Today I spoke at the Workshop “Personality and Its Disturbances in Philosophy, Psychology, and Artificial Intelligence,” organized by the University of Montgomery. The presentation is part of the activities of the Evolution and Personality Lab.
The objective of the talk was to analyze three different hypotheses on the role of the interpersonal domain in psychopathology: specifically, whether none, some, or all disorders should be considered interpersonal. In evaluating these three theoretical positions, I present a general thesis and an antithesis for each, aiming to bolster an interpersonal perspective in psychotherapy. This perspective draws on principles formulated almost a century ago by Harry Stack Sullivan. The null hypothesis (“none” disorders) offers a critical analysis of modern psychopathology beginning with Freud; the quasi-interpersonal hypothesis (“some” disorders) focuses on Wright, Hopwood, and Pincus’s proposal to redefine personality disorders as interpersonal disorders; and the fully-interpersonal hypothesis (“all” disorders) reviews possible integrations between psychopathology and personality from an interpersonal perspective.
Finally, I discuss an evolutionarily-informed synthesis of all the proposed theses and antitheses. Drawing from models in evolutionary psychology and behavioral ecology—specifically the Social Brain Hypothesis, Life History Theory, and Tinbergen’s four questions—I attempt to motivate a radical interpretation of Sullivan’s thought.
My tentative conclusion is that the history of our species, human personality, and thus mental health and psychopathology, have always and distinctly evolved socially. Implications for conceptualizing and treating psychopathology are discussed.
