How The Schizoid Was Formed

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

Who is a schizoid and how is a schizoid character formed? It doesn't really have much to do with schizophrenia. If a person is a schizoid, it is not a fact that he will necessarily become a schizophrenic. Schizoids are often very highly organized and their psyche is at a healthy level of development. The schizoid and schizophrenia have only one thing in common - this is "schiza," splitting. Schizophrenia is a splitting of the mind, the schizoid is one of the splits.

Now about how the schizoid is formed. This happens in early childhood - up to 1-1, 5 years old - this is the pre-verbal, oral period. The baby has a mother. And if she is cold, not emotionally involved enough, emotionally included, does not sufficiently satisfy his needs for nutrition, attention, warmth, care, and to contain his experiences, then he becomes hungry.

Let's consider 2 options for character development in this case - depressive and schizoid. If a child develops a depressive character, then he is angry with the mother, experiencing rage, anger, aggression. He wants to destroy his mother because she does not give him what he wants. Hatred arises in him, and it is directed at himself.

And the schizoid, the second variant of development, he also wants this love, warmth, care, acceptance from his mother. But instead of hatred and rage, he has a very strong love for his mother. Relatively speaking "love", because love is a rather mature experience. And for a child this need, called love, is the need for a mother, for her warmth. These are vital needs through which he can survive. He needs another object to keep him safe. So much needed that it feels like love. But this hunger becomes love and the child begins to fear that he will destroy his mother with his love.

How does this happen? For example, the mother was feeding at the wrong time, and he was very thirsty for the breast. She brings the baby's breast, and he just wants to swallow it, eat it. And then, when this kid grows up, he perceives the relationship in about the same way or projectively. For him, love is hunger. He loves and hates the object of his affection at the same time. He has very strong this back and forth movement, then I love, then I hate, then go to the figs, then go, I will cuddle strongly, strongly and will never let go. And projectively, this person develops such a fear that if he enters into a relationship, he will be swallowed up. Because when I was little I wanted to swallow it myself. And in an adult state, with a certain amount of therapy, he can admit that he loves a person so much, especially in the early stages of a relationship, that he is ready to absorb. And then he hates him just as much that he wants to kill.

What is splitting? The fact that the child has such a strong hunger and at the same time such a strong fear that he will destroy the mother with this hunger and this love that he cannot digest so many emotions. At the age when it was forming, he did not yet have the ability to contain such high affective feelings. Then, conventionally speaking, he curls up and goes inside himself: “Fu - fu - fu, everyone around is bad. I will withdraw into myself. And how is the inner world, inner experience formed? The inner world is formed by means of external objects in a very early, just pre-verbal period of life. That is, if I have a bad mother, then I internalize, put her inside myself. And now I do not perceive her as a mother. It's just that there is an object inside me that is as bad as my mother. If my mother scolded me, then I continue to scold myself with such a text. Already, of course, my voice, instead of her. But the text is the same and the sensations are the same that she inspired me. And, accordingly, the child goes inside himself, but this manifests itself already in a more adult state.

Here a person goes inside himself, and there are also bad objects. He goes outside and looks for other people. And often it either meets bad objects, or endows them with badness. As a result, he feels bad from the outside, the deep need for love, for care, for acceptance is not satisfied. She did not go anywhere, she was not satisfied since childhood, even when she was just one year old. And a person carries this hole with him inside out of an unmet need for love, care, acceptance, warmth. And it is quite difficult to fill it. Because you need to fill with love, all-embracing, unconditional, with full dedication from another person, but not all-consuming. And then he rushes with this hole, and wants to another person. And he cannot fill, because in adulthood people no longer coddle each other, as with little ones. And then the schizoid becomes frustrated, again withdraws into himself. Schizoids are characterized by such regression - the strongest withdrawal of oneself, as in the womb. This is what psychoanalysts call “going into the womb,” the state of such a small, small self. Experiences like depression, but it's not really depression.

Accordingly, a schizoid cannot be in a relationship, but also cannot but be in a relationship. Because he is very bad himself and the internal objects pester him too. Accordingly, what kind of mother was the schizoid? As a rule, she was either very emotionally poor, detached, depressed, she did not have anything to give to the child. Or overprotective, strongly absorbing, not letting the child go anywhere without her, always in control. And he needed distance, he was already suffocating and therefore withdrew into himself. And another very common variant is a mother giving double messages: "Stay there - come here, I love you, but I will knock you, you tell me the truth, but I will knock you for this, etc." And then for this child, relationships become a problem. Because on the one hand, he wants a warm, accepting, understanding relationship, but he runs into cold and rejection.