390 Abstracts

DEDUCTIONS ABOUT THE EVOLUTION OF NEUROSES AND MENTAL ILLNESS

DANIEL R. WILSON, M.D. HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL 115 MILL STREET BELMONT, MA 02 178

Contemporary norms of development as well as certain mental illness are rooted in the past environmental ecology of evolution. The various schools of psychopathology, ranging from depth analytic to behavioral to biologic, must reconcile themselves to this evolution. For hominoids. including Homo sapiens, the cardinal adaptation is that of a foraging, consanguine band with gender and intergenerational tensions.

The hominoid nervous system thus evolved structures and functions of archetypic, small-group behavior overlying more primative levels of behavior (i.e., mammalian, vertebrate, etc.). As the hominoid line evolved more “K-behaviors” came greater risk of errors in generational rapport and social cohesion or “bonding”. This is the basis for neurotic development.

Biological patterns of behavior which balance needed cooperation and competition vary with societal role modulation: mother-child, father-child, parents- child, siblings, “terrible twos”, oedipal and latency phases, adolescent passage, adult vigor, generativity and decline are all identifiable both cross-culturally and across lines of genera in the primate order.

But beyond mere “neurotic” problems there may well also be evolutionary roots for several major mental illnesses. -Several genetically simple mental illnesses seem tOo common to have resulted from anything but positive se/ectlbo in the t?WirOIIment

of evolution. Manic-depression, sociopathy, obsessive-compulsivity and Pathologic anxiety, to name a few, are disorders for which deductive criteria establishes a selective advantage had to have existed.

Without succumbing to the “naturalistic fallacy” this helps destigmatize psychopathology, points to possible refinements in treatment and, curiously, aids the process of paleoanthropology.

Psychiatric disorders and alteration of immune regulation:

Clues to the evolution of human behavior?

J. Stephen Heisel, M.D.

Human social interactions - frequent, intense, enduring - are

characteristic of our species and are thought to be critical in our evolutionary trajectory. However, a variety of common psychiatric

disorders, such as depression, paranoia, and agoraphobia, share a

common feature: severely imneded social relations. This paper suggests that under certain conditions - reduced immunocompetence

or high micropredatory pressure - such behavioral patterns that now appear deviant and detrimental may have hidden adaptive functton. If so, disturbances in immune regulation that accompany psychiatric symptoms may in fact represent an Integrated strategy to

potential ecological challenges. The paper concludes with suggestions

for empirical investigation.

The Sociobiology of Criminal Behavior

One hundred criminally recidivist youths have been studied in order to identify ethologically relevant variables which may