Randolph M. Nesse - Good reasons for bad feelings: insights from the frontier of evolutionary psychiatry

Advance Praise for Good Reasons for Bad Feelings

To quote a renowned geneticist, Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. A quarter century ago, Randolph Nesse bravely helped apply this dictum to medicine. Now, in Good Reasons for Bad Feelings, he tackles the deeper evolutionary question of why we, our minds, and our brains are so vulnerable to mental illness. He navigates the dangers of either too much or too little adaptationism, deftly handles the false dichotomy between psychological and biological perspectives, and bridges abstract intellectualizing with pressing clinical need. This is a wise, accessible, highly readable exploration of an issue that goes to the heart of human existence.

Robert M. Sapolsky, author of Behave

Those powerful feelings that fill our day, that give us the oomph to act one way or another are the guardrails to living and this wonderful book explains all of them. Randolph Nesse has done it again.

Michael S. Gazzaniga, director, Sage Center, UC Santa Barbara; author of Tales from Both Sides of the Brain

A masterful, groundbreaking book that persuasively challenges standard clinical wisdom and provides a road map for the transformation of our conceptually confused psychiatric nosology. With crystal clarity, Nesse reviews what we know of our biologically designed emotions and argues for unflinching acceptance of our evolved nature as a baseline for understanding both normal and disordered suffering.... Anyone interested in mental healthlaypeople, students, clinicians, and scholarswill be grateful for the novel insights to be gained from this important book.

Jerome C. Wakefield, professor of psychiatry, New York University; coauthor of The Loss of Sadness

What is the nature of suffering, its origin and its adaptive significance? Good Reasons for Bad Feelings may well become a legend, as it is a book about psychology, psychiatry, biology and philosophy that is also a good read, and it opens the door to deep questions in a manner that is tender, quizzical and industrious.

Judith Eve Lipton, MD, coauthor of Strength Through Peace

Randolph Nesses new book vividly demonstrates how careful thinking using principles of natural selection leads to new and profound insights into why humans sometimes suffer mental disorders; the key question is why our minds are fragile. His writing style is clear and engaging, and the narrative reflects a masterful blend of history, novel ideas, and clinical experience in an insightful and coherent manner. I hope it is widely read and discussed.

Eric Charnov, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Evolutionary Ecology, University of Utah; MacArthur Fellow

Prompted by the distress of his patients and confusion within his own field, psychiatrist Randolph Nesse set out to combine years of clinical experience with new insights gleaned from evolutionary biology, allowing him to view the entire landscape of human obsessions, anxieties, and compulsions through the lens of deep time, placing traits that contribute to depression and mental illness into evolutionary perspective. The result is a book as wise and illuminating as it is relevant to our daily lives.

Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, professor emerita of anthropology, UC Davis; author of The Woman that Never Evolved and Mother Nature

Nesses book is hugely important for the future of mental health care, and Nesse is the preeminent person to write it. It provides a personalized and lively but well-documented treatise on how we humans function as we do and on needed changes in the way psychiatry thinks about troublesome mental experiences and behavior. It draws on an impressive range of knowledge, from not only psychiatry, including extensive case descriptions, but also psychology, biology, philosophy, and humanistic literature. Many readers will find it hard to put the book down.

Eric Klinger, professor emeritus of psychology, University of Minnesota

Two sets of ideas inform this fine book: one, the coldhearted logic of natural selection; the other, the practical wisdom of a compassionate psychiatrist. The tension is palpable. The result is riveting.

Nicholas Humphrey, professor emeritus of psychology, London School of Economics; author of Soul Dust

Good Reasons for Bad Feelings by Randy Nesse is a delightful book. It is insightful about the human condition, sanguine and not overstated. And it is written in a straightforward and delightful manner, personal and professional, and with humor. Neese is one of the originators of the field of evolutionary medicine. This is a welcome book in evolutionary psychiatry and on the biological basis of the emotions and our cultural evolution.

Jay Schulkin, research professor of neuroscience, Georgetown University

In Good Reasons for Bad Feelings, leading evolutionary theorist, psychiatrist Randolph Nesse, begs us to ask the right question: Why did natural selection make us so prone to mental disorders of so many kinds and intensities? It is no exaggeration to say that he opens the door to a new paradigm in thinking about human beings and their conflicted lives. A path-breaking book by a man who is truly humane and caring. A privilege to share time with him.

Michael Ruse, Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy, Florida State University; author of On Purpose

In this highly accessible, scholarly and deeply illuminating book the internationally acclaimed evolutionary psychiatrist Randolph Nesse guides us through the implications of being gene-built and contextually epigenetically fine-tuned for our states of mind. From depression to anxiety to issues of moral behavior, we are guided to new understandings of the algorithms of the human mind and the contexts in which they can play out, for better or worse. This paradigm offers fundamental, new ways of thinking about mental states and moral behaviours, illuminating new means and opportunities to gain insight to and work with some of the dark sides of our nature. This will become a treasured classic not just for clinicians but for all those interested in how to facilitate well-being and create more moral communities and societies.

Professor Paul Gilbert OBE, author of The Compassionate Mind and Living like Crazy

How did we end up recognizing that every system in the body has a function shaped by evolutionary selection and yet thinking that systems in the mind do not? How did physical and mental health drift so far apart? Randolph Nesse explains, in this highly readable book, how symptoms in psychiatry should be seen in their evolutionary context, and that anxiety and depression for example have functions, just as do inflammation, blood clotting, or a cough. Nesse is a pioneer of evolutionary psychiatry, which has the potential to revolutionize mental health care.

Simon Baron-Cohen, professor of developmental psychopathology, Cambridge University

This book sets out to show how evolution underpins (or should underpin) psychiatry. In doing so, it will surely change the face of medicineand deservedly so.

Robin Dunbar, emeritus professor of evolutionary psychology, University of Oxford

Randy Nesse has brought a new and important synthesis to the study of illnesses that psychiatrists deal in. This engagingly accessible, pioneering book provides a wide range of answers for how something as maladaptive as bipolar disorders could have evolved. It provides a wide range of answers for why natural selection has left us vulnerable to so many mental disorders, and the mystery of missing heredity is identified as a key problem. Nesse shows that by taking into account complex pleiotropic effects, natural selection may push some useful trait close to a fitness peak near a cliff edge despite the disabling consequences for a few individuals who go over the edge. Thus a gene may be useful to many, but with bad luck contributes to victimizing the few. This complex problem surely will yield to further research.