How does a doctor or therapist bridge the gap between particulars and generalizations regarding patients and various phenomena or diseases? The authors of this volume illustrate the multiple ways that practitioners in the fields of clinical psychology and medicine address this tension between the universal nature of scientific knowledge and its particular applications. They discuss the fact that some decisions have impacts that cannot be reversed once they have been made erroneously. Therefore, an error made in a decision process that cannot be reversed in the realms of medicine, ecology, peace, and war brings with it psychological strategies that are different than in the case of correctable decisions. The disciplines of psychology and medicine have two shared goals. The first is that both disciplines seek a basic understanding about how human beings exist in their ordinary biological and psychological worlds and the second is the attempt to describe and treat disruptions of each person's healthy state of being. Therefore, the four coeditors uncover areas of mutual interest between the two disciplines and the basis for the conflicts that have arisen in their fields.