Schizoid Personality Disorder is a pervasive pattern of asociality, and is what many people refer to when they colloquially describe someone as “antisocial” (in the sense of lacking interest in socializing with others).
Before getting into factors in modern society that promote the schizoid personality type, here are a few things to understand about schizoid PD:
- Schizoid PD has been grouped with other “Cluster A” personality disorders. Cluster A personality disorders are marked by “odd or eccentric behavior.” Other Cluster A disorders include Paranoid Personality Disorder & Schizotypal Personality Disorder
- Schizoid PD is theorized to be on the Schizophrenia spectrum, meaning that the genotype and phenotype of schizoid PD are “cousins” of schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders.
- Recent estimates suggest that 1% of the population meets criteria for schizoid personality disorder
- Identical twin studies show that there is a 30% concordance rate of schizoid PD between twins
While there may be a significant genetic component of schizoid pd, many have speculated that aspects of modern life may be responsible for a growing number of cases and/or a greater expression of schizoid traits throughout the population.
Psychodynamics of Schizoid PD
Schizoid is a term that has the same origins of the “schizo” in schizophrenia, meaning “split.” The split that occurs in schizoid personality disorder is a drastic one, involving a detachment of libido (in other words, psychic energy and attention) away from the social sphere and into the internal world of fantasy.
People with schizoid personality disorder often have rich fantasy lives, which given certain conditions over time, becomes preferable to engagement with others. In other words, when the internal world becomes more appealing than the social world, the developmental conditions for schizoid personality disorder have been met.
Another crucial aspect of the schizoid (“or split”) adaptation to extreme developmental conditions, is that the internal split (i.e., severing most libidinal ties to external reality) is created by rage. And, the rage in schizoid pd arises from two main sources:
- Profound emotional invalidation
- Consistent overriding of the individual’s healthy attempts to achieve greater autonomy and mastery
Trends in child-rearing
Decreased opportunities for free, imaginative, and social play:
Free, unstructured play is one of the most important ingredients to healthy social development. Playing with others, making up games, establishing rules, resolving conflict, and imagining things together is the best buffer against the emergence of a schizoid withdrawal.
Many pinpoint collective hysteria around the existence of child abduction and satanic, pedophiliac sex cults in the 1980’s as the beginning of the decline in free, unstructured, outside play. Increasing pressures and expectations around academic achievement are also credited for the decline in free play.
Increased management and surveillance of children’s activities:
As a corollary to the decline in unstructured play, children in recent decades have been exposed to an increase in regimented, structured activities. For example, private tutors, demanding extracurricular activities, and closely-monitored homework completion.
Being watched more closely while losing outlets to “blow off steam” is a contributor to the rise in all sorts of mental health problems, including schizoid pd. Anxiety, depression, OCD, ADHD, bulimia/anorexia nervosa, among other psychiatric disorders may all be rooted in decreased freedom to play and explore in childhood.
Greater external inhibition of healthy expressions of anger and aggression:
The more an individual feels stifled in their expression of healthy anger, the more anger must be dealt with internally. It’s the gradual build-up, or (learned helplessness in behavioral terms) around anger that leads to greater dissociation between communicative engagement and fantasy life.
Inhibition of healthy expressions of anger can either look like harsh punishment for displays of anger, or it can be a more subtle, rigid demand that appearances of a happy, polite, home be upheld.
Expansion in sources of self-stimulation
Video games, online video content, pornography, niche chat forums, etc. all provide the individual highly stimulating and engaging ways to nurture personali interests. For most people, this can be a healthy, validating environment. However, in certain conditions, such as the ones described thus far, the individual can become dependent and even addicted to the refuge of niched interests, fantasy and imagination.
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