NONFICTION - Feb. 10, 1991

LEARNED OPTIMISM by Martin E. P. Seligman Ph.D. (Alfred A. Knopf: $19.95; 309 pp.) . Here’s the essential irony of Seligman’s engrossing, provocative book: Optimists would buy it, but they don’t need it; pessimists, the ones who theoretically could profit from what “Learned Optimism” has to say, won’t believe it because they’re too pessimistic. Seligman believes, simply, that we can unlearn our negative outlook on life. We all know we can exercise to build our biceps or flatten that tummy. Now we can exercise to uplift our outlook. Back in college, the author stumbled upon what does seem a remarkable truth: Dogs used in behavioral experiments were capable of learning helplessness--and, once convinced that their efforts were futile, they became passive. They gave up. They were depressed victims of circumstance, which is how pessimists tend to see themselves. But the dogs could be untaught, which launched Seligman’s lifelong investigation of how to untrain humans. It’s such a tempting notion, to anyone who’s ever felt overwhelmed by life (and as a borderline pessimist, I have to assume everyone has felt that way). And it’s such a benign, noncompetitive concept, in this era of tactical self-help books. To pump up his decades-long scientific saga (which didn’t need inflating; was he worried about getting on the talk shows?), Seligman indulges in a bit too much self-aggrandizement, and too sweeping a dismissal of alternate theories about depression. He needn’t have bothered. Who could resist the old “Think positive!” with footnotes?