"Schizoid" Not to be confused with Schizophrenia or Schizotypal personality disorder.
Schizoid personality disorder (SPD) is a personality disorder characterized by a lack of interest in social relationships, a tendency towards a solitary lifestyle, secretiveness, and emotional coldness. There is increased prevalence of the disorder in families with schizophrenia. SPD is not the same as schizophrenia, although they share some similar characteristics such as detachment or blunted affect.

"Patients with schizoid personality disorders consider themselves to be observers, rather than participants, in the world around them."

the majority of schizoids are not either oversensitive or cold, but they are oversensitive and cold “at the same time” in quite different relative proportions, with a tendency to move along these dimensions from one behavior to the other

Many fundamentally schizoid people present with an engaging, interactive personality style. Such a person can appear to be available, interested, engaged, and involved in interacting with others; however, in reality, he or she is emotionally withdrawn and sequestered in a safe place in an internal world.

The more that schizoids can rely on themselves, the less they have to rely on other people and expose themselves to the potential dangers and anxieties associated with that reliance or, even worse, dependence. The vast majority of schizoid individuals show an enormous capacity for self-sufficiency, for the ability to operate alone, independently and autonomously, in managing their worlds

Because of the tremendous investment made in the self — the need to be self-contained, self-sufficient, and self-reliant — there is inevitable interference in the desire and ability to feel another person’s experience, to be empathic and sensitive. Often these things seem secondary, a luxury that has to await securing one's own defensive, safe position. The subjective experience is one of loss of affect. For some patients, the loss of affect is present to such a degree that the insensitivity becomes manifest in the extreme as cynicism, callousness, or even cruelty. The patient appears to have no awareness of how his or her comments or actions affect and hurt other people. More frequently, the loss of affect is manifest within the patient as genuine confusion, a sense of something missing in his or her emotional life.

There is a very narrow range of schizoid individuals — the classic DSM-defined schizoid — for whom the hope of relationship is so minimal as to be almost extinct;
Depersonalization is a dissociative defense. Depersonalization is often described by the schizoid patient as a tuning out or a turning off, or as the experience of a separation between the observing and the participating ego. It is experienced by those with schizoid personality disorder when anxieties seem overwhelming. It is a more extreme form of loss of affect than that described earlier. Whereas the loss of affect is a more chronic state in schizoid personality disorder, depersonalization is an acute defense against more immediate experiences of overwhelming anxiety or danger

One person with SPD commented that he could not fully enjoy the life he has because he felt that he is living in a shell. Furthermore, he noted that his inability distressed his wife.

Because of their lack of communication with other people, those who are diagnosed with SPD are not able to have a reflection of themselves and how well they get along with others. The reflection is important so they can be more aware of themselves and their own actions in social surroundings. Laing suggests that without being enriched by injections of interpersonal reality there occurs an impoverishment in which one's self-image becomes more and more empty and volatilized, leading the individual himself to feel unreal.

Under stress, some people with schizoid personality features may occasionally experience instances of brief pyschosis (loss of contact with reality) Fantasy is also relationship with the world and with others by proxy. It is a substitute relationship, but a relationship nonetheless, characterized by idealized, defensive, and compensatory mechanisms. It is an expression of the self-in-exile because it is self-contained and free from the dangers and anxieties associated with emotional connection to real persons and situations. Fantasy permits schizoid patients to feel connected, and yet still free from the imprisonment in relationships. In short, in fantasy one can be attached (to internal objects) and still be free.

SPD is rare compared with other personality disorders. Its prevalence is estimated at less than 1% of the general population. but there is a discrepancy as people with this disorder are not likely to seek treatment.





Honestly I don't know about real life relationships. I don't have any strong desires to make any connections. People are so self absorbed I just don't know if I care enough to be the one to make the effort. I'd rather just go with the flow I guess