Beyond Stress and Coping: The Positive Psychology of Transformation

Abstract

(from the chapter) Often, it is easier to study a subject than to define it. Anyone foolish enough to attempt a comprehensive and universally acceptable definition of human culture would be like a blind person trying to describe an elephant. A similar difficulty exists in defining the psychology of stress and coping. Nevertheless, we cannot simply run away from these challenges; we still need to clarify and differentiate some of the key concepts, such as multiculturalism, stress, and coping in order to synthesize the vast and complex subject matter of this edited volume. It is our hope that this book will inspire scholars and professionals to develop new visions of the human drama of surviving and flourishing in an ever-changing cultural context. We want to challenge our readers to venture out from their familiar territories of well-defined and rigorous research paradigms and consider larger but more abstruse issues of human existence. It is through integrating and transcending the various fragmented research paradigms that we can gain greater understanding of both the universal and culture-specific adaptive process of human beings. What makes this volume unique among stress-and-coping books is that it not only highlights the positive psychology of transformation, but also emphasizes the cross-cultural psychology of stress and coping. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved).