What is learned helplessness?

"Learned helplessness"

Psychological violence, insults and humiliation lead to the appearance of helplessness. A person simply stops trying to do anything, somehow improve his life and change the world around him. Psychologists call this helplessness learned.

In short, learned helplessness arises when a person does something, but they constantly hit him on the hands, refuse, and he, in the end, stops acting even at the level of thoughts.

But not only the aggression of others leads to learned helplessness.

Many of the classic literary works that children study in school bring up "learned helplessness."

In Russian-language literature, a situation constantly arises when whatever the hero does, he loses and dies. The other option is the “winner” option is no better. For then the hero will certainly enter the struggle. And in the struggle, the "enemy" will certainly appear.

The term "fight" is extremely important. For struggle is not cooperation, not a search for a compromise solution, but confrontation. Those. "game with zero result" - someone will lose (-1 + 1 = 0, which is less than 1 + 1 = 2).

These two constant messages - "you will lose anyway" or "you need to gnaw your throat" - are broadcast in literature lessons from generation to generation. Moreover, you need to memorize them if they are poetry.

Texts like "Scarlet Sails" by Alexander Grin are a rare exception. When the struggle is simply ignored, together with enemies and evil, when actions and aspirations have a positive result. This is probably why it is believed that Green is also a girlish, i.e. soft, feminine, not serious from the point of view of "great" critics and literary critics. "Some fairy tales" ...

As a result, the student learns two options for the development of events. Or “no matter what you do, nothing will work, so it's not worth starting”, or “all life is a struggle,” “you need to gnaw your throat,” “win” ... but first you need to find the enemy. Enemy and evil become a necessary attribute of life.

In this case, the child goes to a literature lesson after a math lesson. And mathematics is absolute truth. 2 + 2 = 4 always. So, automatically, what a certain writer or poet wrote is also absolute truth. Moreover, few teachers encourage arguments and opinions that diverge from the point of view of the textbook or teacher. Those. the opinion of one person, a writer or a poet, is elevated to an absolute, and through the distorting prism of the words and actions of his heroes, literary critics and a school teacher. Those. from the outset, the idea is not allowed that a writer can be banal to make mistakes, pour out his complexes, neuroses, fears and delusions on the viewer. And then the statements of any hero are elevated to the same absolute. Those. the phrase of the fictional hero becomes absolute truth. It turns out actually a lie for a lie. All this is superimposed on a certain parochialism, when studying mainly the "native literature" of a certain country, which is only a small percentage of world literature. Those. a third distortion occurs. Distortion of the picture of the world as a whole.

It is as if in a geography lesson a teacher and a textbook asserted that the earth is flat and stands on three elephants, and in the sky, which, of course, is an unshakable firmament, evil dragons fly, with whom it is necessary either to fight or hide, since “everything useless". However, this hardly corresponds to reality.