Learned helplessness is a concept Psychologist Martin Seligman, developed many years ago. As explained in chapter 5, Learned helplessness take place when people or animals feel helpless to avoid negative situations. (Hockenbury and Hockenbury, 2014) The mother was unable to protect Precious out of fear that her so called husband will leave the relationship, so she lets him take advantage of Precious for years and on top of that she despise her own little girl for not speaking up and stopping that man from having sex with her and that leads us to another psychological concept, that is ‘Blaming The Victim’. As described in chapter 11, blaming the victim basically means holding the victim responsible for his or her sufferings. When people blame the victim, they attribute the cause of the victim’s suffering to the actions of the victim, instead of attributing the cause to an outside force, they blame the victim for not taking desired actions and steps to stop it. (Hockenbury and Hockenbury, 2014) The mother rationalizes her physical and emotional abuse of Precious, believing that Precious took her husband from her where in real life Precious was a victim of this brutality called rape which infected her with HIV, Her mother’s husband was a filthy man who would sleep around with every girl, woman or kid if he
Learned helplessness is a concept Psychologist Martin Seligman, developed many years ago. As explained in chapter 5, Learned helplessness take place when people or animals feel helpless to avoid negative situations. (Hockenbury and Hockenbury, 2014) The mother was unable to protect Precious out of fear that her so called husband will leave the relationship, so she lets him take advantage of Precious for years and on top of that she despise her own little girl for not speaking up and stopping that man from having sex with her and that leads us to another psychological concept, that is ‘Blaming The Victim’. As described in chapter 11, blaming the victim basically means holding the victim responsible for his or her sufferings. When people blame the victim, they attribute the cause of the victim’s suffering to the actions of the victim, instead of attributing the cause to an outside force, they blame the victim for not taking desired actions and steps to stop it. (Hockenbury and Hockenbury, 2014) The mother rationalizes her physical and emotional abuse of Precious, believing that Precious took her husband from her where in real life Precious was a victim of this brutality called rape which infected her with HIV, Her mother’s husband was a filthy man who would sleep around with every girl, woman or kid if he