From Rider to Mahout: Emotion Regulation according to J. Hannan

The article proposes a paradigm shift in the perception of psychological suffering: moving from treating it as a "glitch" to understanding it as dysregulated protection. Using the perspective of evolutionary psychiatry and signal detection theory, the author explains that anxiety or hypervigilance are often not evidence of a psychic failure, but the result of alarm systems operating in the wrong environment or following trauma. Central to this is the "smoke detector principle"—defense mechanisms prefer to generate a false alarm than to miss a real threat. Instead of trying to "fix" the mind using willpower (the Rider metaphor), the text suggests the Mahout model, which focuses on regulation, understanding, and adapting the organism's response to current living conditions.