Résumé : Psycho-oncology is a young european speciality. Having existed for twenty years, it involves a need for training psychologists and psychiatrists. Originally, psychooncology was a psychological speciality in oncology but its knowledge and skills is now reached by other care-givers. The high level of initial training of the psychiatrists and psychologists is able to generate scientific research but continuous training in these disciplines and specialisation workshops are necessary. The emotional level of their practice would decrease if they could benefit from analytic supervision groups, role playing and critical visualization (video). If ethics, psychotherapies, pharmacology and psychopathology are objective data of their knowledge, professional identity and transference-counter-tranference relations are the major subjective part that gives an holistic clinical approach of the patient, essential in oncology. © Springer 2005.