to the paralysis. I felt that if I let myself go into it, something catastrophic would happen. I made myself wake up fully.
The analysis of Paul's experience shows that the terror manifested in the trembling anxiety and feeling of paralysis developed when Paul made a spontaneous gesture to reach out for pleasure. This gesture of reaching out to suck stirred some childhood memories in which a similar activity threatened to have a catastrophic result. As an infant, Paul met with a hostile reaction from his mother when he made a demand upon her. Her hostility was expressed in a look of murderous rage which the child understood as, I've had enough of your demands; if you don't shut up, I will leave you or destroy you! Such parental expressions of hostility are not uncommon. Many mothers scream their rage and exasperation. Some have even told me how many times they felt they could have killed their children. One such experience will not lead to an overwhelming terror in the child, but if it represents an unconscious attitude on the part of the mother, the effect on the child will be one of fear that any demand it makes could lead to abandonment or destruction. In turn, the child develops a murderous rage against the parent, which is equally terrifying.
The overall effect of such experiences is to inhibit the individual's aggression. The schizoid individual becomes afraid to make demands on life that would lead to pleasure and satisfaction. Reaching out to the world evokes a vague sense of terror. He guards against this terror by narrowing his environment and restricting his activities. I had a patient who was very uncomfortable when she had to travel outside of the area in which she lived. In other patients it is experienced as a panic at the thought of going out on the streets alone or making a trip. In all schizoid patients the terror is related to the fear of losing control, since loss of control would allow the emergence of repressed impulses which, as in Paul's case, carry in their wake the possibility of catastrophic results.
The inhibition of aggression, the restriction of activity, and the necessity for control impose a rigidity upon the body that limits self-assertive gestures. Impulses are restrained, and finally, impulse formation is weakened. Having repressed his desires out of fear, the schizoid individual ends up not knowing what he wants. The denial of pleasure leads to a rejection of the body. To survive in the face of terror he deadens his body by reducing his breathing and his motility.
In view of this situation, it is easy to understand the schizoid detachment and uninvolvement as a defense against terror. To the degree that he can keep himself aloof from emotional relationships, he can avoid the terror that might follow the breakthrough of repressed impulses. His physical rigidity serves the same purpose. But detachment and isolation diminish his contact with reality, undermine his ego, and weaken his sense of identity. Non-involvement also deprives him of the emotional satisfactions which sustain normal relationships and provide an inner feeling of well-being. Finally, rigidity creates an inner emptiness and vacuum which threatens to collapse the schizoid structure.
This defense against terror requires another maneuver. The schizoid individual uses “pseudo-contacts” and “intellectualizations” to maintain contact with reality and support a pattern of behavior which resembles the normal; that is, he plays a role. This unconscious role provides him with an identity and a meaning for his activities. As long as the role can be maintained, the danger of decompensation or of collapse into terror and insanity can be averted. But this maneuver also has its difficulties. Role playing narrows the base of existence. An assumed identity may crumble in the confrontation with the self when one is alone. For this reason, the schizoid is often afraid to be alone. Thus, all aspects of his defense (and maneuvers) render the schizoid vulnerable to the very dangers they are designed to avoid.
Schizoid behavior differs from normal behavior in important respects. It lacks the motivations which determine normal behavior; that is, it is not motivated by the search for pleasure but by the need to survive and the desire to escape the loneliness imposed by emotional detachment. It rests upon rationalizations (May's “technical formulations”) and role playing and does not stem from genuine feeling. Thus, while the schizoid is enabled to function, his behavior and actions have the bizarre quality one associates with automatons and creatures who go through the motions of living without a feeling for life.
It would be a mistake, however, to regard the schizoid individual as deprived of all feeling. Behind his defense lies an intense longing for real contact, warmth, and love. These desires are not completely absent from his motivation. Much as he may impress one at times as an automaton, he comes through at other times as a person in trouble. His actions not only resemble the normal, they partake of the normal. The difference from the normal is fundamentally one of degree. To the extent that the desire for pleasure and satisfaction motivates his behavior, he is normal. To the extent that he represses those feelings but acts as if they determined his behavior, he is schizoid.
THE DYNAMICS OF THE SCHIZOID DEFENSE
The schizoid defense is an emergency mechanism for coping with a danger to life and sanity. In this struggle all mental faculties are engaged in the fight for survival. Survival depends upon the absolute control and mastery of the body by the mind. If the mind should relax its vigilance, catastrophe would occur. In the normal individual, in whom no terror lurks, the body is not immobilized by the struggle for survival and is free to pursue its natural desire for pleasure.
One of my patients repeatedly saw in a Rorschach test the image of a person hanging on to the edge of a cliff. This vision was a projection of his unconscious awareness that he hovered over an abyss, and that to save life and reason, he must hang on with all his might. It also indicated the magnitude of the terror against which he struggled. The physical effort to hang on, literally, consumed all his energy. His improvement was ushered in by a feeling of exhaustion and a need to sleep. This indicated that his state of jeopardy had passed and that he was able to relax for the first time. In therapy, exhaustion is one of the first signs that the patient is coming into contact with his body in a meaningful way.
The immobilization of the schizoid body results in a lack of aliveness and responsiveness. The schizoid individual perceives this unresponsiveness as an “emptiness” in his body. If the condition becomes aggravated, that is, if there is further loss of feeling, he feels “removed.” His mind, as Jack said, feels detached from his body. He feels outside of himself, watching himself.
The mind and body of a normal individual function as complementary systems to further the well-being and pleasurable feelings of the individual. When an impulse arises in the body, the mind determines its meaning, adapts it to reality, and regulates its release. In all higher animals where the mind-body duality exists, the mind functions to control and coordinate movement in the interest of reality, while the body provides the impetus, the energy, and the mechanism for motion. Behavior which has this integrated aspect has an emotional quality. It starts from an impulse, which then gives rise to feeling, thought, and appropriate action. This kind of body-mind relationship is operative in emotional responses motivated by the desire for pleasure.
In the schizoid individual, whose impulses are rigidly controlled because of the underlying terror, there is an absence of feeling upon which the mind can act. In place of feeling, the mind substitutes logical thought as the motivation for action. The body becomes an instrument of the will, obeying the commands of the mind. I explain this difference to my patients as follows. Normally, one eats when one is hungry, but in the schizoid state, one has lunch because it is twelve o'clock. Although many people who are not schizoid are constrained to eat at fixed hours, it nevertheless illustrates the principle to my patients. The schizoid individual engages in sports or does exercises to improve his control over his body and not for the pleasure of the activity or the movement. Lacking the binding power of pleasure, the unity of his personality is threatened. He compensates for this lack by an increase in the direct control over the body by the mind acting through the will. By such a mechanism, schizoid individuals frequently become outstanding dancers, actors, or athletes.
In the normal individual, in addition to regulating and controlling the action of impulses, the mind can also, at times, command the body to act contrary
