When Possession Is Mistaken for Love

di Federica D’Arpino

Femicide, Coercive Control and Narcissistic Dynamics in the Denial of Women’s Autonomy

Abstract: The femicide of Lorena Isceri, killed by her former partner Federico Vella on 4 September 2026, brings into stark focus an issue that runs through research on intimate partner violence: the relationship between separation, loss of control, possessiveness and the inability to fully recognise a partner’s autonomy. While it would be scientifically inappropriate to attribute femicide to a specific personality pathology or to make retrospective diagnoses concerning the perpetrator of an individual crime, the literature nevertheless allows us to examine the role that certain narcissistic mechanisms may play within relationships already characterised by coercive control, possessive jealousy and a sense of entitlement over the other person. In particular, vulnerable narcissism, entitlement, difficulty tolerating rejection and what the literature defines as entitlement rage may contribute, together with numerous other individual, relational and sociocultural variables, to transforming separation into a threat that is not merely emotional but also identity-related. The analysis therefore leads to an essential distinction: love presupposes recognition of the otherness of the other and, consequently, of their freedom, whereas possession tends precisely to deny it. Understanding this difference means removing femicide from the rhetoric of “loving too much” and relocating it within the scientifically more appropriate framework of power dynamics, control and the erasure of autonomy.

Keywords: #Femicide #GenderBasedViolence #ViolenceAgainstWomen #IntimatePartnerViolence #CoerciveControl #Narcissism #VulnerableNarcissism #Possessiveness #Relationships #Psychology #Prevention #WomensRights #FedericaDArpino #EthicaSocietas #EthicaSocietasReview #ScientificJournal #SocialSciences #EthicaSocietasUPLI

versione italiana

Another femicide after the end of a relationship

Lorena Isceri was 45 years old, originally from Squinzano in the province of Lecce, and living in Florence when, on 4 September 2026, she was killed by her former partner, 36-year-old Federico Vella, who subsequently died by suicide after jumping from a viaduct on the A1 motorway. According to preliminary investigative accounts reported by ANSA—which must be treated with the caution required while an investigation is still under way—the woman was reportedly afraid of her former partner and her family had advised her to report him to the authorities, while she had hesitated out of fear that doing so might harm him. Investigators are also examining evidence that could suggest the attack had been planned, as the woman was reportedly abducted and locked in the boot of a car, managing to call for help before she was killed.

The need for caution in relation to an individual case becomes particularly important when moving from judicial reconstruction to psychological interpretation, because no information reported by the media can provide a basis for making a clinical diagnosis of the perpetrator, and it would be methodologically incorrect to attribute narcissistic personality disorder or any other psychopathological condition to him without a specialist assessment. The case can nevertheless provide a starting point for examining a much broader dynamic, since both international research and studies specifically conducted in Italy show that separation, rejection, jealousy, loss of control and previous violent or coercive behaviour recur with particular frequency in trajectories leading to the killing of a current or former female partner.

The distinction is fundamental: the purpose is not to use psychology to retrospectively explain an individual murderer, but to use psychological and criminological knowledge to understand a relational structure.

Separation does not create possessiveness, but it can make it visible

One of the most firmly established findings in the literature on intimate partner violence concerns the particularly critical nature of the separation phase. Indeed, the association between separation and the risk of lethal violence by a male partner has been described in the literature as an empirical generalisation (Ellis, 2017), while studies of coercive control show that such control may continue even after the formal end of a relationship through stalking, harassment, economic control, attempts to discredit the woman and other strategies aimed at continuing to constrain her autonomy.

It is important to understand that, from this perspective, separation should not be regarded as the cause of violence, still less should the woman’s decision be transformed, even implicitly, into a factor assigning responsibility to the victim. Rather, separation may function as a revealing and destabilising event within a pre-existing system of control, because it makes concretely apparent what a possessive relationship cannot accept: the partner is an autonomous individual and may decide to leave the relationship regardless of the other person’s wishes.

It is precisely at this point that one of the most significant findings from Italian research becomes relevant. A recent national forensic case series on femicide found that, among the cases analysed, jealousy and rejection represented the reconstructed motive in 45.1% of cases, while separation and divorce were present in 35.1%, frequently within dynamics characterised by intimate partner violence or by the perpetrator’s inability to accept the end of the relationship. Significantly, the same study found psychiatric disorders and substance abuse to be more prevalent in killings of women that were not classified as femicides.

This finding suggests an important consideration: femicide cannot be reduced to individual madness, because in many cases what emerges is a recognisable relational dynamic in which rejection or separation acquires meaning within a pre-existing configuration of domination.

Possession as the denial of otherness

The question then becomes what distinguishes an emotional relationship—even one whose ending causes profound suffering—from a relationship in which loss is experienced as the intolerable removal of something one believes oneself to possess.

Mature love contains an apparently contradictory yet psychologically essential element: the more significant another person becomes to us, the more necessary it is to recognise them as separate from ourselves, endowed with a subjectivity that cannot be absorbed into our own, with desires we cannot determine, thoughts to which we do not have complete access and, above all, the freedom to change or end the relationship. Separation can cause intense suffering, anger, a sense of loss, humiliation and even temporary difficulties in emotional regulation without any of these necessarily resulting in violence, because suffering caused by loss belongs to ordinary human experience, whereas the claim to prevent another person from exercising their freedom of choice belongs to an entirely different register.

Possession begins precisely where this distinction breaks down and the loved person progressively ceases to be recognised in their autonomy, becoming instead a source of reassurance, identity confirmation, status, gratification, self-esteem regulation, or simply an object over which one believes oneself entitled to exercise a right. Within such a configuration, jealousy no longer concerns only the fear of losing an important relationship but may become surveillance; the need for closeness may turn into control; emotional exclusivity may be reinterpreted as ownership; and the decision to separate may be experienced not as an exercise of the other person’s freedom but as the violation of a right the individual believes themselves to possess.

It is within this theoretical space that narcissism may become relevant, provided that the concept is removed from the indiscriminate use to which it is often subjected in contemporary discourse.

Narcissism beyond the diagnostic label

Describing anyone who displays selfishness, jealousy, manipulation or violent behaviour as a narcissist is scientifically inappropriate, just as it would be incorrect to argue that narcissism constitutes either a necessary or sufficient cause of intimate partner violence. Narcissism is a complex dimensional construct, present in different forms within the general population and distinct from narcissistic personality disorder, which is a clinical diagnosis requiring criteria and assessments that cannot be inferred from media reports.

The empirical literature confirms the need for such caution. The meta-analysis conducted by Oliver, Coates, Bennett and Willis, comprising 22 studies and a total of 11,520 participants, identified a statistically significant but weak association between trait narcissism and the perpetration of intimate partner violence (r = .15). It also found that the association was stronger for vulnerable than for grandiose narcissism and more evident in relation to psychological and cyber intimate partner violence, while no statistically significant association emerged with physical violence (Oliver et al., 2024).

These findings rule out any simplistic formula equating narcissism with violence, but they do not render the construct irrelevant. Rather, they suggest that attention should shift from diagnosis to the psychological mechanisms through which certain narcissistic configurations may interact with relational functioning.

Vulnerable narcissism, entitlement and coercive control

Research published by Day and colleagues in 2025 offers particularly relevant findings in this respect, as it directly examined the relationship between pathological narcissism, the severity of personality pathology, abuse and coercive control. The study found a significant association between pathological narcissism and coercive control and showed that specific components of narcissistic functioning—exploitativeness, grandiose fantasies and entitlement rage—were positively, albeit generally weakly, associated with control or abuse. At the same time, however, the overall severity of impairment in personality functioning was moderately associated with both abuse and coercive control, once again suggesting that narcissism cannot be isolated from the individual’s broader personality functioning (Day et al., 2025).

The concept of entitlement is particularly useful in understanding the relationship between narcissism and possession because it describes the perception of being entitled to special treatment, the fulfilment of one’s expectations or the availability of another person. When such expectations are frustrated, the reaction may take the form of what the literature describes as entitlement rage: anger associated with the perception that something to which the individual was entitled has been unjustly taken away. This does not, of course, mean that such a dynamic normally leads to violence—that would be false—but rather that, within a relationship already structured around control, it may contribute to making the partner’s autonomy psychologically intolerable.

The distinction between grandiose and vulnerable narcissism makes the picture even more significant, because the latter does not necessarily correspond to the popular image of an arrogant, self-confident and openly egocentric individual. Instead, it may involve hypersensitivity to others’ evaluations, fragile self-esteem, shame, a need for recognition and heightened reactivity to rejection. The fact that Oliver et al.’s meta-analysis found a stronger association between vulnerable narcissism and intimate partner violence than between grandiose narcissism and such violence therefore suggests that, at least in some configurations, it is not only overt grandiosity that deserves attention, but also the fragility of an identity that depends heavily on validation from others.

Narcissistic injury is not the pain of abandonment

A further distinction is necessary here, because in everyday language the so-called narcissistic injury risks being confused with the ordinary suffering caused by abandonment. They are not the same.

Anyone may be profoundly hurt by the end of a relationship and experience anger, longing, humiliation or a sense of failure. It becomes theoretically appropriate to speak of a narcissistic dynamic, however, when the loss is processed predominantly as an intolerable injury to one’s self-image, the deprivation of something to which one feels entitled, or evidence of a loss of power over the other person, particularly when the response consists in attempting to re-establish control rather than processing and accepting the separation.

The concept has a long psychodynamic tradition, but it must be used cautiously precisely because part of the literature on narcissistic injury and rage belongs to theoretical and clinical models and does not amount to causal evidence of femicide. Contemporary literature nevertheless makes it possible to integrate this perspective with empirical findings on vulnerable narcissism, entitlement rage and coercive control, thereby allowing for a more rigorous interpretative hypothesis: in some individuals, separation may simultaneously constitute emotional loss, an injury to self-esteem and a loss of relational dominance, and these dimensions may reinforce one another when coercive behaviours and a proprietary conception of the partner are already present.

This is one possible dynamic, not a psychological law, and it is precisely this distinction that allows the hypothesis to retain its scientific value.

From “I can’t live without you” to “you can’t live without me”

From this perspective, there is a semantic transformation that helps clarify the boundary between emotional dependence and domination. The statement “I can’t live without you” may describe, even emphatically, an individual’s perception of their dependence on another person; the transition to control occurs when the implicit meaning becomes “I cannot allow you to live independently of me”, because at that point subjective suffering is transformed into a claim over another person’s freedom.

Coercive control constitutes precisely the terrain on which this claim becomes behaviour: monitoring movements, restricting social relationships, checking phones and communications, imposing rules, unilaterally controlling financial resources, intimidating, demeaning, threatening and stalking after separation are different behaviours, but all share the progressive restriction of the victim’s capacity for self-determination. The literature also shows that coercive control and stalking may precede lethal violence and that coercive behaviours may continue after separation through new strategies aimed at regaining lost control.

The relationship between narcissism and control therefore becomes easier to understand: if the other person performs an essential function in validating identity and self-esteem, their autonomy may be experienced as destabilising; if this is accompanied by a strong sense of entitlement, the partner’s autonomous choice may be interpreted as an illegitimate deprivation; and if the relationship is already structured around coercive patterns, separation may ultimately represent the definitive loss of that power.

None of these factors, taken in isolation, predicts femicide. Their possible convergence, however, is scientifically far more informative than the generic notion of a sudden “fit of rage”.

Femicide is not an excess of love

This analysis also allows us to question some of the language through which violence against women continues to be narrated. Expressions such as “he loved her too much”, “he was obsessed with her”, “he couldn’t bear to lose her” or “he was blinded by jealousy” inadvertently place violent behaviour within the same semantic universe as love, almost as though there were a quantitative continuum between affection and murder and violence were simply the pathological outcome of a feeling that had become excessively intense.

The distinction emerging from the research instead suggests a qualitative discontinuity.

To love means to recognise the other as a subject; to possess means progressively to transform the other into an object.

In the first case, the other person’s identity remains separate from our own and their freedom constitutes a condition of the relationship; in the second, autonomy is experienced as a threat because it contradicts the expectation of availability. In love, separation may be devastating, but it must ultimately be accepted; in possession, separation becomes insubordination. In love, rejection hurts; under domination, rejection is perceived as something the other person had no right to impose.

It is precisely at this point that certain narcissistic dynamics may intersect with possessiveness without providing an exhaustive explanation for it: the person is no longer desired solely for who they are, but may become necessary because of what they reflect back to the individual’s self-image. When that function is withdrawn through separation, the individual may perceive the loss not merely of the relationship but also of validation, status, control and identity integrity.

A multilevel explanation is more rigorous than a diagnosis

Reducing femicide to narcissism would nevertheless be an error mirroring its complete exclusion, because it would transform a complex phenomenon into an individualistic explanation and risk pathologising something that also has an evident social and cultural dimension.

The most convincing model therefore remains multilevel: individual factors, which may include personality characteristics and difficulties in emotional regulation; relational factors, such as coercive control, previous violence, possessive jealousy and separation; situational factors, including access to weapons, stalking and threats; and cultural and social factors, including models of masculinity, gender inequalities and proprietary conceptions of intimate relationships.

Narcissism has a place within this model not as a universal explanation, but as a possible individual amplifier of a relational structure of domination. On the basis of the available evidence, this is the formulation I consider scientifically most defensible.

Educating people to respect the freedom of others

When femicide is viewed from this perspective, prevention also acquires a deeper dimension, because intervening only once physical violence appears often means intervening after a structure of control has already become established. It is therefore essential to learn to recognise the early forms through which autonomy is progressively restricted, distinguishing care from surveillance, attachment from imposed dependence, jealousy from control, sharing from appropriation and, above all, the pain of abandonment from the claim to prevent another person from leaving.

This also means educating people differently about love, freeing it from a cultural tradition that has often romanticised expressions of absolute exclusivity, fusion and mutual belonging without sufficiently questioning the boundary beyond which belonging becomes ownership. A mature intimate relationship does not eliminate the separateness of the individuals involved; it presupposes it, because only someone who is free to leave can truly be free to stay.

The case of Lorena Isceri, whose facts and responsibilities will ultimately have to be established by the justice system, should therefore not become an opportunity to diagnose from a distance a man who committed a crime. It can, however, compel us to confront a much broader and socially significant mechanism: what happens when the need for another person turns into the conviction that one has a right to that person?

It is within this transformation that possessiveness, coercive control and, in some cases, narcissistic dynamics may converge. And it is here that speaking of love that has simply become excessive becomes definitively untenable, because what is progressively erased is precisely the condition without which love cannot exist: recognition of the other as a person distinct from ourselves, endowed with their own will, desires and freedom.

Love may suffer because of another person’s freedom, but it continues to recognise that freedom; possession, by contrast, seeks to abolish it. More than the intensity of any professed feeling, it is this difference that marks the boundary between a relationship and domination.

References

Day, N. J. S., Kealy, D., Biberdzic, M., Green, A., Denmeade, G., & Grenyer, B. F. S. (2025), “Coercive Control and Intimate Partner Violence: Relationship With Personality Disorder Severity and Pathological Narcissism”, Personality and Mental Health, 19(4), e70038.

Ellis, D. (2017), “Marital Separation and Lethal Male Partner Violence”, Violence Against Women, 23(4), 503–519.

Oliver, E., Coates, A., Bennett, J. M., & Willis, M. L. (2024), “Narcissism and Intimate Partner Violence: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis”, Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 25(3), 1871–1884.

Spencer, C. M., Keilholtz, B. M., Palmer, M., & Vail, S. L. (2024), “Mental and Physical Health Correlates for Emotional Intimate Partner Violence Perpetration and Victimization: A Meta-Analysis”, Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 25(1), 41–53.

The references to ISTAT, WHO, UN Women/UNODC, Campbell et al., Johnson et al. and Monckton Smith already used for the epidemiological and criminological framework should be added to the bibliography from the previous version.