In the complicated world of romantic relationships, we often find ourselves caught in an emotional dilemma: We know that the person we are with is not the right one for us, but it is still difficult for us to leave them. The psychotherapist Jennifer Florezin an interview on La Mesa Caliente, shed light on this common phenomenon and offered insights into why we cling to relationships that don’t suit us.
Jennifer highlighted that, especially Among women, there is a tendency to fall in love with the idea of the idealized partner that we have in our minds, instead of facing the reality of the situation.. Often, we focus on the positive qualities we attribute to our partner, ignoring signs that the relationship is not healthy or fulfilling for us.
Women, more than men, are guided by the pleasure principle and tend to fall in love more with what we have in our minds than with what we have in front of us. He has the qualities of being the one, but I’m still not able to say ‘this is not what I want.’
Jennifer Florez
What are psychopaths?
If we ask ourselves this question and try to draw his profile, examples from cinema, television or a book we have read will surely come to mind, but nothing like a real psychopath.
For this reason, EFEsalud has spoken with Andreu Martin, one of the best crime novel writers in Spain. With a degree in psychology, this narrator assures: “I don’t draw my characters according to books so that they don’t become mechanical; I like my protagonists to be multifaceted, even contradictory to science.”
A psychopath is a person who suffers from a mental illness, and specifically an antisocial personality disorder.”
Miguel Gutiérrez, president of the Spanish Society of Psychiatry
If we pay attention to this literary appreciation and the psychiatrist’s definition, then…wait a moment! If all the psychopaths I remember come to mind now Hannibal either The Joker– They kill without mercy… Perhaps what happens is that many of us are wrong in the concept of what a true psychopath is.
It is not necessary to kill to be considered a psychopath. Psychiatrist Miguel Gutiérrez states that “psychopath is not equivalent to murderer, there are many psychopathic people who have never murdered, but within the world of murderers the majority are psychopaths.”
Andreu Martín shares the psychiatrist’s idea and assures that “Psychopaths are very intelligent and do not usually kill because if they do they are asking for trouble. “As it is a mental illness, there are times when they become unbalanced and can harm other people, but they do not have to kill.”
Profile of psychopaths
Both Miguel Gutiérrez and the novelist Andreu Martín agree on identifying a series of characteristics that define a psychopath:
- A person with a callous disregard for the feelings of others. She deeply despises anyone who expresses humanitarian feelings.
- A lack of empathy with others: they are incapable of feeling or experiencing the emotions of others, what others feel or perceive. They are selfish and self-centered people.
- They have irresponsible attitudes and reject norms: they do not accept rules or social obligations, which leads them to have an inability to maintain lasting social relationships.
- They have a low capacity for frustration.
- They are very impulsive people and tend to have aggressive discharges, which does not mean that they are sustained behaviors.
- They have no feelings of guilt, whatever they do.
- They do not learn from their own experience, nor even learn from punishment, so they never assume their own responsibilities and attribute all the blame to others.
In the words of the Catalan writer, “the favorite expression of a psychopath is: screw him!”. He tells us that if, for example, someone has a party at home but there is only room for six people and they should invite two more, the psychopath wouldn’t worry in the least about who couldn’t come: screw them! he would say he.
These traits can be mild, moderate or severe. Quite common traits in many people, in some cases too close to us or…even oneself. A psychopathic society? Both Miguel Gutiérrez and the writer and screenwriter tell us about it.
Our society: psychopathic?
“I was born in a paranoid society in which competitiveness distressed us a lot and we have evolved into a society governed by psychopathic rules. That suffering to be the first has become being the first no matter who falls and by any method. This is psychopathy,” says Andreu Martín.
It also brings us, and so close, examples of bankers, politicians… “who do not have the slightest scruples with people’s money and property. They make decisions without blinking, simply because they think that’s how life is and there is no other choice.“.
A competitive, exhibitionist world that, according to psychiatrist Gutiérrez, “leads people to have psychopathic behavior in the sense that they do not care about anything else. People who steal millions of euros and even though they know that in their country there are so many unemployed, it doesn’t matter, they meet the criteria of psychopathy, antisocial and carefree.
Who has not seen around them, or even in themselves, selfish, egocentric, narcissistic and lacking responsibility behaviors? If you have these traits you already meet 50% of the characteristics that we have named of a psychopath. People with ties, suits, briefcases or jeans and polo shirts…who hide a personality that is at least difficult.
Seeing that this is a “problem” that affects more people than we thought until now, we asked ourselves another question, Can psychopathy be cured?
Psychiatrist Miguel Gutiérrez states that “it is a very problematic issue because these people are not aware of being sick or suffering from anything, therefore “The treatments they do are usually forced by circumstances, almost always legal.”
AND In this psychopathic society we are talking about, the new forms of communication that we are developing have a lot to do with it..
Even talking on the phone, even though you don’t see the other person, you can detect the nervousness in the tone of voice, the stuttering of the first time or the silence that comes because you don’t know what to say.
However, now the options are flying: WhatsApp on your mobile, Facebook everywhere or the immediate Twitter. There is no longer blushing, embarrassment, looks, not even silence because you always have the excuse of saying: sorry, I hadn’t read it.
These new technologies allow everyone to say what they want when they want and how they want, no matter the other person’s reaction.
Is a psychopath born or made?
The professor of psychiatry at the University of the Basque Country states that “There are many factors that can influence, from genetics to environmental factors (which has to do with educational and family aspects).”
And we return to our perception, quite wrong, for many, of what a psychopath is: “The worst massacre in a school in the United States leaves 26 dead.” Sitting on our sofa we are overwhelmed when we hear this headline in a news report, when we open a news page on the Internet or when we look at a traditional printed newspaper: A psychopath!… we think.
“These people who kill massively do not necessarily have to be psychopaths (suffer from a specific psychiatric disorder), they can have many other disorders or other variables influence them,” emphasizes the president of the Spanish Society of Psychiatry.
It must also be admitted that there are simply bad people who do not have a psychiatric illness. And what then is a bad person? “Evil is a human distortion, not a mental illness,” says Dr. Gutiérrez.
A psychopath is usually a bad person; He does not care about the feelings of others, they put their needs before anyone else’s, they are aggressive on many occasions… and that is understood as evil. But there are people who do not meet the characteristics of a psychopath and are simply bad.
(With information from EFE)
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