I don't know if this is what you're thinking of, but Dr. Seligman's other big research work was into "Learned Helplessness." Seligman did some work with optimi

I don't know if this is what you're thinking of, but Dr. Seligman's other big research work was into "Learned Helplessness." Seligman did some work with optimism and the forces, but the Learned Helplessness stuff was taken by two people unconnected with Seligman (James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen) who turned it into a manual for torturing people. Seligman's name was dragged through the mud for this, but he didn't do the work on torture, and his research was into identifying the causes of Learned Helplessness precisely so people could avoid it. He openly discusses helping the forces apply his research to aiding captured soldiers resist torture: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/04/21/learned-helplessness-torture-an-exchange/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/04/21/learned-helplessn... There is a lot of he-said/he-said at work, but there is no evidence that he worked with the CIA or anybody else on implementing torture. Of course, you may be discussing something else entirely!