Abstract‘Placebo’ and ‘placebo effect’ have different meanings in pharmacology and in clinical practice. The action of almost all drugs, especially of psychopharmaca, has a placebo component. Drug effects are altered by relationship and emotional concomitants, especially by the doctor, one of the most powerful ‘drugs’. Human responses to psychopharmaca are often inexplicably variable, and cannot be understood without taking into account the effect of the doctor and of the relationship between the doctor and the patient. It is therefore of the utmost importance to study the pharmacology of the drug ‘doctor’ in therapeutics, both in isolation and in its relationship to medicaments. Drugs, ie chemical compounds administered for therapeutic purposes, and not only psychopharmaca, are also able to affect relationships and emotions. These effects, often disregarded, should also be studied, not least because the alteration of relationship (eg the doctor—patient relationship) and emotions will secondarily influence the pharmacological actio