It is likely you are reading this because a sociopath said “I love you” and you believed him/her. You also probably thought that when the sociopath said “I love you” he/she used these words as you do, to express a sense of intimacy, passion and commitment. However, what a sociopath says and what a sociopath does are so different it can be crazy making.
In the aftermath of a relationship with a sociopath, former romantic partners are left to wonder, “Just what was going on in that person’s mind?” “What was he/she thinking?” Many people have written in asking, “Did he/she really love me?” and “Do you think he/she loves that other person now?” It is the second question many find most disturbing.
In 1943, Dr. Abraham Maslow in his classic paper, A theory of human motivation, declared that psychopaths lack the capacity and motivation for love. “The so-called ‘psychopathic personality’ is another example of permanent loss of the love needs. These are people who, according to the best data available (9), have been starved for love in the earliest months of their lives and have simply lost forever the desire and the ability to give and to receive affection (as animals lose sucking or pecking reflexes that are not exercised soon enough after birth). ”
Contemporaneously with Maslow, Dr. Hervey Cleckley described psychopaths in The Mask of Sanity and developed a set of criteria for their identification. According to Cleckley (criteria #9), psychopathy is associated with “pathological egocentricity and incapacity for love.” He declared “The psychopath seldom shows anything that, if the chief facts were known, would pass even in the eyes of lay observers as object love.”
Cleckley also maintained that an “absolute” incapacity for love is even found in those with an “incomplete manifestation” of psychopathy, who lack the full disorder. Writing in 1956, Drs.McCord and McCord disagreed with Cleckley and Maslow. They described psychopaths as having “a warped capacity for love” stating, “there are indications that the capacity, however under developed, still exists .”
My guess is that the McCords got fooled just like you and I and a recent paper shows us why.
Dr. Barbara Gawda at Maria Curie-Skldowska University Poland studied the “Love Scripts” of sociopaths. Love scripts are simply ideas about love that a person has. These ideas include how people fall in love, and what people in love are supposed to do.
Dr. Gawda showed a picture of a man and a woman hugging to 60 sociopaths in prison, 40 prisoners without disorder and 100 university students. She asked all participants to write a story about the picture and to imagine themselves as one of the characters.
The sociopaths stories were significantly longer, more detailed, and more self-centered than the other two groups. Contrary to expectations then sociopaths do not lack love schemas. They are perfectly adept and perhaps more adept than most in talking about love. The findings of this study jive completely with my own clinical experience. That is, over the years many people I knew to be sociopaths told me about their love experiences. Their stories were impressive and had me believing that they were capable of love.
If clinicians, scientists, lovers and family members rely on verbal reports, they will never come to understand the lack of capacity to love that characterizes sociopaths. Cleckley reached his conclusions about psychopathy and love only after observing their actions over a number of years. He also said this,
“In a sense, it is absurd to maintain that the psychopath’s incapacity for object love is absolute, that is, to say he is (in)capable of affection for another ”¦ He is plainly capable of casual fondness, of likes and dislikes, and of reactions that, one might say, cause others to matter to him. These affective reactions are, however, always strictly limited in degree. In durability they also vary greatly from what is normal in mankind. The term absolute is, I believe, appropriate if we apply it to any affective attitude strong and meaningful enough to be called love, that is, anything that prevails in sufficient degree and over sufficient periods to exert a major influence on behavior.”
References
A theory of human motivation. Maslow, A. H.; Psychological Review, Vol 50(4), Jul, 1943. pp. 370-396
McCord, W and McCord, J (1956) Psychopathy and Delenquency New York: Grune and Stratton, Inc. page 13
Love scripts of persons with antisocial personality.Gawda B.
Psychological Reports 2008, 103, 371-380.
This study compared the scripts of love among 60 prison inmates diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder and those of 40 inmates without an Antisocial Personality Disorder diagnosis but low antisocial tendencies, and a control group of 100 adult students in extramural or evening secondary schools without Antisocial Personality Disorder traits. The study focused on emotional knowledge about love of the group with Antisocial Personality Disorder, as they present lack of capacity for love. The study was done to examine how they perceive love and how much knowledge they have about love. All described their reactions to a photograph of a couple hugging each other. The content of these scripts, analyzed in terms of description of actors, their actions and emotions, and length of description, was compared among the groups. The scripts of love by antisocial inmates contained more actors’ feelings and strong emotions, as well as more descriptions of actors’ traits, their actions, and presumptions. The inmates with Antisocial Personality Disorder showed more focus on themselves when they described love than the other inmates and the controls.
I want to ammend that last post. I do not feel depressed and lonely. I do not feel what “HE” wants me to feel.
I feel sad, I feel heartbroken, I feel uncertain, I feel disillusioned, I feel hurt.
But I also feel hope, sincerity, empathy, compassion, love.
I know that I can and will get through this. The last time was a much worse situation, emotionally, physically, all around.
My troubles seem so petty as I read about some of the things you all are dealing with right now.
I am so grateful be seeing what is going on now before it gets worse. AND IT ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS GETS WORSE.
blueskies,
> Passer-by I don’t feel guilt(?) I can infer from observing my own actions that I’m able to experience guilt somehow, because some my actions
> look like they are designed to avoid situations when I would be guilty(?) But I don’t feel it(?) Probably I’m not an angel to be completely
> free from sin(??) Yet I don’t remember how it feels(?)”
>
> Are these quotes from the sociopath you were inolve with? I am confused”
No. It’s about me. I don’t feel guilt. But it doesn’t mean that I’m walking all over other people. There are practical and moral reasons not to do so. It’s dangerous. It’s unjust. I find it unpleasant to see people suffering. Of course, I want to do bad things to people who get me really angry, like anybody else, and I don’t find unpleasant to see them suffering when I’m angry at them. But I find it almost impossible to be that angry for long time, so devising and employing some long-term strategy to bring down someone else is not a real possibility for me. And without the confidence in your ability to win the prolonged fight most expressions of anger are far too dangerous. My therapist says that I’m habituated to partially repress my anger.
Probably, for me the dissociation from guilt was the strategy to preserve my inner freedom as a child, because my parents usually express their dissatisfaction with their children in the form of “you have such and such trait, so you are bad; you have to get rid of this trait”. When the child hears something like that it must evoke guilt, but it’s impossible to get rid of the part of yourself. So in all probability I had to learn to dissociate from guilt.
Vision ,
> I like tend to see SP’s in plain old black and white”..there are no gray areas here for me
I understand. It’s natural to see the people you are afraid of as completely bad. The problem for me here is, when I allow myself to see people as black and white, almost everyone gets categorized as black for one reason or another. But the truth is, they are not all bad in every respect. So my emotional reaction deludes me. I just have the problem with trusting real people as they are.
Of course, you may say that to see normal people as bad is one thing, and to see sociopaths as bad is quite another, so the latter is justified while the former is not. But I’m not saying that sociopaths are good, or that one should not get away from them ASAP. I’m trying to say that they are human, so their psychology can be studied and understood just as the psychology of anybody else. The question is, do YOU need to be the one who studies them or not. I have to, for number of reasons. But if you are free to engage or disengage, and if you are still struggling with emotional consequences of your past involvement, in my opinion it would be better not to engage with them in any real relationship. So your black and white perception serves you well.
But what is good for you may be bad for therapist. There is no point to look for some presumed lack of affection during the first years of life, as this article suggests, while the problem may be somewhere else. For example, I’m pretty sure that my sister didn’t suffer from lack of affection in the first years of her life.
> So the incapacity for an SP to feel the real love or want it or need it, is the issue here.
Incapacity to feel love does not imply the lack of desire for it. These are different things.
> Anyway, I don’t really care if they “need” love”..or not
I expressed my thoughts about the article. I did not mean that you have to care about what they need. It would be unfair. Why would you have to care about someone who does not care about you? I believe that they do have love needs, but it’s their problem, not yours, unless this is your job.
> Don’t forget that you can’t fix an SP in therapy
I don’t know if they can be fixed through psychotherapy or not. Perhaps some can, and some can’t. But when I’m playing therapist with my sister it’s not because I want to. I’m not a professional therapist after all. The problem is, I can’t have no contact with her without having no contact with my parents since she lives with them. I’m not sure if I love my parents because they hurt me too much, but they did a lot of good things for me too, and it would be absolutely unjust to leave them alone vis-a-vis all their problems now, including the problem with their sociopathic daughter who “loves” them both, especially our mother. So the only choice I have is to get attacked all the time, or to try to help her sometimes by talking through some her problems. The latter choice decreases tensions somewhat for a while.
> otherwise, if we could fix em up I would buy more into your theory of love
It’s very hard to fix anybody, especially when the person does not want to be fixed. It does not have much to do with the question if they want love or not.
skylar,
> Love, on the other hand, radiates. It begins and grows, then envelopes the person who loves.
> The person who inspired the love feels its warmth and begins to radiate love as well.
> The love, like a fire, continues to expand as long as there are people to give and receive it.
> Love redeems each person from shame and envy and it destroys fear.
When you look around you will see that most people are not experiencing this emotional state. Yet most people do love somebody. The emotions you describe are an episode in the course of the long-term monogamous sexual relationship. With time bliss subsides, but if the relationship is successful there will be other positive emotions, more calm.
> Even though the P no longer needs food/diaper changes, it can’t get past the need for attention.
Yes, I observed this. But in fact any attention will do, negative attention is better that no attention. So it’s not just about the survival mechanism of infant still functioning in adult. I think this hunger for attention comes mainly from other sources. For example, you mentioned the validation of existence and importance. Maybe it has to do with necessity to justify the sense of entitlement in his/her own eyes. Probably there are some other reasons as well. But that’s not all they want. They are not content with just having attention; they seek love and try to talk other people into loving them.
But I have the question.
It seems that my supposition that SP’s have love needs invoked suspicions that I’m trying to convince people here that it’s a good idea to love sociopath. But I didn’t say that. I simply stated that in my opinion they do have love needs. If I said that they have monetary needs nobody would think that I’m proposing to give them your money. If I said that they want to eat nobody would suspect that I suggest that you have to ensure they are not hungry. So why with love it is different? You gave them your love and suffered as a result. Why would anybody here want to try again if it turned out that they indeed do want and need love? Isn’t your own bad experience enough?
This question has personal meaning to me. Early on I was inclined to try to exchange rather than give and wait for result. I’ve got a lot of vicious criticism from my parents for that: that I’m selfish, that I’m mercantile and so on, and it all meant that I’m bad. Probably my current psychological problems are mainly due to that childhood experiences. But my parents did not invent the social rules that dictate that people should not care about their interests “too much”. They just relayed this message to me in the manner they saw fit. And now I’m reading your posts. You are the people who loved blindly, who gave without expecting anything in return, and got hurt because of that. So maybe I was right all along? Maybe you will agree with me now?
Everybody
Sorry to just barge in here with an unrelated question, but:
-Did you know there are websites like PEEPSHEET.com where you can enter the sociopaths name and warn other possible victims? I must say Im quite tempted to do this, if only cause I know he is putting so many women’s lives at risk since he claims to be faithful ( swears it) and never wants to use a condom.
-does anyone have experience with such such a site and know whether it’s legally ok ( Im not from the States) to do so? Im a bit afraid of my ex so I would like to check it here first. I would not mention my name but state something simple so that women will think twice.
Thank you very much all!!!!
Passer by
i didnt read all of your posts completely, but I think what were trying to divide here is people who can be emotional attached to others and SHOW behavior accordingly, and people who dont, the sociopaths. so when we talk about love, that is the background. that sociopaths have needs like attention and what not, were all too experienced with. wanting attention, sex and what not alone, is NOT love. I think weve all fallen into the pitfall of making excuses and rationalizing the ‘poor’ sociopath’s actions. I personally cant hear them anymore.
I’m soooooo confused. It sounds a bit like double speak. And a very strong need to convince. JMHO.
MariaLisa, let me reformulate my question. You wrote:
> wanting attention, sex and what not alone, is NOT love.
But what does it change practically? Whether they want love or not, they are going to hurt you. So what does it change?
From my point of view it’s purely theoretical problem. I like theoretical problems, and I’m unfortunate enough to have to deal with one of them without even being emotionally healthy myself.
But it looks like for you it’s not just a theoretical problem. It looks like it’s importatant for you on emotional level. Why?
I meant, I’m unfortunate enough to have to deal with one of sociopaths.
Im doing a repost cause Im afraid this one will get lost here:
Everybody
Sorry to just barge in here with an unrelated question, but:
-Did you know there are websites like PEEPSHEET.com where you can enter the sociopaths name and warn other possible victims? I must say Im quite tempted to do this, if only cause I know he is putting so many women’s lives at risk since he claims to be faithful ( swears it) and never wants to use a condom.
-does anyone have experience with such such a site and know whether it’s legally ok ( Im not from the States) to do so? Im a bit afraid of my ex so I would like to check it here first. I would not mention my name but state something simple so that women will think twice.
Thank you very much all!!!!
Personally I am CONVINCED that S/Ps DO NOT have ‘love needs”. I think you have to be HUMAN first. S/P’s have “NEEDS” and they may sometimes CALL them love. for example; peadophiles often tell people that they ‘love’ their victims, that they felt ‘loved’ by their victims, that they had a SPECIAL connection…they may even convince themselves that they are doing what they are doing because of a need for ‘love’, but the bottom line is it is NOT love they are ‘feeling’… it is always about their need and their supply.
LOVE does NOT come into it.
ML – :)x I have heard of peepsheet and have the same reservations as you, so i will be very interested in hearing responses to you post:)