General Adaptation Syndrome

From Bill Powers (2002.10.26.0957 MDT)]

Found the reference on the Web.

Best,

Bill P.

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Selye

Hans Selye 1907 -- 1982, Austrian physician who did much important
theoretical work on the physical effects of stress. He is considered to
have been the first to demonstrate the existence of a separate stress
disease, the stress syndrome, or General adaptation syndrome.

To grossly oversimplify, Selye discovered and documented that stress
differs from other physical responses in that stress is stressful whether
the news is good or bad, whether the impulse is positive or negative. He
called negative stress distress and positive stress eustress.

Selye is said to have discovered the stress syndrome when in medical school
he observed that people who had various illnesses seemed to share a quality
of "sickness" that was highly similar.

He was the author of Stress without Distress (1974) and The Stress of Life
(1956). He was a professor and director of the Institute of Experimental
Medicine and Surgery at the University of Montreal.