Love’s emotional components in people with improperly shaped personality

Abstract

This study attempts to show the relationship between the emotional components of love and personality disorders traits. The literature presents data on dysfunctional love in people with personality disorders. Considering love as a crucial human feeling, the study was planned to describe the associations between emotional components of love and personality disorders traits. A sample of 220 men and women at the similar age and education level was investigated. The authors measured personality disorder traits using the Structured Clinical Interview for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Axis II Disorders 4th edition and analysed the experience of love based on a nar-rative technique. The computed multiple regression analyses show how specified personality disorder traits are associated with abnormal intensity of emotional elements. The content of affective patterns that are inscribed in disorders cause a dysfunctional way of experiencing love characterized by negative emotions and traits attributed to both one’s self and the partner in a situation of love. The experience of love therefore becomes incoherent and disharmonious.