On the fourth floor of a Swiss psychiatric clinic, you are met with door signs you would not expect to find there: Senior physician. Head nurse. Head physician Dr. Jakob Bösch. And right next door, on another door, simply: "Healer". Behind that door the medium Anouk Claes works – not as a guest, but as a regular participant in initial patient consultations. What would count as a scandal in the German-speaking mainstream, or never go public at all, was for almost two decades ordinary clinical routine in Baselland. This article reconstructs the collaboration and places it in international context – especially compared with Britain, where the public health service has officially co-funded this kind of integration since 1985.
Who is Jakob Bösch?
PD Dr. med. Jakob Bösch (born 1942 in Schwellbrunn, Canton Appenzell Ausserrhoden) is a Swiss psychiatrist, author and the son of a mountain farmer. From 1991 to 2005 he was head physician of the External Psychiatric Services of Baselland; alongside that position he lectured on psychiatry, psychotherapy and psychosomatics at the University of Basel. This is not an outsider career but mainstream medicine: a senior clinical position in a public healthcare structure.
Strikingly, Bösch has received awards from three very different kinds of professional body: the Swiss Society for Psychiatry, the Swiss Association for Natural Healing and the Swiss Association for Parapsychology. This combination is rare. In his books – Spirituelles Heilen und Schulmedizin: eine Wissenschaft am Neuanfang ("Spiritual healing and mainstream medicine: a science at a new beginning"), Parapsychiatrie, Versöhnen und Heilen – Bösch systematically works to treat the boundary between classical psychiatry and complementary methods not as a settled fact, but as an open research question.
Who is Anouk Claes?
Anouk Claes (born 1972 in Belgium) has lived in Switzerland since 1992. She studied theology and psychology at the universities of Basel and Geneva – which is not a kitchen-table esoteric profile but a formal academic training in the two disciplines that traditionally work on "the soul". She describes herself as clairvoyant and, in her own account, communicates with the deceased. For more than fifteen years – as of the 2017 DLF feature – she has worked alongside physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists and social therapists, often in particularly severe cases.
Her work has been featured several times on public television, including in the 3sat documentary Anouk Claes – Hellsichtig (2008) and later in the long-form SRF DOK portrait Hellsichtig: Anouk Claes – Ein Leben in zwei Welten ("Clairvoyant: Anouk Claes – A Life in Two Worlds"). That is unusual for the German-speaking public: a public broadcaster devotes detailed documentary coverage to a spiritual medium and, in its own account, subjects her to "scientific testing".
The clinical cooperation – what actually happens?
The Deutschlandfunk feature "A Long Night on Illness, Healing and Health" (22 April 2017, author Burkhard Reinartz) documents the scene precisely:
"Psychiatric Clinic Basel Land. Fourth floor. A long corridor. The door signs show the roles: senior physician, head nurse, head physician Dr. Jakob Bösch. Then a room with the door sign 'Healer'."
— Deutschlandfunk, 2017
Claes accompanies Bösch in many initial consultations with new patients. She is therefore not merely tolerated or active in a back room, but part of the actual diagnostic intake. Bösch himself formulates it soberly:
"Working with a healer does in fact bring professional advantages."
— Jakob Bösch
On Claes's side the framing is pragmatic and avoids blanket promises of healing:
"I assume that in the moment someone is with me, I give them what is right for them. Of course there are people I cannot help. I once had an elderly lady who was going blind – I cannot do anything about that. But I helped her to accept it in the end."
— Anouk Claes
The methodological framing
In his writing Bösch frames the cooperation as integrative medicine, not as a replacement for mainstream medicine: classical diagnostics, pharmacology and psychotherapy remain; complementary methods – including spiritual healing – are added in a controlled way. His objection to mainstream medicine is not "you are wrong" but "your picture of illness and health is too narrow".
The SRF audio-archive item "Geistheiler in Basel-Land teilweise zugelassen" ("Spiritual healers partly approved in Baselland") shows that the cooperation was not just a personal Bösch project but was institutionally noticed and, to some extent, formally recognised.
The UK comparison
To German or Swiss readers this may all sound exotic. In Britain the situation is more matter-of-fact. The DLF feature cites – and other sources confirm – the following key facts:
- Since 1985 the British National Health Service (NHS) has covered the cost of energetic healing when prescribed by a doctor. This is not an exception but a part of the operating logic of the public healthcare system.
- For roughly 22,000 general practitioners in Britain there are about 14,000 registered healers. The ratio is not marginal.
- Behind this stand established UK institutions such as the Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine (formerly Royal London Homeopathic Hospital) and register-keeping professional bodies such as the Federation of Healers / The Healing Trust.
"Unlike in England, in Switzerland and Germany there is hardly any cooperation between mainstream physicians and healers so far."
— Deutschlandfunk, 2017
For comparison: in Germany, according to the same source, roughly half of the population turns to complementary methods in periods of illness; in the US more than 80 %. Demand is enormous; structural integration in the German-speaking world, however, remains marginal.
Why Bösch & Claes matter as a case study
Three reasons make this cooperation relevant beyond the individual biographies:
- Institutional credibility. Bösch was not an alternative-medicine practitioner with a private practice but the head of a public psychiatric care structure and a university lecturer. The case shows that a seriously meant cooperation with a medium was feasible within the framework of mainstream medicine – without loss of clinical standards.
- Documented case work, not hearsay. The cooperation is not private anecdote but has been audio- and audio-visually documented multiple times: the 2017 DLF feature, the 2008 3sat documentary, the SRF DOK long-form film and a joint 2009 Bösch-Claes interview. For the debate around mediumistic work, this is among the best publicly accessible case studies in the German-speaking world.
- International comparison relativises the taboo character. What made headlines in Baselland has been routine in British clinics for decades. The question is therefore not whether mainstream medicine and spiritual healing can cooperate, but which form of integration is methodologically defensible and practically useful.
Context
This article complements the Heaven Connect series on the scientific framing of mediumistic work: the blog on Lazar's EREAMS study (statistics on authenticity and comforting impact), the interview blogs on Wilfried Kuhn and Walter van Laack (neurological and medical), the philosophical framing by Godehard Brüntrup and the methodological background on the question of the majority versus experts. Where those articles address the question whether mediumistic and spiritual phenomena can be real, the Bösch–Claes case shows how the integration into a modern clinical routine can actually look in practice.
Sources:
• Burkhard Reinartz, Eine Lange Nacht über Krankheit, Heilung und Gesundheit – Befund und Befindlichkeit, Deutschlandfunk, 22 April 2017. Link
• Wikipedia: Jakob Bösch (biographical data, head physician 1991–2005, awards, publications). Link
• Wikipedia: Anouk Claes (biographical data, studies, collaboration with Bösch). Link
• Jakob Bösch, Spirituelles Heilen und Schulmedizin: eine Wissenschaft am Neuanfang, Verlag Lokwort.
• Jakob Bösch, Parapsychiatrie, Verlag Scorpio (ISBN 978-3-943416-27-5).
• 3sat (TV): Anouk Claes – Hellsichtig, 2008; SRF DOK: Hellsichtig: Anouk Claes – Ein Leben in zwei Welten.
• SRF/Memobase archive item: Geistheiler in Basel-Land teilweise zugelassen.
For more, see our curated knowledge collection – the DLF feature itself is linked there, along with further material on Anouk Claes, Bösch-adjacent topics and the scientific debate around mediumistic work.