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www.DarwinianPsychotherapy.com
 

What is Darwinian Psychotherapy?

 


imageDarwinian Psychotherapy is the home page of a therapeutical approach that incorporates evolutionary explanations of mental illness into Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. The outcome of this union is a form of psychological intervention called Cognitive Evolutionary Therapy (CET). This website presents the empirical proofs of CET's efficacy for depression, as well as the therapeutic protocol along with a detailed therapy manual.

This program has its origins in a Randomized Clinical Trial that examined the efficacy of an Evolutionary-Driven Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Depression. Click on the links above for more information.

 
 

What was the inspiration of this approach?

 


image In 1859, in his monumental work "On the Origin of Species", Charles Darwin wrote: "In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation." Little did Darwin know that, more than one century later, his prophetic words would constitute the foundation of a modern discipline within the broad field of psychology, named Evolutionary Psychology. As explained in more detail in the other sections of this site, Evolutionary Psychology examines psychological traits and processes – such as memory, perception, or language – from a modern evolutionary perspective. Evolutionary Psychopathology, a sub-discipline of Evolutionary Psychology, theorizes that some mental conditions afflicting us today are not brain disorders, but potentially adaptive responses to environmental challenges.

Cognitive Evolutionary Therapy incorporates such insights to help patiens suffering from depression and other mental conditions.