Notes on Work, Occupation, and Stress-Strain Equilibrium

We are living in an era of great stress—there are concerns over inflation, the possibility of war, dilemmas in governmental leadership, the decreasing quality of goods and services, an accelerating rise in unemployment, recessions, money markets, gasohol, college loans, Proposition 9, Proposition 13, strikes, industrial mergers, mail-rate increases—to name but a few of the issues that confront our nation. So the attempt to study work, occupation, employment, and their linkage to stress at this time is more than a matter of academic interest.

Stress is a multidimensional topic—there are few aspects of life that are not affected by it—and yet only in recent years have we begun to address its broader social, cultural, and now economic connections. Here I do not refer to the specific medical-economic issues that have involved us for several decades; I refer to those areas that concern all people. My focus is on work.

Work is a four-letter word that has been linked to another four-letter word—love—as the two criteria of maturity. In psychiatry and in psychoanalysis we have concentrated our attention on love and sex—conflicts, deficiencies, affective disruptions. Our focus on major disorders of work has been minimal.

Now, perhaps as a result of the world situation and our greater understanding of the biology of stress-strain, we are entering a new phase and our attention turns to work. In the next decade we will see more research, more application of technical skill, more theoretical emphasis on work at