SOME RESEARCH PROPOSALS 



457 



It was mentioned earlier that about 80 per- 

 cent of the individuals who suffered break- 

 down from the stress of battle had previous 

 records of personality disturbances. How- 

 ever, many individuals whose case histories 

 indicated breakdown performed well in 

 military service, whereas about 20 percent 

 of the psychiatric casualties, who were ear- 

 marked by psychiatrists and various "per- 

 sonal inventories" as adjusted and stable 

 individuals, collapsed under comparable 

 conditions of stress. With such predictive 

 discrepancies, it is important to discover the 

 nature of the positive resources of the former 

 (regardless of the past traumatic experiences 

 or present neurotic symptoms), and the lia- 

 bilities and deficiencies in the personalities 

 of the latter individuals. A full answer to 

 this important problem apparently must 

 wait until investigators pay as much atten- 

 tion to the factors that contribute toward 

 resilient mental health and emotional sta- 

 bility as they have to the causation of the 

 neuroses and other personality disorders. 



4. The most efficient techniques for training 

 adults to master emotional stress on the one 

 hand, and to develop maximally effective skills 

 for dealing with the emergency situation on the 

 other. The point was made earlier that in 

 training men to control themselves and act 

 effectively in a crisis, exposure to simulated 

 emergency situations is often an effective 

 way to "toughen" men to stress. However, 

 it is necessary to determine, for example, (a) 

 the range of individual differences among 

 the men in their ability to tolerate stress, 

 (b) the limits of the stress to be used in 

 training (e.g., from where it is meaningless 

 to where it causes breakdown), and (c) the 

 optimal rate at which stress is to be increased 

 during training, in order to facilitate adap- 

 tation to it, and still avoid unnecessary 

 breakdown. Other areas worth investiga- 



that he fell off his seat. He wept, vomited and 

 lost control of his bladder and bowels. But he 

 was the only man who could operate this radar- 

 controlled gun. And he stuck it out through 

 twelve more raids" (81, p. 275). 



ting include the development of appropriate 

 substitute activities ("safety valves") to 

 avoid the building up on excessive tensions 

 from stress, and various techniques to facil- 

 itate effective performance in order to avoid 

 a feeling of helplessness. 



5. The most efficient techniques for providing 

 adults with appropriate motivational patterns 

 and a well-developed cognitive structure of the 

 situation. The possible effectiveness of var- 

 ious education procedures to develop a 

 broad, flexible, cohesive set of motives should 

 be determined. The nature of the subma- 

 riner's motivations should not be ignored or 

 left to chance, since to a large extent his 

 morale and performance on the job depend 

 on whether he has a feeling of success and 

 accomplishment. Such positive feelings 

 occur when his motivations are satisfied. It 

 is probably the case that, ordinarily, other 

 members of the group, various extraneous 

 events, etc., determine the individual's moti- 

 vations to a large extent — but if this condi- 

 tion is left uncontrolled, it may lead to un- 

 fortunate results. In some instances, it may 

 be necessary to modify the individual's 

 motivations (e.g., from egocentric to socio- 

 centric, or to make them less rigid and un- 

 realistic), as a contributing factor to the 

 efiiciency of the men and the group. 



Similarly, the best means of providing the 

 men with an adequate mental picture of the 

 total situation and their place in it should 

 be determined and utilized. Such a pro- 

 gram would both enable the men to deal more 

 effectively with the realistic emergency sit- 

 uation, and at the same time be less suscep- 

 tible to breakdown from emotional stress. 



6. An analysis of factors which tend to 

 increase or decrease mastery of emotional stress 

 in a crisis. A number of group and situa- 

 tional factors may influence the development 

 of emotional stress in submarines. System- 

 atic investigations should be made of the 

 various factors which might play a critical 

 role in affecting the morale, efficiency, and 

 performance of the men in a crisis situation. 

 Some of these factors apparently include the 



