Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry
Audible Logo Your audiobook is waiting!
Enjoy a free trial on us
$0.00
  • Click above for unlimited listening to select audiobooks, Audible Originals, and podcasts.
  • One credit a month to pick any title from our entire premium selection — yours to keep (you'll use your first credit now).
  • You will get an email reminder before your trial ends.
  • $14.95 a month after 30 days. Cancel online anytime.
Learn more about membership
Sold and delivered by Audible, an Amazon company
List Price: $20.25
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible’s Conditions Of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice.
Sold and delivered by Audible, an Amazon company
Amazon book clubs early access
Loading your book clubs
There was a problem loading your book clubs. Please try again.
Not in a club? Learn more
Amazon book clubs early access

Join or create book clubs

Choose books together

Track your books
Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free.
Explore Amazon Book Clubs

Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Randolph M. Nesse (Author), Arthur Morey (Narrator), Penguin Audio (Publisher)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 347 ratings
See all formats and editions

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.

Previous page
  1. Listening Length
    11 hours and 11 minutes
  2. Author
    Randolph M. Nesse
  3. Narrator
    Arthur Morey
  4. Audible release date
    February 12, 2019
  5. Language
    English
  6. Publisher
    Penguin Audio
  7. ASIN
    B07N7PR34Q
  8. Version
    Unabridged
  9. Program Type
    Audiobook
  10. See all details
Next page

Read & Listen

Switch between reading the Kindle book & listening to the Audible audiobook with Whispersync for Voice.
Get the Audible audiobook for the reduced price of $9.49 after you buy the Kindle book.

Product details

Listening Length 11 hours and 11 minutes
Author Randolph M. Nesse
Narrator Arthur Morey
Whispersync for Voice Ready
Audible.com Release Date February 12, 2019
Publisher Penguin Audio
Program Type Audiobook
Version Unabridged
Language English
ASIN B07N7PR34Q
Best Sellers Rank #45,245 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals)
#172 in Psychiatry (Books)
#244 in Medical Clinical Psychology
#495 in Mental Health (Audible Books & Originals)

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
347 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

J. A. Thomson Jr. MD
5.0 out of 5 stars An essential book for all mental health professionals
Reviewed in the United States on May 28, 2019
Verified Purchase
All psychiatrists should read this book. All psychiatrists-in-training should read this book. Any and all mental health professionals will profit from Dr. Nesse’s volume.

Surgeons have long possessed an accurate anatomy of the human body. Psychiatrists lacked a basic anatomy of human nature to understand the emotional illnesses that arise from it. Now we have a substantial anatomy of human nature thanks to the application of Darwin’s great idea to the mind. Even though Darwin foresaw that psychology would be based on a new foundation, a century and a half elapsed before his idea was systematically applied to psychology and social relations. The advent of evolutionary psychology stands as one of the great intellectual revolutions of all time. The mind is what the brain does and evolved under the rules of Darwinian natural selection. Randy Nesse was one of the first psychiatrists and certainly is the most important one to see the centrality of evolution for psychiatry and medicine.

There are many strengths to the book. Dr. Nesse structures the narrative arc with his personal professional journey. Any mental health professional will identify with this. How does one understand the nature and causes of the suffering that daily confront us as clinicians? How do we treat patients and effectively reduce or relieve suffering? What theoretical framework best explains the facts before us? What treatment modalities give us a running chance at success? To fix a broken leg you need to know its anatomy. Now we have that anatomy. The mind is shaped by natural selection. Our emotions are designed for our genes’ interests, not our individual self-interest.

All of the problems that we see as mental health professionals are addressed. No matter what area a clinician reader might focus on, Randy Nesse teaches valuable lessons.

One of the most important lessons we learn from him, which our profession still has failed to master, is that we confuse adaptive defenses with disease. We continue to conceptualize and medicate the phenomena of anxiety and depression as illnesses that float free of the individual’s unique life experiences and the evolved structure of the mind.

Any mental health provider will be familiar with the failure to find genes specific to the illnesses we treat. A Huntington’s disease model of one malfunctioning gene will never bail us out. We now know that the risk alleles for the major mental illnesses are numerous and probably there for other good evolutionary reasons. So how do we comprehend the devastating diseases like schizophrenia and bipolar illness? Dr. Nesse’s application of “cliff edge fitness landscapes” to severe mental illness illustrates his perseverance and brilliance. He utilizes the tools of evolutionary biology to comprehend the devastating diseases we treat. I’ll explain ‘cliff edge’ no further. Read the book to learn this idea. You will be rewarded.
7 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Anthony
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book
Reviewed in the United States on November 12, 2023
Verified Purchase
This is a very insightful book that I really think that anyone who is interested in mental health or the mental health field should read it
Helpful
 Report
Asta
4.0 out of 5 stars A bit disappointed
Reviewed in the United States on February 1, 2021
Verified Purchase
The idea is great, but I think much of the text is off topic, many important scientific facts related to evolution and emotions are not mentioned, and some interpretations are far-fetched. There are much better books on this.
6 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Keith Garrick
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant! Seminal! And very practical! Life changing!
Reviewed in the United States on February 15, 2019
Verified Purchase
For years and years, I have studied the area of human “operations” and written full time about what works in life. AND... I loved this book, perhaps even better than some of the other seminal books in psychology, like those by Kahneman and Seligman.

The technical and explanatory level is excellent and convincing AND the stories are very interesting and well-written, even entertaining in many ways.

It is relatively easy to read even though it does go deep, with 77 pages of notes. And I would estimate that, for anyone who read it and thought about it, it would start a cascade of observations and adjustments in how one thought of reality, one’s beliefs, and one’s behaviors. Reading the book will likely cause certain unperceived realities to become blatantly and blaringly obvious, in flashing neon lights. Life will never be the same after it, if you apply it, of course.

I would place it in the “necessary for reading” list for those who want a better life. And, different than many books that one reads to “grow”, this has massive substance in relatively little space. (See also Shermer’s The Believing Brain, which is a great complement to this book, helping to shatter false beliefs that lead us into less than great lives...)

Its worth a read, with lots of highlighting, and then a review and then a plan to implant it. I will be making a summary table of the key realities and how we can adjust to make our lives work better by refining where evolution has left us (with a number of things that do not work in this modern environment). From this we can fashion our own adaptation, but much quicker than the slow, limited process of evolution.

After all, the key trait of man that caused his survival is “adaptation”, so doing our own intention caused adaptation seems an appropriate thing to do in this world if we truly want to be happy....
29 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English
Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Great science book to explain why we still have mental illnesses
Reviewed in Canada on January 17, 2023
Verified Purchase
I liked that this book by Randolph M. Nesse explains why evolution doesn't or can't remove many mental disorders. It explains that some are like a "smoke detector" that goes off too easily. I found this book personally helpful to understanding my OCD. I highly recommend this book to any who has or looks after a loved one with a mental disorder of any kind. It won't name a cure per say but it helped with empathizing with yourself on why one has OCD for example. It is very thought provoking.
Report
El
5.0 out of 5 stars Un des livres les plus intéressants que j’ai lu
Reviewed in France on December 14, 2023
Verified Purchase
J’ai acheté ce livre après l’avoir lu à la bibliothèque (c’est dire à quel point je l’ai aimé). L’analyse est très fine et j’ai énormément appris. Si vous êtes intéressé par la psychiatrie/psychologie et les liens qu’on peut trouver avec l’évolution, si vous voulez comprendre l’utilité des émotions, vous y trouverez votre bonheur. Il existe une version française de ce livre si vous souhaitez. Je suis étudiante en médecine et je le recommande vraiment aux autres étudiants ou à tous ceux qui sont intéressés par ces sujets. L’auteur inclut beaucoup d’histoires personnelles de ses patients, ce qui rend la lecture très facile et accrochante.
Report
Clinica Fisio S Bras
5.0 out of 5 stars Em muito bom estado.
Reviewed in Spain on December 13, 2023
Verified Purchase
Em muito bom estado.
Report
Jill
2.0 out of 5 stars Not was I expected
Reviewed in Italy on July 1, 2023
Verified Purchase
This book really was a disappointment; I wished to read a book that 'explained' me in a neutral way, some kind of insights on how to deal with negative emotions/feelings, as the title premise but it just did not. It goes on with a quite dull writing that failed to grab my attention and in a male only point of view, theories and reflections on mental health that are yet to be ascertain. Ugh
Report
Juan Carlos Mares
5.0 out of 5 stars Excelente libro
Reviewed in Mexico on November 29, 2019
Verified Purchase
Excelente libro!
One person found this helpful
 Report