Coping and Defending

Book excerpt: Coping and Defending: Processes of Self-Environment Organization investigates coping and defending within the context of personal-social psychology, with emphasis on processes of self-environment organization. Topics range from ego and stress to personality theory, family, and child rearing. Comprised of 13 chapters, this book begins with a discussion on theories and conceptualizations of ego, paying particular attention to its logical constraints as state; the neomechanical personal man; rational choice; and continuity and discontinuity in states. Subsequent chapters explore coping, defense, and fragmentation as ego processes; immanent value in personality theory; problems and perspectives in investigating ego processes; and the interregulation between structures and ego processes. The next section is largely devoted to empirically based findings concerning the development of ego processing; the link between stress and processing; and processing in families. The final chapter describes research aimed at developing and improving coping and defense scales based on personality inventories. This monograph will be of interest to developmentalists, cognitivists, personologists, clinicians, and social psychologists, as well as sociologists and perhaps anthropologists.