About Rationally Speaking


Rationally Speaking is a blog maintained by Prof. Massimo Pigliucci, a philosopher at the City University of New York. The blog reflects the Enlightenment figure Marquis de Condorcet's idea of what a public intellectual (yes, we know, that's such a bad word) ought to be: someone who devotes himself to "the tracking down of prejudices in the hiding places where priests, the schools, the government, and all long-established institutions had gathered and protected them." You're welcome. Please notice that the contents of this blog can be reprinted under the standard Creative Commons license.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Why love is like a personality disorder

I want to talk about love. But in order to do that, I have to first talk about strep throat.

If you have certain symptoms, like a sore throat and fever, you can guess that you might have strep. And you'll either be right or wrong; either the streptococcus bacteria are present in your body or they're not, and luckily you can go to a doctor to get a strep culture and find out the answer.

Now let's look at another health problem. (I promise I'll get to love eventually.) You can be diagnosed with "Narcissistic Personality Disorder" (NPD) if you meet at least five of a list of criteria specified by the American Psychiatric Association, including "requires excessive admiration," "lacks empathy," "shows arrogant, haughty behaviors," and so on. In other words, NPD is the name that we give to a loose cluster of related traits. With strep, your symptoms suggest the presence of the underlying condition; with NPD, your symptoms are the condition.

The reason all this is relevant to love is that I think most people consider love to be analogous to strep throat. People observe their symptoms -- attraction, obsession, dependence, contentment, admiration, and so on -- and wonder whether they are "really" in love, the same way you might observe symptoms like a sore throat and fever and wonder whether you really have a streptococcus infection. Unfortunately there's no conclusive test for whether you're in love the way there is for strep, but many people are still convinced that there is a right answer even if they can't be sure of what it is -- sort of like an invisible Love switch that's either flipped to ON or OFF.

I think this is all fundamentally misguided. Instead, I'd argue that love is actually more analogous to NPD: it's a word we use to refer to some collection of properties. "Love" isn't the underlying condition of which those properties are symptoms, as with strep; "love" is the name we give to those properties, as with NPD.

(You might be tempted to ask how I can claim love isn't a distinct underlying condition, but I think the burden of proof is on those who claim it is. We all agree on the existence of the feelings of attraction, obsession, dependence, and so on, but to posit the existence of an additional underlying property causing those feelings is to add a hypothesis with no explanatory power.)

How did the American Psychiatric Association pick the particular criteria required for an NPD diagnosis? Partly, the reason is that those traits tend to appear in combination with each other (if you "lack empathy," you're more likely than the average person to also "show arrogant, haughty behaviors"). But picking that particular list of traits and picking "five" as the magic number needed for a diagnosis was really somewhat arbitrary; we just needed some cutoff to standardize our use of the word.

Of course, there is no official checklist specifying which feelings need to be present in order for something to qualify as "love." People use the word in vastly different ways, even within the context of romantic love. Some people might use it to refer to a feeling that other people would instead describe as a crush or an infatuation. Some people would use the word love to describe a feeling that other people would call possessiveness (i.e., "That's not love because he doesn't care whether she's happy, he just wants to control her"). And some people might use the word love where others would say "No, that's not love -- that's codependence." Given the wildly contradictory "checklists" we are all carrying around in our heads, it's no wonder that most disagreements over "Is this love?" boil down to people using different definitions of the word.

If this line of reasoning is starting to sound familiar, it should. My previous post discussed how different people use totally different criteria for deciding what counts as art, and that when people disagree about whether a particular object "is art," they're really just arguing about the definition of the word. For any given case, you can usually find definitions of art that would include your case, as well as definitions that would exclude it. And the same is true with the question "Is this love?"

But if you're wondering whether you're in love, and someone shrugs and says, "Depends how you define love," that probably won't feel like an answer. I suspect that's because "Is this love?" is really a disguised query just like "Is this art?": people associate various characteristics with the idea of being in love -- i.e., love lasts forever, or love is the ultimate emotion, or anything is worth sacrificing in the name of love -- so what they're really wondering is whether their situation shares those characteristics. So, "Is this love?" could be a way of asking "Is what I'm feeling going to last?" or "Would it be possible for me to be happier in another relationship?" And of course, those are important questions. But you're not getting any closer to answering them by deciding whether to affix the label "love" to what you're experiencing.

(Does all this make it sound like I "don't believe" in love? I sure hope not, because judging from the movies, the girl who "doesn't believe in love" is inevitably forced to admit the error of her ways after enduring a brutally cheesy montage involving snowball fights, paddleboating and/or impromptu karaoke. So, please: don't tell Hollywood I said this.)

41 comments:

  1. Ouch, I just got a flashback of debating the gray areas of Love in the process of breaking up with my ex-girlfriend. Needless to say, our definitions were not aligned!

    I'd enjoyed this post and your previous one on semantic / definition disagreements and disguised queries.

    I wonder if we used a set of NPD-like criteria, what other mammals would fall into the category of being in love, if any?

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  2. >Does all this make it sound like I "don't believe" in love? I sure hope not, because judging from the movies, the girl who "doesn't believe in love" is inevitably forced to admit the error of her ways after enduring a brutally cheesy montage involving snowball fights, paddleboating and/or impromptu karaoke. So, please: don't tell Hollywood I said this.

    As long as you have the true spirit of Christmas.

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  3. Wonderful, Julia; truly wonderful.

    I run into a similar predicament, again, with the semantic fairy taking the teeth from underneath the pillow of my argument.

    When I talk about non-traditional romance like non monogamy, I'm often affronted with "well it sounds to ME like you've never been in LOVE"

    to which I reply "define 'in love' and I'll tell you if I've been IN it or not.

    to which THEY reply, "it doesn't WORK that way. Once you're in love, you just know."

    this reminds me of another argument... to the tune of:

    "Sounds to me like you don't believe in god."

    "Well define this god, present evidence for his existence, and I'll see if I 'believe in it' or not"

    "It doesn't WORK that way, once you feel god in your heart, you just know."


    In both scenarios, the words they are using are rendered essentially useless. Self-defining words are interchangeable. It wouldn't matter if we were talking about "god" "love" or "chocolate lemurs named george" if a definition cannot be provided.

    From what I gather "love" denotes an unconditional acceptance of another person, a profound respect and adoration, a desire to minimize suffering in their life when you can, and a feeling of reciprocal joy in sharing your time with them.

    If "IN love" means something different, nobody has provided me a suitable definition. Based on the behavior of those claiming to be "in love", it seems to me like the word means "an excuse to act out irrationally"...strikingly similar to the definition to "feeling god in your heart"

    By those two definitions, I have loved very many, and I was "in love" when I was 14.

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  4. Love Never Fails - Brandon Heath
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nQy-aP_Koo

    Love always hopes
    Love always protects...

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  5. So your relationship to your own definition of love is through the artifice of movies.

    Umm, ok.

    How about applying that intellect to a rational definition of love?

    Your use of NPD is (no offense) somewhat weak.

    "Love," generally at least, has a social or biological purpose, despite the morass of qualifiers an individual may impose on it.

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  6. Julia,

    Good inquiry, but let me be a bit provocative. Your understanding of love approximates a Biblical understanding. Although love might be associated with certain feelings, it’s defined more in terms of commitment and a resulting set of actions. In other words, “Love is a verb!”

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  7. Surely you are familiar with the true nature of love, as laid forth by Woody Allen?

    "l want you in a way of cherishing
    your totality and your otherness
    and in the sense of a presence and
    a being and a whole coming and going
    in a room with grapefruit
    and a love of a thing, of nature and a sense of not wanting or being
    jealous of the thing a person possesses."

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  8. This is a depressing way to view love. Because if it is truly a disorder, and not a sickness, there's no hope of a vaccine.

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  9. Heh, Adam, I bet you'll appreciate this post from Robin Hanson at Overcoming Bias, in which he argues that the grey areas of love are there for a very good reason -- we don't want to know exactly how our partner feels about us.

    Blake, thanks! And yes, the assertion "Once you're in love, you'll just know" is soooo annoying, on multiple levels.

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  10. @Blake Reynolds

    Regarding your demand for definitions of respectively Love and God. Love is God and God is Love. Duh! Glad we solved that one. ;)

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  11. wimvdb,

    hard to find a more circular and intrinsically silly definition of anything. duh.

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  12. That was hilarious -- well done.
    I did a definition of religion using a syndrome approach too. That syndrome approach is useful for fuzzy concepts.

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  13. Massimo, I believe wimvdb's tongue was planted firmly in his cheek.

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  14. Considering the number of real loonies out here, I strongly suggest people do not plant their tongue anywhere other than where they actually mean to put it... Unless Caliana has been a long elaborate joke on us all!

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  15. Massimo, if you believe that its not loony thinking that love is like a disease, then what kind of activities CAN ONE invest time and energy in that would make sense without having ligit LOVE as a basis for why we do such things?

    Apparently pretty much everything has to be corrupt or tainted from the pov that you and others are coming from and I JUST don't believe that. If that makes me a JOKE, oh well. Jokes not on you then, it'd have to be on me.

    Do you remember the tests that involved baby squirrel monkeys and steel frames that were shaped to look like a mother monkey? If the babies (believed) that they had nothing else to cling to they would accept the cold steel frame to be their comfort and their "mother".

    Evolutionists, I think, cling to a cold steel frame. But all along there REALLY IS the possibility of real love from a real relationship with the Creator. After all, its not like there are a mere 4 people in the whole world that have experienced and then chose to believe this. Its no small, insignificant thing really.

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  16. And all the (secu/evo academics) is done for what reason? Julia, Massimo..anyone?
    If there's no love in it or to be gotten from it, what is the goal?
    I think you could do better than soulless, cold steel mama monkeys.

    I understand that you feel that you're essentially saving people from believing in untrue ideas and that sort of sounds like one is caring, but what is it really for? It sounds to me like such efforts erase and destroy (thro cynicism) the trail back to real love.

    Everyone, I think wants to be loved for something other than their superficial self. That said,loving other people totally and completely is not a disease its a choice.

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  17. Suppose its not entirely fair to try to articulate things to those who do not want or will never try to attain such ideas, however, we'll never know till we think it through and try.

    I was fortunate to be raised in a home where our parents really and truly loved us. On the other hand, I've seen situations where circumstances and irritations could really come between parents and their kids. That was never going to happen with my parents. (not to my credit but to theirs) They had a very unconditional love for their kids and grand kids. No offense or mistake was ever going to separate us from each other. They just didn't seem to know how to think that way.

    I understand that most people probably haven't lived that way. They might not know how to handle it if someone took them just they way they were and no matter what they did would never abandon or reject them. But I can attest to the fact that this kind of love really does exist and it is LOVE WORTH FINDING.

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  18. Except you choose not to love Catholics?

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  19. Artie,

    I was born Catholic. Do I have to continue to stay joined to the religion to love the people? I don't think so.

    Accepting every last idea and doctrine from any given church does not make one a more loving person. There are a certain number of churches who espouse unbiblical doctrines and it will not make their adherents better people. We can rightly reject those doctrines!

    My identity is found with Christ not a particular church.

    LOVE?

    My Facebook posting for today. Even if you don't think you'll like this music-I think you might like this music. :)

    "Beauty of the Lord" Listen! :)
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2bEuHo1dbs&feature=related


    Jesus Your love
    Is one step closer
    I will trust
    You will never let me go

    Jesus Your love
    Has won me over
    All my trust
    Has found no other

    I will declare the beauty of the Lord
    Nothing compares to the beauty of the Lord
    Jesus Your love takes my breath away
    Now I'm living everyday for the beauty of the Lord
    The beauty of the Lord ...

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  20. Caliana,

    I keep publishing your comments, but please refrain from posting prayers, this is the last one I will allow. And no, it's not about censorship, it's about irrelevancy.

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  21. Might be relevant in the sense that it sounds like the prayer we used to get from the Chaplain before going into battle and killing the enemy with loving kindness.

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  22. Seriously . . .

    The comments section of this blog seems to constantly and consistently contradict the title of this blog.


    I recently had an argument about the meaning of love. A person claimed their "love" for a child. I protested that as they were the principal guardian of that child, and had let that child play video games for 50-60 hours a week for years on end, thoroughly neglecting the education and proper socialization of the child, I had not a clue what they meant by "love."

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  23. I was fortunate to be raised in a home where our parents really and truly loved us. On the other hand, I've seen situations where circumstances and irritations could really come between parents and their kids. That was never going to happen with my parents. (not to my credit but to theirs) They had a very unconditional love for their kids and grand kids.

    Caliana, you've made a number of anti-Catholic remarks during the brief time I've been reading this blog. I assume that, as an evangelical, you don't believe Catholics are "saved". In that case, if your parents are no longer alive - where are they?

    Pursuant to the rest of what you said - you recognize that people grow up in unloving environments. God, supposedly, chooses a parental metaphor (primarily) through which to relate to us. What happens to people who grow up in abusive homes, and can't internalize the metaphor of a loving parent - and, subsequently, never enter into a "relationship" with God? They're condemned to hell because God chose lousy parents for them?

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  24. Really Cal, you should actually pay attention to the interesting topic and conversation that Julia initiated. You just see the words "love" and "disorder" and you just start pontificating without attempting to really understand the topic. Pity.

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  25. Julia, very nice article. Unfortunately, some people in these comments seem to have taken your argument the wrong way and gone in an entirely different direction.

    I do not believe Julia is arguing for or against the value of love. It is a real force which powerfully shapes the decisions people make, for better or for worse. Yes it can be healing, soulful, and wonderful, but it can also be abused, misguided, and painful. That's not the point of the article.

    The point is that love is a process, produced in the interactions people experience. It is not something one possesses (wherein, the metaphor of a disease becomes handy, but perhaps not entirely appropriate since it unintentionally connotes sickness).

    The notion of love as something one possesses might be traced to Romantic thought, in which individualism as we know it today was born. People have certain personality traits, underlying and unalterable characteristics with the power to determine one's actions and feelings. Of course, these notions are implicit in all of today's pop culture narratives.

    When Julia rails against the idea of love as being a trait one does or does not possess, she is really railing against the edifice upon which popular media is built. Love, in the movies, is portrayed as a possessed property within which the characters are inevitably caught.

    Now, I agree with Julia on all of this, and I think it is important to point out the difference between love as a possessed property of specified dimensions, and love as process interpreted through experience. That is the whole mission of this blog. The authors' collective purpose is to find notions implicit in the popular discourse which are misguided or wrong. In this Julia has cleverly succeeded. Love is not a property of inalienable characteristics, waiting to be "diagnosed." That distinction, however, has no bearing on whether or not love is powerful, meaningful, or necessary to living a good life. Of course it is.

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  26. "I keep publishing your comments, but please refrain from posting prayers, this is the last one I will allow. And no, it's not about censorship, it's about irrelevancy."

    Only lyrics for a song on love. I believe that was the topic at hand? It is really sweet song tho. I guess you didn't get a chance to hear it. Where's your soft side, Massimo? ;)

    You honestly don't have to post anything I comment on here. You know I don't ever give up so you can post things or not it doesn't move me one way or another. It is not like I am about to ruin the whole secular establishment with one simple, sweet song, is it? And if prayers have no power, there's nothing to be afraid of, right?

    BTW my husband's grandmother passed on Sunday night as well. It upset him a lot more than I thought it would. A world without our grandmothers, I hope, won't be too unbearable to live in.

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  27. Ci,

    I was born to what most people would consider lousy parents. I was not raised by them by Gods grace. The parents I was born to both came from Catholic families. I suppose that they considered themselves Catholic too.

    In as much as I believe God can do anything, I don't know if its possible for either of my parents to choose Christ any longer. My dad has been Catholic then JW and now I don't know what it is that he believes. He use to be a VERY frightening person to be around. (hes tall 6'5(?)and still muscular and strong for an older guy) He also use to be ridiculously protective of my mother and almost killed other family members (and a school teacher)a few times on account of fights and you name it. No doubt alcohol had something to do with it. YET his dad was the chief of police for a medium size city in MN. To be fair, he did have a very bad thing happen to him when he was in the military overseas. (50s 60s) He still kind of freaks me out but I try to love and be kind to him anyway. I guess he can't help it. My mother lost her mind quite awhile ago. Sometimes she a little better but there was the incident years ago where she claimed she was gonna kill her whole family.

    Nice huh. I had two particularly violent parents but somehow I'm here.

    The people who raised me were true Christians tho. Peace loving, kind and open to everyone. Their home was a haven for a lot of troubled people over the years. So I know because of their example that how I live my life really does MATTER.

    And that's all I know for certain, Ci. Doing things your own way is a sure and quick route to disaster.

    Just looked our and its snowing outside. :) Winter is never gonna end here this year. But ya know,that's okay.

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  28. I was born to what most people would consider lousy parents. I was not raised by them by Gods grace. The parents I was born to both came from Catholic families. I suppose that they considered themselves Catholic too.

    Okay, but I thought I understood you to say you'd been raised in a Catholic environment. So - you had people who loved you unconditionally and were Catholic - and, I also assume you'd say you love them unconditionally. What happens to them?

    I was not raised by them by Gods grace.

    Which goes back to my other question - what about those to whom God is not so gracious? They grow up in abusive environments, they're angry and resentful, can't relate to God as father, and die without "accepting Jesus". I'll ask again - they go to hell because God gave them lousy parents?

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  29. Ci, "They're condemned to hell because God chose lousy parents for them?"

    Not at all. For one, parents choose how they are going to live. God did not choose a bad path for them.

    Secondly, I would think that if I know good and well that my parents are completely unreliable I would be even more inclined to choosing God as my guide and helper. I've lived between these two worlds, so I sort of know the breadth of my choices.

    I do understand that not everyone has had the ability to get away from a bad situation tho. Even at that, it does not have to DEFINE YOU.

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  30. Not at all. For one, parents choose how they are going to live. God did not choose a bad path for them.

    Secondly, I would think that if I know good and well that my parents are completely unreliable I would be even more inclined to choosing God as my guide and helper. I've lived between these two worlds, so I sort of know the breadth of my choices.


    This is just rationalization. You're simply trying to protect your belief system. In other words, no matter how awful the situation in which one grows up, somehow, one still has the ability to choose. God cares nothing about extenuating circumstances, and gives us just enough rope to hang ourselves.

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  31. Caliana,

    Do you realize what you said publicly about your parents is very hurtful? And you love them?

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  32. Hey, are people making fun of other people with psychological problems here? I have psychological problems, and as per Mr D. Aykroyd sometime in the early SNL years, have the papers to prove it. So I know of what I speak. And in the words of this actor in that movie about Masada, under siege by the Romans, when the Roman accused the fearless leader of the suicide cult of being a lunatic, imploring him to give up and let his fellow cultists live, the answer given was "If I am crazy, how does that help you?"

    Anyway do not have a lot to say about love, other right around the time I got married I thought it was some sort of contract between two people, precipitated by 2 declarations of "I love you" or unspoken equivalents within a timespan close enough for simultaneity or government work or whatever. That happens and hormones and brain function changes. So that's something.

    If it was one-sided (I want her she doesn't want me), then we are just talking about a more powerful version of well, longing. So I'm not with you on that switch thing unless the reciprocity is current.

    Julia, your take on Love like NPD or v.v. was neat, but that APA definition? Yikes I can't believe I'm the only person around who when struck by a severe bout of narcissism is ALSO as empathetic as one can be.

    Caliana: While you are happy to talk about your god on this site and I am happy to talk about my ideas about gods and information and how 'everything' works, we should remember we are in someone else's home. I think both you and I can be bad Internet guests at times. I don't like it when people attack you. But I do wonder how bad a case of NPD Jesus, Moses, Gandhi, and Obama had and have.

    All: any of you have those days when between 10-30 'coincidences' occur, affecting you personally. Yep, me, today, and its was everything from billboards to healthcare news, NCAA activity, random comments, and a conversation between me and a coworker in a bar last Friday night that turned into a big fat project today.

    Many of these incidents were discussed with other people, and there was some concurrence that they were cool.

    There are no coincidences. THAT's information theory Julia. Well a key component anyways there are a few others. Not that there is anything at all wrong with what Shannon did. It was fantastic work that you seem to have a better grasp of than I. But I do know it didn't EXPLAIN information

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  33. Julia,
    Thanks!
    Nice discussion. Although I missed some biological reference, as Harry C Pharisee was into.
    You say that:
    " 'Love' isn't the underlying condition of which those properties are symptoms, as with strep; 'love' is the name we give to those properties, as with NPD."

    But can't you actually measure activities in the brain and hormones excreted in people that claim they are in love? Or in people that meet someone they want to have as partner?
    Although I am aware of that this maybe does not solve the problem of "what is love?" it can broaden the view from what you say, "love isn't the underlying condition of which those properties are symptoms". Or? I'm not sure, just testing hypothesis.

    /Jojje

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  34. I like the approach... it would be interesting to get a pile of data of love-properties / indicators / symptoms people include in their 'wildly contradictory checklists'. If a participant's demographic info is also included, I bet some interesting patterns would emerge ( and hopefully, impromptu karaoke wouldn't have too large a showing).

    Caliana, I can see you have good intentions, but your good will can have a greater practical effect if you gain knowledge of the tools of logic and rhetoric. These tools are required to participate coherently in discussions of the type found here, or to form useful arguments in general. Massimo has been generous in approving your comments so far.

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  35. Well done at the Skeptics thing, Julia!

    I "loved" listening to you speak...whatever that

    means.

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  36. Love is nothing more or less than relationship we have with the image of someone or something in our minds. Close agreement between that image and the love object is convenient but far from necessary.

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  37. I think that if you think of the other person before yourself, then you are in love.

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