Army: Be all your Higher Power can be

Happiness guru Martin Seligman, who first allowed ideas from his learned helplessness discovery to be psychologically reversed engineered as the basis for the CIA's torture program, has now gone one step further.

Calling soldiers his 1.1 million guinea pigs, he now wants the Army to "be all its Higher Power can be," in essence, claiming that "spirituality" will help troops overcome PTSD.

Hogwash:

Bryant Welch, who also served as APA president, said, "personally, I have not been able to find a meaningful distinction between [positive psychology] and Norman Vincent Peale's Power of Positive Thinking. Both emphasize substituting positive thoughts for unhappy or negative ones."

"And yet the US military has bought into this untested notion to the tune of [$125] million," Welch said.

PTSD "is is not a mental state that can be treated by suggesting to the patient that he or she simply re-frame how they think about the situation, as Dr. Seligman suggests," Welch added.

And, it's just part of a trend. Seligman has previously sold out to corporations. Now, it's our increasingly corporatized military.

What would really help PTSD in the military? Adequate head protection and armaments would be a start. Not fighting unnecessary wars would be better yet.

Update, Jan. 7: Here is a sample of specific questions; by asking about things like religious service attendance, it's clear this goes beyond "spirituality" and ventures into the realm of unconstitutionality.

More here noting how these questions, AND other issues behind them, are clearly a religious test, and therefore unconstitutional. It looks like the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers is eventually going to have to sue.