Keys to a Full Life

March 3, 2004

He was flying from San Francisco to Philadelphia. As was his custom, he curled up and faced the window to avoid the need for conversation. But the balding sixty-year-old businessman next to him would not take the hint.

The traveler was a young psychology professor, Martin Seligman. Having been compelled to converse, he found himself discussing his work, which involved research into people who give up easily when faced with loss of control.  He had developed the theory of learned helplessness as a model for depression. Six years earlier (in 1976), he had won a distinguished award for this theory.

"Have you done much work on the other side of the coin?" h