Theories of Psychological Stress

Psychodynamic Model

Traditional psychodynamic models of stress have been used to explain the process of stress transmission and traumatization. Psychodynamic theory examines the extent to which a traumatic incident influences a person's perception of self or others. This model seeks to characterize environmental factors that influence subsequent stress response, such as the importance of early childhood trauma and early psychological conflicts. Affective responses result when conscious or unconscious representations of oneself or others are altered by trauma, resulting in conflict in the representations of self and others. Traumatized individuals then mobilize their psychological defenses to cope with these discrepant meanings and emotions. With time, stress responses continue, and the individual may regress to using primitive defenses, including splitting (thinking all people are either good or bad) and dissociation. The trauma victim will lose control of sense of self and be observed to have affective instability. Unresolved early conflicts may evoke stressors from earlier [Page 669]developmental periods associated with attachment and protection issues, thereby reactivating the stressful effects. Consequently, maladaptive coping pushes the trauma victim into a tendency to repeat mal-adaptive relationship patterns, resulting in unstable interpersonal relationships.

General Adaptation Syndrome

In the 20th century, one of the most important influences in the study of stress was the work of Hans Selye. The earliest conception of stress defined stress as a response. Response-based theories of stress stem from Seyle's early medical research, which noted that stress was a nonspecific response of the body to any demand placed on it, and observed that any adverse event could trigger a biological response. Selye's definition was guided by his medical research, in which he categorized common responses to a variety of events termed stressors. The stress response, which he described as a general adaptation syndrome, was characterized by many of the precursors to the vegetative symptoms of affective disorders, such as melancholy, loss of motivation, loss of appetite, and loss of energy. Underlying his presuppositions was the assumption that stress symptoms were somewhat universal and could therefore be generalized to the nature of the stress. Selye described the general adaptation syndrome with three stages: alarm and mobilization, resistance, and exhaustion. In the first stage, the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and the endocrine system are engaged as a sympathetic nervous reaction to the fight-or-flight response, causing muscle groups and respiratory and circulatory systems to give the body additional energy for acute stress situations. During the second stage, the body's physiological responses continue as long as necessary to combat the effects of the stressors. In the third stage, the body is fatigued from operating at this higher energy level and comes down from this level as stressors subside. Selye's conceptualization of stress was a foundation for the incorporation of the biological model, the transactional theory of stress, and learning theories associated with stress into models of posttraumatic stress.

...