The authors are psychoanalytically trained internists who worked for fifteen months as psychosomatic consultants in a clinic for internal medicine. They report on the extraordinary difficulties they encountered in trying to convey to their psychologically untrained medical colleagues an appreciation of the psychological problems of patients. The physicians reacted with a variety of defenses to the suggestion that they take psychological phenomena into account. The consultants found it necessary to pay close attention to their responses to these reactions so that they would not aggravate the problems.