developed to change eating and nutritional pat­ terns that may lead to obesity and heart disease. In addition, interventions are being developed for a wide variety of medical problems. Many of these techniques are based on behavioral principles. Several years ago, one of the editors of this book gave a behavioral medi­ cine seminar for psychiatry residents concerning behavioral principles and their application to medicine. As the seminar developed, it became evident that many of the important articles on the subject were scattered through­ out a wide body of literature, which encompassed a variety of disciplines and journals. No single source was available to provide the state of the art of this emerging field. This book was spawned, in part, as an attempt to overcome this deficit.