Retrospect & Prospect: A Post-Progressive Developmental Psychopathology

Part 2: What a Post-Progressive Developmental Evolutionary Psychopathology Should Encompass

Sep 09, 2025

Note: Below is the second half of of an invited manuscript I have submitted for peer review as part of a special issue related to the inaugural Heterodox Social Science Conference at the University of Buckingham in June. I am publishing it as a ‘preprint’ here in two installments for two reasons: (1) I believe that the readership of the Mailer newsletter will find the essay of interest despite its more academic prose as it covers in more granular detail topics I have written about across the lifespan of this newsletter; and (2) I intentionally want to maximize the amount of eyeballs who are able to access my thoughts herein as I believe a full public recognition of how ideologically corrupted, and frankly anti-science, the Social Sciences have become is important to generate public support for peri-academics like myself to correct the ideological corruption in the fields we were trained in. This is especially the case in those social sciences that investigate the causes, correlates, and consequences of human behavioral and mental health, like developmental psychopathology. Part 1 is here.

Earlier, I posted my presentation at the conference. You can find that talk here. As described on the Centre for Heterodox Social Science website, the conference’s intellectual aims were twofold: a) to institutionalize the study of woke, arguably a dominant high-cultural ideology of our episteme; and b) to research omitted topics and perspectives, rebalancing social scientific knowledge. The conference brought together academics, journalist, and other intellectuals united by a shared view that the Social Sciences had become subverted by progressive leftist ideology that threatened the integrity of the Social Sciences in the Academy.

Paul Klee: “Glance of a Landscape.” 1926.

What a Post-Progressive Developmental Evolutionary Psychopathology Should Encompass

The growth and maturation of any scientific field will naturally evolve over the course of its history. Paradigm shifts, synthesis and cross-pollination with new fields and methodologies, and internal cultural dynamics will wax and wane at times. Nonetheless, what should remain consistent is adherence to the founding principles of the field, integrity in pursuing scientific questions, faithful and balanced interpretation of findings and dissemination of them to the lay public, and an ability to recognize when the field has lost its way and corrective action is needed. In developmental and evolutionary psychopathology (Del Giudice, 2018), such remedial action is now needed. The fields have become increasingly characterized not by the faithful pursuit of scientific truth, but rather by a radical progressive social justice activism that has polluted and corrupted them, resulting in them straying from their founding principles while also harming the mental health consumer and patient. Below I outline key elements that corrective action in the field should embrace as part of a ‘post-progressive’ developmental evolutionary psychopathology.

Most critically, there needs to be a concerted return to the classic biopsychosocial model, in theory, research, and practice. Biologically and genetically informed designs should be prioritized. Where this is practically impossible, biological or genetic proxies should be included as determinants in models which include social determinants. This should be principled, with clearly articulated theoretical and methodological reasons for the inclusion and exclusion of covariates in researcher-specific models which may prioritize hypotheses concerning the primacy of either social or biological determinants.

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Related to a dedicated return to classic biopsychosocial model, administrators in academic institutions, editors of scientific journals, and leaders in the field of developmental psychopathology, and adjacent fields that directly inform research in developmental psychopathology (e.g., behavioral and molecular genetics), should refrain from directly or indirectly restricting the sorts of questions researchers in the field of developmental and evolutionary psychopathology should be able to investigate. This is especially true regarding research the aim of which is to investigate the contributions of race and sex to mental and physical health conditions. The notion that self-identified race/ethnicity (SIRE) has no basis in genetic reality is false (see Fang et al., 2019; Kirkegaard, 2021; Nagar et al., 2020) and attempts to suggest otherwise should be met with strong rebuke. Publicly available datasets should include access to all data the law permits and not restrict access to select data, such as genetic data, because of moral or political reasons.

Renewed efforts to integrate with the broad field of sociobiology and more generally the conceptual basis of sociobiology, that social behaviors, like physical traits, are subject to natural selection and can be passed down through generations, are needed. This must be coupled with a proper contextualization and representation of figures such as E.O. Wilson and other researchers and theorists in sociobiology and adjacent fields. Uncritical moral denunciation of researchers and their work or prior statements without a critical evaluation of their actual scientific oeuvre in its entirety is unwarranted and damages the credibility of the scientific field and the scientific enterprise itself.

A post-progressive developmental psychopathology should also dispense with social justice-oriented activist research and scholarship organized around an ideology of ‘destigmatization’ that seeks to eliminate any stigma or negative valence associated with mental health conditions (Berwick, 2020). It ignores the origins of cultural stigma (Kurzban & Leary, 2001), and the importance of cultural stigma in facilitating individual mental health (Pryor & Bos, 2015; Satel, 2007; Shellenberger, 2022), cultural hygiene, and civic order (Will, 1987). Juxtaposed with the mental health crisis and civic disorder in many American cities, this Woke, social-justice oriented activist effort in developmental psychopathology and mental health ultimately erodes public trust of research in mental health and developmental psychopathology and undermines the potential of the field to contribute to human and societal flourishing.

More specifically, an ideology of destigmatization across developmental psychopathology often takes the form of changing specific diagnostic nomenclature to less categorical and illness-specific language; (e.g., a “person with problems in living” or “a person with substance abuse problems”), and the elimination of the term ‘abnormal’ altogether in undergraduate and graduate course titles. It also encompasses softer forms, including sanitizing any notion of ‘negative value’ (negative deviance) or ‘problematic or pathological denotation’ with reference to what various psychological, psychiatric, or other mental health constructs and categorical diagnoses imply about the afflicted individual. Watering down the language in this manner to genuflect to ideological priors makes the field incoherent and undermines its legitimacy.

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