Evolutionary Psychoanalysis: a primer and case study
Temperament is the inherited component of three, layered social mentalities.
A social mentality is comprised of emotions and motivations pertaining to social intercourse evolved during one of three evolutionary eras:
1) HIERARCHICAL (Pre-hominin primate, prior to six million years ago).
*Form: Individual transactional win-lose dominance competition.
*Function: Fight-flight response stabilized into dominance and submission mentalities to permit protective benefits of group association.
2) ORGANIC (Hominin pre-modern humans, 6 million→300,000 years ago.)
*Form: Collective authority based on division of labor for group benefit (group selection).
*Function: Maximize benefits of teamwork.
3) MANIC (Modern human or Homo sapiens starting 300,000 years ago.)
*Form: Individual competitive self-display, and attraction to displays (sexual selection).
*Function: Population amalgamation for benefits of culture (natural selection of knowhow across generations) and trade.
Everyone is born with a different configuration of these three mentalities, and mental health is a balance between all three.
Case Study
DJT has a pathological predominance of the temperament evolved in modern humans that is named after the mental illness of mania (#3 above). DJT does not suffer from mania but possesses a very strong preponderance of the normal emotions and motivations that break down into mania. The normally balanced motivations from which manic illness is derived are appropriately directed at attracting favorable attention for behaving in an attractive manner (charm). However, the unmodulated manic temperament is utterly involved in an intense and sustained self-promoting pitch, into which the “audience” can be magnetically drawn by a compelling identity with manic impulses normally muted by our collective sensibilities (# 2 above). Like clinical mania, the manic temperament is enormously energetic driven by addictively euphoric sentience. If inflated goals are frustrated, the other side of this drive for adulation is its conversion into equally intense rage, the intent of which is more to humiliate than dominate. As slights accumulate, the manic temperament can become consumed by the singular desire to humiliate.
