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Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness

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Steven Lesk M.D.

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“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.”

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Book:Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness
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“We are no longer in that primitive state of mind. We have an expectation of survival and have conquered most of the obvious predators that plagued us day to day with our superlative contemplation skills born of language. We sit in our comfy heated houses while the snow flutters like butterflies around us and we bask in a feeling of general contentment.”

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Book:Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness
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“The definition of meditation is to learn to live in freedom. Meditation means to break all chains and destroy all walls that surround you. Meditation is to come out of the prison of the mind into the open sky of the heart. The heart is capable of knowing freedom. To be free one has to move from the mind to the heart. Living in the heart you learn the ABC of freedom. You go beyond the boundaries step by step, and you taste the beauty of freedom.”

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Book:Man is Part of the Whole: Silence, Love, Joy, Truth, Compassion, Freedom and Grace
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“Our minds have advanced from the brutal, terrified, survivalist ethos of Mr. Caveman to the secure plateau of modern-day living. We now expect to survive into our eighties or beyond, to not endure brutal conditions, and to be able to negotiate a society that provides pathways toward success and even happiness, which is one reason I assert that happiness is a modern invention. It is when societies begin to break clown and fail in their promises that we begin to question this exchange.”

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Book:Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness
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“I assume, that the rules changed after language's fortuitous appearance. Natural selection's decision was a no-brainer so to speak. The brain of modern sapiens with their more intense cognitivity, hierarchically structured mind, and conceptual consciousness trumped Mr. Neanderthal's primitive brutality. Homo sapiens proved that. But the primitive organization's old ways are still trying to recapture territory, the territory between our ears.”

MindLanguageEvolutionEvolutionary PsychologyPsychoanalysisHomo SapiensSchizophreniaNeanderthalAncient Mind
Book:Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness
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“This book forwards the hypothesis that schizophrenia is a product of very recent evolutionary events. Although humans, or something like them, have been around for some six million years, language has been extant for a mere 50,000 to 100,000 years. The onset of language was afforded by skyrocketing advances in brain development, the central nervous system ballooning incrementally over eons of time to the point where the fetus's little head could barely navigate Momma's birth canal. The Horno sapiens brain profited from a unique folding of the cerebral cortex, allowing for greater speed and a sly adeptness at symbol formation that led to speech.”

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Book:Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness
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“Consciousness is not some abstract concept. It's our state of mind - our thoughts and feelings at any given moment. The 3LC model (Spacious, Heart, Safety) suggests the state of consciousness we are in will always influence how we perceive a situation, the choices we see for ourselves and our actions. In other words, it affects everything. Three Levels of Consciousness Spacious - AWE - Expansive, Nonverbal, Nontemporal Heart - Appreciation, Gratitude Safety - Reward - Purposeful Proactive Productive - Stuck - Anxiety Anguish Ambivalence - Threat - Fight Flight Freeze”

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Book:The Power of Awe: Overcome Burnout & Anxiety, Ease Chronic Pain, Find Clarity & Purpose―In Less Than 1 Minute Per Day
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