ABSTRACT
The encounter between the psychic and the somatic is also produced by the fact that any somatic disease, whatever it might be is suffered by a particular individual with a complex history, who belongs to a society and moves in a family, object and discursive interweaving that transcends and determines him or her. An interdisciplinary approach was developed, the aim of which was the integrated treatment of chronic skin diseases; this approach will be described. When the psychoanalyst asks questions and the patient speaks, the dermatologist learns to listen, and discovers a singular and unimagined world in what until then was just "a new case of psoriasis". Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory disease of the skin which is very hard to treat. Difficulties in the doctor-patient relationship are common, and as a consequence, patients tend to wander from one doctor to another and finally to abandon treatment, after which they look for magical solutions with quacks and various "healers".
