[Evolutionary psychiatry]

The author's perspective is that of a naturalist and ethologist. In this paper, he looks for evidences of phylogenetic components inherited from evolutionary adaptive behaviours in the etiology of psychopathological syndromes: bipolar depressions, seasonal affective disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders, hysterical syndrome, impulsive behaviours, eating disorders, etc. Evolutionary psychiatry which sets present human pathological behaviour in the context of our species past evolution and of our ancestor's adaptations to their natural environment, leads the psychopathologist to revise certain of classic concepts in this field and resort to some of the concepts used by the ethologists, such as territory, hierarchy, allo-grooming and altruistic behaviour. It constitutes an invitation to reconsider the heredity of mental disorders in the light of phylogenetic consideration. As Freud and Lorenz have always recommended, one should not dissociate ontogeny from phylogeny in the study of human behaviour, whether normal or pathological.