讀書筆記2：Hope Circuit (希望回路） Martin Seligman, 2018

這本書是心理學家 Martin Seligman（積極心理學的創始人）所寫的自傳。應該是在 2024 年寒假、十二月開始讀這本書的。剛剛讀完，2025 年一月我就接到了父親病危的通知，心情非常複雜。奇妙的是，這本書的中文名稱叫做《希望回路》！

這本書邏輯嚴密，文字優美，數據詳實，還頗具幽默感。閱讀的過程讓我非常享受。因為我覺得，如果在某種機緣巧合之下，我能夠成為一位著作等身的心理學領域專家（這是我最希望鑽研的專業），那我理想中的寫作風格，大概就是這本書的樣子。

但也正因如此，我懷著崇敬之情讀完之後，幾個月都沒法動筆寫讀後感，心裏甚至充滿遺憾與不甘。因為這本自傳讓我看清了，成為一名頂級心理學家所需要具備的條件：天賦、紮實的基礎、優秀的導師、誌同道合的同行、以及關鍵時刻的運氣，缺一不可。而我，因為出身的局限，這輩子已經永遠無法成為我理想中那種學者了。

我知道，我的事業已經很好了。但那是在種種局限之下達成的一種狀態，也是在命運眷顧下的結果，其中有許多“無心插柳、意料之外”的成分。但如果我的條件和能力允許，能“有心栽花”的話，Seligman 的成長路徑就是我心目中的理想狀態。

寫下來之後，內心慢慢也平靜了。我可以接受。通過這本書，我仿佛看見了平行宇宙中另一個版本的自己，其實這也是一種領悟。

Seligman 在讀本科時，尤其喜歡哲學和心理學。最後選擇在研究生階段主攻心理學，是因為他身邊的人認為，如果他專攻哲學，將來可能永遠無法成為頂尖的大師；而在心理學領域，“He is a natural”——他是個天生的心理學家，有可能開疆拓土，成為一代宗師。幾十年後回望，果然如此。

他的這本自傳其實有兩條主線：第一，是他個人生活和科研成長的曆程；第二，是現代心理學的發展路徑。

在他個人成長的主線中，我尤其關注他在普林斯頓本科學習的那段經曆。他對普林斯頓 eating club（飲食社團）和 residential college（住宿書院）曆史的描述，也讓我更深刻地理解了這所百年名校的文化底蘊，以及它本科教育的一種獨特的理念。

Seligman 在本科階段學到的一些哲學理論在科學研究中的應用，尤其讓我印象深刻。以前我隻是聽說過“哲學是科學中的科學”這樣的說法，也隻是模糊地知道哲學涉及方法論，但 Seligman 對“前提（premise）”的闡述，令我這個從未接受過係統哲學訓練的人大開眼界。類似以下的段落讓我讀後回味無窮，仿佛“唇齒留香”，我的大腦也因此獲得了極大的愉悅。

 Imbibing the philosophy department’s unspoken premise.  The first one is rigor: It was not enough to know what was true; you had to be entitled to know what was true by the rigorous and compelling argument that got you there. 

In psychology, as in many disciplines, the degree of rigor and the importance of a problem are all too often reciprocal.  Internal versus external validity.  The more the method captures the real-world issue, the less rigor it has.  Conversely, the more rigor the method has, the more poorly it captures the real world.  A man is looking under the stree light for his watch, which he lost elsewhere. 

Atomism, the second premise is the thesis that real understanding comes only by working from the ground up.  We can gain clarify about real world issues only if we first discover and analyze the simple building blocks of the complex world and then reassemble them to reconstruct reality. 

When applied to what philosophy should work on, atomism urges that before real world problems – ethics, science, politics, morality, beauty, happiness and the like - can be tackled, the basic philosophical confusions about language, knowledge and the mind must be tackled.

與此同時，我也感到一絲遺憾。早在初中時，我就喜歡讀哲學書籍，比如《形式邏輯》，但由於種種局限，大學時代卻未能深入學習和探索這一興趣。

Seligman 在成為心理學家的早期，主要研究“習得性無助”（learned helplessness）。後來，他又花了幾十年的時間推翻自己的研究，開創了積極心理學（positive psychology），並提出了許多相關理論，如人類能動性（human agency）、希望回路（hope circuit）、創傷後成長（post-traumatic growth）等。能動性強調個人責任和塑造自身命運的力量。積極心理學在充分認識創傷與無助的基礎上，提出人類的主觀能動性是更高級的進化形態。

“ The great blind spot of traditional psychological framework is that it leaves out human agency and its very fulcrum, a mind that metabolizes that past and present to create the future and then chooses among possible futures. Human consciousness is the seat of agency. Agency consists in running simulations of possible futures and deciding among them. Agency is prospecting the future, and expectation, choice, decision, preference, desire and free will are all processes of prospection. The bottom line is that human action is drawn by the future and influenced, but not driven, by the past.“ 

 傳統心理學框架的最大盲點在於，它忽視了人類的能動性，以及其核心——一種能將過去與現在進行“代謝”、從而創造未來並在多個可能的未來之間做出選擇的心智。

人類意識是能動性的根源。能動性體現在對可能的未來進行模擬，並在其中做出抉擇。能動性就是對未來的探索，而期望、選擇、決策、偏好、欲望和自由意誌，都是這種前瞻性過程的一部分。

歸根結底，人類的行動是被未來所吸引的，同時受到過去的影響，但並非被過去所驅動。 “那些出身、缺憾、遺憾、運氣，影響我們，但並不定義我們。決定未來的，是我們如何回應現在的自我認知。”（quote from TJKCB）

關於他的自傳的另一個主線，現代心理學的發展史，我綜合他的書和Grok, 總結了一下幾個心理學發展的幾個主要階段:

Early Philosophical Roots:
Ancient civilizations such as Greece, Egypt, China, and India engaged in early philosophical explorations of the mind and human behavior. Thinkers like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle laid important foundations by reflecting on perception, knowledge, and emotion.

Birth of Experimental Psychology:
In 1879, Wilhelm Wundt established the first psychology laboratory in Leipzig, Germany. This event marked the official beginning of psychology as a scientific discipline. Wundt’s approach, known as structuralism, sought to analyze the structure of conscious experience through controlled introspection.

Early Schools of Thought:

• Structuralism: Focused on breaking down mental experiences into their basic components using introspection.
   

• Functionalism: Led by William James, emphasized the adaptive functions of mental processes in helping individuals adjust to their environment.
   

Psychoanalysis:
Sigmund Freud revolutionized psychology by highlighting the unconscious mind’s influence on thoughts and behavior. His work introduced concepts such as the id, ego, and superego.

Behaviorism:
As a reaction against introspection, behaviorists like John B. Watson and B.F. Skinner focused on observable behaviors and conditioning, emphasizing the role of environmental stimuli in shaping responses.

Humanistic Psychology:
Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow shifted the focus toward personal growth, self-actualization, and the inherently positive aspects of human nature.

Cognitive Psychology:
With advances in computer science, researchers such as Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky began to study mental processes including memory, language, and reasoning, leading to a renewed focus on cognition.

Modern Psychology:
Today, psychology integrates diverse perspectives, including evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, cultural psychology, and positive psychology. Researchers use a wide range of methods and technologies to study the complexity of human behavior.