Schizoid Character

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Abstract article

Much has been written about the creative talent, high sensitivity, ability to abstract thinking of schizoids - the qualities that they possess due to the ability to easily contact the content of their unconscious. As well as about the other side of these talents: isolation, eccentricity, often inability to establish close emotional contact with others, weak social intuition. NJ Dougherty writes: “The schizoid character can express itself in a wide variety of adaptations. On the schizoid scale, there are also a closed person who is subject to hospitalization during periods of decompensation, and a scientist who is distinguished by high efficiency and made a career, and an artist who is famous for his originality in the art world. All of them are united by a tendency to isolation. If a person has a weak ego, minimal material and cultural resources, then the picture may turn out to be terrible."

The meaning of the term Schizoid Guntrip examines from the point of view of the theories of M. Klein, Fairbairn and Winnicott. Klein refers to the term "schizoid" as "splitting the ego" under the influence of the death drive. If, however, the disorder is caused by external bad object connections (according to Fairbairn) or the failure of a poorly good mother to support the infant's vulnerable ego (according to Winnicott), then schizoid would mean: "Departed from external reality under the influence of fear" … The splitting of the ego will be secondary as a result of the need to leave and maintain contact at the same time. Fairbairn was one of the first to point out that hysteria goes back to the schizoid state of the individual. Klein, recognizing the value of Fairbairn's theory, and agreeing with the emphasis on the connection between the hysterical and the schizoid characters, engaged in polemics with him mainly in matters of terminology regarding the schizoid, paranoid and depressive positions.

Guntrip, who was a student of Fairbairn and developed his ideas, speaks of the schizoid state as a problem that underlies depression and neurosis. He views the formation of paranoid, obsessive, hysterical and phobic characters as various defensive ways of dealing with internal bad objects in order to prevent a return to a depressive or schizoid state of the psyche. When it is impossible to receive love from a significant loved one, he becomes a bad object, to which there are two types of reactions. You can get angry about frustration and aggressively attack a bad object to force it to become good and stop frustrating you. And this is typical depressive position. But an earlier and deeper one is possible. schizoid reaction. When, instead of getting angry, you can feel a painful love hunger, awakening a terrible fear of the destructiveness of your desire, or the fear of approaching, to be swallowed. All schizoid issues are centered around the need for identification with a significant loved one and, at the same time, his incorporation (devouring), and the inability to satisfy this need without feeling a threat to the integrity of their identity.

Guntrip: We must allow three basic positions: schizoid (or regressive), paranoid (or haunting) and depressive (or burdened with guilt); both paranoid and depressive positions can be used as defenses against the schizoid position. Just as the "depressive position" is laden with guilt, so the "paranoid position" is obsessed with fear. The "schizoid position" is even deeper, for the infantile ego has gone, in search of safety, inward from persecution, or is decisively striving for such a departure. The "depressive attitude" is critical to the moral, social, and cultural development of the child, but schizoid phenomena and escape from object relations are more important in therapeutic work than depression and are more common than is commonly thought.

Thus, a depressive position and depression is the experience of guilt and suppressed anger towards the object of love. The paranoid position is the experience of intense "persecution anxiety", sheer fear of the destructiveness of love and, in general, connection with the outside world, which, as Klein discovered, can characterize the first few months of life. The schizoid position is a surrender to the anxiety of persecution, the inability to endure it and, as a result, withdrawal into oneself, refusal of emotional ties. All postnatal phenomena, however infantile in themselves, belong to the sphere of active "object relations" and therefore can serve as a defense against going into passive prenatal safety.

Dougherty: “The lack of emotional resources in the schizoid patient and the apparent lack of interest in the relationship may lead the therapist to believe that the patient is depressed and in depression. However, in the case of schizoid encapsulation, there is no dark guilt characteristic of depression. Inability to express feelings, emptiness and sluggish expression indicate a schizoid character structure. A schizoid person can become depressed, for example, having experienced a loss, but limited affect and depression are not the same thing."

Guntrip: “The stage at which the infant begins to move out of primary identification with the mother and begins to experience its separation from the mother is a dangerous point in development if the mother does not provide the infant with adequate ego support. And this danger lies not in the fact that his instinctive drives are not satisfied, but in the fact that his basic experience of identity is lost. Its core splits, partly displaced by primitive defenses, partly goes into deep fear and retains great personal potential, which remains unawakened and undeveloped. " Subsequently, the schizoid client feels "emptiness", "nothingness" at its core.

The infantile need is a natural imperative to “receive” food, bodily care and contact, and emotional object relationships - from the mother first. The infant is so helpless that his natural needs are urgent, and if they are not quickly met, panic and rage develops. Then the “need-based relationship” with the mother becomes frightening because it becomes dangerously intense and even destructive. Indifference is the exact opposite of love, which becomes too dangerous to express. Everything seems futile and meaningless. Feeling "futile" is a specific schizoid affect. The depressed person fears the loss of his object. The schizoid, in addition to this, fears the loss of his identity, the loss of himself. Responses to deprivation include anger, hunger, genuine fear and withdrawal, and to these are added responses to a real external threat. In an effort to maintain a safe personal space, schizoid clients often come across as aloof and detached.

The schizoid must always strive hard for relationships for the sake of safety and immediately break out of these relationships for the sake of freedom and independence: the oscillation between regression to the womb and the struggle for birth, between absorbing his ego and separating it from the person he loves. Such "Now in, now out" program (the term Gantripa), always leading to a break with what a person is holding on to at a given time, is the most characteristic behavior for a schizoid conflict.“Rapid approach and retreat”, “clinging and breaking”, of course, are extremely destructive and impede all connections in life, and at some point the anxiety becomes so strong that it cannot be tolerated. Then the person completely leaves object relations, becomes clearly schizoid, emotionally inaccessible, detached. This state of emotional apathy, the absence of any feeling - excitement or enthusiasm, attachment or anger - can be very successfully masked.

There are various possibilities to maintain life in the external world despite the significant loss of vital senses. Ways of life can be invented that do not depend on the immediate vitality of the "perception" of the object world. Such a view can easily turn into an unshakable fulfillment of "duty" regardless of the realities of human life and the feelings of others. Or, again, life can be reduced to an ordinary routine, doing obvious things mechanically, without any attempt at deliberation, in a cold indifference that freezes everything around, but is safe for the person concerned. The whole range of this kind is possible stabilization of the schizoid personality - from mild to fixed tendency. All these methods, on the one hand, help the schizoid to save himself from escaping from reality, which would result in the loss of the ego, on the other hand, they pose a danger to that hidden part of the personality, which is doomed to flee from life in the external world. This is the part of the personality that most needs help and healing.

More often there are people with milder traits of introversion and poor emotional contact with the outside world, who show signs of depression, which means that they are apathetic and perceive life as a futility - a schizoid state. Such people retain, albeit a small, effective rational rapport with their world. They are in the grip of a deep inner fear and step aside so that no one can harm them. On the other hand, such deep alienation can often be hidden behind the mask of compulsive sociability, incessant chatter and feverish activity.

That part of the personality that fights to maintain contact with life feels a deep fear of another, "hidden", departed personality, which is endowed with a tremendous ability to attract and absorb more and more from the rest of the personality. In this regard, strong defenses operate against her. If such defenses do not work, the ego of everyday consciousness experiences a growing loss of interest, energy, approaching exhaustion, apathy, derealization of the environment and depersonalization. It turns into an empty shell, the inhabitant of which has retired to a safer place. If this state goes too far, the central ego (usually an external self) becomes unable to maintain normal functioning, and the whole personality undergoes full-blown "Regressive decay".

Dougherty: Depersonalization and derealization - these are states of being experienced at the stage of primitive withdrawal, which precedes decompensation. When a person feels that he does not live in his own body, and life itself is not real, he clings with all his might to the feeling of his I. “Two figurative terms convey the experiences of a schizoid person approaching decompensation: "Unspeakable horror" and falling into "Black hole" … The term "unspeakable horror" was introduced to describe the extreme degree of anxiety in early childhood, describing the child's experiences in a situation where the mother is unable to contain his anxiety. He describes a silent experience of eerie and mysterious horror preceding schizoid disintegration."Inexpressible horror" as a state includes: deep pointless anxiety before entering a dangerous and unexplored area; a terrible premonition of imminent death and complete disappearance. Without the containing presence of an empathetic guardian, “unspeakable horror” remains for the child a primitive numinous experience, which in its untransformed form is practically intolerable.

The image of the "black hole" conveys the sensation of a catastrophic rupture of the I connectedness that arises as a result of total implosion. Like a collapsing star, a person falls into himself, being pulled into an icy nothingness, where there is no light, no meaning, no hope. The soil disappears from under his feet, and a person can no longer feel himself alive. In this state, identity, consciousness, the ability to comprehend experience disappear in the space of archetypal reality.

Departing from life, a person runs the risk of overshooting a certain "critical point", after which the powerful energy of the unconscious drags him into an intrapsychic vortex, taking him to the other side - into the schizoid landscape. The chilling fear of disintegration is not exclusively pathological in nature. In the first year of life, consciousness is just beginning to differentiate from the unconscious. And any child lives in a state of dependence on a guardian, who may or may not be present, be caring or indifferent. The child inevitably experiences moments when the perceived threat causes strong anxiety and helplessness, he cannot verbally communicate his needs or his own distress. In this state, the child needs support and reassurance from another who could contain his experiences. When the trauma is perceived as catastrophic, and the caregiver is unable to endure the child's fear, defenses come into play to prevent overwhelming mental disorganization. Trying to cope with the fear of disintegration, the child sacrifices the spontaneous manifestations of his Self, only then his body can survive. Putting it more dramatically: "In order to preserve its life, the body, in fact, ceases to live." Often during periods of stress, sudden change, or in the process of transformation, adults relive catastrophic anxiety. It is at such moments that we all experience a primitive fear of disintegration.

Schizoid regression is a move away from a bad outside world in search of security in the inner world. The problem of the schizoid is that his fearful withdrawal leads to an inability to make genuine connections with objects and to subsequent isolation, which entails the risk of total loss of all objects and, with this, the loss of his own identity. This is a serious question - will the departure of the schizoid and his regression lead to rebirth or to true death. Trying to save your ego from persecution by running inward to safety creates an even greater danger of losing your ego in another way. The characteristic feature of the definitively regressed ego is dependent passivity, the autonomic passivity of the intrauterine state, which promoted initial growth and which can contribute to recuperation.

Deprivation of needs is not the only reason for schizoid withdrawal. Winnicott emphasizes that the mother should not only satisfy the needs of the baby when he feels them, but also should not impose herself on the baby at a time when he does not want it. This becomes an "encroachment" on the still weak, immature and sensitive ego of the baby, which he cannot bear and hides in himself. There are many other sources of "negative pressure" in unloving, authoritarian and aggressive families, in which the infant often develops real fear. The problem arises not only because of the child's need for parents, but also because of parental pressure on the child, which is often exploited in the interests of the parents and not the child himself.

Associated with this is the contempt that many clients express for their need to depend on the help of others or the therapist. It is easy to see this also from the fear and hatred of weakness interspersed with our cultural relationships. The reason why there is a taboo on tenderness is that tenderness is considered a weakness in all but the most intimate relationships, and many people consider tenderness a weakness even in this area and introduce patterns of dominance into love life. Weakness is taboo; what no one dares to admit is a feeling of weakness, no matter how strong the real weakness may be in them in infancy.

Fear and struggle against regressive striving and fear of falling asleep and relaxation are part of the psyche's self-defense against the inner danger of losing all contact with external reality, which constantly stimulates efforts to restore this contact.

Efforts are usually made over many years to prevent regression, although occasional breakdowns occur, such as every four to five years, with minor signs of fatigue and tension between breakdowns. In many cases, however, very powerful defenses of a sadistic nature in relation to its vitalitywhich direct energetically charged, albeit extremely intense, drives into real life.

The hope and possibility of rebirth of the regressed ego is the task of therapy

Psychotherapy becomes a realistic attempt to reconcile the departed frightened infantile ego in the inner world with the outer reality.

1. 1. The first aspect of the problem is the slow emergence from the shackles of sadistic self-persecution. Schizoid individuals need to stop ruthlessly persecuting themselves under the incessant mental pressure to behave like "forced pseudoadults" and to gain the courage to accept the therapist's understanding attitude towards their inner frightened and under intense pressure.
   2. Simultaneously with this, the second process is taking place - the growth of constructive faith in a "new beginning": if the needs of the regressed ego are satisfied, first in a relationship with the therapist, who protects the regressed ego in its need for initial passive dependence, then this does not mean a collapse and loss of active forces for all times, but a stable way out of deep tension, a decrease in deep fears, a re-revitalization of the personality and the revival of an active ego, which is spontaneous and which does not need to be "driven" and forced. What Ballint called "primitive passive addiction" that made possible a "new beginning", and Winnicott called "the true self, hidden in a safe vault and waiting for an auspicious chance of rebirth." Finally, Guntrip emphasized that regression and disease are not the same … Regression is an escape in search of safety and a chance for a new beginning. But regression becomes a disease in the absence of any therapeutic person with whom and to whom one could regress.

The ego without object connections becomes meaningless. The search for objects is the source of the ability to love, and maintaining connections is the main expressing activity of the whole self. In a deeply schizoid person, the vital core of the self and the active search for object connections are equally paralyzed, which results in a state from which he himself cannot escape. The more intense the client's need for therapeutic regression, the more he fears it and the more he resists it in the internal struggle that fills him with extremely painful physical and mental tension.

The schizoid person can maintain his existence through hatred when love is impossible. However, such motivation is destructive, aimed at either destroying bad internal objects or destroying the bad element in good objects. It does not in itself have any constructive purpose and does not provide any experience of a positive self. Hatred, together with the guilt it generates, becomes for the manic-depressive person a way of maintaining contact of the ego with objects in order to prevent disintegration into a schizoid state; for in this state the individual always feels on the verge of hopeless despair, not having a strong enough identity to make any real contacts, unless the therapist supports the patient in his isolation.

The struggle to destroy identification is long and arduous, and in therapy it briefly repeats the entire process of growth towards the normal combination of voluntary dependence and independence that is characteristic of the mature adult. One of the reasons for anxiety is that separation may not be perceived as natural growth and development, but as a violent, vicious, destructive breakup, as if the baby at birth was destined to leave the mother dying from childbirth. However, the main cause of anxiety is that separation entails the threat of loss of identity.

Schizoid clients simultaneously seek and resist a real good object connection with the therapist. They cling tenaciously to their external bad objects because they are their internal bad objects that they are unable to leave behind. Bad parents are better than none. The loss of internalized bad objects can be followed by both depressive and schizoid reactions. The client cannot give up and become independent of the internalized bad parental objects, and therefore cannot recover and become a mature person, unless he strengthens a good relationship with his therapist as a real good object; otherwise, he will feel left without any object connections, experiencing that extreme horror that the withdrawn schizoid always fears.

The transition from the original archetypal transfer to a more personal one is very frightening, but it is he who can slowly lead from the inner world of imagination to human tears and close contact. The ability to perceive the therapist as not compulsive, but as a benevolent and helpful person does not appear immediately, but it is this ability that helps to ease the feeling of overwhelming physical and emotional neglect or abuse.

A well-intentioned therapist's manifestation of warmth and anxiety in the earliest stages of work can be perceived as a flood threat and ultimately have a devastating effect on the formation of working relationships. Schizoid clients need emotional space. Only with a smooth modulation from one accurate interaction to another, trusting relationships begin to gradually build, and the therapist's keen interest will be perceived more tolerantly, laying the foundation that will later allow him to release the grip of encapsulation. On the other hand, early resistance to transference and alienation is the very protection that must be dismantled so that the process can move on.

Guntrip: Schizoid withdrawal, if understood correctly, is intelligent behavior in the circumstances that gave rise to it. Winnicott argues that under pressure, the infant pulls his real self away from the collision in order to later wait for a more favorable chance for rebirth. However, this retreat in order to save the "hidden ego" also goes a long way, undermining the "manifested ego", which perceives such behavior as a threat of decay or death.

With the destruction of the schizoid defense, the threat of flooding by the unconscious increases significantly. When the frequency of recourse to encapsulation decreases, unmediated, previously unconscious primitive affects of rage, horror and despair begin to appear. Simultaneously with the appearance of gross affects, the body is more and more filled with primitive energy and becomes responsive. The awakening of physical sensations such as pain and pleasure can greatly complicate the life of a person who was previously encapsulated. Suddenly released sexuality, neglected health problems and the ability to commit destructive actions come to the fore. Feeling a revived body is both scary and interesting.

Dougherty: “Clinicians often believe that schizoid character structures are found exclusively in mentally disabled people. As a result, these character problems remain underexamined among clients and therapists, and in society at large.”

McWilliams: “One of the reasons mental health professionals fail to notice highly functional schizoid dynamics is that many of these people are 'hiding' or passing 'through' non-schizoid others. Their personality traits include an "allergy" to being the object of intrusive attention, and in addition, schizoids are afraid of being exposed to the public as weirdos and madmen. Since non-schizoid observers tend to attribute pathology to people who are more reclusive and eccentric than themselves, the schizoid's fear of being scrutinized and exposed as abnormal or not entirely normal is quite realistic. In addition, many highly effective schizoids are concerned about their own normality, regardless of whether they have actually lost it or not. The fear of being in the category of psychotics may be a projection of a belief in the intolerance of their inner experience, which is so private, unrecognizable and not mirrored by others that they think their isolation equals madness.

Even mental health professionals sometimes equate schizoid with mental primitiveness and primitiveness with abnormality. M. Klein's brilliant interpretation of the paranoid-schizoid position as the basis for the ability to withstand separation (that is, for a depressive position) was a contribution to the perception of the phenomena of the early stages of development as immature and archaic.

It is likely that schizoid people are mentally in the same position as people belonging to sexual minorities. They are sensitive to the risk of appearing deviant, sick, or behavior-disturbed to those with normal mentalities, simply because they are truly a minority. Mental health professionals sometimes discuss schizoid topics in a tone similar to that previously used when discussing the LGBT community. We have a tendency to both equate dynamics with pathology and generalize a whole group of people on the basis of individual representatives.

Schizoid fear stigmatization understandable given the fact that people unwittingly reinforce each other on the assumption that the more common psychology is normal, and the exceptions are psychopathology. Perhaps there are notable internal differences between people, expressing psychodynamic factors as well as others (constitutional, contextual, differences in life experience), which in terms of mental health are no better or worse. The tendency of people to rank differences according to some scale of values is deeply rooted and minorities belong to the lower rungs of such hierarchies."

Literature:

1. Bowlby J. Affection. Translated from English by N. G. Grigorieva and G. V. Burmese. - M., 2003.

2. Gantrip G. Schizoid Phenomena, Object Relationships and Self, 1969.

3. Dougherty NJ, West JJ The Matrix and Potential of Character: From the Position of the Archetypal Approach and Theories of Development: In Search of the Inexhaustible Source of the Spirit. - Per. from English - M.: Kogito-Center, 2014

4. Klein M. Notes on some schizoid mechanisms. 1946 Report to the British Psychoanalytic Society

5. Klein M. Sadness and Manic-depressive states, 1940.