Learned Helplessness

Abstract

As we approach the turn of the century, it has become increasingly common for people to review the greatest advances in science, technology, medicine and other disciplines that have occurred during the past decades. Ask anyone on the street what they believe to have been the most important advances in our understanding of health and disease and you will get a great variety of responses. My response would be that, during the Twentieth Century, the prototype of a pathogenic situation has been clearly identified. The most typical pathogenic situation is the condition of being trapped in adverse or threatening circumstances from which one can neither fight nor flee, a condition to which one can only passively submit, resulting in a deterioration of health. To be in a state of initiative, however, is health enhancing. The practical implications for this model are obvious, particularly in the framework of any study regarding sexual mutilation.