Eminent psychologists say that, perhaps more than anything else, Warren M. Anderson's ability to talk about Bhopal and to accept the magnitude of the tragedy indicates an unusually healthy and constructive manner of dealing with his own reactions.

"To be able to talk about it is healthy; to be able to talk about it with one's wife is healthier still; to talk about it with one's wife while walking to discharge tensions is very, very healthy," said Harry Levinson, a professor of psychology at the Harvard Medical School and an expert on executive stress.

"If you pretend everything is normal, you have a poor grieving process, and you will not get back into the realities of everyday life very quickly," added John R. Sauer, an industrial psychologist for consultants Rohrer, Hibler & Replogle Inc. Too much defensiveness, he warns, results in "guilt, anxiety and embarrassment."

Anderson's occasional sleeplessness is not much to worry over, psychologists say. But they expect that executives at other companies who have denied that serious problems existed or blamed others for them will have longer bouts of unease than will Anderson.

Levinson notes that Ford Motor Co. was initially reluctant to admit how bad the problems with Pinto's exploding gas tanks were, while General Motors Corp. responded to consumer advocate Ralph Nader's discovery of safety problems with the Corvair by initiating a personal attack against Nader. Levinson's guess is that the top executives at both companies probably suffered a good deal of psychological trauma by not dealing fully with disasters. He says the feelings of guilt or blame may fester and hamper performance for years.

By contrast, he predicts that all parties at Johnson & Johnson will remain psychologically unscathed, even though tainted Tylenol capsules killed seven people in Chicago in 1982. The company reacted quickly, removing Tylenol from store shelves and almost immediately initiating packaging changes that would make undetected tampering almost impossible.

The disaster that Anderson must deal with, however, differs from these examples in several respects. Victims numbered in the thousands, making the basis for guilt much greater. And dealing in a foreign culture and with a foreign government added greatly to the frustration. "Senior managers like to be in control," Sauer said. Because in many ways Anderson felt helpless, the crisis "was especially complex and difficult" to deal with, Sauer said.

But the distance factor had a plus side for Anderson: He did not personally view the worst of the carnage. And that, says Norman R. Bernstein, a psychiatrist at the University of Chicago and an authority on stress consulted often by attorneys in legal actions involving the subject, probably helped Anderson cope with the enormity of Bhopal . Dr. Bernstein said studies show that soldiers who drop bombs from miles in the air suffer far less postbattle stress than those who see people die close up. "If you don't see dead bodies, your ability to detach yourself from the tragedy is greater," he said.