Hope has been largely ignored by mental health practitioners or, at best, viewed as a mixed blessing due to its potential for decreasing the individual's contact with reality. Hope is here denned as an essentially positive phenomenon necessary for healthy coping, its key purpose being the avoidance of despair, with the secondary function of permitting the individual psychologically to bypass ongoing unpleasant or stressful situations. Hoping is differentiated from wishing by hope's reality-oriented focus, and from expecting or anticipating by its intense affective component. The dangerous physical and psychological consequences of the loss of hope are described, distinctions between hopelessness and depression are explored, and some methods of activating and using hope as a coping device in persons under acute stress are presented.1 Requests for reprints should be sent to Ija Korner.

In our department offices, we have a sound system which allows you to listen in on the proceedings in another room. One day, while monitoring a student-patient psychotherapy session, one of the authors heard the following conversation: Patient: "My mother does some of the meanest things to me but . . " Therapist: "You don't like your mother." Patient: "Well, I don't see why she is so unfair to me but I . . " Therapist: "She makes you very angry at her. Sometimes ynu are sure you hate her." Patient: "Well, I ... I ... guess but I . ..." Therapist: "And it makes you feel awful to hate her."

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