The Quantification of Human Defence is to be welcomed both for its scientific merit, and as an example of international collaboration and cooperation between psychologists, psychiatrists and clinicians from many countries. The problems surrounding the analysis and assessment of psychological coping are complex, particularly with responses such as defence where many processes are not immediately accessible to conscious awareness. It is widely recognised that without reliable and quantifiable measures, little progress can be made towards understanding the role of psychological defence in human...

This volume contains fifteen papers by invited participants delivered at the NATO International Workshop on Coping and Health held March 26 through March 30, 1979, at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio study and Conference Center, Bellagio, Italy. The editors of the book were co-directors of the workshop as well as participants. The conference was a small conference consisting of only 20 scientists and was designed to be an intensive period of exchange of ideas dealing with a range of topics varying from experimental models of coping through coping and its psychosomatic implications. The...