This essay describes how the author gradually gets a deeper understanding for his profession and the development of his professional skills, attitude and practice. 

The essay contains two main narratives representing examples from the author´s occupational practice, and through those narratives he tells how his practice alters and develops. These stories are also the basis for considering different aspects on how to get good models for practising a profession when you are a beginner, and how to manage ethical dilemmas. 

The starting point is when the author in the beginning of his career as a rural pastor is visiting a seriously ill parishioner at a province hospital. The course and the outcome of this call is surprising the young pastor, and the author tries to analyze the background to the outcome and assesses several possible explanations for the result of his call. 

The narrative is used to examine the attitude, the professional skills and the social and existential context for the author at that time. The patriarchal patterns in the parish are illuminated and questioned. 

In the second part of the essay the author investigates what will happen when pastoral cure transforms to psychotherapy, and how the author deals with phenomena in the therapeutical process such as idealization and secondary traumatization. 

On basis of texts written by among others Ingela Josefson, Fredrik Svenaeus, Christian Nilsson and Ulla Ekström von Essen the author seeks explanation for the development of his practical knowledge. With references to philosofers as Plato, Aristotle, H.G. Gadamer, Hannah Arendt, Dreyfus&Dreyfus among others he discusses how the theory of practical knowledge can be used in describing the development of professional skill and professional ethics in a person being both curate and psychotherapist.