'Stress' can hardly be considered as a circumscribed phenomenon. It should rather be conceived as a larger area of interactions, containing the exposure of the organism to overloading stimuli in the physico-chemical, psychological or sociological sphere, entailing certain physiological and/or psychological repercussions, the coping-processes and eventual psychological and/or somatic illness patterns, resulting from this exposure or/and coping-procedures. With regard to these processes, attention is called to a number of problems:

• The share of individual dispositions and possibilities in the genesis of overloading.
• How far can different forms of overloading be grouped in one category, called 'stress'?
• The differentiation in physiological and psychological indicators of overloading.
• Specific versus non specific repercussions of overloading.
• Eventual noxious effects attributable to coping mechanisme.
• Different ways of pathogenesis of illness patterns in stress.