Helplessness: On Depression, Development, and Death

Abstract

Overview - depression, golden girl, anxiety and unpredictability, childhood failure, sudden psychosomatic death controllability - voluntary responding, response independence and response contingency - the superstition experiments experimental studies - helplessness saps the motivation to initiate responses - learned helplessness in the dog, the triadic design, motivational deficits in several species, generality of helplessness across situations helplessness disrupts to ability to learn helplessness produces emotional disturbance theory - cure and immunization - the statement of the theory, motivational disturbance, cognitive disturbance, emotional disturbance cure and prevention - limits on helplessness alternative theories - competing motor responses, adaptation, emotional exhaustion, and sensitization physiological approaches to helplessness depression - types of depression the learned-helplessness model of depression - ground rules, symptoms of depression and learned helplessness, etiology of depression and learned helplessness, a speculation about success and depression, cure of depression and learned helplessness, prevention of depression and learned helplessness anxiety and unpredictability - definition of unpredictability anxiety and the safety-signal hypothesis - the safety-signal hypothesis upredictability and monitoring fear stomach ulcers preference for predictability the relationship of predictability to controllability - self-administration, perceived control systematic desensitization and uncontrollability conclusion emotional development and education - the dance of development - reafference maternal deprivation predictability and controllability in childhood and adolescence - the classroom, poverty death - death from helplessness in animals death from helplessness in humans - institutionalized helplessness, death from helplessness in old age, infant death and anaclitic depression.

Keywords

Affiliated Institutions

• University of Pennsylvania US

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