Subtitle: The Phylogenetic and Cultural Basis of Mental Illness
Author: Horacio Fbrega Jr., M.D.
Subject: Evolution/Anthropology/Psychology
Cloth ISBN 0-8135-3023-7
Pages: 432 pp.
Description: An application of evolutionary biology to the study of mental illness
What are the origins of human psychopathology? Is mental illness a relatively recent phenomenon, or has it been with us throughout evolution? Can something so seemingly cultural and contemporary have a phylogenetic history?
In Origins of Psychopathology, Horacio Fábrega Jr. employs principles of evolutionary biology to better understand the significance of mental illness. He explores whether what psychiatry has categorized as mental disorders could have existed during earlier phases of human evolution. Fábrega approaches the prominent features of mental disorders as adaptive responses to the environment and lifes circumstances, which in turn can only be understood in the context of our evolutionary past. Taking his cue from theoretical issues raised by research into primate behavior and early hominid evolution, he poses the questions: What was involved in the shift from animal to human varieties of psychopathology? Does mental illness occur in primates and other animals, and if so, what does this tell us about mental illness in human evolution? How has mental illness played an adaptive role? How has the development of language and higher cognitive functions affected characteristics of psychopathology? Fábrega synthesizes insights from both the clinical and the evolutionary points of view. This facet of psychopathology, which involves its origins and manifestations viewed across the expanse of human evolution, has, until now, been largely neglected in psychiatric education, theory, and practice.
Horacio Fábrega Jr., M.D. is a professor of psychiatry and anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of Disease and Social Behavior: An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Evolution of Sickness and Healing, and coauthor of Illness and Shamanistic Curing in Zincatan.
Contents
I. Psychiatry and Evolutionary Biology
1. Evolution and the Study of Psychopathology
2. Evolutionary Theory Applied to Psychopathology and Psychiatry
3. Clinical and Evolutionary Images of Psychopathology
4. Accounting for the Universality of Psychopathology
5. An Active Role for Psychopathology in Evolution
6. On the Limits of an Evolutionary Conception of Psychopathology
II. Psychopathology during Human Biological Evolution
7. Searching for Psychopathology in Nonhuman Primates
8. Responses to Psychopathology in Nonhuman Primates
9. The Setting of Psychopathology during Evolution
10. The Content of Psychopathology during Evolution
11. The Impact of Meaning Systems on Psychopathology
12. Dissociation, Psychopathology, and Evolution
13. Psychopathology in Archaic Human Societies
III. Recapitulation and Synthesis
14. Phases of the Biological Evolution of Psychopathology
15. Visualizing the Cultural Evolution of Psychopathology
