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SUBJECT:

pouci re COLLECE | LIGRARY
Fiabe Se
NATIONAL HEART WEEK (cont'd) ARCHIVES

If you indulge in polyphasic thought or performance, frequently striving
to think of or do two or more things simultaneously. For example, if
while trying to listen to another person's speech you persist in continuing
to think about an irrelevant subject, you are indulging in polyphasic
thought. Similarly, if while golfing or fishing you continue to ponder
your business or professional problems, or if while using an electric
razor you attempt also to eat your breakfast or drive your car, or if
while driving your car you attempt to dictate letters for your secretary,
you are indulging in polyphasic performance. This is one of the commonest
traits in the Type A man. Nor is he always satisfied with doing just

two things at one time. We have known subjects who not only shaved and
ate simultaneously, but also managed to read a business or professional
journal at the same time.

If you find it always difficult to refrain from talking about or bringing
the theme of any conversation around to those subjects which especially
interest and intrigue you, and when unable to accomplish this maneuver,
you pretend to listen but really remain preoccupied with your own thoughts.

If you almost always feel vaguely guilty when you relax and do absolutely
nothing for several hours to several days.

If you no longer observe the more important or interesting or lovely
objects that you encounter in your milieu. For example, if you enter a
strange office, store, or home, and after leaving any of these places

you cannot recall what was in them, you no longer are observing well---or
for that matter enjoying life very much.

If you do not have any time to spare to become the things worth being
because you are so preoccupied with getting the things worth having.

If you attempt to schedule more and more in less and less time, and in
doing so make fewer and fewer allowances for unforeseen contingencies.
A concomitant of this is a chronic sense of time urgency, one of the
core components of Type A Behaviour Pattern.

If, on meeting another severely afflicted Type A person, instead of
feeling compassion for his affliction you find yourself compelled to
"challenge'' him. This is a telltale trait because no one arouses the
aggressive and/or hostile feelings of one Type A subject more quickly
than another Type A subject.

If you resort to certain characteristic gestures or nervous tics. For
example, if in conversation you frequently clench your fist, or bang your
hand upon a table or pound one fist into the palm of your other hand in
order to emphasize a conversational point, you are exhibiting Type A
gestures. Similarly, if the corners of your mouth spasmodically, in
tic-like fashion, jerk backward slightly exposing your teeth, or if you
habitually clench your jaw, or even grind your teeth, you are subject to
muscular phenomena suggesting the presence of a continuous struggle,
which is, of course, the kernel of the Type A Behaviour Pattern.

[S Jae. Geont'd)