Outsiders to Love: The Psychopathic Character and Dilemma

Abstract

This article describes key characteristics of psychopaths. Their dangerousness stems not only from the unexpected deceit in a world that generally runs on trust, but also from the psychopath's ability to tap into and intermesh with peoples' dissociated need, greed, fears, and sadism. Psychopathic character is understood in terms of a dissociative structure of interlocking self-states in which a ruthless instrumentality is dominant and in which there is a severe dissociation of attachment need. The character problem and dilemma originates in the experience of being an outsider to love, outside the fabric of the social order and emotional world shared by others. The envy of the emotional bonding that others have drives them to seek to destroy it in others. It is argued that although it is human to have some characteristics of evil, sadism, and psychopathy, psychopaths themselves fit into a taxon, a category. The dangerous possibility of psychopathy as an incipient social ego ideal is discussed.

Keywords:

• psychopathy
• narcissism
• dissociation
• attachment
• instrumentality
• sadism

Acknowledgments

 I thank Harvey Schwartz, for the suggestion of the phrase “outsiders to love” (personal communication, 2004).

Small parts of this article have been adapted from Chapter 12 of The Dissociative Mind.

I am very appreciative and grateful to Sheldon Itzkowitz for his careful reading and helpful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this article.

Notes

1 Lawrence Kohlberg (1971) formulated a model of moral development based on the achievement of certain developmental milestones that he believed to be universal. Although Kohlberg included the ability to take the role of the other as a crucial aspect of development and provided an explanation of how people formulate moral principles based on an understanding of social good, his highest stages have been criticized as unclear. The achievement of higher morality also required higher intelligence, and did not explicitly derive from attachment. The theory, in many ways a breakthrough, was ultimately never widely accepted.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elizabeth F. Howell

Elizabeth F. Howell, Ph.D. is a psychoanalyst and traumatologist who specializes in the treatment of dissociative disorders. She is on the editorial board of the Journal of Trauma and Dissociation, an adjunct clinical associate professor in psychology for the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, and faculty and supervisor for the Trauma Treatment Center of the Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis. She has written extensively and lectured nationally and internationally on various aspects of trauma and dissociation, as well as on gender and trauma/dissociation. Her books include Understanding and Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder: A Relational Approach; The Dissociative Mind; The Dissociative Mind in Psychoanalysis, co-edited with Sheldon Itzkowitz, Ph.D.; and Women in Mental Health, (co-edited with Marjorie Bayes). The first three won the Media Award-Written by the International Society for the Study of Trauma & Dissociation (ISSTD), and The Dissociative Mind in Psychoanalysis won the Author Recognition Award from NIP, but has also been nominated for the 2017 Gradiva Award.) Dr. Howell is the recipient, from ISSTD, of the Cornelia Wilber Award for outstanding clinical contributions in the field of dissociative disorders and the Lifetime Achievement Award. She runs study and consultation groups, and is in private practice in New York City.