Martin E. P. Seligman - Helplessness. on depression, development, and death

Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 http://www.archive.org/details/helplessnessondeOOseli

HELPLESSNESS

A series of books in psychology

Editors :

Richard C. Atkinson Jonathan Freedman Gardner Lindzey Richard F. Thompson

ON DEPRESSION, DEVELOPMENT, AND DEATH

MARTIN E. P. SELIGMAN

University of Pennsylvania

W. H. FREEMAN AND COMPANY SAN FRANCISCO

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Seligman, Martin E P Helplessness.

Bibliography : p.

Includes indexes.

I. Helplessness (Psychology) 2. Depression, Mental. I. Title.

BF575.H4S44 616.8*528 74-23125

ISBN 0-7167-0752-7 ISBN 0-7167-0751-9 pbk.

Copyright 1975 by Martin E. P. Seligman

No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording, nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or otherwise copied for public or private use, without written permission from the publisher.

Printed in the United States of America

Excerpt from When the Watchman Saw the Light," p. 96, translated by Edmund Keeley and George Savidis in . P. Cavafy, Passions and Ancient Days . Copyright 1971 by the Dial Press.

Excerpt from Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night," p. 188, copyright 1952 by Dylan Thomas. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation and J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd.

Dedicated to my father, Adrian Seligman (1906-1972), who knew well the struggle against helplessness.

CHAPTER THREE

CONTENTS / X

People become involved in psychology for various reasons. Some people are fascinated by the elegance of a simple system, some by the habits of a particular species, and some by the awesome possibility of controlling what other men shall do. I have made psychology my life's work in order to better understand one speciesman.

This is an unfashionable thing for a learning theorist and comparative psychologist to admit; nevertheless it is true. Although I have spent much of my time working with species other than man and thinking about simple processes, I am also a clinical psychologist who has observed other human beings and interacted with them, both in experimental and in therapeutic settings. These two faces of-my workthe experimental and the clinicalare intimately related, for I believe

that an understanding of other species and of simple processes is relevant to the understanding of complex processes in man. More than relevantessential. That is one way of saying what this book is about. It is an attempt to analyze human helplessness, in its many aspects, by applying theory and relevant knowledge from the laboratory.

For seventy-five years experimental psychologists, from the isolation of their laboratories, have written many promissory notes. These promissory notes claimed that an understanding of simple processes, lower species, and highly controlled experimental situations would shed light on real problems, in particular, human psychopathology. What follows is my attempt to begin to pay off what is owed.

Since much of the subject matter of this book derives from experimentation, I must say a few words about ethics. Many of the experiments I shall describe may seem cruel, particularly to the non-scientist: pigeons are deprived of food, dogs are shocked, rats are plunged into cold water, infant monkeys are deprived of their mothers, and all experimental animals are deprived of their freedom by confinement to cages. Are such manipulations ethically justifiable? To my mind they are by and large not only justifiable, but, for scientists whose basic commitment is to the alleviation of human misery, not to do them would be unjustifiable. In my opinion, each scientist must ask himself one question before doing any experiment on an animal: Is it likely that the pain and deprivation that this animal is about to endure will be greatly outweighed by the resulting alleviation of human pain and deprivation? If the answer is yes, the experiment is justified.

Anyone who has spent time with severely depressed patients or with schizophrenic adults can appreciate the degree of their misery; to argue, as some do, that people should not do experiments on animals, is to ignore the misery of their fellow human beings. Not to do such research is to consign

millions of humans to continued misery. Most human beings, as well as household pets, are alive today because animal experiments with medical ends were carried out; without such studies, polio would still be rampant, smallpox widespread and almost always fatal, and phobias incurable. As for the studies discussed in this book, I believe that what we have learned about depression, anxiety, sudden death, and their cure and prevention justifies the animal experiments that have led us to these insights.

This book has been ten years in the making. A large number of people have contributed to it by collaborating with me in experiments, by brainstorming sessions, by teaching and advice, and by general sustenance. The easiest way to thank them is in chronological order.

From 1964 to 1967 I was a National Science Foundation graduate fellow in the Department of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. Richard L. Solomon and J. Bruce Overmier first interested me in the phenomenon of helplessness; Bruce collaborated with Russell Leaf on the first experiments and worked with me in my first year, and his last, of graduate school. During that year Steven F. Maier and I began three years of working together on helplessness; we performed our first studies that were self-consciously about helplessness and formulated the rudiments of the theory presented in this book. James Geer collaborated with Steve and me on therapy for helplessness. During those three years so many people taught us, read our manuscripts, and gave us advice that I fear I have forgotten some. Among them were Francis Irwin, Robert Rescorla, J. Brooks Carder, Henry Gleitman, Vincent Lo-Lordo, Frank Norman, Joseph Wolpe, Arnold Lazarus, Jack Catlin, Lynn Hammond, David Williams, Morris Viteles, Nicholas MacKintosh, Elijah Lovejoy, Phillip Teitelbaum, Larry Stein, J. Paul Brady, Julius Wishner, Martin Orne, Peter