Handling stress in reality

Both sexes suffer the same stresses in the same professional conditions, and there is not a great deal of difference between men and women in the ways each responds. For the purpose of this outline we are only interested in systems in which the person is operating within a totally hostile, unsurvivable environment, while armoured against it by machinery and equipment. Stress may be regarded as having two sources: that caused by (internal) personal predisposition; and that caused by surrounding conditions and circumstances. A human being functions best under stress. Too little and one becomes comatose. Too much and one panics and either makes gross, possibly fatal, errors, or capitulates and hands over to one´s Maker. The way in which the human operator functions has a number of electrical analogies. Under stress, which is always present with work-load, influences intrude which are similar to ´noise´. These may result from other people around and about-from system, structural and mechanical failures occuring simultaneously-from within oneself, through fear and anxiety. The authors focus on human beings subjected to high and low static pressures in air or water and the measurement of stress in these circumstances