Good Reasons for Bad Feelings

Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry

By: Randolph M. Nesse MD

Narrated by: Arthur Morey

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.

With his classic book Why We Get Sick, Dr. Randolph Nesse helped to establish the field of evolutionary medicine. Now, he returns with an audiobook that transforms our understanding of mental disorders by exploring a fundamentally new question. Instead of asking why certain people suffer from mental illness, Nesse asks why natural selection has left us all with fragile minds.

Drawing on revealing stories from his own clinical practice and insights from evolutionary biology, Nesse shows how negative emotions are useful in certain situations, yet can become excessive. Anxiety protects us from harm in the face of danger, but false alarms are inevitable. Low mood prevents us from wasting effort in pursuit of unreachable goals, but it often escalates into pathological depression. Other mental disorders, such as addiction and anorexia, result from the mismatch between modern environments and our ancient human past. And there are good evolutionary reasons for sexual disorders and for why genes for schizophrenia persist. Taken together, these and many more insights help to explain the pervasiveness of human suffering and show us new paths for relieving it by understanding individuals as individuals.

Includes a Bonus PDF of charts and visuals.

Cover art © The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2018.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2019 Randolph M. Nesse (P)2019 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"A fascinating study of the evolutionary roots of mental illness.” --The Economist, "The Best Books of 2019

“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

“If you’re curious about why humans seem stuck with emotional suffering, Good Reasons for Bad Feelings provides thoughtful evolutionary commentary. Nesse looks at emotions, addictions, and mental afflictions every which way and, to his credit, does not pretend to have all the answers. The ones he offers and the questions he raises about their likelihood make for highly interesting and enlightening reading.” --New York Journal of Books

“If your idea of self-care skews less spiritual and more scientific, Nesse’s new book on why humans are so vulnerable to a variety of mental disorders is a must. In this new work, he covers both why some people get sick, as well as why natural selection left us all so vulnerable to developing mental illness. Topics covered include changes in our environment impact us, how anxiety and low mood sometimes help our genes and how social anxiety is nearly universal.” --Forbes

Ricapitolazione scorrevole ed approfondita.

Ricapitolazione scorrevole ed approfondita. Fornisce le basi per capire i disturbi mentali partendo da premesse teoretiche scientifiche.

great ideas

Wow. this is very confirming and validating. i'll listen again. for me it had considerable depth in fields that only a few yrs ago didn't exist.

A Very Good, if Imperfect, Book

Nesse does a nice job of surveying an impossibly complex mental landscape. And he succeeds in making the ideas interesting and accessible. Truly, the book is an accomplishment. His tone is encouraging, and he approaches professions and theories with an inclusive openness. Unfortunately, that openness breaks down to unboundedness at times. His oddly strident defense of debunked psychoanalytic theory (including a shrill protest of a "purge") did not fit well in a book that claims a position on "the frontier." Similarly out of place were the heroic-insight clinical vignettes; these sophomoric tales almost certainly were forced in per editorial insistence to add human interest. The weaknesses can be forgiven, given the size of the challenge and the genuine value of this effort. Nesse's book is a provocative resource for psychiatric residents, clinical psych interns, and anyone wanting to shake up the way they think about mental health and illness.

A must read for everyone

If you live anywhere on the Mediterranean coast, you'll feel it in your skin even deeper

Very good resource.

The author goes to great effort to try to provide a balanced view. Much of what he writes deserves to be heard and studied. The explanation, in evolution, leaves room for other causes, e.g., a designer or God, that reaches the same end.

Great approach

very thought provoking. highly recommend for anyone who thinks about humans. worth the time

Hands down a must read!! HIGHLY recommend

I listened to this book on audible and it is hands down one of the best books I have ever listened to (or read)! I purchased this audiobook thinking I would learn a thing or two about mental disorders but rather learned a million things about life / humankind in general.

It is refreshing to learn that there are logical (evolutionary) reasons for our feelings, emotions, etc. I never thought about this. Even though I have no background in psychiatry nor am I involved in the medical field this book was easy to understand and follow.

I'm glad I found this book and have been recommending it to all of my friends (and now the amazon universe) to improve their lives. I read another comment mentioning this as a must read and I couldn't agree more. The author truly thinks deeply about these issues and its astonishing that he can fit all of these thoughts into 1 book. I'm very thankful.

Thoughtful and methodical - dryness is the price

I said it all in the title but 15 words are required here. Last two.

Fantastic

Fantastic book, inspiring and engaging and curious!! The performance is wonderful and. a pleasure to listen !!

Highly insightful work by a researcher who has thorough knowledge of the field

Dr. Nesse Did a marvelous job of communicating some complex ideas in a manner that helps someone without a thorough grounding in mental illness or in evolutionary biology, to understand where mental illness might come from. There are numerous insights in the book that are useful to anyone with a brain, or anyone who interacts with anyone with a brain.