Religious Education As a Prevention of Learned Helplessness and Depression: Theoretical Consideration

Vadim S Rotenberg

doi:10.1007/bf03379580

Abstract

Abstract In comparison to the expected outcome of the long lasting suppression and persecution, Jews during centuries demonstrated the relative resistance to stress, learned helplessness and depression. This article suggests that this resistance may be related to the peculiarity of the traditional Jewish religious education that stimulates intellectual search activity as well as right-hemispheric polysemantic thinking in equilibrium with the left hemispheric verbal thinking.

Highlights

INTRODUCTIONHealthy adults have a special brain mechanism that provides a very specific integration of the conflicting motives and of the formally incompatible information that provokes such conflicts
This article does not represent original experimental investigations of the relationships between Jewish religious education and depression in Jews. It is not a comprehensive review of the literary data related to this topic just because articles about depression in Jews, even those that are discussing the role of religion, do not take into consideration the peculiarity of the education in Judaism in its relation to the psychological and brain mechanisms that can protect subject from depression
Martin Seligman (1975) proposed learned helplessness to be a general psychobiological state that predisposes subject to depression

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Healthy adults have a special brain mechanism that provides a very specific integration of the conflicting motives and of the formally incompatible information that provokes such conflicts It is the ability of the right frontal lobe to create a polysemantic context – the highest skill of human’s brain (see Rotenberg, 2004). It is a long-lasting process that requires special attention and directed activity of parents and teachers Until this very delicate mechanism become totally matured it is very vulnerable to all disturbing patterns, both physical and mental, and the functional insufficiency of this mechanism is a predisposition towards mental disorders and especially towards depression because it does not help to solve inner conflicts and prevent repression (Rotenberg, 2009). The polysemantic image thinking during the dream state (in REM sleep) is an important reservoir for the alternative search activity which helps to restore this activity after giving up in the previous period of wakefulness (Rotenberg, 2009 )

DEPRESSION IN JEWS

THE PECULIARITY OF THE JEWISH RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

Findings

CONCLUSION