This chapter presents the case study of Dan, an eleven-year-old fifth-grader in a Boston public elementary school, who is Identified by his teachers and classmates as the biggest bully in the school. Both the external and internal data were subjected to two kinds of analyses, a qualitative examination of themes and a quantitative analysis of developmental levels in the components of the friendship framework. The interview data indicate that Dan does not identify himself as a bully, despite his quite sophisticated understanding of the role of fighting in fifth-graders' interpersonal relationships. Jimmy, Dan's partner in pair counseling, discussed Dan's fighting in the school context several times in the course of his fighting interview. In terms of developmental analysis, Dan showed an uneven pattern across the three psychosocial domains of interpersonal understanding, skills, and personal meaning, but these patterns …

An intensive interview and observational study was carried out with 43 low-income mothers to determine the stress factors associated with depressive symptomatology and to determine the impact of maternal stress and depression on the mother-child relationship. While the respondents experienced a high frequency of life events, neither the number nor the subjectively rated stressfulness of life events was correlated with level of depressive symptomatology. How ever, chronically difficult life conditions and the subjectively rated difficulty of these conditions were strongly correlated with level of maternal depressive symptomatology. Maternal behavior character ized by a lack of responsiveness and nurturance was associated with the extent of stress mothers experienced about their ongoing life conditions and the level of their depressive symptomatology. The authors conclude that stressful chronic life conditions threaten the mental health of mothers and, thus, endanger the quality of the mother-child relationship.

Interviews were conducted with 43 low-income mothers concerning the ways they found to maintain their well-being while living under highly-stressful conditions. This paper discusses the environmental impact at four points of the coping process. Frequent and severe threats to the individual's well-being, differing life contexts upon which threats impinge, limited options for addressing a problem, and lack of environmental response complicate the individual's coping efforts. Case material is presented and its theoretical relevance discussed.