Caricature of Love

Laura

Laura

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NOTE: These posts are split from another topic in where the nature of personal sexual predation was being discussed. I had mentioned that the poster (and those commenting) should read Cleckley's "Caricature of Love" which is no longer available except in very pricey old copies. To help out, the book was scanned and uploaded and from this point, the discussion was devoted to it and deserves to be available to a wider audience so it has been moved to a public area of the forum. This thread begins with the announcement that the book is now available.
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AI has fixed up the book for ya'll:

Here's a link to the PDF for Caricature of Love. I couldn't get it smaller than 25 mb, so if someone can do so, please go ahead. Also, it's on mediafire, so if someone can upload it to a more stable place, that'd be cool too!

http://www.mediafire.com/file/tilkz1s2zfnlsaa/Caricature%20of%20Love_C.pdf
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I HIGHLY recommend that everyone read this book not for the issues of homosexuality, but for the historical review of how women have been degraded. The only homosexuals Cleckley had to study were those who were psychiatric patients. What he was really seeing, and probably didn't realize, was the sexual attitude of the psychopath and how it has completely ponerized society and the relations between men and women. VERY important work.
 
Laura said:
AI has fixed up the book for ya'll:

Here's a link to the PDF for Caricature of Love. I couldn't get it smaller than 25 mb, so if someone can do so, please go ahead. Also, it's on mediafire, so if someone can upload it to a more stable place, that'd be cool too!

http://www.mediafire.com/file/tilkz1s2zfnlsaa/Caricature%20of%20Love_C.pdf
Click to expand...

I HIGHLY recommend that everyone read this book not for the issues of homosexuality, but for the historical review of how women have been degraded. The only homosexuals Cleckley had to study were those who were psychiatric patients. What he was really seeing, and probably didn't realize, was the sexual attitude of the psychopath and how it has completely ponerized society and the relations between men and women. VERY important work.
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Thanks for that Laura, I'm gonna download it now!
 
Here's a link to the PDF for Caricature of Love. I couldn't get it smaller than 25 mb, so if someone can do so, please go ahead. Also, it's on mediafire, so if someone can upload it to a more stable place, that'd be cool too!

http://www.mediafire.com/file/tilkz1s2zfnlsaa/Caricature%20of%20Love_C.pdf
Click to expand...

Yes thanks Laura & AI.
 
I won't kid you, it's going to be a HARD read. But stick with it.
 
Parallax said:
Here's a link to the PDF for Caricature of Love. I couldn't get it smaller than 25 mb, so if someone can do so, please go ahead. Also, it's on mediafire, so if someone can upload it to a more stable place, that'd be cool too!

http://www.mediafire.com/file/tilkz1s2zfnlsaa/Caricature%20of%20Love_C.pdf
Click to expand...

Yes thanks Laura & AI.
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Thanks again for the work involved - now to start reading it! :)
 
Laura said:
I won't kid you, it's going to be a HARD read. But stick with it.
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I am almost ready with this book and I would say it is fascinating read.

However, some people, especially those of homosexual inclinations may find it quite shocking. Cleckley posits that homosexuality is basically pathological abomination of nature in contrast with the mainstream psychology which tends to normalize the whole issue, so some people may understand this as an indictment.
Therefore it is worth having in mind what Laura already had mentioned - Cleckley studied a limited sample of homosexuals who were unsuccessful in their life aims. The psychopaths he wrote about in the Mask of Sanity were those who came under his observation because they were hospitalized for one reason or another. The same is true, mainly, for the homosexuals he writes about in this book.
Still, just as he made excellent observations about psychopathy, extrapolating from his sample, so he makes some excellent observations about homosexuality. He also makes excellent observations about unsuccessful heterosexuals. The main value of this book is what it has to say about love overall and in general.
 
Corto said:
He also makes excellent observations about unsuccessful heterosexuals. The main value of this book is what it has to say about love overall and in general.
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I think that the observations about unsuccessful heterosexuals is the meat of the book and that is why I think it should be read by everyone.
 
Laura said:
Corto said:
He also makes excellent observations about unsuccessful heterosexuals. The main value of this book is what it has to say about love overall and in general.
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I think that the observations about unsuccessful heterosexuals is the meat of the book and that is why I think it should be read by everyone.
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Agreed....its summing up things I've seen, but couldn't quite figure out. What he says about "Sunday definitions" is very important, osit. Thank you for getting this book to us. :flowers:
 
You'll all understand, too, why this book is no longer available.
 
Regarding the topics of "Caricature of Love," Approaching Infinity posted something in another thread that includes a bit that partly explains what Cleckley was seeing and describing:

Approaching Infinity said:
Regarding loss of sex drive, there is some observational evidence that this is so in cases of advanced development. Dabrowski describes what he saw as the development of the sex drive in several of his books. Simply put, at the lowest level, sex drive is nothing more than the instinctive/biological impulse to procreate which is present in all biological entities. The human instinctive substratum, containing the results of our entire history of evolution, shares vast similarities with that of animals, notably in the domains of the moving and emotional "centers". Just as animals have an instinctual catalogue of emotional/behavioural programs, so do we. When an animal encounters a threat, at a low level it freezes; at a mid level it flees; and at a high level it attacks. Same with humans, where the attacking is called "reactive aggression". (Incidentally, this is the type of aggression that is heightened in individuals with frontal lobe pathologies and those in which the "trigger" is made more sensitive, as in paranoid characteropathy, PTSD, etc.)

With the sex instinct you can see the lowest levels in psychopathy, where sex is used primarily as a means of domination, self-service, and control, with no emotional component. At the level of normal humanity, there is an emotional component, but it is often temperamental and still can't be called "love". At higher levels of development (multilevel disintegration), care for and consideration of the partner governs sexual behaviour; and according to Dabrowski, at the highest level, "sex" loses most of its physical expressions, being mostly a union of souls that is not dependent on physicality.

According to TPD, the loss of the sex instinct is a natural progression, achieved only at the highest levels of development. This corresponds with Gurdjieff's description of the use of sex energy, i.e. it's transmutation is rarely understood or performed correctly. To force it will only cause more problems and amounts to putting the cart before the horses, so to speak
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What Cleckley was seeing was the actions of psychopathy in "high places" and the effects of psychopathy in power on normal humanity.

What was amazing to me was how we have ALL been programmed to accept certain things that are promoted as "ideals" when, in fact, they are perverse. We may feel that something is wrong there, but it is such a part of our social environment and programming, that it is difficult to get outside and see it. Plato, for example. This is one of the reasons I say it is a hard book to read because it sure shoots some sacred cows.
 
Laura said:
Regarding the topics of "Caricature of Love," Approaching Infinity posted something in another thread that includes a bit that partly explains what Cleckley was seeing and describing:

Approaching Infinity said:
With the sex instinct you can see the lowest levels in psychopathy, where sex is used primarily as a means of domination, self-service, and control, with no emotional component. At the level of normal humanity, there is an emotional component, but it is often temperamental and still can't be called "love". At higher levels of development (multilevel disintegration), care for and consideration of the partner governs sexual behaviour; and according to Dabrowski, at the highest level, "sex" loses most of its physical expressions, being mostly a union of souls that is not dependent on physicality.
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I just read this part of "Caricature of Love", which touches on this:

Cleckley said:
As the male matures, his sexually sensuous aims are more likely to arise from (or to join naturally) strong and positive personal feelings toward the sexual object, with affection, devotion, adoration, and the like, which might be called intense and specialized forms or developments of friendship and affection. So, too, these more broadly personal attitudes and relations may from out of or join what was at first chiefly a self-centered sensuous aim. Considering the immense variety of human attitudes and reactions, it does not seem necessary for practical purposes to insist on either sex-sensuality or social feeling as a philosophical monad from which the other evolves. The real sexual love of those happily mated appears to be not merely an additive mixture of intense friendship, plus special devotion and adoration, plus true pride of each in the other, plus sensual sexuality, but, instead, something more like an integration of these and other affective components into what is different from, and more than, a sum of the parts. The gaseous elements, hydrogen and oxygen, uniting to form water become an entity that is not like any gas at all. So, too, the human affective elements that participate in real love cannot separately or in mere addition account for the properties and the nature of this unique experience.
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And just before that:

Actually we know that sexual acts and relations frequently occur not only as the expression of the "more intense form of friendship" ordinarily called "being in love," but without the presence of even a mild but real friendship. Surely, few will argue that friendship necessarily accompanies the sexual satisfaction obtained by men in visiting houses of prostitution, or that the woman in earning her fee is likely to develop toward a transient client personal feelings that merit such a term. Who can doubt that sexually sensuous and genital satisfactions are often sought first by the immature male either with embarrassed indifference toward the partner as a person, or with puerile ideas of quasi-virility and impulses to dominate, that cause him to regard her as being despoiled, a sort of victim seduced by his competitive charm? Such attitudes often persist in a pathology of adult sex-and-love relations. ...

The manifestations of sexual desire without affection or devotion, and even with accompanying hate or contempt can, of course, be accounted for by libido theory. ... There seems, however, no need, aside from a partisan need to gain support for the theory, to insist on such interpretations. Actual observation reveals people seeking genital satisfaction with or without love and respect for the partner, with almost infinite degrees and kinds of interpersonal attitudes. So, too, we see great variations of feeling, distaste, liking, indifference, respect, devotion, tender regard in the relation of people to objects poorly designed to arouse or to satisfy any sensuously sexual aim ...
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This matches up pretty closely with Dabrowski. First of all, the idea of an "integration" of sex and feeling, not just a simple addition. It's something different, a new "level", in Dabrowski's terms. Whereas the pathological, immature kind of sex is one of selfishness, domination, "conquering", using, etc. - primary integration, or psychopathy as Dabrowski called it in conversation (funny how Gurdjieff used the word in similar contexts). And from my experiences and observations in junior high and high school, I was shocked to see this was how most boys perceived sex and talked about girls and women. Like Cleckley observed, you can tell a lot by the way people talk about sex, the terms they use to describe sexual acts: "f***ing", "doing it", etc. Words completely devoid of feeling, concern, tender feeling, etc. And that immature level seems to be where a LOT of people are stuck, thinking it's "normal", when it's anything but that.
 
Corrected a typo I noticed below: should be "grow out of" not "from out of"

Approaching Infinity said:
Cleckley said:
As the male matures, his sexually sensuous aims are more likely to arise from (or to join naturally) strong and positive personal feelings toward the sexual object, with affection, devotion, adoration, and the like, which might be called intense and specialized forms or developments of friendship and affection. So, too, these more broadly personal attitudes and relations may grow out of or join what was at first chiefly a self-centered sensuous aim. Considering the immense variety of human attitudes and reactions, it does not seem necessary for practical purposes to insist on either sex-sensuality or social feeling as a philosophical monad from which the other evolves. The real sexual love of those happily mated appears to be not merely an additive mixture of intense friendship, plus special devotion and adoration, plus true pride of each in the other, plus sensual sexuality, but, instead, something more like an integration of these and other affective components into what is different from, and more than, a sum of the parts. The gaseous elements, hydrogen and oxygen, uniting to form water become an entity that is not like any gas at all. So, too, the human affective elements that participate in real love cannot separately or in mere addition account for the properties and the nature of this unique experience.
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