Schizoid Dynamics by McWilliams

Tendencies,outlooks,etc
  • Harry Guntrip once joked to him that “psychoanalysis is a profession by schizoids for schizoids.
  • Think of the schizoid personality as defined by a fundamental and habitual reliance on the defense mechanism of withdrawal.
  • Fairbairn argued that the tragedy of schizoid children is that . . .they believe it is love, rather than hatred, that is the destructive force within.Love consumes. Hence the schizoid child’s chief mental operation is to repress the normal wish to be loved.
  • Describing the central dilemma of such a child, Seinfeld (1993, p. 3) writes that the schizoid individual has “a consuming need for object dependence, but attachment threatens the schizoid with the loss of self.” This internal conflict, elaborated in countless ways, is the heart of the psychoanalytic understanding of schizoid personality structure.
  • One seldom-appreciated quandary in which interpersonally sensitive schizoid individuals find themselves repeatedly involves the social situation in which they perceive, more than others do, what is going on nonverbally. be equally visible to the schizoid person, it is impossible for him or her to know what is socially acceptable to talk about and what is either unseen or unseemly to acknowledge.
  • The admiration between a more hysterical person and a more schizoid one is frequently mutual. Just as the hysterically organized woman idealizes the capacity of the schizoid man to stand alone, to “speak truth to power,” to contain affect, to tap into levels of creative imagination that she can only dream of, the schizoid man admires her warmth, her comfort with others, her empathy, her grace in expressing emotion without awkwardness or shame, her capacity to experience her own creativity in relationship. To whatever extent opposites do attract, hysterical and schizoid individuals tend to idealize each other--and then drive each other crazy when their respective needs for closeness and space come into conflict. Doidge (2001, p.286) memorably compared love relations with a schizoid person to litigation.
  • Sensitive clinical writers have also noted that schizoid individuals have radar forevasion, role-playing, and the false note. For this reason and others, one may need to be more “real” with them.
  • People with schizoid personality . . . tend to feel more comfortable with people who are in touch with themselves, who do not fear to reveal their weaknesses and appear mortal. I refer to an atmosphere that is relaxed and informal, where it is accepted that people err, may even lose control, behave childishly or even unacceptably. In such surroundings a person who is very sensitive by nature may be more open and expend less energy on hiding his/her differences. (“Mitmodedet,” 2002, p. 190)
  • One reason that a therapist’s willingness to reveal personal experiences catalyzes the therapy with schizoid clients is that even more than other individuals, these patients need to have their subjective experience acknowledged and accepted. Reassurance feels patronizing to them, and interpretation alone, however accurate, may fall short of conveying that what has been interpreted is unsurprising and even positive. I have known many people who spent years in analysis and emerged with a detailed understanding of their major psychodynamics, yet experienced what they uncovered as shameful admissions rather than as expressions of their essential humanity in all its ordinary depravity and virtue. The willingness of the analyst to be “real”- to be flawed, wrong, mad, insecure, struggling, alive, excited, authentic--may be the most believable route to fostering the schizoid person’s self-acceptance. Finally, there is the danger with schizoid patients that as they become more comfortable and self-revealing in therapy, they will make the professional relationship a substitute for the satisfactions they could be pursuing outside the consulting room. Many a therapist has worked with a schizoid client for months or years, feeling increasingly gratified in their engagement, before remembering with a jolt that the person originally came for help because of wanting to develop an intimate relationship that has so far shown no signs of being initiated. Because the line between being an encouraging presence and being an insensitive nag can be thin, it is a delicate art to embolden the patient without being experienced as impatient and critical in ways reminiscent of the early love objects. And when the therapist inevitably fails to be perceived differently, it takes discipline and patience to contain the patient’s hurt and outrage about once more being pushed into toxic relatedness.
Edit
Pub: 02 Feb 2023 14:37 UTC
Edit: 02 Feb 2023 18:16 UTC
Views: 87