Here's Why Psychopaths/ Narcissists Are Unable to Love Their Own Children

[dixiegrrrrl]

"Narcissists, psychopaths, and sociopaths do not have a sense of empathy, they do not and will not develop a sense of empathy, so they can never really love anyone," she told Business Insider.

This doesn't change when they have children. There's no primal instinct to protect and encourage their offspring, because they are not seen as a separate entity. They are merely a tool which is at their disposal.

"DTPs tend to see children as an extension of themselves and a possession," Neo said.

"So rather than saying, 'I'm going to nurture you so you can grow up to be the amazing person you're meant to be,' [they say] 'you're supposed to grow up and do this so that you're my trophy.'"

http://www.sciencealert.com/here-s-why-psychopaths-are-unable-to-love-their-own-children?perpetual=yes&limitstart=1

this does not mean if a parent is not loving towards a child that the parent is a narcissist, there can be other reasons for that.
It means a narcissist parent lacks the ability to love others, including their children.

[Loki Liesmith]

1. Not really true.

I can't speak for narcissists, but sociopathy definitely comes on a sliding scale. You may not feel empathy for John Doe down the street, but many sociopaths do feel a kind of love for their children and spouses. It's different than what a complete non-sociopath would feel, and definitely has components of self-interest. And the farther you are along the scale, the more selfish this becomes.

But it's really foolish to write off a fairly large portion of humanity as completely worthless the way to many do with socipathic individuals.

[Jim__]

2. Study shows psychopathic brains are wired in a way that can lead to dangerous and violent actions

Some new information about psychopathic brains from MedicalXpress:

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An Associate Professor of Psychology, Buckholtz is the senior author of a study that relies on brain scans of nearly 50 prison inmates to help explain why psychopaths make poor decisions that often lead to violence or other anti-social behavior.

What they found, he said, is psychopath's brains are wired in a way that leads them to over-value immediate rewards and neglect the future consequences of potentially dangerous or immoral actions. The study is described in a July 5 paper in Neuron.

"For years, we have been focused on the idea that psychopaths are people who cannot generate emotion and that's why they do all these terrible things," Buckholtz said. "But what what we care about with psychopaths is not the feelings they have or don't have, it's the choices they make. Psychopaths commit an astonishing amount of crime, and this crime is both devastating to victims and astronomically costly to society as a whole.

"And even though psychopaths are often portrayed as cold-blooded, almost alien predators, we have been showing that their emotional deficits may not actually be the primary driver of these bad choices. Because it's the choices of psychopaths that cause so much trouble, we've been trying to understand what goes on in their brains when the make decisions that involve trade-offs between the costs and benefits of action.," he continued. "In this most recent paper...we are able to look at brain-based measures of reward and value and the communication between different brain regions that are involved in decision making."

more ...

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