vanity is all

THE DESIRES THAT BREAK LOOSE IN MANIA DEFINE OUR OWN HOMO SAPIENS SPECIES

Filed under: Emotional Fossils, Evolution of human motivation, Human Nature, Mental illness | 4 Comments

All manner of rhetorical flourishes and beautifully constructed phrases can pour out in a torrent. Often there is a magnetic quality to this verbal virtuosity, the meaning (semantics) of which can constitute a brilliantly creative flight of ideas. Beyond the grammar and meaning, the sheer musicality of it can elicit rapt fascination.

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THE AUDIENCE WITHIN US ALL

Filed under: Human Nature, Mental illness

Forty-five years ago, while in my psychiatric residency, I moonlighted at DC General Hospital’s emergency room. I never knew ever knew who would come in the doors down there at the General. The “White House cases” were a staple, a motley collection of characters pulled off the fence surrounding the presidential residence. One evening is …

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What we caught from Neandertals

SAD is an STD (and we caught it from the Neandertals!)

Filed under: Mental illness

major mental illnesses are an epiphenomenon—or “side effect”—of the major adaptation that bestowed upon us the miraculous capacities of reflective self-consciousness and the deep complexity of syntactical language that has enabled our rich symbolic culture. Therefore we should look at the mentally ill as paying the price for our extraordinary capacities.

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A Philosophical Journey – Discovering the Mystery of Creation in the Mind – a memoir; #10: The Genius of Vanity

Filed under: Evolution of Emotion, Evolutionary psychology, Language, Summary of Philosophy

Freud’s observation that humans are hypersexual has become such a cultural staple to have settled in as the sitcom-with-canned-laughter cash-cow. Although I had long been steeped in Darwin’s theories of sexual selection and sexual display, I hadn’t put the two together until I read Geoffrey Miller’s book, The Mating Mind (2000), the thesis of which …

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Emotional Fossils – V – Summing It Up and Questions Raised

Filed under: Belief, Emotional Fossils, Evolution of Emotion, Evolutionary psychology, Self domestication | 3 Comments

  Mental illnesses lift out into bas-relief segments of our normal emotional function that have been evolved in the successive eras of our six million year hominid legacy, as if placing them under a microscope and magnifying their fundamental elements.  The anxiety disorders reveal that the source of their emanation is our social ecology.  Separation …

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Emotional Fossils IV – Mania and the Genius of Vanity

Filed under: Emotional Fossils, Evolution of Emotion, Evolutionary psychology, Language, Sexual Selection | 6 Comments

Mania is not usually thought of by itself because it is almost always followed by depression, hence the names Manic Depression or the current Bipolar Disorder.  However, while the shutdown response is simultaneous with the underlying emotional hyperactivity in major depression, it is manifested serially in Bipolar Disorder.  So, the manic part of this condition …

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