[The physician faced with the mentally handicapped and his family]

In his work in the field of mental retardation, the physician is exposed to his vivid emotive reactions. He risks either to withdraw in a scientific relation or to identify himself with either family's members. The physician must learn to join with a pluridisciplinary team, to build up his emotional impulses, to answer to the needs of the mental handicapped and his family and to estimate the evolutive potential rather than the deficits. He must be conscious that the handicapped and his family are called, in an imperative manner, to resolve many tasks: they must not only confront themselves with many specialists (doctors, teachers, educators, logopedists, physiotherapists) and many Services, but also overcome the shock of the diagnosis and build, on the existential plan, a new life.