Ethology is the cross-species study of behavior using an evolutionary perspective. It has developed 1) a methodology which emphasizes the observation of a species in its natural habitat (seriously neglected in psychiatry), 2) an organized body of detailed descriptions of behavior, including social behavior (sociobiology), and 3) a set of operationally defined concepts such as territoriality, dominance, attention structure, agonistic behavior, etc.
The evolutionary perspective places the focus on the adaptational significante of behavior patterns, integrating neurophysiologic, genetic, enviornmental, and learned aspects of each behavior.
The ways in which ethology can enrich psychiatry is discuseed in the present paper. The results of the first deliberate efforts in this direction — relative to psychiatrie theory research, and practice — are reviewed and assessed.