[Characteristics and problems of Balint groups with medical students]

For a period of seven years medical students have had the opportunity to attend Balint-seminars in an intensive training course in the field of "Medical Psychology and Psychotherapy" during their clinical education. In groups of 10-15 students the participants study conscious and subconscious aspects in the relationship between students and patients in the setting of their practical work in hospital. Some of these students additionally hold supporting conversations with mentally and psychosomatically ill patients. This takes place at the Psychotherapeutic Department and at the Department of Psychiatry, both at Innsbruck University, and is supervised in the Balint-seminars. In addition to this psychoanalytically oriented supervision theoretic knowledge (socio-psycho-somatic aspects of illnesses, subconscious aspects in the doctor-patient-relationship, phenomena of transference and counter-transference) is being brought across. In the students' Balint-seminars both patient-related self-experience and the reflection upon the students' social role in hospital acquire special importance. The development of this model of teaching and learning and the experiences which have been achieved over the last seven years are described in this article concerning the practicability for a patient centered model in the education of medical students.