Pathological Altruism - Various (2011).pdf

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advance praise for
pathological altruism
“What a wonderful book! This is one of the few books in evolutionary biology
I’ve read in the past ten years that taught me something completely new. It
demonstrates how medicine, biology, and evolutionary theory can be brought
together to illuminate an important part of the human condition.”
—
Edward O. Wilson
Pellegrino University Research Professor Emeritus and Honorary Curator
Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University
“Be careful what you wish for’ might be one way of summing up the take-home
message of this strikingly original book, highlighting the fact that ‘more is
not always better’ when it comes to either being the altruist or the recipient of
altruism.”
—
Jay Belsky
Professor of Psychology, Birkbeck
University of London
“A hugely valuable and important contribution to a strangely neglected area of
both individual psychopathology and our thinking as a society—a book that
deserves to be very widely read, and should inform and stimulate discussion not
just in psychiatry and psychology, but in our culture at large.”
—
Iain McGilchrist
Former Fellow, All Souls College, Oxford
Author of
The Master and His Emissary
“While other-regarding actions are rightly deemed the moral alternative to self-
ishness, and while a new biological science of generosity shows that such proso-
cial actions are in general associated with flourishing and health in the agent,
there is always the problem of a good thing going bad. Barbara Oakley and her
colleagues have addressed the dark side of altruism, for the altruistic personality
can be manipulated by nefarious ideologies and overwhelmed by excessive
expectations, can ignore the due care of the self and be unwise in its application.
Pathological Altruism
surveys the dark side of a human capacity that is
otherwise one of our saving graces. In this regard, altruism, hope, forgiveness,
creativity, purpose, and so many positive human assets can easily be distorted.
It is good to have such discussions available.”
—
Stephen G. Post
Director, Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care, and Bioethics
Department of Preventive Medicine, Stony Brook University
Editor,
Altruism and Health: Perspectives from Empirical Science
“Pathological altruism? Sounds like an oxymoron, but this fascinating book
quickly convinces you that altruism can go seriously mad and bad. The great
breadth and quality of contributors to this book from psychiatry, psychology,
and philosophy—and that’s just the ‘P’s’—shed light on the dark side of our
evolutionary propensity towards altruism, which can be subverted to a wide
range of pathologies such as survivor guilt, drug co-dependency, personality
disorders, and eating disorders. When within-group altruism is exploited to
between-group hostility, it can lead to suicide martyrdom and genocide.”
—
Robert Plomin
MRC Research Professor and Deputy Director
Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre
Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London
Past-President of the Behavior Genetics Association
Author of
Behavioral Genetics
(now in its 5th edition)
pathological altruism
A new perspective regarding altruistic actions and their consequences.
Image © Kevin Mendez-Aracena and Barbara Oakley

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