No way out
Martin Seligman became known as a pioneer of positive psychology. At the beginning of his career, however, he trained dogs to behave in a way that depressed people also show.
Some people are so overwhelmed by pain or sadness that the dark side of life seems almost inevitable. Psychologist Martin Seligman describes such fatalism, which in severe cases can even lead to self-abandonment, as "learned helplessness". It is learned because we do have the means to escape from suffering or to minimize it. But those who have learned from experience that they can't do anything anyway and that any rebellion is futile are much more likely to surrender to their fate. Even if there are indeed ways out and remedies - but those affected do not recognize them.
"People with learned helplessness believe they can't control the evil that happens to them," explains Seligman, who was born in upstate New York in 1942. "In the context of clinical depression, this can go so far that the affected person passively endures unpleasant or stressful situations."
Seligman worked at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia from the mid-1960s. The Psychology Institute there was considered a stronghold of behavioral research in the tradition of the Russian Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936; see Brain&Geist 1/2018, p. 14). Like this one, Philadelphia researchers often used dogs as experimental animals…
