PSY435H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Anatta, Learned Helplessness
PSY336H1F
Tuesday September 13, 2016
Lecture 01
Martin Seligman – Learned helplessness Attributional Model of Depression.
• Granddaughter asked why he was so grumpy. Then when he became president of APA,
he developed the belief that just as he had lost his way in psychology, the field has lost its
way with its goals.
Aside: before WWII, psych wanted to heal people and prevent mental illnesses. After WWII,
because the war had huge impact on people, US government put a lot of money into mental
health illness research, which then gave clinic psych a huge step-up.
• Martin Seligman thinks that 40 years after WWII, we lost our original goals; we got too
used to thinking that people are damaged and need to be patched up. So he wanted to
bring Maslow stuff back up into the mainstream. But Humanists didn’t have empirical
data and stuff, so that’s hard to bring it into mainstream (ex. no scale, often no
definition). Martin Seligman wants to empiricize humanistic psych, so positive psych
came up.
Outline:
• Self: Happy vs. Fulfillment
o Positive emotion
o Motivations
o Goals
o Thinking patterns
• Non-positivity
o Trauma/loss
o Shame
o Attachment issues
• Non-self
o Flow state can be interrupted by other people. Flow state = you forget about
yourself. Dropping out of flow state = you remembers yourself again.
o Gratitude
o Humility
o Compassion
o Empathy
o Awe
o Meaning
o Self-transcendence
o Enlightenment
Assignment 50%
• Basically creating a class (presentable) where you use all the stuff out there, and make a
presentation where
1. People can make sense of it.
2. People will be motivated to do something with it / about it.
• The topic has to at least loosely relate to positive psych / wellbeing.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Martin seligman learned helplessness attributional model of depression: granddaughter asked why he was so grumpy. Then when he became president of apa, he developed the belief that just as he had lost his way in psychology, the field has lost its way with its goals. Aside: before wwii, psych wanted to heal people and prevent mental illnesses. So he wanted to bring maslow stuff back up into the mainstream. But humanists didn"t have empirical data and stuff, so that"s hard to bring it into mainstream (ex. no scale, often no definition). Martin seligman wants to empiricize humanistic psych, so positive psych came up. Outline: self: happy vs. fulfillment, positive emotion, motivations, goals, thinking patterns, non-positivity, trauma/loss, shame, attachment issues, non-self, flow state can be interrupted by other people. Dropping out of flow state = you remembers yourself again: gratitude, humility, compassion, empathy, awe, meaning, self-transcendence, enlightenment.
