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Good Reasons for Bad Feelings

Page 40

by Randolph M. Nesse


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  80. Pearlson GD, Folley BS. Schizophrenia, psychiatric genetics, and Darwinian psychiatry: an evolutionary framework. Schizophr Bull. 2007;34(4):722–33.

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  84. Burns JK. An evolutionary theory of schizophrenia: cortical connectivity, metarepresentation, and the social brain. Behav Brain Sci. 2005;27(6):831–55.

  85. Nesse RM. Cliff-edged fitness functions and the persistence of schizophrenia (commentary). Behav Brain Sci. 2004;27(6):862–3.

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  87. Lack D, Gibb J, Owen DF. Survival in relation to brood-size in tits. Proc Zool Soc Lond. 1957 Jun 1;128(3):313–26.

  88. Nesse RM. Cliff-edged fitness functions and the persistence of schizophrenia (commentary).

  89. Bumpus HC. The elimination of the unfit as illustrated by the introduced sparrow, Passer domesticus. Biol Lect Mar Biol Lab Woods Hole. 1899;6:209–26.

  90. Crespi BJ. Autism, psychosis, and genomic imprinting.

  91. Crespi BJ, Go MC. Diametrical diseases reflect evolutionary-genetic tradeoffs: evidence from psychiatry, neurology, rheumatology, oncology, and immunology. Evol Med Public Health. 2015 Sep 9;2015(1):216–53.

  92. Wilson AJ, Rambaut A. Breeding racehorses: what price good genes? Biol Lett. 2008 Apr 23;4(2):173–5.

  93. Crow TJ. Is schizophrenia the price that Homo sapiens pays for language?

  94. Brüne M. Social cognition and behaviour in schizophrenia.

  95. Brüne M. “Theory of mind” in schizophrenia.

  96. Nesse R. Cliff-edged fitness landscapes make complex genetic disease inevitable. In preparation.

  97. Mitteroecker P, Huttegger SM, Fischer B, Pavlicev M. Cliff-edge model of obstetric selection in humans. Proc Natl Acad Sci. 2016 Dec 20;113(51):14680–5.

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  102. Metcalf CJE, Tate AT, Graham AL. Demographically framing trade-offs between sensitivity and specificity illuminates selection on immunity. Nat Ecol Evol. 2017 Nov;1(11):1766–72.

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  108. Nesse RM, Finch CE, Nunn CL. Does selection for short sleep duration explain human vulnerability to Alzheimer’s disease? Evol Med Public Health. 2017 Jan 1;2017(1):39–46.

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  EPILOGUE

  1. Robinson, M. The Niagara Gorge kite contest. Kite history [Internet]. 2005 [cited 2018 Jan 15]. Available from: http://kitehistory.com/Miscellaneous/Homan_Walsh.htm.

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  8. Nesse RM. Ten questions for evolutionary studies of disease vulnerability. Evol Appl. 2011;4(2):264–77.

  9. Troisi A. Mental health and well-being: clinical applications of Darwinian psychiatry. Appl Evol Psychol. 2012;276.

  10. Troisi A, McGuire MT. Darwinian psychiatry: it’s time to focus on clinical questions. Clin Neuropsychiatry. 2006;3:85–6.

  11. Brüne M. Textbook of evolutionary psychiatry and psychosomatic medicine: the origins of psychopathology. New York: Oxford University Press; 2015.

  12. Hjemdal O, Hagen R, Solem S, Nordahl H, Kennair LEO, Ryum T, et al. Metacognitive therapy in major depression: an open trial of comorbid cases. Cogn Behav Pract. 2017 Aug 1;24(3):312–8.

  13. Gilbert P. The origins and nature of compassion focused therapy. Br J Clin Psychol. 2014;53(1):6–41.

  14. Gilbert P. Human nature and suffering. Hove (UK): Lawrence Erlbaum; 1989.

  15. Gilbert P, Bailey KG. Genes on the couch: explorations in evolutionary psychotherapy. Philadelphia: Taylor & Francis; 2000.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book is a product of selection. I have lobbed ideas to colleagues and friends in conversations and drafts for decades, and they have tossed them back or away. Those conversations and comments have carved away much nonsense and confusion and helped me to capture ideas that otherwise would have gotten away. Barbara Smuts, Linda A. W. Brakel, and
Richard Nisbett deserve special thanks. Barb is a psychologist and primatologist whose work and friendship have inspired me. Linda is psychoanalyst/psychiatrist/philosopher who for years joined Barb and me in weekly discussions that shaped my ideas and who provided wonderful critical comments on drafts of these chapters. Dick is a social psychologist whose work and friendship have inspired me and whose comments on a draft of this book were invaluable.

  My students and colleagues at the University of Michigan have provided wonderful encouragement and criticism. Generations of psychiatry residents took my course on evolution and mental disorders. One group read a whole draft of a previous version and provided cogent suggestions; it included Ryan Edwards, Lauren Edwards, Srijan Sen, Margit Burmeister, Paul Wright, and Shweta Ramdas. This version of the book is so different that they will not recognize it. Professors of psychiatry who inspired my research career at the University of Michigan include John Greden, Bernard Carroll, George Curtis, Kevin Kerber, James Abelson, and Oliver Cameron.

  The University of Michigan provided a fabulous intellectual environment in the last twenty years of the twentieth century. The evolutionary biologist Richard Alexander brought together a nucleus of scientists to debate the crucial issues about evolution and behavior. That group developed into the Evolution and Human Behavior Program, including Barbara Smuts, Richard Wrangham, Bobbi Low, Warren Holmes, David Buss, and me. Younger affiliated scientists, including Beverly Strassmann, Paul Turke, Laura Betzig, and Paul Ewald, have gone on to stellar careers. After that group disbanded, the university provided funds, thanks to Nancy Cantor, that allowed me to continue as the director of the Evolution and Human Adaptation Program. Many others at the university were also sophisticated evolutionary thinkers, including the psychologist Phoebe Ellsworth and the philosophers Allen Gibbard and Peter Railton, whose evolution and ethics lunches set me straight on many matters. The university also made possible leaves that allowed creation of this book, including one at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, where the environment was extraordinarily conducive to creative thinking. UK philosophers and evolution experts Helena Cronin and Janet Radcliffe Richards provided friendship and conversations that were even more inspiring than their wonderful books.

  Conversations with John Holland, Bob Axelrod, Bobbi Low, and Carl Simon proved seminal about complexity theory, and regular lunch conversations with the geneticist Jim Neel over many years provided an advanced education in genetics and a model of generosity from a world-leading scientist to a curious doctor. Visitors, including Bill Hamilton, George Williams, Bill Irons, Napoleon Chagnon, Martin Daly, and Margo Wilson, expanded our vision. The person at Michigan who did the most to make my work possible was Nancy Cantor; in her administrative position she arranged for half of my appointments to move from the medical center to the main campus, where I was able to do the work needed to develop evolutionary medicine.

  Many friends and colleagues provided detailed commentary on chapters, some on the entire book, line by line. Your reading experience has been greatly improved as a result of the generous and detailed critiques provided by Sylvia Bonner, Annette Hollander, Richard Nisbett, Carl Carlson, Holly Carlson, Linda Brakel, Holly Smith, and Paul St. John-Smith. Tyler Quigley spent an entire summer editing and helping me find missing references. Maria Klingler and Chelsea Landolin are careful readers whose comments were as encouraging as they were critical. Julia Heiman, Marlene Zuk, Laura Betzig, and Hanna Kokko provided crucial critiques of the sex chapter.

  Conversations and friendships with evolutionary psychiatry leaders have inspired many ideas and made this work possible. A few of them are Daniel Stein, Martin Brüne, John Price, Russell Gardner, Riadh Abed, Paul St. John-Smith, Daniel Wilson, Daniel Nettle, Paul Gilbert, Leon Sloman, Douglas Kramer, Jay Feierman, Pieter Adriaens, John Beahrs, Jerry Wakefield, Allan Horowitz, Jay Belsky, Kalman Glantz, Eiko Fried, Matthew Keller, Andy Thompson, and most of all Brant Wenegrat, Melvin Konner, Alfonso Troisi, and Michael McGuire, whose seminal books about evolutionary psychiatry set this field in motion decades ago.

  I hope this book will be recognized as a fine example of the “third culture” developed so well by my agents John Brockman and Katinka Matson, who is also a talented artist. Their work and their Edge.org blog have created a new publishing space for popular books that advance serious new science. I am especially grateful to Katinka for her patience and sage advice at many phases of the process.

  Finally, the two editors who provided the most help and support to get this manuscript in shape are my wonderful wife, the novelist Margaret Nesse, and my wonderful editor at Dutton, Stephen Morrow. Warmest thanks to them and everyone else I can never repay. I hope they and all others who have helped will take satisfaction in seeing this book do what it can to advance our understanding of mental disorders and to find better ways to treat them.

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  INDEX

  The page numbers in this index refer to the printed version of this book. The link provided will take you to the beginning of that print page. You may need to scroll forward from that location to find the corresponding reference on your e-reader.

  A

  Abed, Riadh, 267

  abnormalities, 13

  abundance, 231–33

  Ache tribe, 125

  Adaptation and Natural Selection (Williams), 33

  adaptationism, 264

  addictions

  to alcohol, 234–35

  behavior control system and, 236–37

  to drugs, 238–39, 240–41

  to sugar, 219–20

  treatments for, 243–44

  vulnerability to, 235–36, 242–43

  ADHD. See attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

  affect, 87

  affective disorders. See mood disorders

  aging

  evolutionary aspects of, 11–12

  genes that cause, 13

  agoraphobia, 77–78

  Akil, Huda, 24

  Akiskal, Hagop, 253

  alcohol and alcoholism

  infection and, 238

  rates of, 235

  Alexander, Richard, 162, 184, 193, 197

  alleles (gene versions), 39, 164

  alpha male, 91

  Allport, Gordon, 145

  altruism

  closed groups and, 171

  competitive versus selfless, 174

  cultural factors in, 170

  as hypocritical, 193

  reproduction and, 161

  sexual partners and, 173

  Alzheimer’s disease, 253, 258–59

  ambition, 132

  American Psychiatric Association (APA), 21–22

  amphetamine, 240–41

  amygdala, 52

  amyloid beta (protein), 259

  Andreasen, Nancy, 22–23

  Andreas-Salomé, Lou, 213

  Andrews, Paul, 94

  Animal Behavior Society, 183

  anorexia, 224–27, 228

  antagonistic pleiotropy, 253

  antibiotic resistance, 37

  anticipator mechanism, 131

  antidepressants, 79, 136

  anxiety

  benefits of, 72

  false alarms and, 73–74

  reason for, 71–73

  social, 176–78

  usefulness of, 16, 82

  anxiety disorders, 67–68, 71–72

  APA. See American Psychiatric Association

  Apgar, Virginia, 152

  Apgar score, 152

  appraisals, 62

  Archer, John, 180

  Armstrong, Elizabeth, 212

  arousal, 209–10

  artificial sweeteners, 229

  attachment

  avoidant or anxious, 90

  in sexual relationships, 205, 215<
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  attachment theory, 89–90

  attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), 98

  attention surplus disorder, 98

  Austen, Jane, 147

  autism

  benefits associated with, 253

  genetic factors in, 247, 251–52

  rates of, 245–46

  Axelrod, Robert, 167–68

  B

  babies

  Apgar score for, 152

  larger, 251–52, 258

  mental disorders in, 246

  nutrition in utero of, 230

  separation from mothers and, 89–90

  bacteria, 37, 56

  Bargh, John, 191

  Barker, David, 230

  Baron-Cohen, Simon, 252

  Barrett, Lisa Feldman, 58

  baselines of mood, 122–23

  Bateson, Melissa, 83, 231

  Bayer Company, 240

  Beck, Aaron, 129

  behavior

  control systems for, 236–37

  formula for cost of, 33

  normal, xii, 264

  in pursuit of goals, 94–95

  regulatory systems for, 241–42

  behavioral ecology, 48

  behavioral psychology, 69

  behavioral therapy, 136–37

  Behavior is a function of a Person in his or her Environment (B = f(P,E), Lewin formula), 115

  behavior therapy, 79

  Bell, Charles, 52

  benefits

  of anxiety, 72

  of cooperation, 163–64

  of mental disorders, 253

  of traits, 33, 164

  vulnerability and, 253

  bereavement, 86, 178–82

  Berridge, Kent, 242

  berry picking, 95–98

  Betzig, Laura, 216, 239

  B = f(P,E) (Lewin formula), 115

  Bierce, Ambrose, 205

  Biggest Loser, The (television program), 224

  biopsychosocial model, 8, 90, 267

  bipolar disorder

  benefits of, 253

  brain abnormality and, 119–20

  depression and, 114, 130–33

 

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