Going back to the American Institute of Stress' page on definition of stress, we find the following reminiscence about Dr Hans Selye, the "father" of stress theory:
In his later years, when asked to define stress, he told reporters, "Everyone knows what stress is, but nobody really knows."
This is in many respects quite similar to Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's famous concurring opinion in
Jacobellis v Ohio, 378 U.S. 184 (1964), where he wrote:
I have reached the conclusion ... that under the First and Fourteenth Amendments criminal laws in this area are constitutionally limited to hard-core pornography. I sall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.
Stress, then, is like pornography: hard to define, but people "know it when they see it." And let's take it one step further: people's interpretations may vary-- what one person may find harmful, another may find beneficial.
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