446 



PSYCHOLOGY OF STRESS 



provide the energy and incentive to achieve 

 this. 



It furthermore seems a fundamental char- 

 acteristic of the functioning of any hving 

 organism that such mobihzed energies, ir- 

 respective of their specific nature, seek ex- 

 pression. From the standpoint of one's 

 inner economy, the most efficient ways of 

 reacting to the stress-producing situation is 

 either to escape or to attack the source of 

 threat. But since in wartime it often hap- 

 pens that neither is possible, it is necessary 

 that the person have adequate means of con- 

 trolling such impulses as fear and aggres- 

 sion. 



If, in the past, the individual was punished 

 and forced to hold in check the expression 

 of aggressive impulses, so that stable pat- 

 terns of self-assertion were not developed, he 

 will tend to be anxious and guilt-ridden when 

 aggression is called for (42). If his inade- 

 quate control of such impulses collapses in 

 the face of the stress, he may in consequence 

 be ovei'whelmed with anxiety — he may feel 

 guilty because of his aggressions — and may 

 fall back into earlier and more infantile 

 modes of behavior. Or, if aggressive im- 

 pulses do not find adequate and satisfactory 

 outlets, they tend to express themselves less 

 adaptively, as in developing chronic anxiety, 

 a sense of effort or fatigue, physical ilbiess, 

 or in unconsciously causing accidents, or in 

 other forms of neurotic behavior. 



Thus, it is necessary that the individual 

 who is to be placed in threatening situations 

 be able to adjust to and tolerate emotional 

 stress. One consequence of the failure to 

 do so is the presence of accumulated and 

 mounting emotional tensions, a condition 

 which indicates that the person's controls 

 and adaptive mechanisms are not function- 

 ing properly. If this state of affairs is al- 

 lowed to continue, breakdown will result, 

 since there is a limit to how much any man 

 can withstand (20, 22, 23, 79, 83). 



Evidence for the desirability of expressing 

 aroused energies is seen in the results of two 



expeiimental frustration studies. In one 

 (31), it was found that the individuals who 

 work off their aroused energies in some overt 

 activity, even though it is apparently of 

 no use (nonadaptive), also recover inner (au- 

 tonomic) equilibrium more rapidly after the 

 stress is terminated. This finding was con- 

 firmed in a subsequent study (37); and it 

 was also found that subjects who directed 

 their activities toward the relevant problem- 

 task at hand during the period of stress re- 

 covered inner equilibrium more rapidly than 

 those who engaged in random, irrelevant 

 actions. Similarly, in numerous animal 

 studies, it was found that a too rigid block- 

 ing of activity in stress situations facilitated 

 the development of "experimental neuroses" 

 (cf. 3, 47, 51, 52, 84) .3 These findings illus- 

 trate the every-day observation that it is 

 both difficult and enervating to do nothing 

 when one is excited to activity. Familiar 

 examples of this include aviators for whom 

 it was more difficult to "sweat out" a mission 

 than to go on one, or submariners who, 

 while being depth charged, were forced 

 simply to submit to it. 



The release or expression of pent-up ener- 

 gies alleviates the inner tensions they cause. 

 This is perhaps why submariners, after a 

 depth charging episode, usually delight in 

 surface battle after it is over, and then feel 

 "satisfied" about things. Thus, when men 

 under stress cannot express their aroused 

 energies directly, they should be provided 



' The justifications for utilizing animal studies 

 in this report is twofold. First, the physiological 

 complexity and functional adequacy of the auto- 

 nomic and vegetative mechanisms, which are 

 involved in emotional-adjustive behavior, are gen- 

 erally as satisfactory in lower animals as in man, 

 so that generalizations of such findings to human 

 behavior seems justifiable. (This is not true to 

 the same extent of behavior involving the central 

 nervous system and the higher mental processes.) 

 Second, the use of animals in experimentation 

 permits a degree of knowledge of causal relation- 

 ships resulting from the control of the subjects' 

 past and present experiences which is not possible 

 with human subjects. 



