From Helplessness To Hope: The Seminal Career Of Martin Seligman

This book explores a specific field of psychological research, but it also celebrates the profound contributions to this field of Martin E. P. Seligman. Therefore, the book blends the history of this research enterprise and Seligman's own intellectual history. This chapter reviews the modest origins of the phenomenon of "learned helplessness" in the animal laboratory, its extensions to human beings (especially those displaying dramatic failures of adaptation), and its eventual emergence as "learned optimism." The remainder of the book documents two major themes. First, the insights arising out of research on learned helplessness have been extended to almost every domain of modern psychology. And second Seligman has played a significant role in almost all of these extensions. In fact, this book makes a fitting tribute to the man whose fingerprints appear on every chapter. Although the research discussed in this book focuses on optimism and hope, the research story does not begin there. Rather, it begins with the opposite end of the pole—helplessness. As will become apparent Seligman is now a strong proponent of the development of a positive psychology, but the historic, intellectual seeds of the view that underlies this new emphasis are very much in negative psychology. The critical first step in thinking that made this development possible was an appreciation of the negative consequences of the inability to control important environmental events. It is this inability that produces the learned helplessness phenomenon.