“The great questioner. the social animal, in a limitless world of mystery, intrigue and dangers. Why did the sun rise and fall and influence the growth of plants and food? What were the stars that moved silently through the sky and the planets that wandered between them? What had happened to our relatives who had died, or what would happen to our children in the future? What excitement and wonder when they met an outside group, tried to communicate and exchanged and bartered goods, hearing tales of other lands and frightening beasts.”
Source: Evolutionary Psychiatry: Current Perspectives on Evolution and Mental Health
“We are sole hominin survivors, but not the inevitable masters. Luck, as much as biology, might have been key to sapiens’ place in the world. Our existence as a species is due to a series of devastating, largely random catastrophes, each of which overhauled the planet and its ecosystems, providing new opportunities: from the meteorite impact that killed the dinosaurs but unleashed mammals through to climate change in Africa some 2 million years ago and the emergence of the great savannahs.”
“For most of human evolutionary history our species lived as hunter-gatherers; hence, much of our cognition and behavior is adapted to this way of life. Given the magnitude of the sociocultural, economic and lifestyle changes experienced by Homo Sapiens over the last 10,000 years, in particular the last several hundred years, aspects of human psychology may be maladapted to modern ways of life.”
Source: Evolutionary Psychiatry: Current Perspectives on Evolution and Mental Health
“Thus, for our ancestors, social networks were a matter of life and death, group living was the norm and social isolation was rare, carrying fatal risks. In turn, psychological mechanisms promoting the maintenance of social relationships have been heavily favored by natural selection.”
Source: Evolutionary Psychiatry: Current Perspectives on Evolution and Mental Health
“Such is the magnitude of our evolved psychological dependence on social interaction that, even when surrounded by individuals who have committed the most heinous crimes, solitary confinement for more than 15 days is considered psychological torture by the United Nations.”
Source: Evolutionary Psychiatry: Current Perspectives on Evolution and Mental Health
“In this world things are beautiful only because they are not quite seen, or not perfectly understood. Poetry is precious chiefly because it suggests more than it declares.”
Source: Can You Forgive Her?
“Emotions function as a behavioral motivation system; accordingly, our mood is heavily impacted by progress towards current goals rather than one's overall life situation.”
Source: Evolutionary Psychiatry: Current Perspectives on Evolution and Mental Health
“Looking for the brain abnormalities causing mental disorders without understanding normal function is like looking for the heart abnormalities causing heart failure without knowing what the heart is for.”
Source: Evolutionary Psychiatry: Current Perspectives on Evolution and Mental Health
“The sexual competition hypothesis suggests that women are vulnerable to eating disorders because modern media augment the natural motivation for having a desirable body in order to get better mates. This explains why so many women use extreme caloric restriction in intense efforts to be attractive, but it does not by itself explain anorexia nervosa and bulimia.”
Source: Evolutionary Psychiatry: Current Perspectives on Evolution and Mental Health
“An individual may feel guilty about the event(s) that triggered their depression. Feelings of guilt make one reflect upon how their actions led to that outcome and thus help minimise the likelihood of the same thing happening again. The greater the role oplayed by one's own actions in the situations that led to the event that triggered the depression, the greater the sense of guilt.”
Source: Evolutionary Psychiatry: Current Perspectives on Evolution and Mental Health