Similar to psychoanalysis, I have examined the subjective experience of the most severe psychiatric illnesses, but I have interpreted them in the context of our species’ evolution instead of childhood development. The distortions of normal mental function in sufferers of mental illness magnify emotions and motivations so elemental that they can be pieced together into a narrative of the inner experience of human evolution.

The essay humanizes the scientized fields of psychiatry and human evolution with emotions and motivations that we all know intimately. My mission is to treat the abiding stigma of mental illnesses by identifying their disturbing symptoms as emotional fossils that illuminate our evolutionary journey.

Emotional Fossils and Evolutionary Psychoanalysis