“It is difficult to induce learned helplessness in an adult who has been consistently brought up. It is possible; it has happened to a few victims who I have seen, of major disasters. They teach apprentice torturers to do it in South American dictatorships. The principle is sometimes to reward your victim and sometimes to visit unspeakable torment upon him, but above all, to make him recognize, over a protracted period, that you are in control and that he is powerless to affect his environment.

But it is easy to do it to a child. All you have to do is fail to be consistent, so that she doesn't learn that she can make things happen.”