Center for Systems Research

5 In psychology and the social sciences, analytic issues, i.e., issues that are decidable by choosing definitions of terms and by selecting a formal calculus, are often treated as synthetic, i.e., as if they could be decided by ontological disclosure or by observation. Among these are many issues relating to ‘stress’. In this paper I describe a family of concepts of which the term stress is a member. Then I outline a theoretical approach within which issues concerning behavioral stress can be formulated and resolved. Drawing on the physical theory of matter and on phenomenology, I consider the conceptualization of stress within the psychological and sociological theory of action. The locus of the concept of stress is established within the theory of motivation; the primacy of the idea of the deformation of the surface of a system is asserted; the principle of management of tension is introduced; and a systematic classification of stresses resulting from normal and abnormal loads (situations) experienced by an actor is referred to. Finally, the place of the theory of motivation in the contexts of the theories of action and of living systems is identified, and the difference in the formalization of the theory within a classical and a postmodern system paradigm is indicated.