Stress and psychosomatic illness

Increasing attention has been addressed to the relationship of stress and illness during the past several decades. Despite extensive and intensive research in this area leading to statistically significant correlations, the specificity of the relationship remains vague. Some of the difficulty evolves from the definition of stress and illness. What is stress? How is it defined? Can it be defined independent of an identifiable reaction or change in behavior? How is illness defined? How does stress as a phenomenon relate to its perception and cognition and on what levels? To what extent do the physiological-worded concepts of Selye and Levi relate to the social and psychological ones of Holmes, Rahe and others? What do we mean by psychosomatic illness? How specific is it in terms of discrete entities. If we are in agreement that there is something there--something relating to change in behavior, conceptualized in social, psychological and biological terms with an event occurring external or internal to the individual, what greater precision can we strive for in determining and identifying specificity and the particulate? Is it possible to define a new model of relationships that will assist in identifying, determining and intervening in stress-related illness situations?