this period I had a constant fantasy. I fantasized that I was riding a horse. Everyone else had a horse, but mine was better than theirs.
Men absolutely terrified me. I had no friends through high school and only one date in college.
Jane was at war with her sexual feelings. She could neither accept them nor repress them. The result was an intense conflict that tormented her and from which she attempted to escape through the world of fantasy. In her fantasy, the horse can be interpreted as a symbol of the body, especially the lower half. Her attempt to deny the reality of her body was only partially successful. Its feelings intruded on her consciousness and demanded satisfaction even at the price of enormous guilt.
The split in Jane's personality was also manifested on the physical level, in a very striking way. From the waist down, Jane ‘s body was heavy, hairy, and dark-hued. Her hips and thighs were large and their muscle tone was poor. Above her waist she was dainty: her chest was narrow; her shoulders sloped sharply down; her neck was long and thin; and her head was small, with regular features. The skin tone of the upper half of her body was fair. The contrast between the two halves was sharp. From the lower half of her body one had the impression of sexual maturity and womanhood that was ripe, or perhaps, in view of its flaccidity and heaviness, overripe. The upper half of her body had an innocent, childlike appearance.
Who was Jane? Was she the dainty creature riding regally on the lower half of her body or was she the horse with whom she also identified and upon whom her ego rode like a queen? Obviously, she was both, but she was unable to reconcile these two aspects of her personality.
4. The next case, though less severe in its manifestations of illness, presents another aspect of the schizoid disturbance. Sarah was a divorcee with a five-year-old son. The breakup of her marriage was quite a shock to her and brought on a deep depression. I diagnosed her character structure as schizoid although her superficial behavior gave little evidence of so severe a disorder. She expressed her problem as follows:
It's not that I'm unreal, yet I feel that my relations to people are not real. I often wonder what people think of me when I am doing something. I have delusions of grandeur. I feel that they must think I'm great. But really, I see that I can't cope. My performance doesn't measure up to my expectations.
I had been aware of an arrogance in Sarah's manner and speech which is typical of certain schizoid individuals. Sarah impressed me as one who thought she had superior qualities or superior intelligence. When I questioned her about the nature of her delusions of grandeur, she replied:
My delusion is that I have a good character in general. For example, even now, I expect people to say what a good mother I am. How well I treat my son! I was always the teacher's pet. I never disobeyed. I was a classic “goody-goody.”
Sarah was a small girl-woman with a petite, dainty face, square shoulders, and delicate body structure. Her physical appearance suggested a frightened, immature person, while her speech and manner reflected maturity and confidence. This contradiction in her personality suggested a schizoid disturbance. But there were other signs of unreality about Sarah, despite her statement to the contrary. These signs were mostly physical: the lack of contact between her eyes and mine, a frozen quality in her facial expression, a rigidity of the body structure, and a lack of coordination in body movement.
Sarah played a role, that of the “good” compliant child who did what was expected of her and did it well. Her role playing was so unconscious that she expected people to approve of her as if she were a child. Many people play certain roles in life without thereby becoming schizoid. It is a matter of degree. When the role dominates the personality, when the whole is lost in the part (the part acted out), when, as in Sarah's case, the person cannot be seen or reached behind the mask and the costume, one is justified in describing such a personality as schizoid.
In terms of symptoms each of the four cases—Jack, Peter, Jane, and Sarah—was different. In terms of the two variables which determine this illness they were alike. Each one suffered from conflicts that split the unity of his personality, and in each there was some loss of contact with reality. The most important aspect of these cases, however, was that the conflict and the withdrawal were manifested physically. Jack could describe his problems with a verbal fluency that contrasted sharply with the rigidity and immobility of his body. In Peter the conflict was expressed in the contrast between the athletic appearance of his body and its marked incoordination. Jane showed the conflict in the contrast between the two halves of her body while Sarah's sophisticated attitude contrasted sharply with the immaturity of her body.
Withdrawal from reality was manifested in each of the four patients by the lack of aliveness and the emotional unresponsiveness of the body. An observer of the schizoid individual gets the impression that he is not fully “with it.” Phrases such as “not with it” or “not all there” are commonly used to describe a schizzy quality in a person. We sense his detachment or removal. This impression stems from his vacant eyes, his masklike face, his rigid body, and his lack of spontaneity. He is not absent-minded like the proverbial professor who is absorbed in some mental preoccupation. The schizoid individual is consciously aware of his surroundings, but on the emotional or body level he is out of touch with the situation. Unfortunately, we lack an expression to denote the complement of absentmindedness. Schizzy is the only word that describes a person who is mentally present, but absent on an emotional level.
An air of unreality is the hallmark of the schizoid personality. It accounts for his “strangeness” both to us and to himself. It is also expressed in his movements. He walks mechanically, like a wooden soldier, or he floats zombie-like through life. Ernst Kretschmer's description of the physical appearance of the schizoid individual emphasizes this point.
This lack of liveliness, of immediately reacting vivacity, of psychomotor expression, is found also in the most gifted members of the group with their hypersensitive inner capacities for reaction.5
When an individual's appearance is so bizarre that his unreality is clearly evident, he is called psychotic, schizophrenic, or insane. The schizoid person feels his unreality as an inner emptiness and as a sensation of being removed or detached from his environment. His body may feel alien to him or almost nonexistent, as the following observation indicates.
Going to work yesterday I didn't feel my body. I felt skinny, like a bag of bones. I never felt so bodiless. I just floated in. It was terrible. I felt strange in the office. Everything felt different, unreal. I had to pull myself together to be able to work.
This graphic description of depersonalization shows both the loss of feeling of the body and the concomitant loss of contact with the environment. In other cases the tenuous contact with reality is threatened when the schizoid individual uses drugs which further dissociate his mind from his body. For example, Virginia took “pot” (marijuana) one night. This is what happened:
I had the feeling I was watching myself. I felt my body was doing things which were not connected with me. It was very frightening, so I got into bed. I became paranoid. I was afraid I might jump out of the window.
The schizoid may be said to live in limbo, that is, he is not “gone,” as is the schizophrenic, nor is he fully “with it.” He is often found on the fringes of society, where, with like kind, he feels somewhat at home. Many schizoids are the sensitive persons who become the poets, the painters, and the musicians. Others exploit the various esoteric cults which flourish in the borderlands of our society. These cults are of several kinds—those that use drugs to achieve higher states of consciousness, those in which Oriental philosophies are exploited to find a meaning in life, and those in which various body exercises offer the promise of a fuller self. But it would be a serious error to assume that the schizoid personality is found only in this milieu. He may also be the engineer who runs his life like a machine or the schoolteacher who is quiet, withdrawn, shy, and homosexual.
