Learned Hopelessness

Angus was speaking about the Psychological concept of Learned Hopelessness in rehearsal on Friday.

A quick glance at the Wiki is surprisingly revealing:

"Learned helplessness, as a technical term in animal psychology and related human psychology, means a condition of a human being or an animal in which it has learned to behave helplessly, even when the opportunity is restored for it to help itself by avoiding an unpleasant or harmful circumstance to which it has been subjected. Learned helplessness theory is the view that clinical depression and related mental illnesses result from a perceived absence of control over the outcome of a situation"

[...]

"Social impact

[...]

Another example of learned helplessness in social settings involves loneliness and shyness. Those who are extremely shy, passive, anxious and depressed may learn helplessness to offer stable explanations for unpleasant social experiences. However, Gotlib and Beatty (1985) found that people who cite helplessness in social settings may be viewed poorly by others, resulting in a situation that reinforces the problematic thinking. A third example is aging, with the elderly learning to be helpless and concluding that they have no control over losing their friends and family members, losing their jobs and incomes, getting old, weak and so on.[24]

Social problems resulting from learned helplessness seem unavoidable; however, the effect goes away with the passage of time.[25] Nonetheless, learned helplessness can be minimized by "immunization" and potentially reversed by therapy. People can be immunized against the perception that events are uncontrollable by increasing their awareness of previous positive experiences.[26] Therapy can instruct people in the fact of contingency[27] and bolster people's self esteem."

(my emphasis)

Take from this what you will. But it seems more than co-incidental that we have a socially isolated hero, an aging clown, and an audience formation that is going to feel like therapy (for example).