Migration Load, Ecological Opportunity, and Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder Etiology: Obsessive Character as an Adaptation to Seasonality

Abstract

The obsessive-compulsive personality pattern of orderliness, parsimony, and obstinacy was first described and explained by Sigmund Freud. Freud's description was sound, but his explanation was flawed. Further still, no extant etiology, psychoanalytic or otherwise, convincingly accounts for the existence, and intergenerational perpetuation, of obsessive character. Thus, herein is presented a new etiology; an evolutionary etiology that describes obsessive personality, not as a disorder, but as an extreme strategy whose imbalance is a product of post-dispersal evolution. Migration into northerly latitudes brought about a relative release from biotic selective pressures, such as conflict and conspecific competition, and a corresponding increase in abiotic selective pressures, such as cold and seasonal scarcity. Features such as (1) future-oriented thought, (2) parsimoniousness, and (3) compulsive conscientiousness become both viable and intelligible as a temperamental consequence of struggling more exclusively with the elements. After using comparative animal data to demonstrate their biogeographical distribution, the human distribution of these three traits is also shown to be concentrated within northerly latitudes.

The Biology of Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder Symptomatology: Identifying an Extremely K-Selected Life History Variant

“…As in this evolutionary etiology, Rushton emphasized the cold of higher latitudes as causal of evolutionary change. Furthermore, the evolutionary model in question (Hertler 2015c) is also consistent with more recent life history research, which situates stressors such as seasonal cold more explicitly within the context of mortality regime (Griskevicius et al 2011a, b). Mortality regime is now commonly understood to calibrate the life history of the organism (Promislow and Harvey 1990;Franco and Silvertown 1997;Chisholm 1999a, b;Vindenes et al 2012;McDonald et al 2012;van Schaik and Isler 2012).…”

“…A life history framework has etiological implications because, to claim that obsessive personality is an extreme life history variant, is to implicitly claim that obsessive personality has been evolved, and has an evolutionary history. Though traditionally explained psychoanalytically (Hertler 2014b), obsessive character was recently described as an evolved strategy (Hertler 2014a;2015c). Specifically, obsessive character was hypothesized to be a product of post dispersal evolution out of Africa and into the temperate latitudes of Eurasia.…”

“…Migration thus altered the selective regime, which then selected for obsessive psychology. With this two-part shift in the environmental selective regime, obsessive traits, such as extreme conscientiousness, reflexively future-oriented thought, and habitual parsimoniousness became at once practicable and adaptive; practicable because futurity was less uncertain, and adaptive because hardship was more certain (Hertler 2015c).…”

“…So as intrinsic mortality waxes and extrinsic mortality wanes, life history slows. These are precisely the conditions specified as causal in the evolution of obsessive psychology: Northwarddispersing humans assumed a predictable, environmentally imposed hardship while being partially relieved of random, biotically imposed mortality (Hertler 2015c). …”

“…Additionally, empirical studies featuring obsessive samples yield performance-based elevations in preparatory activity, information seeking, and monitoring (Gibbs Gallagher et al 2003), showing experimentally how the present moment is habitually subordinated to future exigencies (Hertler 2013). Time urgency, a corollary of future-oriented thought, is also felt as a matter of temperament; there is almost an instinctual sense that time is scarce and obligations are abundant (Hertler 2015c). Wenner et al (2013) suggest that cognitive aspects of life history are aptly captured by the term executive functioning.…”