Randolph M. Nesse, MD, is a founder of the field of evolutionary medicine and co-author with George C. Williams of Why We Get Sick. He served for many years as Professor of Psychiatry, Professor of Psychology and Research Professor at the University of Michigan. He currently is the Founding Director of the Center for Evolution & Medicine at Arizona State University where he is also a Foundation Professor in the School of Life Sciences. He is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, a distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, and an elected Fellow of the AAAS.
“A fascinating study of the evolutionary roots of mental
illness.”
--The Economist, "The Best Books of 2019"
“All psychiatrists and patients who find themselves having
occasional ‘bad feelings’ about our current understanding of mental
illness will have many ‘good reasons’ to consult this book. I do
fully expect that someday nearly all psychiatry will be identified
as evolutionary psychiatry. If so, Randolph Nesse’s book should be
seen as the field’s founding document.”
--The Wall Street Journal
“If your idea of self-care skews less spiritual and more
scientific, Nesse’s new book on why humans are so vulnerable to a
variety of mental disorders is a must. In this new work, he covers
both why some people get sick, as well as why natural selection
left us all so vulnerable to developing mental illness. Topics
covered include changes in our environment impact us, how anxiety
and low mood sometimes help our genes and how social anxiety is
nearly universal.”
--Forbes
“Important and fascinating…The future of clinical psychiatry is
likely to be embedded in the integration of this [Nesse’s] type of
evolutionary theoretical framework.”
--Nature
“An ingenious exploration of how Darwinian evolution explains
mental disorders.”
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Nesse (Why We Get Sick), director of the Center for Evolutionary
Medicine at Arizona State University, thought-provokingly comments
on modern medicine’s continuing difficulties in treating mental
illness… Nesse fully meets his modest but laudable goal of
providing a conversation-starter on why mental illness should be
viewed from an evolutionary perspective.”
--Publishers Weekly
“Nesse’s book offers fresh thinking in a field that has come to
feel stagnant, even if new therapeutic avenues are not immediately
obvious... Recasting our psychiatric and psychological shortcomings
as the unintended sprawling by-products of evolution seems a useful
way of understanding why our minds malfunction in the multiple,
messy ways that they do.”
--The Financial Times
“An excellent and timely account of the history, development and
implications of evolutionary psychiatry.”
--Evening Standard
“If you’re curious about why humans seem stuck with emotional
suffering, Good Reasons for Bad Feelings provides
thoughtful evolutionary commentary. Nesse looks at emotions,
addictions, and mental afflictions every which way and, to his
credit, does not pretend to have all the answers. The ones he
offers and the questions he raises about their likelihood make for
highly interesting and enlightening reading.”
--New York Journal of Books
"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
“Randolph Nesse is one of the key architects of evolutionary
medicine. He's been an inspiration to a generation of scientists
who explore evolution to understand why we get sick from diseases
ranging from cancer to obesity to infectious diseases. Now Nesse
has turned his attention from the body to the mind, in a
provocative book full of intriguing explanations about human nature
in all its strengths and weaknesses.”
--Carl Zimmer, author of She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers,
Perversions, and Potential of Heredity
“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 books 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] testament to Professor Nesse's command of the field of
evolution and medicine as well as his extraordinary ability to
explain enormously complex ideas in plain English."
--Riadh Abed in the The Royal College of Psychiatry Evolutionary
Psychiatry Special Interest Group Newsletter
“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
"Randolph Nesse, who trained psychiatrists for many years, has
for a quarter century been a key leader of evolutionary
medicine. Good Reasons for Bad Feelings integrates these two
strands of his life and thought in
a readable, insightful book, as much a philosophy of
emotions as it is a new window on mental illness. All who want to
know themselves should read it."
--Melvin Konner, Dobbs Professor of Anthropology, Emory University,
author of The Tangled Wing
“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
“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 Compassionate Mind, and
Living like Crazy
"'Why am I feeling bad?' This is the first burning question of
everyone who suffers. This accessible new book will be an essential
tool to help patients, their loved ones, and treating professionals
arrive at more satisfying answers."
--Jonathan Rottenberg, Professor of Psychology, University of South
Florida, author of The Depths
"A bold book that would have made Darwin proud. Cutting-edge
and compassionate at the same time."
--Lee Dugatkin, Professor of Biology, University of Louisville,
co-author of How to Tame a Fox and Build a Dog
“A masterful, groundbreaking book that persuasively challenges
standard clinical wisdom and provides a roadmap 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
health—laypeople, students, clinicians, and scholars—will be
grateful for the novel insights to be gained from this important
book.”
--Jerome C. Wakefield, Professor of Psychiatry, New York
University, co-author 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, co-author of Strength Through
Peace
"Very engagingly written for the general reader, Nesse's book is
hugely important for the future of mental health care, and Nesse is
the pre-eminent 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, Emeritus Professor of Psychology, University of
Minnesota
"Two sets of ideas inform this fine book: one, the cold-hearted
logic of natural selection; the other, the practical wisdom of a
compassionate psychiatrist. The tension is palpable. The result is
riveting."
--Nicholas Humphrey, Emeritus Professor 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 over-stated. And it is written in
a straight-forward 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 pathbreaking book by a man who
is truly humane and caring. A privilege to share time with
him."
--Michael Ruse, Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy, Florida State
University, author of On Purpose
"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 medicine -- and 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 contribute to victimizing the
few. This complex problem surely will yield to further
research."
--Christopher Boehm, Professor of Biological Sciences, USC Dornsife
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