A model is proposed to calculate the real part of the nucleus-nucleus interaction potential. Starting from a finite-range effective interaction, the one-body optical potential is obtained as a function of density and kinetic energy density of the target nucleus and the energy of the projectile nucleon. This potential is modified to incorporate the necessary many-body corrections, including the effects of saturation, antisymmetrisation and energy dependence to define a nucleon field which, when folded in with the target or projectile density distribution, gives the nucleus-nucleus interaction potential. To investigate the effects of saturation and antisymmetrisation on the potential, the contributory terms arising from these effects are eliminated in a systematic way from the nucleon field and the corresponding potentials are computed to determine their relative magnitudes. The calculations of these potentials have been performed for the system ¹⁶O-¹⁶O. The values of the calculated potentials at the strong absorption radius and onwards agree well with those referred to in the literature.