The editors of Beyond Trauma: Cultural and Societal Dynamics have created a volume that goes beyond the individual's psychological dynamics of trauma, exploring its social, cultural, politica , and ethical dimensions from an international as well as a global perspective. In the opening address as International Chair of the First World Conference of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies on Trauma and Tragedy: The Origins, Management, and Prevention of Traumatic Stress in Today's World, June 22-26, 1992, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, the conference that formed the foundation for...

Several people have asked what motivated us to write a book about commut- ing, something that we all do but over which we have very little control. As a matter of fact, the general reaction from professional colleagues and friends alike was first a sort of knowing smile followed by some story. Everyone has a story about a personal commuting experience. Whether it was a problem with a delayed bus, a late arrival, broken-down automobiles, hot trains or subways, during the past year we have heard it all. Many of these stories must be apocryphal because, if they were all true, it is amazing that...

"Like a Bridge over Troubled Waters" The surge of current interest in the interface between clinical and social psychology is well illustrated by the publication of a number of general texts and journals in this area, and the growing emphasis in graduate programs on providing training in both disciplines. Although the bene- fits of an integrated clinical-social approach have been recognized for a number of years, the recent work in this area has advanced from the- oretical extrapolations of social psychological models to clinical issues to theory and research that is based on social...

I n the wake of an earlier book (Solomon, 1993), this new work, Coping with War-Induced Stress: The Gulf War and the Israeli Response, promises to make Zahava Solomon a modern maven with respect to the psychologi- cal effects of war. Dr. Solomon is a high-ranking officer, serving as a psychiatric epidemiologist in the Mental Health Department of the Is- raeli Defense Forces Medical Corps. She also teaches at Tel Aviv Univer- sity. The earlier book dealt with the reactions of the Israeli Defense Forces to the 1982 war in Lebanon, which divided the population of Israel concerning its wisdom and...

As a researcher whose work focuses largely on the causes and conse- quences of unwanted pregnancy, I may appear to be an unlikely candidate to write a foreword to a book on infertility. Yet, many of the themes that emerge in the study of unwanted pregnancy are also apparent in the study of infertility. Moreover, this volume is an important contribution to the literature on fertility, women's health issues, and health psychology in general, all topics with which I have been closely involved over the past two decades. Neither pregnancy nor its absence is inherently desirable: The occurrence of...

For hundreds of years, the human response to personal and collective catastrophe has been recognized. Major historical events of the twen- tieth century have highlighted the reality of the human response to extreme traumatization, especially the experience of persons exposed to the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the unique features of the Vietnam conflict. However, it was not until1980, with the publication of the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-111), that post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was...

This book is one additional indication that a new field of study is emerging within the social sciences, if it has not emerged already. Here is a sampling of the fruit of a field whose roots can be traced to the earliest medical writings in Kahun Papyrus in 1900 B.C. In this document, according to Ilza Veith, the earliest medical scholars described what was later identified as hysteria. This description was long before the 1870s and 1880s when Char- cot speculated on the etiology of hysteria and well before the first use of the term traumatic neurosis at the turn of this Century. Traumatic...

I am very pleased to have been asked to do abrief foreword to this second CRISP volume, The Social Context o Coping. I know most of the participants and their work, and respect them as first-rate and influen- tial research scholars whose research is at the cusp of current concerns in the field of stress and coping. Psychological stress is central to human adaptation. It is difficult to visualize the study of adaptation, health, illness, personal soundness, and psychopathology without recognizing their dependence on how weil people cope with the stresses of living. Since the editor, John...

This book is a research mono graph reporting empirical results, but we have tried to place the data in a very broad national perspective. Our intent is a volume on mental health policy in the United States, most notably our de facto policies, as indicated by empirical data. The book gives a broad perspective of mental disorders and mental disorder treatment in general hospitals in the United States. The audi- ence that we ho pe to reach is those interested in mental health policy, planning, and treatment alternatives. The issues raised in this book are germane to anyone who is concerned with...