Actualizing persons interact with the world through rhythms of
contact and withdrawal, involvement and detachment, activity and passivity.
Contact, involvement, and activity require action to engage in work, relationships,
or self-development. Withdrawal, detachment, and passivity allow for resting
and sleeping, solitude, and recharging one’s batteries.
But the schizoid Loner cuts
this rhythm in half, fixating on withdrawal, detachment, and passivity. The
word schizoid derives from the Greek word schizoid
and means “split off.” All the compass points are collapsed, except for Weakness,
which intensifies into nothingness.
The Pattern’s Interior
The schizoid Loner is trapped on the Weakness
compass point. Loners withdraw because of an
indifference to everything—to friends and relations, to vocational enjoyment,
to duties or rights, to good fortune or bad. The rewards
and pleasures of human companionship mean nothing to them.
Karen Horney
noted that schizoids actively “move away from people” by forming an impenetrable
shell that makes other people fade out of consciousness. The phrase, “Out of sight,
out of mind,” is not just a credo. It is a daily goal.
 |
| Hermit Crab |
Not only do
others disappear off their radar screen, but their emotions evaporate as well.
This life plan has its merits in that schizoid Loners maintain simple lives,
untroubled by feelings, impervious to relationships, and undisturbed by inner
conflicts. In fact, if a person wants to live an ascetic life that is celibate
and single, the schizoid pattern offers the structure and function for doing
so.
Perhaps this accounts for the secret superiority often noted in schizoid
counselees. Compass theory posits that this tendency reflects the psychodynamics
of a tightly repressed Strength compass point that acts out in the form of
unconscious narcissism. Millon notes: “Fantasy in a schizoid-like person sometimes
betrays the presence of a secret grandiose self that longs for respect and
recognition while offsetting fears that the person is really an outcast.”
While everyone
needs a rhythm that includes occasional withdrawal and detachment, the schizoid
Loner’s selection of isolation as a long-term coping pattern leads into dangerous
territory: a solitary confinement that begins as a retiring lifestyle, but can
spiral into schizotypal eccentricity, possibly leading to several types of
schizophrenia. For this reason Rollo May has described the schizoid life as
existentially hollow.
This
hollowness reflects the interpersonal truth that human beings need social
stimulation, and when they isolate from the rewards and consensual validation
society normally provides, their psyche begins to create its own media show:
excessive daydreaming, voices that speak from illusory entities, and the
formation of an alternate reality that is light years away from normalcy.
In other
words, the psychospiritual energy for actualizing growth, when not pursued,
doesn’t just disappear; unconscious forces convert it into the landscape of the
Loner’s version of the universe. In Self Compass terms, the Loner-patterned
person lacks esteem for self or others (Strength compass point), love for self
or others (Love compass point), and courage to take risks for self-development
or the bettering of circumstances (Assertion compass point). The energy from
these compass points is shunted into exaggerated weakness, creating a barren
existence rather akin to the hermit crab.
By applying
techniques that balance a healthy Weakness compass point with an awakening of
the Strength, Love, and Assertion compass points, therapeutic intervention generates
enough aliveness to jump-start the Loner’s motivational engine and develop the
LAWS of personality.
For more on the schizoid Loner personality disorder see:
