Next I struggled with an idealistic conception of comfort as opposed to a continuum of behavior which would indicate a person's degree or state of discomfort-comfort. Again, reflecting on and teasing out aspects of my data, I set up four behaviorally recognizable criteria for estimating a person's discomfort-comfort state: 1. Relationships with other persons which confirm one as an existent important person. 2. Affective adaptation to the environment in accord with knowledge, potential, and values. 3. Awareness of and response to the reality of the now with understanding of the influence of and separation from the past. 4. Appreciation and recognition of both powers and limitations which enlighten the alternatives of the future. These behavioral criteria, too, could each be spread on a continuum to evaluate the effects of this aim of nursing on a patient's actual comfort status at any particular point in time. Considering the concept of comfort as a proper aim of psychiatric nursing brought forth the necessity of considering its opposite, discomfort, as a concept. Evidence for the existence of discomfort could be inferred in the absence of the above behavioral criteria. {101} The basic foundation to justify the concept of comfort as a proper aim of psychiatric nursing would be both organic and environmental. In our culture, among the species man, we are moving toward being able to effect some organic conditions by genetic controls and surgical and chemical means. The professions have struggled long years to influence environmental deterrents to comfort. If an individual as a fetus, or as an infant, or young child never internalizes comfort of any kind from his environs, the probability of initiating a continuum within himself as an adult that is propelled toward comfort seems unlikely. Such individuals, lacking any potential capacity for comfort, I suspect are rare. There is evidence for the existence of this dormant seed of comfort in persons with schizophrenia in the hospital setting. Consider how repetitively and ambivalently they "reach out" to authority figures. This dormant comfort seed requires nourishment of a high quality for testing whether it can develop and bear the fruits of health, growth, freedom, and openness.