Learned Helplessness

When experience with uncontrollable events gives rise to the expectation that events in the future will also elude control, disruptions in motivation, emotion, and learning may ensue. "Learned helplessness" refers to the problems that arise in the wake of uncontrollability. First described in the 1960s among laboratory animals, learned helplessness has since been applied to a variety of human problems entailing inappropriate passivity and demoralization. While learned helplessness is best known as an explanation of depression, studies with both people and animals have mapped out the cognitive and biological aspects. The present volume, written by some of the most widely recognized leaders in the field, summarizes and integrates the theory, research, and application of learned helplessness. Each line of work is evaluated critically in terms of what is and is not known, and future directions are sketched. More generally, psychiatrists and psychologists in various specialties will be interested in the book's argument that a theory emphasizing personal control is of particular interest in the here and now, as individuality and control are such salient cultural topics.

Summarizing 25 years of research, the author integrates virtually the entire published literature on the phenomenon of learned helplessness, as well as some unpublished data, into a single coherent theoretical framework. Dr. Mikulincer accounts for the complex nature of the phenomenon by focusing on cognitive, motivational, and emotional processes, and then details a new coping perspective to deal with uncontrollable events. His groundbreaking work will become an essential reference for all future work in the field.

Learned Helplessness: The Poison Pill Threat to Black America By: Colonel Vaughan Witten, Ph.D. Learned Helplessness: The Poison Pill Threat to Black America discusses the self-destructive behavior of the American Black male, his delusional belief of victimization by a white society as the primary reason for his failure to acclimate and succeed in today’s capitalistic America. This engrained worldview thereby sufficiently blinds him and the general Black culture to the concept that discipline, sacrifice, and industry are their only escape from their dilemma instead of their rearview blame, pity, and destructive behavior. This helplessness, learned and absorbed in their psyche, negates any macro attempt to thrive as an independent, self-sufficient, and competitive subculture in America.

Between 1996 and 2017, the number of families on welfare declined to less than a quarter of its former rate of coverage, yet nearly twice as many households live in extreme poverty and nearly 25 percent of American children live in poverty. What can be done to help these children and families escape poverty? Are government programs like welfare the best solution, or are there other ways to pull families out of poverty? This volume looks at the issue of poverty, the various theories about why it proliferates, and a number of proposed strategies to fight it.

The past few years have witnessed widespread acceptance of the notion that few elderly individuals are willing to stand by silently in the process of growing, and to relinquish whatever actual controls, autonomy or control beliefs they had in the past. Increasingly, old age is viewed as the dynamics of growth in mastery, control and self-efficacy, on the one hand, and a relative decline in psychological and physical resources on the other. It is the intent of this volume to communicate both aspects of these changes, and to offer a comprehensive review of the cross-fertilization of the field of gerontology and the psychology of reactance, freedom and control. Leading psychologists and social science researchers from the United States, Canada and Europe give their views on the meaning and application of control-related constructs having specific implications for the field of human aging. They address themselves to one or more of the major themes, issues or concerns which currently figure in discussions of control beliefs and control constructs as they apply to aging and old age. Written primarily for scholars, researchers and developmental theorists interested in the complexities and generativity of control constructs and their applications for the psychological well-being of older adults, the data and issues presented will be equally informative to gero-psychologists and mental health professionals concerned with healthy adaptive functioning of the elderly.

Understanding and Overcoming Learned Helplessness is intended for anyone who suffers from obsessive compulsive learned helplessness and desires to understand and be free of this troubling condition. Likewise, this book can be helpful for any social worker, mental health counselor, psychologist, physician, or clergy who desires to help clients who suffer from obsessive compulsive learned helplessness or who desires to educate themselves about this condition or enrich themselves by working the Twelve Steps of Recovery.

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