Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life Author: Visit Amazon's Martin E. P. Seligman Page | Language: English | ISBN:
1400078393 | Format: PDF
Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life Description
Amazon.com Review
Martin Seligman, a renowned psychologist and clinical researcher, has been studying optimists and pessimists for 25 years. Pessimists believe that bad events are their fault, will last a long time, and undermine everything. They feel helpless and may sink into depression, which is epidemic today, especially among youths. Optimists, on the other hand, believe that defeat is a temporary setback or a challenge--it doesn't knock them down. "Pessimism is escapable," asserts Seligman, by learning a new set of cognitive skills that will enable you to take charge, resist depression, and make yourself feel better and accomplish more.
About two-thirds of this book is a psychological discussion of pessimism, optimism, learned helplessness (giving up because you feel unable to change things), explanatory style (how you habitually explain to yourself why events happen), and depression, and how these affect success, health, and quality of life. Seligman supports his points with animal research and human cases. He includes tests for you and your child--whose achievement may be related more to his or her level of optimism/pessimism than ability. The final chapters teach the skills of changing from pessimism to optimism, with worksheet pages to guide you and your child. --Joan Price --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
The author, a leading expert on the theory and treatment of depression, has written a lively, very accessible book on the power of a positive outlook and how to develop it. Basing his theories on his original research on "learned helplessness," Seligman goes on to develop a systematic model for the cognitive treatment of depression. This book summarizes his more recent work on a person's characteristic predisposition toward optimism or pessimism. Convincingly demonstrating that an optimistic mood contributes to one's success and happiness, Seligman goes on to demonstrate how a more optimistic outlook can be developed. Presented for lay readers, this book can be highly recommended to professionals as well for its lucid and informative introduction to cognitive therapy and its approach to issues of mood and depression.
- Paul Hymowitz, New York Medical Coll.Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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- Paperback: 319 pages
- Publisher: Vintage; Reprint edition (January 3, 2006)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1400078393
- ISBN-13: 978-1400078394
- Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.7 inches
- Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
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