Psychopathic personality in Marital disorders

Another type of mental abnormality which can be very destructive to the marriage relationship is what is called the psychopathic personality. This term covers a number of different kinds of disorder seen primarily in the field of behavior. While the neurotic feels a significant part of the trouble within himself, however much upset his trouble may bring about for other people, the psychopath usually shows little signs of disturbed inner feelings, and practically the whole disturbance is felt by other people.

In many ways the behavior and relationships of the psychopath are comparable with those of the grossly immature, and this is in harmony with certain physical characteristics of the psychopath. The tracings generally found in electroencephalograms of psychopathic persons are often similar to those found in children, and the conformation of the capillary loops in the nail bed of their fingers is also frequently like that found in children.

“These people” wrote David Stafford-Clark (”Psychiatry Today” Penguin Books, 1952) “are impulsive, feckless, unwilling to accept the results of experience and unable to profit by them, sometimes prodigal of effort but utterly lacking in persistence, plausible but insincere, demanding but indifferent to appeals, dependable only in their constant unreliability, faithful only to infidelity, rootless, unstable, rebellious, and unhappy. A survey of their lives will reveal an endless succession of jobs, few of which have been held for more than six months, many of which have been abandoned after a few days; very little love but often a great number of adventures, very little happiness despite a ruthless and determined pursuit of immediate gratification.”

It is easy to see how unfit such people are for the responsibilities and obligations of marriage and parenthood, and there is no doubt that they are responsible for a great deal of misery, bewilderment and despair in their marriages. It is extraordinary how much they are trusted in spite of many failures, and how often their plausibility and even charm (when it suits them) get them (temporarily) out of trouble. But their lack of apparent insight, their unwillingness to undergo any kind of psychotherapy, and the futility of most efforts to help them to better social responsibility, make the outlook generally far from promising. In most cases of any severity the marriage either breaks up or else the other partner makes the best of an intensely difficult situation with whatever safeguards can be established. In some cases it is found after a period of strain and conflict, and possibly great financial loss, that the person has made a bigamous marriage without giving any hint of the existence of a previous wife and family.

The most important consideration relating to the psychopathic personality as it affects marriage is the discovery of the disorder before marriage, which would generally be during pre-marital counseling. It is possible that very much unhappi-ness in marriage would be prevented if more people understood something of the indications of this abnormality and of the difficulty of changing the character of such people. This might involve considerable knowledge of the past activities of prospective marital partners, and this is much more difficult in these days when so many people choose their partners from outside their own neighborhood, and therefore may know much less about their backgrounds. The choice of a life partner is surely important enough to warrant a fairly full knowledge, rather than a series of unsupported “assurances,” or a very short acquaintance of a fairly superficial kind.

Tags: Counseling