An adaptive dimension

Albert Demaret's vision remains strikingly relevant today. Long considered the "bible" of American psychiatry, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manuel of Mental Disorders (DSM) is now at the centre of a great deal of controversy, as its ever-growing number of critics cite its contradictions and susceptibility to the influence of the pharmaceutical industry. "Of course, clinicians use and refer to this psychiatry manual, but if we believe that it can explain a mental illness or that it contains unique and absolute knowledge that reduces the patient to a set of symptoms, then we are mistaken,” declares Jérôme Englebert.

In 1966, Albert Demaret, who was 33 at the time, made his intentions clear: he sought to "spark a discussion on a general psychopathology common to both humans and animals to a certain extent." But let us be clear: Demaret had no intention of treating possible (and still hypothetical) psychiatric conditions in animals. Nor was he denying the role of heredity, biology, social background, the environment, or antecedents (the past) in human mental problems. Through an ethologic approach and evolutionary re-contextualisation, his objective was actually to propose an original framework for understanding these pathologies that took into account information from the fields of systemic psychology, philosophy, fundamental research, neurocognitive sciences, etc.

In his preface to the first edition of Ethology and Psychiatry, Paul Sivadon summarised the founding principle of Albert Demaret's work. "His hypothesis was that particular human behaviours that cannot be explained by current living conditions may actually originate in the persistence or resurgence of a behaviour from the distant past of hominids or even preceding species, which served an adaptive function at the time and thus had survival value."

In other words, behaviour that is considered completely inappropriate today may have an adaptive function that is rooted in our ancestral heredity. Based on an "evolutionary logic" and analogies that Albert Demaret made between human and animal behaviour, this conclusion offers an innovative and even revolutionary approach to understanding and treating psychiatric illness. "Indeed, this approach reconsiders the symptoms, which are often very serious, even catastrophic," says Jérôme Englebert. “The clinician is thus asked to look at the person they are treating in a new light."

Food altruism

According to Albert Demaret's hypothesis, medical symptoms were secondary to other factors originating in the dawn of time, during an era when today's dysfunctional behaviour had undeniable adaptive value. He developed two main models in his book: mental anorexia and manic-depressive disorder.