I read this article in the Globe and Mail the other day and it’s been bothering me a lot. Why? I suppose it’s because while the public’s idea of psychopathology is of a cold, bloodthirsty lunatic who dismembers people with chainsaws, it’s actually an attachment disorder, taken to the extreme.
And what is an attachment disorder? It’s what it says – the failure to create meaningful and nurturing attachment to others. To connect with others of your own species. Unfortunately, disorders of attachment result in the worst of mood and personality problems.
Babies that don’t attach in any way, die. To me that’s amazing and reveals how crucial attention and nurturing is to human survival. People destined to become psychopaths do not suffer from no attachment, but rather a very negative one. Instead of love they attach to poison, because the body says survival at any cost and poison is still adequate to keep one alive. Sort of. It’s difficult to call the result fully human, though.
I find it astounding that they claim they still don’t really understand it. They know that the propensity is somehow heritable, and they know that childhood abuse is required to trigger it, but beyond that they scratch their heads. How can this be? Do they not talk to people or do they just devise creative experiments that cannot be clouded by a subject’s subjective opinion?
I think I know a little about it because at one time I too had an attachment disorder, and all that entails. It’s taken me many, many years of hard work to overcome it, but I will always be incomplete and will always have scars.
The thing is I believe I understand how a psychopath’s mind works, as it’s just further along the road that I once walked. I believe I could have ended up there.
In terms of my own experience, I was parented largely without love, particularly in my earlier years. Physical care, yes. Nurturance, very little. Now I don’t blame my parents for this, as they could not help their limitations; they were young, messed up, and burdened with poverty and three small children.
The problem is at some level I knew I wasn’t important, that I was a burden. The sighs, the impatience, and the lack of warmth told me so. The fought with each other and emotionally abandoned their kids. And there was noting to cling to. It was an abyss.
And being a typical egocentric kid I was enraged at this treatment. I was instinctively terrified for my survival. And I thought it was because I wasn’t loveable.
That’s too much for any two or three year old to cope with so I stuffed it down. I tuned out. I couldn’t possibly deal with such rage and pain so instead I numbed out. I lost touch with my feelings. I looked at the world as strange and dangerous, filled with beings that could mostly only hurt, only occasionally offering solace. People became objects that were both required for and a risk to my survival. And I did not trust them. In secret I lashed out at them, and manipulated them whenever I could.
I did not want it to be this way, but it was what I was offered and it was all I knew. In the few cases when some adult did offer me love I pounced on it, and that’s how predators gained access.
Of course along with this there was a lot of acting out; better negative energy than indifference, as I said above. What this lead to was a lack of feeling masking a tremendous hostility to others. I was enraged at the injustice and cruelty, but had no way to outwardly express it. I believe to create a psychopath all you have to do is increase the individual’s suffering, (coupled with a personality predisposed to both intense sensitivity and narcissism).
In cases of extreme abuse and neglect, feelings would increasingly be shut down in order not to overwhelm the mind, and the person would become divorced even further from what they would see as “dangerous people”. Humanity would become an alien “other” rather than kindred beings.
All this makes so much sense to me; if your suffering threatens your sanity, you shut down all feeling parts; if all you know of people is as a source of terrible pain, you detach from humanity. Or rather you never learned to attach. We have an instinct from birth to form attachments, but there has to be someone there to reciprocate. If not, the connection to your own species will not be made. And so it is for all primates.
That is how a psychopath is made. When we take scans of the brains of psychopaths we find crucial parts diminished, and his makes sense. Form reflects function and it’s not hard to see that the structures responsible for feelings atrophy in individuals who have totally emotionally shut down to survive. You see the result of years of being dead inside.
I suspect that’s why it is so hard to heal these people. Their very brains are damaged akin to the way a child’s is in the womb of an addict mother, and you can’t talk it back in therapy. By the time a psychopath is found out, the belief that people are an alien other will be totally established. And without feelings of loss or loneliness, why should they change that belief? Often it’s only our feelings that push us towards change that is difficult. And given their horrible experience with humanity, it’s not totally illogical to want to be separate from your own species.
Woe to the innocent child doomed to such a terrible fate. I think death would be preferable. In my own case I was saved by my grandmother. I saw her every summer and in those few weeks she showed me love. And so I knew love existed. I knew what I needed. And I knew I was loveable. Her gentleness and compassion made all the difference for me.
In my twenties, I know now that I was one of those rare men who suffer from BPD, Borderline Personality Disorder. Generally it is women who carry this diagnosis, and I see it as less severe than psychopathology. I’ve known a lot of women who suffer from this and each one shows much the same symptoms: volatile temper, fear, mistrust, rage, neediness, emptiness, difficulty in their working lives, inability to maintain relationships.
They are all single. And they go through many boyfriends and lovers. Rarely will a BPD sufferer find a partner.
But they share with me that original experience – neglect, a lack of love, abuse, and parents unable to nurture. People were proven to be dangerous to them. They became enraged at their treatment. They grew into adults desperately needing love but equally fearful of it. And hating themselves even more than those around them. Recovery is a long haul for people who come unloved into the world and there are no miracles awaiting them. But you can learn to love yourself and others. You can learn to trust and you can learn to risk being vulnerable.
I still have a long way to go. I’m still confused by reciprocity. People still scare me. I’m not sure what belonging means. And I know I’ll always be somewhat of a loner yearning to be accepted.
Those who have landed along the attachment disorder continuum will always love with a cane or a wheelchair, but it’s far far better than being closeted away with the emptiness. Just don’t ask a psychopath what he thinks. He’s already lost.
