Martin Seligman

Published in 1990, Learned Optimism warned of an epidemic increase in depressive mental illness. A quick Google search suggests that the epidemic continues to increase, at least in western industrialised cultures. Seligman provides a half-baked evolutionary explanation for this modern plague. Depressive mental illness, in those who suffer from the condition, correlates with pessimism. When human existence was nasty brutal and short, pessimism served us well. Pessimists, to give them their show more due, usually have a more secure hold on reality than optimists. Seligman speculates that our ancestors, who ‘survived the Pleistocene may have done so because they had the capacity to worry incessantly about the future’. Now it is different. The enormous expansion of human freedoms and choices in modern societies encourages a deleterious tendency to inward reflection and insecurity about our extended sense of self, the ‘maximal self’ in Seligman’s terminology. He argues that pessimism, when allied with a ‘ruminant’ style of thinking, can quickly lead to depressive mental illness. Women, who are far more likely to explore their feelings, are in consequence far more likely than men to suffer depression. This is a crude and brutal theorisation of depression and its origins but perhaps one should not expect more sophistication or nuance in discussion of a self help manual. Seligman provides a self diagnostic quiz to enable his readers to locate themselves on various scales of pessimism, optimism and depression.

Fortunately, Seligman avers, there are two cures for the debilitating scourge of pessimism and its depressive sequel. The first is the cultivation of habits of thought that Seligman calls ‘learned optimism’. Surveys suggest that optimists live longer, happier, healthier and more successful lives than pessimists. Learned Optimism provides drills and exercises to exorcise debilitating pessimism. It is quite possible that Seligman is correct in his prescription, though more recent research does not seem to support his hopes that optimism cures cancer.

Learned Optimism concludes with a more visionary alternative cure for epidemic depression. Reduce our endemic preoccupation with the maximal self, Seligman suggests and learn altruism instead. He calls it ‘moral jogging’. The triteness of the slogan grates, but it masks an inspiring programme of self transformation. Here are some of his prescriptions: give generously to charity, but make it personal. When asked by a homeless person for money, stop and talk to the supplicant. Then give generously and with discrimination, according to need. Set aside a fund of 5% of your taxable income, invite applications for benefits and interview the applicants, selecting those who are most deserving of your help. Give an evening a week to community activities. Visit and comfort those who are dying of AIDS. (Seligman is writing in the last decades of the 20th century, when AIDS was often a death sentence for young men.) Devote three hours a week to actively promoting, by letters, meetings or personal solicitation, necessary social reforms. Twelve hours a week, or thereabouts, spent in altruistic activity can be a cure for excessive self-absorption, pessimism and a preventive against sliding into depressive mental illness.

Seligman’s promotion of a more altruistic society should be remembered to his credit, in contrast to the repellent cruelty of his earlier experimental work, teaching ‘learned helplessness’ to caged dogs. show less

I'd known about Seligmman's work for quite some time. I first started taking questionnaires at his website back in 2008. The fact that three years later, I still haven't taken them all, should be a pretty good indicator that I've never been converted to a true believer. But I do keep coming back, so there are aspects of his work that I find interesting.

This book and the test center at his website are really tie-ins to each other. It was because my results kept saying "for more information, show more see the book," that I finally read the book. And while the book includes at least basic versions of all the tests, the book constantly refers you to the website to take the tests there. The website is nice in that it keeps track of all your results for you and records when you took each test.

I should back up. The intention of this book is to be a sort of handbook to the relatively new science of positive psychology. Of course, as you may have gathered from my review so far, it comes across as more of a guidebook to the current tests and surveys of the positive psychology movement. Which is, I suppose, a good place to start from, but I found myself wishing Seligman went a little further with it. Instead, each section introduced the concept behind some test, talked about why it was important, gave the test, discussed why certain answers were indicators of important behaviors/attitudes, and discussed the results. A few tips were given for "improvement" in that category, and then on to the next test!

Okay, so really, that only comprises the first half of the book. In the second half, Seligman deals with the concept of "signature strengths," which I am very interested in and was the tipping point for me to seek out the book in the first place. A group of researchers examined many of the cultures and religions of the world and came up with a list of 24 virtues or strengths that had near-universal appreciation. Their theory is, rather than dwelling on the virtues we are weakest in, true gratification and fulfillment comes from arranging our lives in such a way that we are using our signature strengths as much as possible.

This idea really appeals to me, and the last section of the book had some lovely suggestions on recognizing and supporting the strengths of our spouse and our children. There was some lip service given to using your strengths at work, but the "how" to do this seemed to be left a little vague.

The very last section on meaning and purpose was utterly fascinating as it referenced Asimov's "The Last Question," and fed directly into the future-focused theology I seem to be building into. Seligman and I have some philosophical differences that I found mildly irritating during a few points of the book, but this theory as a conclusion for the book was a very validating moment that greatly upped the chances that I'll pick up another work by Seligman in the future. show less

Be an optimist and you can outperform pessimists. More money, more success, better health; just blame others for your failures and perservere. Science proves it. A much better writer than Beck, Seligman is also more moral than Zimbardo, but Seligman is one of the reasons that we have institutional review boards. But then, what would you expect from a Phillies fan.

An Aristotelian approach to psychology

The basic idea behind positive psychology is that, rather than solely treating mental disease and alleviating negative symptoms, the field of psychology should focus on defining mental health in positive terms and promoting positive emotions, character traits, and social institutions. But Seligman is even more ambitious than that: in the introduction, he writes that he seeks to overthrow what he calls the "rotten-to-the-core dogma", the oldest show more manifestation of which is the doctrine of original sin but which was dragged by Freud into twentieth-century secular psychology, which has since tended to regard happiness or any positive emotion as inauthentic.

This completely sold me on the book, and while it's far from perfect (I would take exception with Seligman on a number of points), it's general approach is very good. To a large extent, it's explicitly Aristotelian, and Seligman even argues for virtue ethics in the form of identifying and cultivating what he calls "signature strengths". He also draws on a lot of interesting recent research, including some of his own. His earlier book Learned Optimism and the more recent Flourish are also well worth reading.

http://www.amazon.com/review/R2Y0D3VC04WDNS show less