Authors: Andrew Solomon
410
The principle that low mood keeps people from overinvesting in excessively difficult strategies is expounded in Randolph Nesse, “Evolutionary Explanations of Emotions, “
Human Nature
1, no. 3 (1990). For his current ideas on depression and evolution, see his “Is Depression an Adaptation?”
Archives of General Psychiatry
57, no. 1 (2000).
410
The musician is described in Erica Goode, “Viewing Depression as a Tool for Survival,”
New York Times,
February 1, 2000.
410
The idea of depression as a means of soliciting altruism is described in the work of Paul J. Watson and Paul Andrews. I have taken their ideas from their unpublished manuscripts “An Evolutionary Theory of Unipolar Depression as an Adaptation for Overcoming Constraints of the Social Niche” and “Unipolar Depression and Human Social Life: An Evolutionary Analysis.”
411
Edward Hagen’s views are presented in his article “The Defection Hypothesis of Depression: A Case Study,”
ASCAP
11, no. 4 (1998).
414
On the link between depression and interpersonal sensitivity, see K. Sakado et al., “The Association between the High Interpersonal Sensitivity Type of Personality and a Lifetime History of Depression in a Sample of Employed Japanese Adults,”
Psychological Medicine
29, no. 5 (1999). On the relationship between depression and anxiety sensitivity, see Steven Taylor et al., “Anxiety Sensitivity and Depression: How Are They Related?”
Journal of Abnormal Psychology
105, no. 3 (1996).
414
Paul MacLean’s views on the triune brain are in his book
The Triune Brain in Evolution.
415
Timothy Crow’s views are expressed in a broad range of work, the relevant portion of which is cited in the bibliography. The most straightforward articulation of his linguistic principles and his theories of brain asymmetry is in his article “A Darwinian Approach to the Origins of Psychosis,”
British Journal of Psychiatry
167 (1995).
415
On language as a function of brain asymmetry, see Marian Annett,
Left, Right, Hand and Brain: The Right Shift Theory,
and Michael Corballis,
The Lopsided Ape: Evolution of the Generative Mind.
415
On deaf people and left-hemisphere strokes, see Oliver Sacks,
Seeing Voices.
416
On deep grammar, see Noam Chomsky’s
Reflections on Language.
416
On the specific effects of right-brain strokes, see Susan Egelko et al., “Relationship among CT Scans, Neurological Exam, and Neuropsychological Test Performance in Right-Brain-Damaged Stroke Patients,”
Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology
10, no. 5 (1988).
416
Timothy Crow’s proposition that schizophrenia and affective disorders are the price of a bihemispheric brain is in “Is schizophrenia the price that
Homo sapiens
pays for language?”
Schizophrenia Research
28 (1997).
417
For general information on prefrontal cortex asymmetries and depression, see Carrie Ellen Schaffer et al., “Frontal and Parietal Electroencephalogram Asymmetry in Depressed and Nondepressed Subjects,”
Biological Psychiatry
18, no. 7 (1983).
417
The work on blood flow abnormalities in the prefrontal cortex of patients with depression is in J. Soares and John Mann, “The functional neuroanatomy of mood disorders,”
Journal of Psychiatric Research
31 (1997), and M. George et al., “SPECT and PET imaging in mood disorders,”
Journal of Clinical Psychiatry
54 (1993).
418
On neurogenesis—the reproducing of adult brain cells—see, for example, P. S. Eriksson “Neurogenesis in the adult human hippocampus,”
Nature Medicine
4 (1998).
418
For a good general discussion of TMS, see Eric Hollander, “TMS,”
CNS Spectrums
2, no. 1 (1997).
418
On learned resilience, still an open field in which the hard data are just beginning to accumulate, see Richard Davidson’s “Affective style, psychopathology and resilience: Brain mechanisms and plasticity,” to be published in
American Psychologist
in 2001.
418
On left cortex activation and deactivation, see Richard Davidson et al., “Approach-Withdrawal and Cerebral Asymmetry: Emotional Expression and Brain Physiology I,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
58, no. 2 (1990). For work on brain asymmetry and the immune system, see Duck-Hee Kang et al., “Frontal Brain Asymmetry and Immune Function,”
Behavioral Neuroscience
105, no. 6 (1991). For Richard Davidson’s work with babies and maternal separation, see Richard Davidson and Nathan Fox, “Frontal Brain Asymmetry Predicts Infants’ Response to Maternal Separation,”
Journal of Abnormal Psychology
98, no. 2 (1989).
418
In support of the assertion that the majority of people are left-side activated, see A. J. Tomarken’s “Psychometric properties of resting anterior EEG asymmetry: Temporal stability and internal consistency,”
Psychophysiology
29 (1992).
418
The idea that right-frontal brain activation is often correlated with high levels of cortisol is explored in N. H. Kalen et al., “Asymmetric frontal brain activity, cortisol, and behavior associated with fearful temperament in Rhesus monkeys,”
Behavioral Neuroscience
112 (1998).
418
Timothy Crow’s papers on handedness discuss the connections among language, hand skill, and affect. See “Location of the Handedness Gene on the X and Y Chromosomes,”
American Journal of Medical Genetics
67 (1996), and “Evidence for
Linkage to Psychosis and Cerebral Asymmetry (Relative Hand Skill) on the X Chromosome,”
American Journal of Medical Genetics
81 (1998).
419
Hamlet’s line is in act 2, scene 2, line 561.
419
That evolution will cast light into the fog of modern psychiatry is one of the central arguments of Michael McGuire and Alfonso Troisi’s book,
Darwinian Psychiatry.
The lines quoted here are from page 12.
424
Angel’s move had been from Norristown, which was a residential long-term-care facility or mental hospital, to Pottstown Community Residential Rehab (CRR), then to South Keim Street, which is defined as an Intensive Housing Program, or Supported Housing Arrangement, intended for graduates of the CRR program.
430
The quotations from Thomas Nagel are in his book
The Possibility of Altruism,
pages 126 and 128–29.
430
The lines from
The Winter’s Tale
are from act 4, scene 4, lines 86–96.
433
On the matter of a depressive’s perceived control over his circumstances, see Shelley E. Taylor’s
Positive Illusions.
I also refer to a series of experiments related to me by the documentarian Roberto Guerra.
433
Freud’s reference is from his seminal 1917 essay “Mourning and Melancholia,” taken from
A General Selection from the Works of Sigmund Freud,
John Rickman, editor, page 128.
433
The quotation from Shelley E. Taylor is from
Positive Illusions,
pages 7 and 213.
435
Emmy Gut’s thoughts are in
Productive and Unproductive Depression
and are sketched out in chapter 3.
435
The quotation from Julia Kristeva is from
Black Sun,
page 42.
435
These numbers on SSRI prescriptions have been taken from Joseph Glenmullen’s
Prozac Backlash,
page 15.
435
The information on TWA flight 800 was given to me by a friend who had lost a relative on that flight in July 1996.
437
The quotation from
Daniel Deronda
is from page 251.
438
Emily Dickinson on despair is in poem 640 on page 318 of Thomas Johnson’s edition of
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson.
Its first line is “I cannot live with You.”
439
The quotation from
Areopagitica
is from
Paradise Lost,
page 384. The first quotation from
Paradise Lost
itself is from page 226 (Book IX, lines 1070–73); the second is from page 263 (Book XI, lines 137–40); and the third is from page 301 (Book XII, lines 641–49).
440
Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s famous remarks are in
The Idiot,
page 363.
440
For more on Heidegger and the relationship between anguish and thought, see his monumental masterpiece
Being and Time.
440
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling’s words come from his “On the Essence of Human Freedom,” in his
Saemmtliche Werke,
vol. 7, page 399. I thank Andrew Bowie for help in interpreting this passage. For more, see Andrew Bowie’s
Schelling and Modern European Philosophy.
440
The lines from Julia Kristeva on lucidity are from
Black Sun,
pages 4 and 22.
443
The words from Schopenhauer are from his essay “On the Sufferings of the World,” in
Essays and Aphorisms,
page 45.
443
The flip remark from Tennesee
Williams is from
Five O’Clock Angel: Letters of Tennesee Williams to Maria St. Just, 1948–1982,
page 154. I thank the persistently studious Emma Lukic for finding this quotation for me.
443
The Oxford English Dictionary
defines
joy
as “a vivid emotion of pleasure arising from a sense of well-being or satisfaction; the feeling or state of being highly pleased or delighted; exultation of spirit; gladness, delight,” volume 5, page 612.
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