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.
blueskies
Oxy: ‘WORD!” (that, I am told is youth slang for ‘bingo! you’re so flippin completley right its astounding and they should make you president;)xxx
Skylar:Please sign me up as the stupidest person on this forum? I think you’ll have to fight every last one of us for that posthumous position!;)xxx
DasInChick :)xxxxxxx Thank you for posting. I relate to so much you have said. The ‘word webs’ alone were so confusing….had me out of my mind too. xxx I am so glad you are here.xx welcome.xx (Next on my list… after the first hundred things, is finding a way to be the sexual and sensual woman I AM without it being toxic for me:)xx That’s another ‘baby I am NOT throwing out with the bathwater’!
blueskies
‘I reached a level of disrespect for myself that I didn’t know was possible.’
I read that and took a great big gulp.:( I hope that all of us who recognise just how far down we travelled past our own sense of morality, can find a way back… to something much better.x
MariaLisa
Blueskies
Yes, but I still have to live with the insecurity that it might all happen again. I think back of the first say 6 months of the relationship and there was no clue. Do I have to wait to get serious with someone for longer than 6 months…The problem with them is that they first make you attached, which I know inevitably happens when I am close to someone over longer periods of time. So attached and invested is the situation where you find yourself to have to detach again at the first signs of disrespect. Maybe I look at this too sombre. I sometimes truly think I wont ever trust again. BUT as one of my best friends said the other day:” You can trust yourself, you will work on being good to you and you will always have someone, namely YOU’.
Ox Drover
Blueskies,
I don’t wanna be president, I want to be DICTATOR so I can buy Devil’s island and move all the Ps there and just turn them loose to kill each other off. when the P population gets low, we will ship another load of them there. Or maybe Antatrica and just load them ALL up and send them there for the end of them all. No one but the penquins would object.
Can you imagine how wonderful the world would be if all psychopaths were in Antartica? Little or no crime, and just a wonderful world. Maybe that is what Heaven will be like, NO Ps, in fact, that would make ANYPLACE heaven with no Ps. LOL
MariaLisa
A friend of mine with whom I was discussing sociopathy a while ago actually asked me that too: ” what would happen if you put only sociopaths together”. I couldnt really imagine the craziness the must ensue.
Like I said before I think earth would be as it was meant to be without the sociopaths. I truly believe there wouldnt be wars in the magnitude that there are. Im convinced.
blueskies
Not trusting someone ever again… I think this is a hurdle. I think, I had it wrong… the ways in which I gave my trust? It needs re-thinking …but I dont want to not be able to do it. That I am sure of. I think also that I DID know what was going on, but was in denial… it’s not about pre-empting anyone else, or a time frame, it’s about knowing yourself isnt it.I am sooooo tired. Going to bed. Lots of love to you Maria xxx I must put a stop to my wafflings!xx
blueskies
OXY: How could we Live in this world KNOWING we Did that to the poor innocent penguins!!!!!???? xxxxxxx
Goodnight Lovely.x
skylar
blueskies: you KILL me! LOL!
Maria Lisa: I was telling a 15 year old girl about the N – her mother asked me to because she will flirt with ANYONE.
This girl is beautiful and smart. she asked, “what happens when 2 of them MEET?”
I told her, “They are exactly like vampires, they will often collaborate to snare a victim, but one will usually be dominant and in the end, THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE.”
The narcissist creed: me, me, me, mine, mine, mine.
MariaLisa
blueskies
i thought i knew myself brilliantly…i lost being in touch with me WHILE he was making me more and more attached. its so weird and confusing….i know next time ill meet someone I will come on this blog and have you all test this guyt with me…is that crazy?!
have sweet dreams!!!! im going to bed too, its middle of the night!!
Skylar:
i think it would be an endless powerstruggle in a million ways and lord knows how they will end up. it would get brutal.
Oxy and everyone else too: from europe i wish you a great day and if in europe a peaceful night!
Vision
Been reading all the above post……
All so true……If you let someone disrespect you, you cannot respect yourself…..
I have had my share of getting it through my thicker skull that I have been with a SP…..made excuses, etc but as I read on and applied the consul , realizing that the last 9 months are unhappy ones, in limbo, and certainly not a loving relationship, I found it finally sinking in…
Yes, despite the proof, I had to make sure……And so much of others experience and wisdom helped to see how he really was…
The control was the biggest proof…..My details I have expressed before but much the same as us all….
I have spent the last two months still attached but it was like allowing it to really make me believe. If I didn’t really believe then I couldn’t make the conclusion….
After he stood me up, after a nice weekend the week before, standing me up and not calling….a simple courtesy call…..he was nasty the next day when I asked for respect…..He said he had just hung out and it was his business….wow…..So I told him that what I do from now on was my business…..
I spent the next few days studying very hard about what he had just done…plus other things that weekend…..and I realized all the good I had done for him really was not appreciated at all..
That he doesn’t love me…..that he is all the things we speak of on this site….His control over me……and the funny thing is that after all this time, it was like an epiphany ….
I had spent months wondering, hurt, crying, trying, showing love, thinking he had to be different….I wrote several posts as well here, that showed his cruelty, etc….We know the reasons why I kept myself blind…..I just couldn’t believe it….
But I kept reading here…….After feeling so utterly alone and so disappointed….not really heart broken since I had already went through the hurt of that earlier, but kept thinking he would change…..since his excuse was he had been so hurt before he didn’t want to fall in love….that this explained why he changed and started to hold back….
I know it was the last thing he did, not much different, but just that the full reality of what he did and really seeing it, made the difference to me……that there was no excuse for it…
and then, I was suddenly tired of the game, tired and worn out, and I realized that I was abusing myself. That maybe I felt I was not worthy of love and respect. That I couldn’t respect myself letting this person disrespect me.
So when he called, I told him that he disrespected me and when he does that, then I cant respect myself if I allow it…..he was dead silent…..not a sound…and no remorse, no I am sorry, but that it was his business….so the proof is all there….
And this is the first time I know that I can forget him…I think of him now as a nobody….a person not worth my energy or of me even thinking anymore about him…..He isn’t a big deal….In this world of honorable men, why oh why do we waste our time with them….
Of course we need to heal…..Happily, I have had only 9 months of this…..If I continue with the crab walk he does, forward then backward, then I am in his control. And when we don’t make decisions when we should, well, life makes them for us and most of the time they are most unpleasant….
Do I want to “hang” in there and still be involved with my heart and he tells me he has met someone else and it is over….Torturing me? I believe he has someone else anyhow but do I hide and not want to know? Do I? Yes….
I don’t like him anymore…I realize he doesn’t know what love is, he is lost himself, and that his love script is his wonderful love he showed his ex who hates him after all the loving and great things he did for her”……Even if a person is hurt from past love, they don’t treat you like crap because they “don’t want to fall in love because they were so hurt before”….
Now to continue in the healing and finding myself again….
It is a new world and I am no lonelier then I was before being with him…..while I was thinking of him and waiting, he was out laughing and having fun with no thoughts other then control about me…..
Now I take control back…..ahhhh, what a good feeling…..peace and my love for myself…..