THE WORD consultation IMPLIES interaction between two specialists. What we call medical—psychiatric interconsultation means the concurrence of two disciplines which present important and essential differences as to: health criteria, ideologies, technical language, patterns of action, aims, and setting.

In the interconsultation, two different observers (a physician and a psychoanalyst) coming from two different disciplines, observe the same phenomena ("being ill" and "cure") with differences at the level of: recording of observable data, priorities, and interpretation of data. This includes the patient, his illness, his physician, the vicissitudes in their relationship, and the institution in which they are situated.

The psychoanalyst gives priority to those elements he considers relevant from the very moment the patient has been hospitalized, which may have motivated the request for interconsultation. He