BDC #30 - Schizoid Personality Disorder: Just simply a poker face and loner

Have you ever checked your own personality or mental disorder? Well, just out of curiosity? If yes, how many of you got a tendency of Schizoid Personality Disorder?

Don't worry, Schizoid is not the same as Schizophrenia. You know, the voices in you head..like in the movies.
"Kill your self"
"Kill them"

NO...it's not the same...rest assured

 Schizoid Personality Disorder is actually a personality disorder included in group of conditions "Cluster A" or eccentric personality disorder. People with schizoid tend to be distant, detached, and indifferent to social relationship.

The term "schizoid" was firstly used in 1908 by Eugen Bleuler to designate a human tendency to direct their attention toward their inner lives and away from the external world. Bleuler labeled this exaggeration of the tendency as the schizoid personality.


Studies on the schizoid personality have developed along two distinct paths. The first one is the descriptive psychiatry, focuses on overtly observable, behavioral and describable symptoms and finds its clearest exposition in the DSM-IV revised.
The descriptive tradition began in 1925as Ernst Kretschmer tried to describe the observable schizoid behaviors, which he organized into three groups of characteristics:

1. unsociability, quietness, reservedness, seriousness, eccentricity
2. timidity, shyness with feelings, sensitivity, nervousness, excitability
3. pliability, honesty, indifference, silence, cold emotional attitudes.

The second path, the dynamic psychiatry, began in 1924 with observations by Eugen Bleuler, who observed that the schizoid person and schizoid pathology were not things to be set apart.
Following the dynamic path, W. R. D. Fairbairn presented in 1940 the four central schizoid themes:

1. the need to regulate interpersonal distance as a central focus of concern, 
2. the ability to mobilize self preservative defenses and self-reliance, 
3. a pervasive tension between the anxiety-laden need for attachment and the defensive need for distance that manifests in observable behavior as indifference, and 
4. an overvaluation of the inner world at the expense of the outer world.

Theodore Millon, in his book (2004; Personality disorder in modern life), identified four subtypes of schizoid. Any individual with schizoid may exhibit none or one of the following:

Subtype	Features
Languid schizoid (including depressive features)	Marked inertia; deficient activation level; intrinsically phlegmatic, lethargic, weary, leaden, lackadaisical, exhausted, enfeebled.
Remote schizoid (including avoidant, schizotypal features)	Distant and removed; inaccessible, solitary, isolated, homeless, disconnected, secluded, aimlessly drifting; peripherally occupied.
Depersonalized schizoid (including schizotypal features)	Disengaged from others and self; self is disembodied or distant object; body and mind sundered, cleaved, dissociated, disjoined, eliminated.
Affectless schizoid (including compulsive features)	Passionless, unresponsive, unaffectionate, chilly, uncaring, unstirred, spiritless, lackluster, unexcitable, unperturbed, cold; all emotions diminished.

It might be easy to spot a real loner. However, there are more people with a hidden schizoid tendency. Many fundamentally schizoid individuals present with an engaging, interactive personality style that contradicts the observable characteristic and definitions of the schizoid personality. Klein classifies these individuals as secret schizoids. They present themselves as socially available, interested, engaged and involved in interacting, BUT remain emotionally withdrawn and sequestered within the safety of the internal world.
Therefore, Klein gives big precaution that we should not miss identifying the schizoid patient because we cannot see the patient's withdrawal through the patient's defensive, compensatory interaction with external reality. He also suggests that we need to ask the patient what his or her subjective experience is in order to detect the presence of the schizoid refusal of emotional intimacy.
Actually, descriptions of the schizoid personality as "hidden" behind an good-cheeful-appearance of emotional engagement have been recognized as far back as 1940 with Fairbairn's description of schizoid exhibitionism, where the schizoid individual is able to express a great deal of feeling and to ake it impressive in social contacts, yet, in reality gives nothing and loses nothing. Because they are practically only "playing a part," their own personalities are not actually involved. According to Fairbairn, "the person disowns the part which he is playing and thus the schizoid individual seeks to preserve his own personality intact and immune from compromise."

There is no solid medications to treat individual with schizoid, unless they suffer heavy depression, they might get some pills. However, the main problem of the schizoid personalities can only be help with talk therapies. We need to explore more, why did they start to withdraw their selves.  

So, how deep are you willing to involve and help people with schizoid tendency? Try to check on some voices of them. (check out the blog below)

 I don't own the picture, try to check the blog ^^