In this sense the therapist is non-directive because they are tracking and following the client. Metaphorically the therapist is walking alongside the client, sometimes a few paces behind and sometimes a few paces ahead, sometimes stopping to discuss where to go next, but always going wherever the client goes.
Martin Seligman developed the theory of learned helplessness, and defined it as the motivational and behavioral deficits displayed by humans when exposed to uncontrollable circumstances.
Seligman and colleagues drew their reformulated model not from the learned helplessness paradigm, but rather from that body of literature known as attribution theory (e.g., Jones et al., 1972). Attribution theory is concerned with the way people attribute causality to events.aier and Seligman (1976) listed alternative explanations of the helplessness effect in animals. For example, there was the theory that inescapable shock is an extreme stressor that depletes a neurochemical needed by the animals for movement.