Today I’d like to revisit the question we left off with in the previous video: why do some women get involved with men who are so violent, so cold, so disturbed? This would require a whole discussion of cultural and historical factors, but in this video I’ll avoid delving into that aspect and focus instead on more distinctly psychological elements.
First, however, we must make a preliminary point. We believe—we are convinced—that mental illness is linked to violent interpersonal relationships. Let us therefore immediately set aside the current trend of attributing everything to genetics, biological factors, or strictly conscious processes. We believe, in fact, that these dynamics unfold on an unconscious level.
To try to frame this phenomenon, however, we must also consider another element that is simultaneously present in a violent interpersonal relationship: namely, that for there to be a negative effect—for there to be a genuine injury, for there to be a mental illness—there must still be an alliance, a complicity, between the victim and the aggressor.
Having said that, let us state this immediately: the woman we are dealing with is a woman who presents a depressive picture. It does not necessarily have to be overt, visible depression; often it is hidden—it is so-called masked depression—but we are always dealing with depression. So let us try to see right away what this depression is. The depressed person is so precisely because they are in a relationship that brings out the two situations that characterize the depressed person: on the one hand, a marked sensitivity in the body that leads them to feel the affective and instinctual dimensions of the other, so that in a relationship with a man of this kind, they feel and feel worse and worse.
At the same time, however, the other dimension that characterizes the depressed person and that emerges in this type of relationship is an inability to bring this sensitivity to the level of consciousness. So there is a body that grows heavy, there is a feeling of the other’s violence, but they cannot move from this to a thought that might then lead them to see the other’s reality—they do not see it.
On the other hand, we are faced with the so-called schizoid. Massimo Fagioli spoke specifically about the schizoid-depressed couple, saying, “The schizoid is the one who sees but does not feel, in contrast to the depressed person who, conversely, feels but does not see.” That is, the schizoid—we could call them the narcissist—in short, we’re clearly talking about unemotional people. They see human reality, but to them it’s meaningless; they don’t give it any weight. Think, for example, of a general who’s now entered politics and says, “Egonu is black.” Of course she’s black, but he sees nothing else. That is, the rest of human reality doesn’t interest him. Or, I don’t know, they made a documentary, a TV series about Fabrizio Corona that talks about his relationship with women as one of calculation, exploitation, money, and so on, but in short, everything that is human just doesn’t concern him. Think for a moment, instead, about our Cognetti—I always mention him because I really loved what he said about the period when he was ill, when he said, “Mental illness consists in being able to see only the surface of things.”
Already in the comparison between these two figures, we see a certain complementarity because the schizoid, the narcissist, makes this insensitivity his identity; he’s proud of it, he boasts about it, he sees only that. The depressed person, as I was just mentioning Cognetti, takes it as a fault. The problem is that the depressed person blames themselves for everything; they take everything to heart, yet in reality they fail to see that they do have one real fault, which is a lack of emotional depth that could instead drive them to see the deeper reality of others. They don’t get it, so they think they’re suffering over the silliest things in the world and see in these characters, in these men, a strength because there is an absence of conflict. Now, let’s be clear: you can have strength, a strong identity, and an absence of conflict, even while being well.
But the depressed person, on the other hand, is in that state because they form relationships with these deeply troubled people, yet they don’t notice a thing. How often does it happen that friends, relatives, or parents tell the girl, “Can’t you see that this person is a bad person, they’re cold, and you’re getting worse and worse, and so on?” And these words systematically hit a brick wall. The answer is always: “No, but don’t you really know him? Deep down, he’s a good person,” or they understand everything rationally—that is, with this very split between emotions and thought—they understand that he’s a bad person, etc., etc., but “I love him so much,” you see; in short, there’s this absolute rift.
But there’s another thing, in my opinion, that’s important to understand about why these relationships risk becoming cemented—I don’t know how to put it—because in a relationship with such a cold and violent man, the depressed person, who knows they lack something on one level, for example, vitality. How many times have you heard them say, “I’m ugly, I have nothing to offer, and so on.” In a relationship with a schizoid or a narcissist, she’s fine—in the sense that a schizoid will never ask her to have vitality, to find a zest for life, to have even a shred of desire, because those are the things that would throw him into crisis, and so she paradoxically finds herself in her comfort zone. That is, she isn’t forced to bring out those things she knows she thinks she lacks, so she remains in that relationship that makes her feel worse and worse, also because if by chance she does manage to muster a shred of will to live or joy, the other person’s emotional detachment crushes it immediately—that is, the coldest possible response to any manifestation of, let’s say, vitality.
And here there is another theoretical element to keep in mind, because the issue of emotional coldness needs to be explored further, in the sense that it is not a personal, individual characteristic, like having black hair, but rather an unconscious, instinctual dynamic of the relationship aimed at the vital dimensions of the other person. So when the woman expresses something meaningful, there is immediately this icy response that completely blocks her, and she blames herself for it. Why? How many times have we heard, “I went to the party, but I laughed too much, I looked terrible”—and with that kind of person, she doesn’t come out of it alive.
Even though we can say that we notice some signs of improvement when these women start looking for a different kind of man—a man who demands that they bring out something positive, something beautiful, a beautiful achievement—and for the depressed person,
as you all know, is the hardest thing in the world because, for heaven’s sake, if you give a depressed person—or rather, a depressed woman in this case—a gift or a compliment, she feels terrible, she feels awful.
To conclude, however, let’s try to understand that this pairing isn’t random; there are specific dynamics that must be observed and understood. Here I am just giving you a glimpse of a discussion that is far more complex.
To conclude, I wanted to say this. In our practice, it’s usually the depressed woman who comes in; the schizoid and the narcissist almost never come—if not never—because their “treatment” consists of making the other person feel bad. They heal themselves this way, and as long as the other person keeps taking all the castrations from the schizoid—who, if we look closely, is actually much worse off than the depressed person, mind you—in this relationship, he becomes the one who’s doing just fine, is all happy, is so cool, while she keeps getting worse and worse.
Anyway, I hope I’ve piqued your curiosity. If anything, go look into these topics in the appropriate texts because I know it’s rare to hear about them these days.
Marco Michelini
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