The doctrine of instincts and emotions in Charles darwin’s monograph «The descent of Man and Sexual Selection» as a basis of contemporary evolutional psychiatry and psychology

The article presents an analysis of the doctrine of instincts and emotions in Charles Darwin's fundamental work “The Descent of Man and Sexual Selection” from the point of view of its significance for contemporary evolutionary psychiatry and psychology. Darwin believed that man has common instincts with animals (sexual love, self-preservation, maternal, social, etc.) and emotions (fear, suspicion, feelings of competition, sympathy; pleasure, suffering, vindictiveness, good nature, moral sense, etc.), and to substantiate this, he made systematic comparisons of the behavior of humans and animals of different species, arguing that with all the diversity of instincts, their number in humans is less than in animals. Darwin paid particular attention to animals that “gained from living” in close-knit communities. At the same time, Darwin did not see a fundamental difference between the mental abilities of humans and lower animals, noting that some species of higher animals also possess self-awareness. Most of the instincts, according to Darwin, were acquired by both people and animals through natural selection, operating by the “trial method,” because of that errors are often found in instincts. Darwin also believed that animals could suffer from insanity, but to a lesser extent than humans. In «The Descent of Man», Darwin outlined the problem of the existence of altruism and a “high level of morality”, which is relevant for contemporary evolutionary psychiatry and psychology. Аt the individual level of natural selection these traits may not bring any benefit to their owner (and even lead to his death as a result of self-sacrifice), and, it would seem, lead to the disappearance of owners of such qualities in subsequent generations.