van de Kamp says. We soften them, dress them up. In the title of her dissertation, she calls this disguised suffering; what is painful and involves loss has to give way to our ‘ideal of a successful life’.
And according to her, that has everything to do with how our society is structured. “A successful life then comes down to individual freedom of choice and self-reliance; you are personally responsible for your success and your failure. It’s essentially an entrepreneurial, capitalist way of looking at people.”
The 68-year-old Van de Kamp was already a theologian and care ethicist before she began her PhD research. She taught at Utrecht University and at a University of Applied Science, and at the same time she worked as a domestic aide: for eight years she did household work in elderly people’s homes. She studied care ethics later in life in Tilburg. To avoid misunderstanding: this is not about ethics in healthcare, but a political theory grounded in how people care for each other.
In ‘disguising suffering’ two elements resonate, Van de Kamp says during an interview at her home in Houten. “It’s at the same time making it look nicer as well as pushing it out of sight.” By “covering suffering in embellishing terms,” it is forcibly removed from view. “It’s not supposed to be there; we do not wish to see it. Even though we know that’s not how it works—it is there, the misery, the horror—we still move away from it. Life has to remain pleasant; it all has to stay enjoyable.”
‘We suffer because everyone always and everywhere
has to display that successful life’
Isn’t it natural that we want to move away from misery and toward happiness?
“What I criticize is the one-sidedness. As long as humanity has existed, people have strived for a happy life. And for many in the Western world, that ideal seems closer than ever. And yet, it just doesn’t work. I find that fascinating. No one can be against reducing suffering. But in our modernity, it is being repressed, and if the reality of life is no longer allowed to be there, then that produces new pathologies, new forms of suffering.”
It’s not that you want to glorify suffering.
“No, I call it an evil. And I’m also against of all those interpreters of the ‘art of living’, the ‘art of dying’ or the ‘art of baring loss’—the suggestion that we can learn so much from suffering, that we come out of it enriched. I don’t go along with that.”
Why not?
“Because it’s not true. In pastoral care I am alongside people who tell me about their terrible lives. People who often have nowhere left to go—not in psychiatry, not elsewhere. Of course, sometimes it happens that someone says: I did learn something from it. I leave that alone. But when that idea is promoted in care and counseling—and it very much is, also in healthcare and support—then things get turned upside down.”
So then you’ve failed if you haven’t learned from it?
“That’s the dominant way of thinking, yes.”
You say that disguising suffering has a political dimension—what is that dimension?
“This is not about politics in the sense of governing, but about ‘the political’ as something that always takes shape between people. Wherever people meet, they organize life together from the ground up. I partly draw on the work of political philosopher Chantal Mouffe, who speaks of friction—the latent conflict that is always there between people.”
“People either push others aside, or give them space. That is what Mouffe calls ‘the political.’ It is important to name that friction and find ways of dealing with it. That happens within households, between loved ones, all the way up to the level of society. You have to live with one another. Put up with one another.”
How does that show up in healthcare?
“There too, we need to dare to name the political. If Mrs. X in a nursing home calls out ‘nurse, nurse’ for the umpteenth time, you don’t go to her cheerfully. It’s not: this is someone in need of care, how nice that I get to help her. No—you think: is she calling again already?!”
“At that moment, you have to do something with that calling that irritates you. You go to Mrs. X despite your irritation—or you pretend you didn’t hear it. The irritation, moving toward her or away from her—that is the political, because it is a way of organizing life together.”
“In healthcare there are many situations—when someone is incontinent, or has a condition that makes them smell very bad—in which the person in need evokes aversion. More broadly, people with dementia can evoke that same reaction. Then the response is: this is no longer a human life. And we move away from that person.”
“It always comes down to recognizing your own tendency to want to be with some people and not with others. In that way, we end up not wanting to see entire groups: those who have not ‘made it,’ those who do not fit the ideal of what is considered normal.”
‘The social message is that you only really count
if you keep improving yourself.
Otherwise, you’re one of the losers.’
‘Being normal’ is also largely understood—as your hospital examples already show—as being autonomous, being in charge of your own life.
“They say the patient is put center stage, that it’s about what you want. But that’s not true at all. Jean-Jacques Suurmond, former columnist of newspaper Trouw, described this very well when he himself ended up in hospital with cancer. You are given a locker with a hook for your jacket—but also for your autonomy. You undergo what is done to you. You lie in a room, in a bed. When the first shift arrives, you are woken up—you have no say in that. All kinds of things are measured and done to your body that you do not get to choose. But if you want to stay alive, or not deteriorate too badly, you have to put up with it.”
Does this apply more broadly than hospitals? That everywhere this not being autonomous, not being successful, not being happy gets to be disguised?
“I think so, yes. And there are also quite a few conditions, especially psychological ones, that are in fact not really illnesses at all. Psychiatrist Dirk De Wachter, one of the members of my dissertation committee, wrote about the ‘borderline society.’ It does not necessarily make people ill, but it does produce suffering. Because everyone always and everywhere has to display that successful life—has to perform.”
Isn’t suffering inseparable from existence? Even someone who is healthy can suffer.
“Certainly. It can even take the form of deep despair—a sense of total uselessness. But what matters to me, is that this is increasingly so. Are we able to see this as something that concerns us all? Now it is placed on the individual: solve it yourself, or get out of sight. But is it really an individual matter? In the neoliberal era we live in, the assumption is that people are equal and free. The government says we should solve problems ourselves, or together within our communities.”
“But that’s not how it works. I now live here very well, but I have also lived in neighborhoods where life was very hard. Then you are dealing with major political issues: not being able to work, being seriously ill, living in unhealthy surroundings, not being able to find proper housing. There is deep inequality, from the beginning to the end of life.”
“In the meantime, the social message is that you only really count if you keep improving yourself. Otherwise, you are a loser—and it is no coincidence that this has become such a common insult. Whereas we should recognize that specifically being vulnerable is what we all have in common: one moment we are thriving, the next we fall apart. That is our common ground—and it calls for a shared, social and political practice of care.”
Note
The English summary of the dissertation Disguised suffering. A care ethical inquiry into the late modern ideal of a ‘succesful life’ (2026) was published on the Ethics of Care website in December 2025, see here