Guest Author - Barbara Rice DeShong, PhD.

When is love “caring for the other person?” When is love no more than one person’s obsession or “incorporation” of the other?

When love is possession, the lover’s powerful desire is separate from the existence of the person chosen as the love object. The strength of “love” felt is not about the love object, but about keeping the object attached. In other words, when love is obsessive, the “lover” doesn’t really care about the person who is the object of their desires at all. If true caring were present, then the choosing person would want the loved person to be fulfilled and happy in life. The obsessed lover’s only desire is to own the other as part of themselves. Since the “loved” person is seen as part of one’s self, once you are chosen by an obsessed lover, what you want doesn’t matter at all.

What happens when a lonely woman in her late thirties finds “love” for the first time? In “Possessed,” (1947) Louise Howell (Joan Crawford) catches the attention of an engineer dedicated to music, math, and running free. She agrees to his terms of no promises, and confines their relationship-- according to his rules--to romantic interludes in his lake cabin on Louise’s day off. She knows better than to tell David she loves him, that he will react by pulling away, but she tells him anyway. At that point, David Sutton (Van Heflin) withdraws, says he does not love her, and tells her of his plans to leave the area.

What David Sutton doesn’t realize is that Louise Howell is a woman on the verge of a psychotic breakdown. Told that he is leaving her, Louise desperately tries to manipulate David into staying or even (pitifully) to allow her to wait for him. David says, “No,” he simply doesn’t care anymore. Louise warns him that he will not survive leaving her. Still David leaves for
a job in Canada.

Louise is left working for the cruel and jealous invalid, Mrs. Graham and her kind husband, Dean Graham. Mrs. Graham is found drowned in the lake of a presumed suicide, Louise comforts Dean Graham, and eventually agrees to marry Dean though Carol Graham, Dean’s young daughter doesn’t trust the new Mrs. Graham. Louise makes a second-best life for herself in the plush lifestyle her husband provides. She manages all right until David Sutton returns, falls in love with Carol Graham, Louise’s step-daughter, and announces they are to be married.

Humiliated, Louise chases David down and confronts him. What happened to his commitment to freedom? He says his love for Carol Graham is real and their lover was not. This is more than Louise can bear. She shoots and kills David with the reasoning of a personality disordered person, “If I can’t have you, no one will.”