Word: stressing
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Mother & Son. Stress is ever present everywhere, according to Selye. He sees it in "the soldier who sustains wounds in battle, the mother who worries about her soldier son, the gambler who watches the races . . . the beggar who suffers from hunger and the glutton who overeats . . . the child who scalds himself-and especially the particular cells of the skin over which he spilled the boiling coffee." So far it would seem that Dr. Selye has discovered only the obvious. But then he takes a bold, imaginative leap: "To understand the mechanism of stress gives physicians a new approach...
...Selye sees it, every influence that bears on man requires him to adapt himself to his circumstances, including both outward events and internal emotions. As a technical framework for the disorders resulting from excess stress (or from faulty adaptation to normal stress), he has constructed the general adaptation syndrome, or G.A.S. Under this theory, the immediate response of the human or any other animal to a challenging stimulus is the alarm reaction-the mobilization for fight or flight marked by drops in body temperature, blood pressure and blood sugar. This first or shock phase may last from a few minutes...
Specific "diseases of adaptation," according to Selye, include rheumatoid and gouty arthritis, several kidney disorders and some types of high blood pressure. Less well-defined but perhaps more clearly related to stress are emotional disturbances. There is also a two-way vicious cycle: besides "psychosomatic" illnesses in which a sick psyche causes physical changes in the organs, Selye emphasizes "somatopsychic" illnesses, arguing that nobody can be physically ill without as a result also suffering emotional upset...
Know Thyself. Medical science, says Selye, should now make the effort to combat disease by strengthening the body's own defenses against stress. It may do this not only by ordering rest or prolonged sleep but artificial hibernation or treatment with ataraxic drugs and others (including hormones) not yet discovered...
...individual's success in achieving a new and less stressful way of life, says Selye, lies in self-knowledge-insight into the particular factors that provoke stress in one's own case, from job insecurity to feeling unloved. A man can be drunk with his own hormones, according to Endocrinologist Selye, who adds: "This sort of drunkenness has caused much more harm to society than the other kind* ... In all our actions throughout the day we must consciously look for signs of being keyed up too much-and we must learn to stop in time...