Most of us have discovered since Anders Behring Breivik killed 78 people on 22 July how well Norwegians speak English. We heard many use the phrase in shock. Two days after the shooting, the Catholic bishop of Olso said: ‘Norway is still in shock.’ The killer’s father some days later said: ‘I am in a state of shock.’ After a week, a woman working near the scene of the crime, said: ‘We are still in a state of shock.’ International Gymnast magazine was told by the veteran gymnast Espen Jansen: ‘We are all in shock.’
To my husband’s generation of medicos, to be in shock was to suffer a serious fall in blood pressure, which can deprive vital organs of oxygen. The popular metaphor, though, seems to come from the acute stress reaction, a state leaving one dazed and confused, then perhaps agitated, anxious, detached and depressed. The
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