这本书是心理学家 Martin Seligman（积极心理学的创始人）所写的自传。应该是在 2024 年寒假、十二月开始读这本书的。刚刚读完，2025 年一月我就接到了父亲病危的通知，心情非常复杂。奇妙的是，这本书的中文名称叫做《希望回路》！
这本书逻辑严密，文字优美，数据详实，还颇具幽默感。阅读的过程让我非常享受。因为我觉得，如果在某种机缘巧合之下，我能够成为一位著作等身的心理学领域专家（这是我最希望钻研的专业），那我理想中的写作风格，大概就是这本书的样子。
但也正因如此，我怀着崇敬之情读完之后，几个月都没法动笔写读后感，心里甚至充满遗憾与不甘。因为这本自传让我看清了，成为一名顶级心理学家所需要具备的条件：天赋、扎实的基础、优秀的导师、志同道合的同行、以及关键时刻的运气，缺一不可。而我，因为出身的局限，这辈子已经永远无法成为我理想中那种学者了。
我知道，我的事业已经很好了。但那是在种种局限之下达成的一种状态，也是在命运眷顾下的结果，其中有许多“无心插柳、意料之外”的成分。但如果我的条件和能力允许，能“有心栽花”的话，Seligman 的成长路径就是我心目中的理想状态。
写下来之后，内心慢慢也平静了。我可以接受。通过这本书，我仿佛看见了平行宇宙中另一个版本的自己，其实这也是一种领悟。
Seligman 在读本科时，尤其喜欢哲学和心理学。最后选择在研究生阶段主攻心理学，是因为他身边的人认为，如果他专攻哲学，将来可能永远无法成为顶尖的大师；而在心理学领域，“He is a natural”——他是个天生的心理学家，有可能开疆拓土，成为一代宗师。几十年后回望，果然如此。
他的这本自传其实有两条主线：第一，是他个人生活和科研成长的历程；第二，是现代心理学的发展路径。
在他个人成长的主线中，我尤其关注他在普林斯顿本科学习的那段经历。他对普林斯顿 eating club（饮食社团）和 residential college（住宿书院）历史的描述，也让我更深刻地理解了这所百年名校的文化底蕴，以及它本科教育的一种独特的理念。
Seligman 在本科阶段学到的一些哲学理论在科学研究中的应用，尤其让我印象深刻。以前我只是听说过“哲学是科学中的科学”这样的说法，也只是模糊地知道哲学涉及方法论，但 Seligman 对“前提（premise）”的阐述，令我这个从未接受过系统哲学训练的人大开眼界。类似以下的段落让我读后回味无穷，仿佛“唇齿留香”，我的大脑也因此获得了极大的愉悦。
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.
与此同时，我也感到一丝遗憾。早在初中时，我就喜欢读哲学书籍，比如《形式逻辑》，但由于种种局限，大学时代却未能深入学习和探索这一兴趣。
Seligman 在成为心理学家的早期，主要研究“习得性无助”（learned helplessness）。后来，他又花了几十年的时间推翻自己的研究，开创了积极心理学（positive psychology），并提出了许多相关理论，如人类能动性（human agency）、希望回路（hope circuit）、创伤后成长（post-traumatic growth）等。能动性强调个人责任和塑造自身命运的力量。积极心理学在充分认识创伤与无助的基础上，提出人类的主观能动性是更高级的进化形态。
“ 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.“
传统心理学框架的最大盲点在于，它忽视了人类的能动性，以及其核心——一种能将过去与现在进行“代谢”、从而创造未来并在多个可能的未来之间做出选择的心智。
人类意识是能动性的根源。能动性体现在对可能的未来进行模拟，并在其中做出抉择。能动性就是对未来的探索，而期望、选择、决策、偏好、欲望和自由意志，都是这种前瞻性过程的一部分。
归根结底，人类的行动是被未来所吸引的，同时受到过去的影响，但并非被过去所驱动
关于他的自传的另一个主线，现代心理学的发展史，我综合他的书和Grok, 总结了一下几个心理学发展的几个主要阶段:
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:
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Structuralism: Focused on breaking down mental experiences into their basic components using introspection.
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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.
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