this is a very much over-simplified example , but it may serve to emphasise the point that common criteria of adaptation often contradict each other . a common antecedent to symptoms of stress in the individual is violent change in the environment and , in the particular instance of stress conditions and behaviour that I will be discussing , overt and drastic changes are not far to seek . Africa is in a stage of turbulent transition . the last hundred years have brought great changes in the life of its tribes and of its tribesmen . as I have mentioned , a fertile source of human stress is the clash between the demands of the individual and those of his society . this conflict must be the more severe when the two aspects are not geared together , functionally , as they tend to be in any rigid pre-literate tribal system where the conformity of the individual to a very stable pattern of expected behaviour is ensured by the traditional methods of child rearing . tonight I will be considering some aspects of life in Zululand and change has been as violent here as elsewhere on the continent . the modern Zulu is neither purely traditional African nor purely western in his attitudes , aspirations and behaviour . he is a displaced person and his society is a displaced society . in effect , there are few readily identifiable social norms for any specific action and I think that it is this fact that makes the investigation of stress disorder in Zululand so difficult and yet so potentially illuminating . the situation is an excellent example of Durkheim &apos;s anomy , social disorganization at all levels - norms are hard or impossible to find and the psychologist can not , for long , hold many preconceptions . as , to most of you , the background will be unfamiliar I must spend a little time in giving a very short account of the social situation then ( say 1850 ) and now . in the nineteenth century the Zulu people were the pastoralist and agriculturist conquerors of a very large area of southern Africa . there was more than enough land for their needs . the men were warriors whose chief domestic duty was the tending of the cattle - an occupation strictly taboo to women . the women did the hard work on the lands . the state was a pyramidal patriarchy with the Zulu king , the secular and religious father of his people , at the apex . the men remained at their homesteads except when they were required for military service , and all legal and ritual authority was vested in the males of the nation . most marriages were polygynous and based upon a system of bride-price , and the Zulu woman was at the bottom of the social pyramid . while the behaviour of all members of the society was strictly circumscribed by law and custom , this was especially true of the young married woman , living under the strict tutelage of her husband &apos;s mother . she even had to modify the very speech that she used in order to avoid any words containing the root sound of the name of her father in law . the extended family was always present , which helped greatly in the rearing of children ; children that were of vital importance to the nation for not only did they ensure continuity of the clan and the adequate care of the parents when they died and became ancestral spirits , but they were also economically profitable , a girl child fetching , on marriage , some ten head of cattle ( highly prized on both economic and religious grounds ) from the prospective bridegroom . fertility in women was thus an attribute of paramount importance . in any marriage without issue the woman was , almost invariably , regarded as the sterile partner . in only two ways could women ever assert power in any public fashion . on one day in the year they were allowed to dress as men , tend the cattle , drink beer in a masculine fashion , sing obscene songs and beat any man found outside the huts . also any woman , if possessed by the spirits of the dead ancestors , could become a diviner - usually called in lay description a witch-doctor . during the period of her emergence into this r&amp;ocirc;le the possessed person ( ninety per cent of diviners were and are women ) became very ill , showing gross symptoms of mental disturbance , - in our society the label psychotic would probably be applied - and then often recovered to take up her profitable and public duties as a diviner of the causes of harm in the society such as illness or the results of bewitchment . to the people , a kind of Harley Street consultant . so much for a very brief summary of the position as it was . what of the analogous situation today ? there is no longer a Zulu King , the temporal and spiritual head of his people . tribal authority has been taken over , in all really effective aspects , by the white man . the tribal lands have been drastically restricted in area . in order to make ends meet some eighty per cent of all men of working age ( between sixteen and fifty ) have to be away from home for some ten months in each year , working hundreds of miles away in the mines and factories of the white man . the Zulu extended family has , usually , been broken up , and the traditions and regulations of the tribe are becoming a dead letter . many Zulu have become Christians , abandoning , at any rate nominally , the worship of the ancestors . polygyny is rare , and becoming rarer . poverty and malnutrition are rife ; infant mortality is some 350 per 1000 live births . both tuberculosis and venereal disease have become common disorders - the latter exacerbated by the promiscuity engendered by the migrant labour system . what of the Zulu woman in all this ? she will still work in the fields though they can not produce enough food for herself and her children . she will have to tend the cattle , an unthinkable action in the indigenous situation . she is still subject to the control of her mother in law . she is less likely to be pregnant and to bear a live child ; conception is more improbable with her husband away for a large part of the year and here too venereal disease rates are of relevance . on average , she will have had two or three years of western education . even if she has been to school for a much longer time she may not be allowed to work in the distant towns . the transvestite ceremony of the one day in the year has fallen into desuetude , but the Zulu woman can still become a diviner and there are as many of these - probably more - than there ever were . here , then , we have a classic picture of general social stress as it has usually been conceived . it is obvious that the Zulu woman could be affected at many levels of her functioning by the pressures inherent in the general situation , and many theorists would argue that some new forms of pathological behaviour were to be expected or , at least , that one would expect an increase in the rates of known types of mental disorder in the population . has either of these possibilities come to pass ? this is an extremely difficult question to answer but , possibly rashly , I am inclined to say yes . about 1897 the crying began - umHayizo or isiPoliyane - it goes under different names . but none of these names , as far as I can ascertain , had appeared in the language before this date . there is no mention of this very specific behaviour in the written records of travellers , missionaries or lexicographers , though other aberrant forms of behaviour such as spirit possession had been named and described from 1820 onwards . the people themselves date the symptoms from 1897 , after all our cattle had died in the greatest rinderpest epidemic . but why should simple crying be regarded as pathological ? it is , in fact , anything but simple and ordinary . a Zulu woman may suddenly begin to cry out Hayi ! Hayi ! Hayi ! or Zza ! Zza ! Zza ! or to make guttural grunting screams . she may keep this up for hours , days , even weeks on end , ceasing only during sleep . by our standards this looks , and sounds , most peculiar and most earlier observers unhesitatingly adjudged it pathological . various ethnologists , doctors and missionaries stated that the crying was directly caused by : epilepsy ; alcoholism and the breakdown of the old social order ; abnormal sexual habits ; forbidden or unfulfilled sexual wishes ; gain by illness ; the use of love charms by men ; even Hamletism . once a reason for the behaviour had been stated no further investigation was , generally , felt to be necessary but there are implications of a stress situation in most of the hypotheses advanced . observers tended to assume that the crying was a discrete reaction - a single and separate bit of behaviour in its own right . at any rate , using interviews , questionnaires and a projective test ( asking my subjects to tell stories about pictures which were illustrative , I hoped , of the stress points of the culture ) I spent some years trying to find out about this very clear cut kind of behaviour . I hope that some of my findings may serve to illustrate various levels of adaptation , the possible utility of some apparently maladaptive symptoms , and to demonstrate that this pattern of behaviour is anything but discrete and that it has a logic of its own as an integral part of the personality of the screamer . firstly it emerged that while some ten per cent of men reported that they had suffered occasional attacks , almost exactly half Zulu women showed a history of the crying fits . this fact emerged on three separate occasions from random samples totalling some thousand women . this made the use of a quantitative criterion for normality ( is it more normal to scream than not to scream ? ) unprofitable , and I went on to examine related phenomena to try to establish the nosology and aetiology of the condition . using as a control group those women who had no history of such crying I found , on a statistical basis , that the crying was not linked with hysteria as I had thought likely , but that it was highly significantly associated with a history of such classical symptoms of anxiety as precordial pain , sweating hands and feet , apparently causeless fear etc . the screaming represented an immediate reaction to fear . the subject felt overpowering terror , the physical sensation of which was localised between the shoulder blades , and cried out . this could be precipitated by many different stimuli in the environment , a snake , a clap of thunder , a sharp word or even , subjective and very common , a feeling of anger . in effect , what I was investigating was probably a sudden discharge of anxiety in the form of an immediate , but prolonged , fear reaction . here , too , the interesting finding appeared that the cryers were , if anything , less prone to most symptoms of conversion hysteria than were the controls . there seemed a possibility that this relative immunity from hysterical blindnesses , paralyses etc was connected with the crying fits as this was a central difference between the two groups ; the categories of cryers and controls having been established after all the questions had been asked , on the basis of whether the reply to the question . have you ever had crying attacks ? was positive or negative . but there was one exception to this freedom from hysterical conversion . women with a history of pseudocyesis , common in the area , and itself a classical symptom of conversion hysteria , were practically all to be found in the crying group . this was of particular interest for two reasons . firstly it was an exception to the relative lack of proneness to conversion shown by the screamers , and the reasons for this exception thus seemed worthy of close investigation . secondly , in terms of the literature , such pseudo-pregnancy has often been regarded as the result of a strong but unavailing wish for a child , especially when the woman is under strong social pressure to produce a baby - the obstetrical history of some Queens of England where an heir to the throne was required is a case in point . 