Do patients and health care professionals wish to become partners in the relationship of care ? While many tend to think like that, it is far from certain that this is really the case. Data collected by the Espace Patients&Proches, where users of the Lausanne University Hospital are allowed to complain about health care-related problems, show that patients, their relatives, and health care professionals suffer from a process of de-subjectivization owing to the increasing technologization and standardization of care. Indeed, they want to be recognized as subjects before even thinking of becoming partners. Neither patients, their relatives, nor health care professionals call for a symmetrical relationship yet ; such attempts may moreover be experienced as painful.