The Evolution of Psychotherapy: Applying Evolutionary Theory to Mental Health Care

This book shows how evolutionary theory can be applied in psychotherapy and mental health care. The theory of evolution and its applications in psychology and psychopathology have increasingly informed and shaped mental health sciences. While there are important publications devoted to an evolutionary perspective on psychopathology and psychiatry, surprisingly, there is a paucity of research and books on psychotherapy. This volume intends to fill this gap by showing how evolution-derived concepts can be applied in clinical psychotherapy.

Recent advances in mental health care have highlighted the need to reform approaches to conceptualise and treat mental disorders. The ongoing debate about conceptual issues in psychopathology and psychiatry, which is partly reflected in expert discussions preceding the publication of the latest editions of the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), has emphasised some of the shortcomings of contemporary approaches, without offering fully shared solutions. Clearly, there is a need for an integrative framework that does justice to research and practice, as well as diagnostic and clinical models of psychopathological conditions. The aim of this book is to show why and how applications of evolutionary theory to mental health can facilitate this integrative process. More specifically, the book aims to offer a unified framework to the understanding of the evolution of the human mind and give more weight to the meaning of psychological processes and behavioural dispositions, which eventually may become maladaptive to the point of generating what we define as psychopathology.

The book is divided into three sections. The first section presents the basic knowledge of evolutionary theory and its applications in psychopathology. The second section reviews different and specific applications of evolutionary theory in psychotherapy. The third section delves into specific topics related to psychotherapy from an evolutionary perspective.

Martin Brüne, MD, PhD, is professor of Social Neuropsychiatry and Evolutionary Medicine at the LWL University Hospital Bochum, Germany, Ruhr University Bochum. He has published some 300 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. He has authored the Textbook of Evolutionary Psychiatry and Psychosomatic Medicine: The Origins of Psychopathology (2nd ed. Oxford University Press, 2016). He served as the Editor (together with Prof. Wulf Schiefenhövel) of The Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Medicine (Oxford University Press, 2019), and of The Evolutionary Origins of Brain Diseases (together with Profs. Nico Diederich, Christopher Goetz, and Katrin Amunts), OUP, 2024. 

Simone Cheli, PhD, PsyD, is adjunct professor at St. John’s University, the founding president of Tages Charity (a member organization of Mental Health Europe), and director of the Evolution and Psychotherapy Lab. His editorial work includes serving as co-editor of the Journal of Clinical Psychology: In Session, Associate Editor of New Ideas in Psychology, and member of the Advisory Board for the Oxford University Press series Treatments That Work. Author of over 100 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters focused on evolutionarily informed psychotherapy for personality disorders, he co-edited A Dimensional Approach to Schizotypy: Conceptualization and Treatment (Springer, 2023; with P.H. Lysaker).