Home > Work > Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry

Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry QUOTES

Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry QUOTES

1 " [Mood allocates] investments of time, effort, resources, and risk taking to maximize Darwinian fitness in situations of varying propitiousness. High and low moods adjust cognition and behavior to cope with propitious and unpropitious situations. "

― Randolph M. Nesse , Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry

2 " Like fever and pain, anxiety and low mood are useful normal responses to some situations. "

― Randolph M. Nesse , Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry

3 " Most behavior is in pursuit of a goal. Some efforts are attempts to get something, others to escape or prevent something. Either way, an individual is usually trying to make progress toward some goal. High and low moods are aroused by situations that arise during goal pursuit. What situations? A generic but useful answer is: high and low moods were shaped to cope with propitious and unpropitious situations. "

― Randolph M. Nesse , Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry

4 " In the clinic it is obvious that what patients believe about human nature influences their lives and problems. "

― Randolph M. Nesse , Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry

5 " Caffeine seems innocuous, but a single coffee bean can kill a mouse. "

― Randolph M. Nesse , Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry

6 " All organisms are shaped to behave in ways that increase fitness even if that decreases health and happiness. Did you ever desperately want to have sex with someone even though you knew that could lead to disaster? Most people have, with sometimes dire consequences. Then there are the rest of our desires and the inevitable suffering because they cannot all be fulfilled. We want so badly to be important, rich, loved, admired, attractive, and powerful. For what? the good feelings from succeeding are just about balanced by the bad feelings from failure. Our emotions benefit our genes far more than they do us. "

― Randolph M. Nesse , Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry

7 " Strong selection for extreme mental capacities may have given us all minds like the legs of racehorses, fast but vulnerable to catastrophic failures. This model fits well with the idea that schizophrenia is intimately related to language and cognitive ability.93 It also fits well with the observation that schizophrenia may be intimately related to the human capacity for “theory of mind,” our ability to intuit other people’s motives and cognitive abilities in general. "

― Randolph M. Nesse , Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry

8 " The mechanisms our minds use to anticipate the results of our actions are inadequate for coping with modern media. "

― Randolph M. Nesse , Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry

9 " Chen H, Li C, Zhou Z, Liang H. Fast-evolving human-specific neural enhancers are associated with aging-related diseases. Cell Syst. 2018 May;6(5):604–11. "

― Randolph M. Nesse , Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry

10 " Some clinicians skip asking about personal details. They check symptoms on a list, put patients into diagnostic categories, and then recommend whatever treatment has been shown to help patients with that diagnosis. This nomothetic approach saves time, effort, and the emotional entanglements that ensue from creating relationships with individuals. Fewer midnight phone calls. "

― Randolph M. Nesse , Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry

11 " First, the rest of medicine recognizes symptoms, such as pain and cough, as protective defenses and carefully distinguishes them from the disorders that arouse them. In psychiatry, by contrast, extremes of emotions, such as anxiety and low mood, are categorized as disorders, irrespective of any situation that might be arousing them. This error is so basic and pervasive that it deserves a name: Viewing Symptoms As Diseases (VSAD). "

― Randolph M. Nesse , Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry

12 " Internal medicine doctors know the functions of the kidneys. They don’t confuse protective defenses such as cough and pain with diseases such as pneumonia and cancer. Psychiatrists lack a similar framework for the utility of stress, sleep, anxiety, and mood, so psychiatric diagnostic categories remain confusing and crude. "

― Randolph M. Nesse , Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry

13 " The greatest boon of modern life is also the greatest villain: the availability of plentiful food.30,31,32,33,34,35 Or, rather, foodlike substances manufacturers concoct with the exact combinations of sugar, salt, and fat that we most desire. "

― Randolph M. Nesse , Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry

14 " The body is not shaped for maximum health or longevity; it is shaped for maximum transmission of its genes. Alleles (different versions of a gene) that increase the number of offspring become more common over the generations, even if that shortens life and increases suffering. This is not merely theoretical. Half of the human population has been shaped by selection to live fast and die young. "

― Randolph M. Nesse , Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry

15 " In the meanwhile, people with anxiety disorders deserve recognition for their courage and daily determination to live full lives despite their symptoms. "

― Randolph M. Nesse , Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry

16 " Psychiatrists are supposed to help their patients get in touch with things they are trying to avoid. "

― Randolph M. Nesse , Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry

17 " The German psychologist Jutta Heckhausen, now in California, studied a group of childless middle-aged women who were still hoping to have a baby. As they approached menopause, their emotional distress became more and more intense. But after menopause those who gave up their hope for pregnancy lost their depression symptoms.81 The irony is deep: hope is often at the root of depression. "

― Randolph M. Nesse , Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry

18 " The general human tendency to ignore the effects of situations and to attribute problems to characteristics of individuals is so pervasive that social psychologists have a name for it: “The fundamental attribution error. "

― Randolph M. Nesse , Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry

19 " Selection shapes brains that maximize the number of offspring who survive to reproduce themselves. This is very different from maximizing health or longevity. It is also different from maximizing matings. That is why organisms do things other than having sex. Especially humans. Having the most offspring requires allocating plenty of thought and action to getting resources other than mates and matings, especially social resources, such as friends and status. Everyone else is doing the same thing, creating constant conflict, cooperation, and vast social complexity whose comprehension requires a huge brain. "

― Randolph M. Nesse , Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry