[Interaction between physician and patient]

At a psychosomatic experimental station the patient-oriented therapeutical visits by the chief physician were investigated, in order to elucidate the importance and the role of the chief physician. The data obtained by an indirect measurement device, i.e. Osgood's "semantic differential" in its German version of Ertel, consist in self-evaluation and xeno-evaluation of the chief physician, of the resident doctors, and of the patients after fifteen visits. The results show that the patients and the accompanying doctors regard the chief physician as a "king" or a "father figure". The chief physician, on the contrary, assumes no strong role.