《进化心理病理学：一个统一的视角》一书将进化心理学与精神病学结合，以“生命史策略”理论为基础，并结合进化和遗传学知识，对精神疾病进行了全新解读。书中将生物的繁殖策略分为“快”策略和“慢”策略，并将其与不同环境和生存压力联系起来，解释了不同策略下的生物特征和行为模式。

📚 **生命史策略：快与慢** 该书的核心概念是“生命史策略”，它描述了生物体在不同环境下所采用的不同的繁殖策略。**快策略**适用于不稳定、危险的环境，生物体快速生长、早熟、繁殖速度快，但对后代投入较少。**慢策略**适用于稳定、资源丰富的环境，生物体生长缓慢、晚熟、繁殖速度慢，但对后代投入较多。 例如，鱼类产卵量大，但对后代投入很少，而大象则产卵量少，但对后代投入很大。这两种策略都能够确保物种的延续，但它们在繁殖策略和后代养育方面存在显著差异。

🧠 **精神疾病的进化解释** 该书将生命史策略理论应用于精神疾病的解释，认为精神疾病可能与个体在特定环境中的适应性反应有关。例如，焦虑症可能与个体在不安全环境中进化出的警觉性机制有关，抑郁症可能与个体在资源匮乏环境中进化出的能量节省机制有关。 通过将精神疾病与生命史策略联系起来，该书为理解精神疾病的病因和治疗提供了新的视角。

🧬 **进化与遗传学** 该书还探讨了进化和遗传学在精神疾病中的作用。它认为，精神疾病的易感性可能是由基因决定的，而环境因素则可能触发这些基因的表达。例如，一些基因可能与焦虑症的易感性有关，而压力事件则可能触发这些基因的表达，导致个体出现焦虑症状。 通过整合进化和遗传学知识，该书为理解精神疾病的生物学基础提供了更深入的认识。

I.

Evolutionary psychology is famous for having lots of stories that make sense but are hard to test. Psychiatry is famous for having mountains of experimental data but no idea what’s going on. Maybe if you added them together, they might make one healthy scientific field? Enter Evolutionary Psychopathology: A Unified Approach by psychology professor Marco del Giudice. It starts by presenting the theory of “life history strategies”. Then it uses the theory – along with a toolbox of evolutionary and genetic ideas – to shed new light on psychiatric conditions.

Some organisms have lots of low-effort offspring. Others have a few high-effort offspring. This was the basis of the old r/k selection theory. Although the details of that theory have come under challenge, the basic insight remains. A fish will lay 10,000 eggs, then go off and do something else. 9,990 will get eaten by sharks, but that still leaves enough for there to be plenty of fish in the sea. But an elephant will spend two years pregnant, three years nursing, and ten years doing at least some level of parenting, all to produce a single big, well-socialized, and high-prospect-of-life-success calf. These are two different ways of doing reproduction. In keeping with the usual evolutionary practice, del Giudice calls the fish strategy “fast” and the elephant strategy “slow”.

To oversimplify: fast strategies (think “live fast, die young”) are well-adapted for unpredictable dangerous environments. Each organism has a pretty good chance of randomly dying in some unavoidable way before adulthood; the species survives by sheer numbers. Fast organisms should grow up as quickly as possible in order to maximize the chance of reaching reproductive age before they unpredictably die. They should mate with anybody around, to maximize the chance of mating before they unpredictably die. They should ignore their offspring, since they expect most offspring to unpredictably die, and since they have too many to take care of anyway. They should be willing to take risks, since the downside (death without reproducing) is already their default expectation, and the upside (becoming one of the few individuals to give birth to the 10,000 offspring of the next generation) is high.

Slow strategies are well-adapted for safer environments, or predictable complex environments whose intricacies can be mastered with enough time and effort. Slow strategy animals may take a long time to grow up, since they need to achieve mastery before leaving their parents. They might be very picky maters, since they have all the time in the world to choose, will only have a few children each, and need to make sure each of those children has the best genes possible. They should work hard to raise their offspring, since each individual child represents a substantial part of the prospects of their genetic line. They should avoid risks, since the downside (death without reproducing) would be catastrophically worse than default, and the upside (giving birth to a few offspring of the next generation) is what they should expect anyway.