Language of love and hate of persons diagnosed with antisocial personality.

Abstract

The aim of this article is to compare the description of two opposite feelings, i.e. love and hate, expressed in the narratives created by persons with an antisocial personality disorder. Several researchers point to the fact that persons suffering from antisocial personality disorder display an incapacity for love, that their descriptions of love are poor, and that their language related to love is poor. On the contrary, they have an ability to experience anger and hate, therefore their possibilities to describe hate and their language related to hate are developed. We focus on verifying these scientific opinions. We examined 50 prisoners diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder, 40 prisoners without antisocial personality, and 50 men outside of prison without antisocial tendencies. The participants had to describe situations presented at photographs linked to love and hate. The qualitative data (elements of narrative discourse) were analyzed concerning two feelings, using nonparametric statistics. The results show that persons with antisocial personality disorder are able to describe both love and hate feelings, and that their language is expressive and convincing. They have affective knowledge and the capacities to imagine the feelings. They were more concentrated on themselves than the control groups.