#233 Randolph Nesse: Good Reasons for Bad Feelings
Dr. Randolph Nesse is Foundation Professor of Life Sciences and Founding Director in The Center for Evolution and Medicine at Arizona State University, Professor Emeritus in the Departments of Psychiatry and Psychology and the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, and Founding President of the International Society for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health. He was the initial organizer and second president of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society, and is currently the president of the International Society for Evolution, Medicine & Public Health. He is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Sciences, and an elected Fellow of the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science). He’s also the author of several books, including Why We Get Sick (coauthored with George C. Williams) and, more recently, Good Reasons for Bad Feelings (2019).
In this episode, we focus mostly on Dr. Nesse’s most recent book. We first talk about the field of Evolutionary Medicine, and refer specifically to phenomena like antagonistic pleiotropy and aging, evolutionary mismatch and modern disease, and if we should approach diseases as adaptations. We then move on to discussing issues in Psychiatry and Clinical Psychology; the classification of mental disorders; studying emotions from an evolutionary perspective; and the Smoke Detector Principle. We talk about depression, and how we haven’t evolved to feel good or experience wellbeing. In the latter part of the interview, we discuss Psychoanalysis and the self-defense mechanisms, and also if people can benefit from learning about how their minds operate, from an evolutionary standpoint.
Time Links:
About Evolutionary Medicine
Are diseases adaptations?
Evolutionary mismatch
How we classify mental disorders, and issues within Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, and Clinical Psychology
Are mental disorders diseases?
How to best approach emotions, and their usefulness
The Smoke Detector Principle
Depression
Determining that something is a “disorder”
Natural selection doesn’t “care” about our mental wellbeing
Psychoanalysis, and the self-defense mechanisms
Can people benefit psychologically from learning about Evolutionary Psychology?
Follow Dr. Nesse’s work!
Follow Dr. Nesse’s work:
Faculty page: http://bit.ly/2GEaNMi
Personal website: http://bit.ly/2ypzUyf
Website for Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: http://bit.ly/331I9hZ
Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry: https://amzn.to/2GBYQXA
Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine: https://amzn.to/2LQwGfV
Other books on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2LUtgsf
International Society for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health: http://bit.ly/2SXtqQn
EvMedReview: http://bit.ly/2K75SWr
ResearchGate profile: http://bit.ly/2KdJolu