The Seven Sins of Evolutionary Psychology - Konrad Lorenz Institute

Russell Gardner, Jr.The enormous swing in psychiatric practice augmentedby major changes in payment schemes producedpowerful distressing repercussions, documentedby anthropologist Tanya LUHRMAN in herbook, “Of Two Minds: The Growing Disorder inAmerican Psychiatry” (2000). In the course of thinktank deliberations in the Research Committee at theGroup for the Advancement of Psychiatry (GAP), academicchild psychiatrist Karen Dineen WAGNERsuggested that the ideal for psychopharmacologyand managed care has become “relationshipless psychiatry”.Examiners for Board Certification at theAmerican Board of Psychiatry and Neurology feelthat interpersonal skills are seriously lacking inmany observed candidates. In conclusion, therenow exist increasingly high-level awarenesses bothin and out of the field that psychiatry needs a coremodel for how the brain at its center operates. Theabove-mentioned Research Committee of the GAPsuggested that such a model would be “the socialbrain” (BAKKER et al. 2001).SociophysiologyI turn now to my compatible but different intellectualroute from that of Jaak PANKSEPP. My backgroundas an academic psychiatrist includedresearch on the ethology of sleep movement (GARD-NER/GROSSMAN 1975) and evolved to a role as educator/administrator.In the course of this, anassignment as chairman of a medical school’s curriculumcommittee affected my thinking. Theresponsibility occurred during a major curricularrevolution and involved a charge from the dean toincrease hours for educating medical students in“behavioral science,” a national trend. I of coursesupported these changes because behavioral scienceissues and interviewing skills provided foundationsfor all future physicians, not psychiatrists only. Buteven as I fostered the major changes successfully, Ialso felt cognitive dissonance because I had beenparticularly interested in medical pathogenesissince medical school and saw no evidence my felloweducators showed understanding of this for psychiatry,nor, for that matter, did my psychiatristcolleagues, even those interested in education. Notradition existed for understanding psychiatricsymptoms or illnesses as deviations from normalbrain processes, as symptoms of congestive heartfailure represent the heart muscle’s more limitedability. I realized that psychiatry’s basic scienceneeded articulation and started with the alpha communicationstypical of a manic patient (GARDNER1982). PRICE (1967) well before me had suggestedthat ancient biology of social rank hierarchy playssignificant roles in affective illness.I found with Joan and Carl GUSTAVSON that operationallydefined “manic” communications did notdiffer from those of charismatic leaders (GARDNER etal. 1985). This resonated with the idea that an alphabasic plan likely underlay the behavior, and givensimilarities of these communications to those ofdominant animals, represented factors transmittedvia ancient genes determining brain structure. Withthe concept of propensity states antedating languagein communication (psalic), I proposed that communicationand sociality foster important ancient brainstates retained in the present (GARDNER 1988,1998a). Signaling the “planful” attributes of livingmatter emphasized by MAYR (1982), psalic also refersto programmed spacings and linkages in conspecifics,fundamental aims of communication. Particularpsalics take definition from existing in (1) normalhumans, (2) psychiatrically disturbed humans, and(3) animals. Two psalics include alpha psalic, ofcourse, seen in mania, normal leadership, and animaldominance, and the related audience psalic(state of receptivity to conspecifics as in cult membership,normal audiences, and animal subordination).Sample others include mating, nurturant andnurturance-eliciting psalics.Molecular biologist C. U. M. SMITH (1993) wrotean editorial supportive of the psalic concept for theBritish Journal of Psychiatry. Support for basic planapproaches stem now from recent neurobiologicalresearch. KANDEL and SQUIRE’s neuroscience review(2000) cited the following data-based advances:“molecular machinery and electrical signaling propertiesof neurons are widely conserved across animalspecies,” that “what distinguishes one species fromanother, with respect to their cognitive abilities, isthe number of neurons and the details of their connectivity,”and that “remarkable principles of evolutionaryconservatism are emerging from the study ofnerve cells”.In 1987, I commenced publication of The Across-Species Comparisons and Psychopathology (ASCAP)Newsletter that represented a brainstorming operation.It ran monthly for twelve years with an internationalcirculation and now continues on a quarterlybasis as The ASCAP Bulletin. The ASCAPpublication also now additionally serves as the communicationalorgan for the Psychotherapy Sectionof the World Psychiatric Association. The ASCAP Societycommenced in 1991, its first president ethologistMichael CHANCE, and meets at least yearly. AS-Evolution and Cognition ❘ 28 ❘ 2001, Vol. 7, No. 1