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 exceptional beauty of the Bellagio Study and Conference Center, the hospitality of the staff at the Conference Center as well as the support of the administrative staff of the Rockefeller Foundation, combined with the intensity and enthusiasm of the participants made the conference a most memorable one for those who attended it. A special thanks is in order for the help and assistance of Dr. B. A. Bayraktar, Executive Officer of Human Factors Program, Scientific Affairs Division, NATO, and Miss Susan Garfield, Program Director of the Rockefeller Foundation. Needless to say, without their participation and help at all points in the organization and planning of this conference, the conference would not have occurred.

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 experience. The multifacet nature of defence, and the relevance of experimental and clinical psychology, psychometrics, psychodynamics, psychiatry and psychophysiology, renders it particularly resistant to investigation by a single research group. It was with these issues in mind that an interdisciplinary collaborative initiative was formulated through the Concerted Action on Quantification of Parameters for the Study of Breakdown in Human Adaptation. The Concerted Action, which is part of the Commission of the European Community's Medical and Health Research Programme, was set up in 1983 with the aim of stimulating international collaborative research into problems of quantification of stress and adaptation. More than 70 university departments and research institutions from the European Community and other European countries have participated in the programme, tackling a wide variety of topics ranging from basic biological regulatory processes to measurements in psychosocial epidemiology.