Abstract

This volume brings together a collection of seven articles previously published by the author, with a new introduction reframing the articles in the context of past and present questions in anthropology, psychology and human evolution. It promotes the perspective of ‘integrated’ social science, in which social science questions are addressed in a deliberately eclectic manner, combining results and models from evolutionary biology, experimental psychology, economics, anthropology and history.

Highlights

  • The concept of mental disorder is one which exists across the world— people in each and every country have a certain way of classifying and modelling this notion

  • This leads us to pose several questions: do those in different groups and communities view the concept of mental disorder as consisting of similar aspects? Are there limitless ways to envisage the concept or are our categorizations based on some common underlying principles? If these principles exist, where did they emanate from, and do they have influence over the purportedly scientific models and classifications in psychiatry?

  • We are able to set forth a synthetic model which suggests that all normal adult minds across the world contain certain intuitive expectations about normative mental function and behavior, based on common underlying principles

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Summary

Introduction

The concept of mental disorder is one which exists across the world— people in each and every country have a certain way of classifying and modelling this notion This leads us to pose several questions: do those in different groups and communities view the concept of mental disorder as consisting of similar aspects? We are able to set forth a synthetic model which suggests that all normal adult minds across the world contain certain intuitive expectations about normative mental function and behavior, based on common underlying principles These expectations are constrained by intuitive psychology, which influences both the detection of disorder (through affecting people’s recognition of certain kinds of behavior as symptomatic of mental dysfunction) and the explanation of disorder. It seems that, despite the very different cultural conceptions of sanity and mental dysfunction, the underlying principles are simple and the same

Detecting Mental Disorder
The Background
Intuitive Catalogue of Detectable Mental
An Illustration
Scope and Limits of Intuitive Psychology Principles
Prediction of ‘Invisible’ Conditions
From Intuitions of Disorder to Folk-Models
What Makes Folk-Models ‘‘Folk’’?
A Basis for Dysfunction Intuition
Conclusion
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