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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol. 9, No. 5
Publication Date: May 25, 2022
DOI:10.14738/assrj.95.12072. Vincze, J., & Vincze-Tiszay, G. (2022). The Biophysical Modeling of Psychological Aspects. Advances in Social Sciences Research
Journal, 9(5). 90-97.
Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom
The Biophysical Modeling of Psychological Aspects
Janos Vincze
Health Human International Environment Foundation
Budapest, Hungary
Gabriella Vincze-Tiszay
Health Human International Environment Foundation
Budapest, Hungary
ABSTRACT
The notion of stress has became as the same time very popular but is sometimes
used improperly or with many exaggerations especially concerning the
recommendations of practical solutions suggested for stress management. The
stress producing stimuli, many physiological processes go into action, probably
through different paths in close connection; the response is, therefore, an
interaction between the organism and his environment. The emotional component
takes part in the response reactions through the somatic effect of which it
influences the behaviour. The man having lost his last connection with the world
grieves duple and his environment must pay great attention not to lose also him.
Every medico-surgical intervention belongs to the stress factors. Both contain
psychopathological elements and a long psychotherapy accomplished by a
specialist is needed, considerate-protective environment for the accommodation in
the normal life, for the resocialization. The biological stress is a long succession of
active, interactive mutual effect. This relation which always consists of the
difference of value-power-intensity is, like an example of today, a chain of action of
two fighter during which they get the offensive and defensive conduct in exchanged
role. From the point of view of the human individual life the psyche (psychism) is a
subsystem. If still we take it out of this relationship with investigational aim then
we have to consider it a system.
Key words: stress, psychological balance, psychical stressors, psychical system
INTRODUCTION
The 19th century pathology development as well as clinical diagnosis were based on this
concept. Hans Selye, while a student in Prague, already observed what others failed to notice,
namely that there are many similarities among the various illnesses. However, due to their
general nature these did not help the physician to make a proper diagnosis, thus they were
overlooked. It struck Selye though that those hospitalised with various all looked more or less
distressed, weary or restless, feverish, pale or flushed as the case may be. He came to the
conclusion that in most cases these symptoms were more or less identical. His attention was
caught especially by the „physical symptomatology”. Selye’s theory of stress was already
launched in 1936 [1] when he described the General Adaptation Syndrome.
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Vincze, J., & Vincze-Tiszay, G. (2022). The Biophysical Modeling of Psychological Aspects. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 9(5). 90-97.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.95.12072
What is stress? Stress is the non-specific response of the living organism to a stressor. Such
stressors include effort, focused attention, pain, illness, failure, joy, success [2]. Stress can be
either pleasant or unpleasant, whereas distress always denotes something troubling and
unpleasant. Although the natures of the stressors may differ, similar physiological/biochemical
changes are produced. Selye distinguishes three stages of the stress in its development: 1) the
phase of “alarm reaction”, which occurs when the harmful factor begins to act and large
amounts of the adrenocorticotropic hormone and glucocorticoids are released; 2) the phase of
resistance, when the increased amount of glucocorticoids circulating in the blood leads to the
development of resistance to the harmful effects; 3) the phase of “exhaustion” during which the
adrenals no longer produce sufficient glucocorticoids (which Selye considers protective or
adaptative hormones) and the condition of the organism deteriorates.
In 1949 Selye discovered that an inflammatory reaction [3], which can be induced in the rat by
the parenteral administration of egg white, is inhibited by cortisone or by purified ACTH [4]. In
his review article in Science entitled „Stress and disease” [5], he describes the stress response.
His conclusion is as follows:
If I may venture a prediction, I would like to reiterate my opinion that research on stress will
be most fruitful if it is guided by the principle that we must learn to imitate – and if necessary
to correct and complement – the body’s own autopharmacologic efforts to combat the stress
factor in disease.”
About the stress
The stress response is an essential component of the body’s regulatory systems. Stress is
nowadays a reality of the contemporary life which implies as well various categories of society
as the entire population.
The causes of this phenomenon are multiple:
– high incidence of stress symptoms;
– negative outcomes for health with increased morbidity and even cardiovascular or psychiatric
mortality;
– pressure of the mass-media publicity offering many kind of medication proposed by
traditional and complementary medicine.
The biopsychosocial concept became a framework in psychosomatics, proving the reemergence
of holistic systems theories. Horowitz published in 1976 a first book on stress response
syndromes, a concept revisited in several of his publications where have been explored namely
the subjective stress in response to psychosomatic life events. [6]
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Stress syndromes in clinical medicine
Several researches deal with the impact of chronic distress on the cardiovascular conditions.
– Positive correlations between the stress vulnerable type A personality and the cardiovascular
heart disease.
– Association between psychosocial stressors and high risks for myocardial infarction.
– Acute cardiomiopathy (Taco-Tsubo syndrome) occurring after severe emotional stress.
– Sudden cardiac death in young competitive athletes.
The controversies as concern the involvement of stress in the ulcerous disease prove the
shortcoming of the view that the psychosomatic dimension and immune processes imply
isolated reciprocally excluding mechanisms. After the demonstration of the role of Helicobacter
pylori on the genesis of ulcerous disease many clinicians have considered obsolete the
hypothesis that this condition could be the result of psychological stress.
The Psychological Balance
Stress is a complicated concept just as its special literature looks like. For the sake to keep the
everyday physical balance, the healthy man creates mentally that stress-level interval which,
despite its fluctuations, represents the proper ratio of the equilibrated state. Motivation is one
of its facilitating factors composed of intrinsic as well as extrinsic constituents. Both set an
adaptation process in the individual, first by imagination, later put into the practice whatsoever
step by step.
Although the unsuccess, failure, lack of self-confidence, delay of recognition, uncertain
existence, insecure status are negative judgement forms they may also stimulate to search for
new variations. In this case drawing a lesion from the failure one must take another course,
prepare another strategy accordingly and apply it gradually. The solution of the question
depends upon how long a person can tolerate the mass of negative influences, when does a
lethargic state ensue resulting in stagnation. [7]
In the natural sciences even with physical phenomena, it is a known fact the summation of small
effects the time interval of vhich we cannot suspect, it is person-dependent. The longlasting
unsuccess may generate failure on other fields whether similar or different and the protracted
negative status may call in action itself a process of query.
Stress is similar so far to other stimuli as to elicit a lot of somatic responses. We should primarily
understand the somatic functions in order to get nearer to the essence of the stress. Alarm
reactions originate from the conception of Cannon: once the person is confronted with any kind
of difficulty, emotional experience to overcome problems, there happen automatically a long
row of somatic changes and although the struggle is mental in the beginning, changes are
notwithstanding similar to some kind of „flight”. The usage flight is symbolically general,
nothing else but a mental preparedness carrying out the voluntary action to come which is a
purposeful activity. The perceptible part of the stress is the internal restlessness preparing with
its pulsation the accomplishment of the conceived action. The organic and psychotic
behavioural changes don’t run parallelly and on the same frequency where as they appear
simultaneously despite the shift.
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Vincze, J., & Vincze-Tiszay, G. (2022). The Biophysical Modeling of Psychological Aspects. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 9(5). 90-97.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.95.12072
The physiological activation processes are parts of the psychical emotional mechanisms, these
processes are intensity indicators, markers of the behaviour and aren’t any criteria in
directional relation. The born and learnt behaviour as forms are composed in an imperfectly
connected system in complicated interaction with each other. [8]
The born and the learned behavioural reactions evolve during the long-term effect of the
stimulus and do not by the chaotic short, low intensity appearances. There is no correlation
between two somatic variables. But correlations are modified in functions of more than two
variables; such influencing factors are the cultural surrounding, the intelligence level, tradition,
national customs, manner of life (conduct), family structure, etc.
The observation, perception, experience of the stress and the adaptation, sufferance to it,
forming of defensive mechanisms jointly appear but not in the same time. [9] The different
somatic processes have got different role in performing the behaviour, the interaction is of
different dimension and of temporal order. The different attitudes of stimuli induce different
somatic patterns of response being so the cause of the psychosomatic illnesses. Individuals
inclined to produce psychosomatic symptoms possess of different and characteristic attitudes.
Also the different emotional states result in deviating physiological response patterns or even
when stimuli are unaltered these bring about different subjective states, experiences. The
pattern derives from the attitude, expectation of the person. [10] From the complex responses
of behaviour, from the complex states of stimuli, one cannot separate the essential factors
neither to determine the interactions between the somatic response reactions nor estimate
them in advance.
Psychical Stressors
The greatest loss is the mourning known by everybody. The mourning reaction has a regular
course giving rise to psychical injury and one needs a certain definite time for its conscious
treatment. Because of the shock we don’t believe, don’t accept the reality. Shock retards, delays
every psychical function moreover sometimes temporary constriction of mind sets in.
Doubts, scruples, charges and self-accusations take their origin but mourning passes off in the
form as it is prescribed by the tradition how one must adapt such occasion. To have respect for
the cultural tradition, to keep customs and rites facilitates the process of the mourning being a
diverting scheme. Death arises in the mind, the person left alone struggled against despair,
vacuity and hopelessness feels the final secession. [11]
The natural mourning, lasts for 6–12 mounts. Henceforth living have to speak without sorrow
of the deceased. The surviver has to create new connections setting in the positive
identification. During the treatment of mourning it is first the sorrow to be dominant and
lessens by the time, the bequeathed things, inheritance are attended to care, testimony fulfilled
and people try to do their best according to the deceased’s wish which would have been liked
to see. In this last tribute the apology is included, too.
A state similar to the mourning reaction occurs on the course of stress condition due to losing
parts of the body. After an accident or as the consequence of a disease surgeons often have to
amputate. The final cessation of a lost function is a grave “object loss” after which one have to
learn once more to live under other circumstances, to realize oneself by restricted living space
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and means of earning of a livelihood chance to learn with the special insufficiency feeling as he
were of sound mind in an impaired body. [12] Every medico-surgical intervention belongs to
the stress factors.
Losing the native-, homeland elicit a grave stress condition the feeling of homelessness after a
period of residence in a new, chosen country. In the new, recipient country the settler counts
as a stranger and everything – beyond the elementary selfsufficiency – has to be learnt again on
another basis, to live practically impersonal „without countenance”.
The nationalization of the private property, giving „in the hand of the people” the forfeiture of
the property, losing the landed property set off an irreversible process which was equal with
genocid and makes its effect feel for the time being. The loss of the personal goods and
immovable property as the results of a lifetime work is again a new stress which cannot heal
like the trauma of losing the homeland. The deprivation of protection means harmful stress for
a lifetime. To be threatened by losing the living space, and to be in jeopardy appears as a fatal
disease, as the experience of a catastrophe like a state after survival of a trauma. The loss of life
space shows increased negative activity which lasts for a long time. [13] The longer the threat
and losing period of the life-existence space was the greater is the chance for an irreversible
state to happen. Psychogenic damages proceed, previous pathologies recrudesce or worsen,
turn into chronic. The uncertainty of existence, the threats menacing brings about mental crisis,
personality impairment which in itself makes impossible the balanced participation in the
society.
The subsistence is of vital importance. The loss of a post-work (unemployment and
worklessness) if somebody becomes unemployed through no fault of his own but by
irrationality of mismanagement his working place have been reduced and passed over to
foreigners then it means a mockery of the constitutional human right, the life element of man.
The involuntary change of employment: re-education and retrained for other work is up to the
stress of a personality change because the skill and experience gathered throughout a lifetime,
the profession-conformed personality will be inhuman, cruel degrade to zero.
The appearance of life danger-threats provoke experience like disease, natural catastrophe or
as the survival of war or an accident. The destructing elementary calamities signify increased
threats because possessing the same chance one cannot figure out who shall survive and who
falls victim to. The man who had thought of his invulnerability suddenly realizes the critical
situation that he is in the centre of the catastrophe. People behave embarrassed in every life
danger, in fact they don’t grasp bygones and drift along with the tide. War brings about stress
reaction similar to the symptoms of the life-danger stress. Both contain psychopathological
elements and a long psychotherapy accomplished by a specialist is needed, considerate- protective environment for the accommodation in the normal life, for the resocialization.
In the state of isolation there arise affective disturbances specious solutions to give themselves
purpose and task. The sexual life, the instinct of self-preservation belongs to the line of instinct
frustration. To give it up, to cease it, induces stress process. Nourishment also belongs to the
instincts. Keeping the dietary prescription or the over-eating as supplemental actions are not
primary stressors but the consequences of secondary problems of other nature.
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URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.95.12072
In childhood, the stress is diffuse and multicausal, the appearing disturbances are: negativism,
elective mutism, resistance-spite and fit of fury, opposition, aggression, eating disturbance,
emptying troubles. In the case of children these are notorganic manifestations but prove the
loosened connection with their surroundings, their therapy shouldn’t aim the conscious
treatment of life-danger or threats. [14]
On middle and long course, the effect of stress elicit about psychosomatic diseases
(hypertension, cardiac and colon problems, etc.) in the general state of health it means
disappointment, withdrawal from the activity, depression. There are changes also in the social
behaviour: conflicts become critical, aggressive actions against others thicken, the tolerance
threshold of the individual diminishes. Set out from these facts we can declare: the more invalid
is a population the worse is the quality of the social life.
THE ORGANIZATION OF THE PSYCHICAL SYSTEM
The inner life is a multidimensional and at the same time a uniform system. From the point of
view of the human individual life the psyche (psychism) is a subsystem. If still we take it out of
this relationship with investigational aim then we have to consider it a system.
In this respect the human psychism unifies in itself the attributes of integrity, the openness, the
complexity of the synthetic character, the probabilisticity, the self-organization i.e. the (active
and passive) homing guidance and the self-regulation so we can draw a picture of the highest
grade cybernetic system. This is to explain that in the course of searching the human psyche
one have to use the general system theory, the internetics and the dimensions of the control
regulation. Quite apart from our morphological, functional or spiritual approximation we have
to emphasize first of all the internetical connections of its components and peculiar features,
those of organization, information delivery, controllability, expediency. The psychology
represents a non-substantial, essentially functional system the fundamental role of which is
governing and control: referring to the internal conceptual world of the man and by the interest
to insure mutual balance as well between the man’s attitude and the outside world. [15]
One can establish that the physical system is an isomorphic superstructure of material, ener- getical and informational cycles of events originating from the inside and outside of the
organism and realized in the peculiar alphabet of the logical network of the nervous system.
This superstructure evolves place through the self-organization of abstract codes created in the
course of the juncture of the reflexion-rised imaginal and of the symbolic one. We can plainly
say that the spiritual life in cybernetic respect is nothing else but an entropy device subjected
to the preservation task of the human-specific psychophysiological homeostasis.
The psychical system in organizational viewpoint is of developing character because it forms
and develops within the frame of interaction between the man and his environment. It is,
therefore, a self-organizing, developing system.
The organization of the psychical system is subordinated to the domination areas of the
universal laws of the evolution and it is directed also by such particular principles which
accentuate more concrete its organizational mechanisms and variants. Out of these let’s
mention some: the Le-Chatelier principle, the weakest chain-loop, the efficiency of the energy
consumption, the ranking, avalanche-effect, the compensation, the principle of action. [16]
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In reference to the Le-Chatelier principle: if on a system in rest is operative such an external
input which changes one of the conditions resulting the equilibrium state then the system
evades in the direction reducing the outcome of the effect. The principle of the weakest chain- link declares that during a change-over from a given organization to the new one the
modification determined by the effect of the directing factors take place mainly in the
vulnerable points or chain-loops of the system. For the energy consumption an excellent
example is the formation of dynamic stereotypes. Ranking happens when simultaneously more
factors affect the living system. The avalanche-effect is well illustrated by the „it’s hit or miss”
law of the nervous system in the case of the stimulus-answer reaction. The compensation
principle is realized in the living organism in every case of the negative feedback regulation.
Action comes into being when it is threatened by an external factor or mediates such adequate,
essential information towards the system that has to be replied.
According to the system theory, from the of viewpoint of the steering circumstances in the
systems the process of the guiding communication takes its course in compliance with the
diver- gency-convergency principle.
Creativity can be considered as the highest level of the expression of the operational polivalency
of the human psyche. The distance between reality and model the effort and the possibility is
such an indicator which determines the real selfimplementation level of the personality. Since
these indicators determine the entity of the psychical organization by their help one can
estimate the general development level of the personality which expresses the conformity of
the behaviour towards the nature and sense of the external effects. This can be estimated by
completing the phase profile of the psychical system on the basis of the main psychical
indicators which can be expressed in the form of the following relatio
where
expresses the sum of the mean (value) of the adaptative answer answers,
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URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.95.12072
still the sum of their extemal effects and employments, tk (k = 1,2, ..., p)the consecutive moments
of the examined period. If the value of S is near the zero then the personality is characterized
by considerable absence of psychical organization, i.e. psychical inorganization; if the value of
S is near the 1 it can be expected the individual should properly respond, show psychically
balanced state and his psychical amplitudes should be minimal.
References
[1] Selye, H. (1936) Thymus and adrenals in the response of the organism to injuries and intoxications. British
Journal of Experimentál Pathology 1936.17. 234–248
[2] Selye, H. (1955) Stress and disease. Science 122: 625–633
[3] Selye, H. (1956) The Stress of Life. New York: McGraw-Hill,
[4] Vincze, J. (1980) Biomathematical elements on sympatholo-adrenal reactions to stress. Tim. Med. 25, 46–52.
[5] Selye, H. (1974) Stress without distress. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 364 pp.
[6] Horowitz, M. (2002) Treatment of stress reponse syndromes. Amer. Psyh. Publ. Wash., D. C.., London.
[7] Hoppe, W., Lohmann, W., Markl, H., Ziegler H. (1983) Biophysics. Springer-Verlag, Berlin.
[8] Vincze, J. (2007). Interdisciplinarity. NDP P., Budapest.
[9] Sarson, E., Cobelli, C. (2014) Modelling Methodology for Physiology and Medicine. Elsevier P.
[10] Vincze, J. (2018) Medical Biophysics. NDP P., Budapest, 2018.
[11] Theorell, T. (1987) Stress syndromes. Annals. Clin. Research, 19: 53–61.
[12] Vincze, J. (2021) Biophysical vademecum. NDP P., Budapest.
[13] Cleri, F. (2016) The Physics of Living Systems. Springer.
[14] Vincze, J. (2020). The Biophysical Modeling of the Apparatuses in the Human Organism. Lambert Academic
Publishing, Berlin.
[15] Vincze, J., Vincze-Tiszay, G. (2020). Some Aspects of Sciences from the Biophysical Point of View. Int. J.
Software & Hardware Engin. 8(9): 103–108.
[16] Vincze, J. (201) The Biophysics is a Boderland Science. Phyl. Study, 11 (5): 351–362.