The Evolution of Psychopathology

This review of recent evolutionary theories on psychopathology takes on controversies and contradictions both with established psychological thought and within the evolutionary field itself. Opening with the ancestral origins of the familiar biopsychosocial model of psychological conditions, the book traces distinctive biological and cultural pathways shaping human development and their critical impact on psychiatric and medical disorders. Analyses of disparate phenomena such as jealousy, social anxiety, depressive symptoms, and antisocial behavior describe adaptive functions that have far outlasted their usefulness, or that require further study and perhaps new directions for treatment. In addition, the book’s compelling explorations of violence, greed, addiction, and suicide challenge us to revisit many of our assumptions regarding what it means to be human.

Included in the coverage:

 ·         Evolutionary foundations of psychiatric compared to non-psychiatric disorders.

·         Evolutionary psychopathology, uncomplicated depression, and the distinction between normal and disordered sadness.

·         Depression: is rumination really adaptive?

·         A CBT approach to coping with sexual betrayal and the green-eyed monster.

·         Criminology’s modern synthesis: remaking the science of crime with Darwinian insight.

·         Anthropathology: the abiding malady of the species.

 

With its wealth of interdisciplinary viewpoints, The Evolution of Psychopathology makes an appropriate supplementary text for advanced graduate courses in the evolutionary sciences, particularly in psychology, biology, anthropology, sociology, and philosophy.