“The theory of learned helplessness was then extended to human behavior, providing a model for explaining depression, a state characterized by a lack of affect and feeling. Depressed people became that way because they learned to be helpless. Depressed people learned that whatever they did, is futile. During the course of their lives, depressed people apparently learned that they have no control.”
“Learned Helplessness“, Duen Hsi Yen (1998)
“Although we experience the world in bits and pieces, the sequence in which we experience them flows together and we feel the world around us in a continuous panorama. When we try to communicate about it, we have to break it down into bits and pieces. Perhaps a large part of our trouble starts there.”
“Communications: The Transfer of Meaning”, Don Fabun (1968)
“[Psychologist Harry Harlow’s revolutionary experiments on maternal deprivation] found monkeys who had soft, tactile contact with their terry cloth mothers behaved quite differently than monkeys whose mothers were made out of cold, hard wire.
“Harlow hypothesized that members of the first group benefited from a psychological resource — emotional attachment — unavailable to members of the second. By providing reassurance and security to infants, cuddling kept normal development on track.”
Original Source: Harry F. Harlow, “Love in Infant Monkeys,” Scientific American, 1959
“thanks for writing that and
helping me feel less retarded.”
a comment left by the incomparable “dw” on my last post
I think I need to expand a little on my last post. I think some of it has been misinterpreted and I think some of it was overlooked and I think it’s because I didn’t use enough words.
The post wasn’t meant to be about compliments and money, but those two issues were what most people concentrated on in their comments.
But the difficulty I have accepting, and especially believing, compliments and acknowledgements, as well as budgeting my income, are symptoms of something much larger. They’re not the disease.
Compliments, as I wrote in my comment on the post, do feel good. I do encourage them. I have received them in the past and I’m still alive and, without a doubt, better off for them. My problem is not being able to believe them, or to be able to accept them as they’re generally meant… as acknowledgement of having done something well.
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...salted lithium. 