It’s not surprising that some people are naturally good therapists just from a lifetime of observing people, and also not surprising that some of those people end up in teaching-focused academic jobs.
I guess you can train people to be empathetic if they’re motivated in the right ways but just lacking the skill. It makes sense that it’s a big part of counselor training.
What kind of things are you talking about?
This regularly happens and nobody seems the slightest bit curious about why. That is, when you think about it, totally mad. I'd suggest it's got to be either:
1. The only psychology mystery worth investigating, or
2. A sign that clinical trials are actually mostly junk science
Either would be hard to admit.
I think you are being very dismissive there.
After all, the placebo effect happens in your body, which your mind inhabits. These are not two separate systems interacting by some magical means. This is one system with various subsystems that interact all the time.
Concrete mechanism of the placebo effect is still unknown, but the observation that your immune system can be influenced by your mental state isn't in itself magical. Our bodies respond to all sorts of mental states. We get red in face when embarassed, and sometimes must run to the toilet when scared etc.
All this "psionic" "paranormal" label stuff would only apply if someone could do it to other people without them even knowing.
Some people really do become spontaneously cured of diseases, yes - it happens all the time, and is something worth studying further. But the idea that the placebo effect is what causes it, is not really well-founded.
Somewhat notoriously some trials give patients a placebo that's actually another drug, as otherwise people could unblind themselves by not suffering side effects. The COVID vaccine trials did this. It doesn't make sense if you think the placebo effect only influences perception of pain, as otherwise you could lose the placebo entirely and double your statistical power (compare against a synthetic control group).
Lots to say about it but this is a finding that has been reported intermittently for decades. However, it's being spun a little misleadingly.
Note that the author says that untrained professors were selected for their ability to be warm and empathetic. It's not everyone (we all know not everyone is warm and empathetic), and even trainees learn very very early (like immediately in their first term) the basics of therapy. Not everyone is warm and empathetic, and people going into clinical psychology are sort of self-selected in their empathy to start with.
This research is kind of being taken out of context too. Wampold, one of the authors cited (who I have the greatest respect for) is very big on "nonspecific factors", meaning things like empathy, good social skills, and so forth. His studies in general tend to be focused not on "does training matter?" but "do specific therapy protocols matter, or is it about the clinician's social/relationship skills?"
If you want some kind of medical standards, you can't just say "oh it's ok, everyone can just be warm and empathetic". You have to train on it, grade it, hold it to some standard. Otherwise you get manipulative, self-serving therapists who do harm in the long run (the length of a study versus real settings is another issue).
Another issue is that many of these issues are not unique to psychology. In lots of medical scenarios it's been shown that the amount of training needed to competently do a wide variety of procedures is lower than current standards in the US require. Experienced clinicians in many fields have acquired biases that interfere with practice, young trainees are much more worried about performance and are more open-minded and so forth (on average a little; not trying to stereotype).
A huge, enormous volume of studies over many years have shown that therapy works compared to all sorts of placebos and controls; that some therapists are reliably better than others; but that what makes therapy "work" overall is not what protocol-driven therapies (CBT etc) assert. It's not so much that training isn't necessary, it's that the field has has been obsessed with scientific details that, although well-intended, don't matter, and healthcare in general is full of phenomena that we'd rather not admit.