CONDITIONS OF STRESS IN UNDERSEA WARFARE 



427 



periment on emotion bears more weight when 

 its conclusions may be supplemented by ob- 

 servations under stresses of real Mfe condi- 

 tions. (See Section V, 6.) 



On board a submarine, on patrol or in 

 combat, it is conceivable that the stimulat- 

 ing effects of perceived danger may be out 

 of all proportion to anything produced in a 

 laboratory, and they may be greater than 

 those usually encountered in hfe situations. 

 The limitation of possible action may mag- 

 nify the perceptual effect. Evidence from 

 the laboratory seems to indicate that limi- 

 tation of opportunity for motor activity 

 under stress may increase the emotional con- 

 sequences of stimulation (44). Without 

 such expression every sound of the pursuing 

 enemy or by ones colleagues on board may 

 be exaggerated. "The drawing of a glass of 

 water may sound hke Niagara." The con- 

 fines of a submarine permitting but Umited 

 motion or adaptive activity might conceiva- 

 bly further aggravate the discrepancy be- 

 tween mobilization and actual expenditure 

 of one's energies. Not only is attention not 

 objectively directed, but there may also be a 

 relative absence of overt expressive activity. 

 Lack of opportunity for aggressive action has 

 been reported bad for morale. Anger during 

 depth bombing, for example, has been at- 

 tributed to the necessity for "taking a beat- 

 ing without fighting back." The urge of the 

 submariner to seek refuge in action and fight 

 it out among the (for him) even greater 

 dangers of surface warfare may represent 

 such a need for action. One has the feehng 

 that to improvise duties for these men (oxy- 

 gen supply being adequate), to keep them 

 intensely active and provide a nucleus of or- 

 ganization and a function for otherwise "free 

 floating" emotional organic changes, would 

 be doing them a service. 



To the extent that reactions are excessive, 

 disorganized, or inappropriate to the situ- 

 ation they have been designated "emo- 

 tional." By definition such reactions have 

 ceased to serve solely as preparatory and 

 facilitative physiological changes. Their 



added value if any, must be a psychological 

 one, an effect on the man himself or on his 

 confreres. And reactions to the observation 

 of one's o^vn extreme physiological changes 

 may also be classed as emotion. Whether 

 such reactions occur on observing one's own 

 homeostatic adjustments to conditions of 

 habitabihty, his own behavior under stress of 

 duty, or his own reactions to perception of 

 dangers threatening from without, they by 

 definition exceed the immediate physiological 

 need. A person, for example, may become 

 emotionally perturbed on observing his own 

 cardiac changes in response to an injection 

 of adrenahn in a laboratory experiment. 



Feedback Effects of Emotion Upon the Central 

 Nervous System 



In the early study of emotion by the em- 

 ployment of "expressive" methods it was as- 

 sumed that the analysis of such symptoms 

 would provide clues as to what was going 

 on \vithin the organism. The peripheral 

 changes recorded by "expressive methods" 

 were considered as symptoms, and Httle con- 

 sideration was given to the possibility that 

 these organic changes might themselves have 

 important effects upon the brain. With the 

 development of EEG for recording of the 

 brain activity electrically, and with the con- 

 comitant recording of autonomic activities 

 by the polygraph (26, 27, 60, 61, 76), the 

 effects of emotion or autonomic changes upon 

 the central mechanisms have become demon- 

 strable. Now that it is recognized that 

 engine governors, thermo-regulations, self- 

 stokers, self-feeding, self-piloting, self-aim- 

 ing, self-guiding machines are possible only 

 by apphcation of the feed-hack principle (84, 

 91), we have come to see examples of feed- 

 back in nature where its importance was 

 never suspected before. It is reahzed that 

 without such systems a coordinated, directed, 

 regulated system such as the human body 

 would be impossible. 



What happens when the human regulatory 

 systems are damaged may be observed in the 

 dysmetrias, incoordinations, palsies, athe- 



