Although there has been considerable accumulation of knowledge in psychosomatic obstetrics during the past few decades, the critical level of psychosocial stress above which sub-optimal pregnancy outcome can be said to occur remains indeterminate. Consequently, it is virtually impossible on the basis of psychosocial stress inventory for a prenatal care provider to accurately identify those women who are truly at the risk of stress-related poor pregnancy outcome.In our recent study of 185 primigravidas selected for their low baseline medical risk factors, the inability to cope (which we defined operationally as psychosocial distress and determined clinically from the participants' scores on the Hope Index Scale) was found to be highly predictive of pregnancy outcome with a positive predictive value of 0.8 1. The 3-year prospective study also suggests that lower socioeconomic status may not be a true risk factor in an otherwise low medical risk pregnancy.We conclude that in screening for the pregnant woman at risk, even in the absence of apparent biomedical risk factors, a determination of the ability or inability to cope is essential for an accurate prediction of pregnancy outcome. 0167-482X/84/$03.00 0 1984 Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. J Psychosom Obstet Gynaecol Downloaded from informahealthcare.com by Chinese University of Hong Kong on 12/26/14 For personal use only.

Philosophers and theologians, for eons, have debated and speculated about the purpose of human life without reaching any conclusive agreement. In his rebuke of such an unproductive endeavor, Sigmund Freud once wrote: "The question of the purpose of human life has been raised countless of times; it has never received a satisfactory answer…….We will therefore turn to the less ambitious question of what men show by their behavior to be the purpose and intension of their lives. What do they demand of life and wish to achieve in it? The answer to this can hardly be in doubt. They strive after happiness; they want to become happy and to remain so." (Freud, 1930) In agreement with this admonition, and very much encouraged by it, I began several years ago to carefully observe and exhaustively document the spontaneous actions and primal behaviors of infants and children-in order to gain better insight into the most basic of human desires and aspirations as they naturally become unveiled-starting from the moment of birth. At the end of that pursuit, contrary to the conclusion reached by Freud, I found that (i)-the major priority and end-goal of man, is more than mere happiness in the hedonic sense; and that (ii)-there are five in-born human hungers without the influence of which, ironically man can neither survive nor thrive at all. In this paper, I present empirical, experiential, and historical evidence to support a proposed -Extra-Uterine Adaptation Theory-which embodies these two findings and offers a novel framework for a much clearer understanding of authentic human priorities, daily preoccupations, and everyday endeavors

Philosophers and theologians, for eons, have debated and speculated about the purpose of human life without reaching any conclusive agreement. In his rebuke of such an unproductive endeavor, Sigmund Freud once wrote: "The question of the purpose of human life has been raised countless of times; it has never received a satisfactory answer…….We will therefore turn to the less ambitious question of what men show by their behavior to be the purpose and intension of their lives. What do they demand of life and wish to achieve in it? The answer to this can hardly be in doubt. They strive after happiness; they want to become happy and to remain so." (Freud, 1930) In agreement with this admonition, and very much encouraged by it, I began several years ago to carefully observe and exhaustively document the spontaneous actions and primal behaviors of infants and children-in order to gain better insight into the most basic of human desires and aspirations as they naturally become unveiled-starting from the moment of birth. At the end of that pursuit, contrary to the conclusion reached by Freud, I found that (i)-the major priority and end-goal of man, is more than mere happiness in the hedonic sense; and that (ii)-there are five inborn human hungers without the influence of which, ironically man can neither survive nor thrive at all. In this paper, I present empirical, experiential, and historical evidence to support a proposed-Extra-Uterine Adaptation Theory-which embodies these two findings and offers a novel framework for a much clearer understanding of authentic human priorities, daily preoccupations, and everyday endeavors.