“But in the mood d1sorders, uni- and bipolar, we see a return to more primitive, primary process ruminating without the loss of adult cognitive rules. Major depression is a return to a primitive hibernation state without the wholesale collapse in logical processes that we see in schizophrenia. It shifts the usual thought pattern from secondary to primary process thinking, the embattled autopilot of the past six million years or so. If happiness is a modern invention, depressives return to the affective state of the hibernating cave dweller. Mania, on the other hand, is a desperate flight from dreaded depression and encapsulates the level of primitivity imposed by it.” MindEvolutionCivilizationSchizophreniaEvolutionary PsychopathologySavage Book:Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness Source: Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness
“At some point in our infancy, we draw a curtain across this terrorizing mental state and put it behind us. Freud called this infantile amnesia, and it was said to happen around age five. We forget the gruesome terror and brutality of that drama. Civilization is based on pushing it aside, perhaps delusionally, to create acquiescent civility. When we regress to psychosis, that door is opened up again and often reveals feelings that have been submerged since infancy: the door to the psychotic id. Is civilization based on a delusion of safety? Perhaps, or possibly just the need to maintain a sense of security that promulgates itself, in fragile pose, like a ballerina en pointe too long. The maintenance of this civilized state of calm has much to do with the suppression of dopamine.” MindLanguageEvolutionCivilizationHorrorTerrorEvolutionary PsychologyPsychoanalysisAncient Mind Book:Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness Source: Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness