[Medico-psychological interconsultation and the physician-patient relation]

Clinicians and psychoanalysts have been working together sharing responsibilities for the clinical care of patients with somatic illness. This has opened a new field for interdisciplinary action, the so-called Medical Psychological consultation (MPC). The MPC is the application of psychoanalytic understanding to this new field. In the present paper, the medical setting and the analytic setting are defined and clearly distinguished. The most significant goal in MPC is to assist or help in the assistance or care of the patients. To attain a good standard of clinical care means to provide a highly personalized help to a patient based on an adequate discrimination of his physical and emotional needs. The MPC is a new scientific development that works on that direction.