A founder of the field of evolutionary medicine uses his decades of experience as a psychiatrist to provide a much-needed new framework for making sense of mental illness.
Randolph Nesse is an American physician, a founder of evolutionary medicine, and co-author with George C. Williams of the acclaimed Why We Get Sick. After a long career as a Professor of Psychiatry and Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan, Nesse moved in 2014 to become the Founding Director of the Center for Evolution and Medicine at Arizona State University, where he is also a professor in the School of Life Sciences.
Nesse's book offers fresh thinking in a field that has come to feel
stagnant
*The Financial Times*
A compelling case for locating mental illness within an
evolutionary frame-work . . . an excellent and timely account of
the history, development andimplications of evolutionary
psychiatry.
*The Evening Standard*
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*
This intriguing book turns some age-old questions about the human
condition upside down . . . In an engaging, storytelling voice that
rests on 30 years of clinical practice, he offers a series of
insights.
*The Observer*
Insights that radically reframe psychiatric conditions ... As Good
Reasons for Bad Feelings boldly posits, many of the core
dysfunctional components of mental illness ultimately help to make
us human.
*Nature*
Using [...] fascinating insights, Nesse suggests novel and
revolutionary ways to treat mental illness.
*The Daily Mail*
[Nesse's] basic conception of the mind feels like good, common
sense.
*The Sunday Times*
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*
Highly accessible, scholarly and deeply illuminating . . . 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*
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*
A personalized and lively but well documented treatise on how we
humans function and on needed changes in the way psychiatry thinks
about troublesome mental experiences and behavior. . . . Many
readers will find it hard to put the book down.
*Eric Klinger, Emeritus Professor of Psychology, University of
Minnesota*
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*
A book as wise and illuminating as it is relevant to our daily
lives.
*Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Professor Emerita of Anthropology, University
of California, Davis, author of The Woman that Never Evolved and
Mother Nature*
In this very accessible book, Nesse explains how an evolutionary
framework can be to psychiatry
what physiology is to the rest of medicine. Evolutionary science
bridges the gap between
neuroscience and the environment.
*Royal College of Psychiatrists newsletter*
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*
It is no exaggeration to say that Nesse 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*
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*
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*
A masterful, groundbreaking book that persuasively challenges
standard clinical wisdom and provides a roadmap for the
transformation of our conceptually confused psychiatric nosology .
. . Anyone interested in mental health-laypeople, students,
clinicians, and scholars-will be grateful for the novel insights to
be gained from this important book. The distillation of decades of
pathbreaking contributions to evolutionary psychiatry, this book
will be an influential watershed in the mental health field, and a
worthy successor to Nesse's earlier celebrated book on medical
disease. If joy is indeed a biologically programmed emotional
response motivating us to take advantage of unexpected bounty and
opportunity, then every reader will experience joy in reading Randy
Nesse's beautifully written, profound book.
*Jerome C. Wakefield, Professor of Psychiatry, New York University,
co-author of The Loss of Sadness*
Randolph Nesse's book Why We Get Sick put evolutionary medicine on
the map. His follow-up, Good Reasons for Bad Feelings, promises to
transform our understanding of mental illnesses in the same
way.
*New Scientist*
Randolph Nesse's new book ... is 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*
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*
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.
*Matthew Ruse, Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy, Florida State
University, author of On Purpose*
Why I 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*
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*
The book is aimed at a wide audience including the general public.
However, it is testament to Professor Nesse's command of the field
of evolution and medicine as well as his extra-ordinary ability to
explain enormously complex ideas in plain English with minimal use
of jargon that the book is just as relevant to psychiatrists,
psychologists of all levels as well as to academics interested in
evolutionary science.
*Riadh Abed, FRCPsych, Founding Chair of the Evolutionary
Psychiatry Special Interest Group, Royal College of Psychiatrists*
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