Psychopatho logical response to stress may be considered from two perspectives. The first, perspective emphasizes pathological consequences of stress, such as impaired brain function, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), hippocampal shrinkage, or elevations in scrum Cortisol levels. The second perspective focuses on how an individual’s integrated

central nervous system alters and copes with the stressor. In this case, the result, of stress is seen not as nonspecific Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical depression and anxiety, but, as a set of differentiated creative but involuntary behaviors that may range from elaborate delusional systems to Beethoven warding off suicidal depression by inserting Schiller’s Ode to Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical Joy into his Ninth Symphony. This second perspective is the orientation of this report. A fever is a coping response, not a

sign of illness. If response to stress can be viewed from two vantage points – pathological or coping, coping responses to stress can be divided into three broad categories. The first coping category involves voluntarily eliciting help from appropriate others, for example, by mobilizing social supports. The second coping category involves voluntary strategies like information gathering, anticipating danger, and rehearsing responses to danger.1 The third coping category, like fever and leukocytosis, is involuntary. It entails deploying unconscious homeostatic Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical mechanisms that, reduce Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical the disorganizing effects of sudden stress. Such coping mechanisms (shortened to defenses for this paper) have more to do with adaptation to life than with Freud’s “psychoanalysis.” Despite the emerging dialogue between neuroscience and dynamic psychiatry, the chemical processes and neuronal assemblies underlying involuntary defenses have not been identified. Not long ago at an amusement park, I watched my grandson ride the loop-the-loop roller coaster with astonishment. As he hung suspended upside down 30 meters above the ground, I saw that for him the experience was one of joy, release, and Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical exhilaration. I imagined

that for myself the ride might produce panic. By what, alchemy had the chemistry of his brain, hardwired to feel lasting fear at dangerous heights, left, him without residual distress? Who is sane and who is crazy – the excited teen or the phobic grandfather? Choice of defense is involuntary, but Histone demethylase so-called “mature defenses” (eg, sublimation and humor) rather than “immature defenses” (eg, projection and hypochondriasis) can make an enormous LY2228820 manufacturer difference in mental health. But even the most, “pathologic” defenses serve to calm. Early 19th-century medical phenomenologists viewed pus, fever, and coughing as evidence of disease; late 19th century pathophysiologists learned to regard these symptoms as evidence of the body’s healthy efforts to cope with infectious insult.