[Adjustment, coping and defense mechanisms--deciding factors in the therapeutic process].

Disease leads to a great number of psychosocial charges of man which must be coped with. Strategies of coping, as an active and flexible contest with disease and defence measures, as a more unconscious orientated to experience effort for internal adaptation are different possibilities to overcome a disease. A subdivision of strategies of overcoming according to Ehle is presented. Therapeutic consequences which result from the knowledge of processes of overcoming find their issue in a method of psychotherapeutic treatment for patients with psychosomatic diseases.