Prevention and Wellness: Jonas Salk

Among the many celebrated participants at a 1984 conference on the power of the mind to impact the body, was Dr. Jonas Salk, whose polio vaccine had changed the world decades before.

Being the most famous immunologist in the world, the elderly Salk attempted to arbitrate the heated arguments being waged between the biological immunologists and the psychologists. And his private words to Seligman, recounted in Learned Optimism, resonated: 

   "If I were a young scientist today, I would still do immunization. But instead of immunizing kids physically, I'd do it your way. I'd immunize them psychologically. I'd see if these psychologically immunized kids could then fight off mental illness better. Physical illness too." 

The Penn Resiliency Project typifies how Seligman was able to switch his scientific gears away from learned helplessness and toward psychological immunization. By then, his work on learned helplessness had already made him an expert on depression and pessimism. He had created powerful tools capable of diagnosing how a person's level of pessimism could measure their risk for developing depression. Inspired by the work of Penn's legendary "depression wizard," Dr. Aaron T. Beck, the University Professor Emeritus of Psychology, Seligman had also spent years refining a number of cognitive techniques and exercises which helped to relieve and heal persons with depression, and prevent future recurrences of that ever-more-pervasive illness.


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