I have spent weeks on this weblog telling some assistant and associate professors with lots of research time and resources to stop trying to discourage the rest of us by telling us we must suffer in solidarity with the suffering they allege to be undergoing due to the challenge of writing, and in case the legislature does not believe we are working.
In honor of, and in deference to those who suffer and mourn I have given psychic blood for years and limited the expression of my enthusiasms for most of my life. I am unwilling to do that any more. In case anyone wonders, this does not mean I am recommending anyone read Norman Vincent Peale or Martin Seligman – who, as it turns out, is instrumental in the creation of the torture programs of the USA.
Despite his “happy” reputation, in some circles, Seligman is best known for developing the theory of “Learned Helplessness” at the University of Pennsylvania more than four decades ago. As psychologist and torture expert Dr. Jeffrey Kaye noted in a report published in Truthout last year, Seligman and psychologist Dr. Steven Maier developed the concept of Learned Helplessness after they “exposed dogs to a situation where they were faced with inescapable electrical shocks.”
“Within a short period of time, the dogs could not be induced to escape the situation, even when provided with a previously taught escape route,” Kaye wrote. “Drs. Seligman and Maier theorized that the dogs had ‘learned’ their condition was helpless. The experimental model was extended to a human model for the induction of clinical depression and other psychological conditions.”
Read the whole thing, and shudder and quake – it is chilling, but illuminating.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 