Description
Book SynopsisCan evolutionary theory explain depression, anxiety, and other mental disorders? The authors re-examine this old question in light of current research and show that evolution may provide the essential framework for understanding both everyday human behavior and a range of mental disorders. Their discussion includes up-to-date research on emotions, moods, symptoms, and mental processing. The authors make a compelling case for the view that prominent features of mental disorders are simply adaptive responses to the environment and life''s circumstances and that these responses can only be understood in the context of our long evolutionary past.
Trade Review"The authors are psychiatrists who have done distinguished experimental work in primatology. They summarize evolutionary influences on everyday behavior, and argue convincingly for this area as a science basic to psychiatry."--The Quarterly Review of Biology "Darwinian Psychiatry represents a encyclopedic, ambitious and well-argued attempt to convince its readers that the field of psychiatry would benefit from the explicit incorporation of evolutionary theory, and offers nothing short of a complete reconceptualization of mental disorders. McGuire and Troisi are writers of considerable distinction in the psychiatry literature...their scholarship is unmistakable and their shared knowledge startlingly comprehensive. The overall tone of the work is relatively conversational, a style that well befits the obvious familiarity of the authors with the tenets of evolutionary theory and their knowledge of mental conditions. Well thought out, well-structured, and well written...the application of their ideas is both comparatively straightforward and appropriately provocative." -- Metapsychology (Mental Help Net's Bookstore) "The authors are psychiatrists who have done distinguished experimental work in primatology. They summarize evolutionary influences on everyday behavior, and argue convincingly for this area as a science basic to psychiatry."--The Quarterly Review of Biology "Darwinian Psychiatry represents a encyclopedic, ambitious and well-argued attempt to convince its readers that the field of psychiatry would benefit from the explicit incorporation of evolutionary theory, and offers nothing short of a complete reconceptualization of mental disorders. McGuire and Troisi are writers of considerable distinction in the psychiatry literature...their scholarship is unmistakable and their shared knowledge startlingly comprehensive. The overall tone of the work is relatively conversational, a style that well befits the obvious familiarity of the authors with the tenets of evolutionary theory and their knowledge of mental conditions. Well thought out, well-structured, and well written...the application of their ideas is both comparatively straightforward and appropriately provocative." -- Metapsychology (Mental Help Net's Bookstore)
Table of ContentsI. Introduction ; 1. Darwinian psychiatry - the context ; 2. Diagnosing and explaining disorders/conditions ; II. An evolutionary context for disorders ; 3. Evolutionary concepts important to psychiatry ; 4. A theory of behavior ; 5. Mechanisms, emotions, moods, symptoms, and affects ; 6. Information processing ; 7. Evolutionary models of disorders/conditions ; 8. Regulation-dysregulation theory ; III. Disorders and conditions in evolutionary context ; 9. Personality disorders ; 10. Anorexia nervosa ; 11. Schizophrenia ; 12. Phobias ; 13. Other conditions ; 14. Dysthymic disorder: a study of infrastructural suboptimality ; IV. Treatment in evolutionary context ; 15. Treatment in evolutionary context ; V. Conclusion ; 16. Summary and conclusion
