I want to monopolize your New Year's Eve, your New Year's Day and your entire New Year.
So I've created a five, almost six hour video about a phenomenon much neglected in literature and even online.
The schizoid personality.
I know, I know, Americans should say schizoid.
But of course it's the wrong pronunciation of the word.
Never mind.
Schizoid, schizoid, loners, people who either choose to spend their time alone enjoying their own company or not, or people who are compelled to behave this way because of some mental health pathologies.
This is the topic of today's course, actually, seminar, six hour seminar.
My name is Sam Wachnin.
I'm the author of Malignant Surf Love, Narcissism Revisited.
I'm a former visiting professor of psychology and currently on the faculty of CEAPs, Commonwealth Institute for Advanced Professional Studies, Cambridge, United Kingdom, Toronto, Canada and Outreach Campus in Lagos, Nigeria.
But before we deal with the issue of the loner's psychology, is it a Pandora's box or a treasure chest?
The mystery of the schizoid personality.
Before we go there, it's important to emphasize the schizoid lifestyle, the choice to be alone as a way of life is possibly, arguably, debatably a rational choice in today's world where people constitute at the very minimum a burden or an annoyance and in many cases a threat.
63% of adult men and 34% of adult women choose to remain single at any given year.
About half of them choose to remain single lifelong.
So this is not some fringe phenomenon.
This is not a deviation, an aberration, a perversion, if you wish.
This is first becoming the norm, the new normal, the schizoid lifestyle could be described easily as rational and in many cases it's egosyntonic.
In other words, people who live alone, people who spend all their time by themselves, people who don't bother to interact with others, even for the sake of sex, having sex.
These people increasingly report being happy, egosyntonic.
I like being alone, they say.
I like my own company.
I've had a very bad experience with other people repeatedly so I'm avoiding society, I'm avoiding socializing, I'm not going out, I'm not having an intimate relationship, an affair, romance, I'm not even having sex.
Indeed, the frequency of sex, the frequency of sexual acts and the number of sexual partners have declined precipitously by more than 40% compared to previous generations.
So boomers, for example, had almost 50% more sexual partners than millennials, Generation Z, not to mention alphas.
And generally the frequency of sex has collapsed to such a degree that their whole countries, for example Japan, big parts of the United Kingdom, even Scandinavia, their whole countries where the majority and sometimes the vast majority of people under the age of 25 or under the age of 35, depending on the study, haven't had sex in the preceding year.
It's very common to not have sex for five years, for ten years.
Celebacy, is becoming celebrated and becoming a lifestyle choice that is embraced by many.
It's of course a schizoid choice.
But as long as it is egosyntonic, as long as people are happy, as long as the choice can be rationalized in a way that would appeal to independent neutral observers such as therapists, then this is not a pathology.
I want to repeat this.
A schizoid lifestyle choice is not a pathology.
We should not apologize.
People who elect and select to be alone.
Now aloneness is not the same as loneliness.
Loneliness is an emotional reaction to an unwanted state of solitude.
When you're solitary and you don't like it and you're unhappy about it and it affects your functioning in some way, your mental health is deteriorating.
You desperately attempt to connect with other people, even by for example compromising your moral standards in one-night stands and so on and so forth.
That is loneliness, not aloneness.
So aloneness could be and often is a healthy lifestyle choice.
Why loneliness indicates that there is some problem bordering on a pathology.
Before I proceed to discuss the schizoid personality, a kind of introduction to the seminar, I would like to clarify something about yesterday's video.
Created a lot of confusion.
The video deals only with sexual attraction, not romantic attraction.
In other words, the video attempts to answer the question, why are you sexually attracted to narcissists?
Why do you find them sexy and irresistible, charming?
What is this aura or charisma that induces you to engage in sex acts with a narcissist?
The video yesterday does not deal with the question.
Why are you romantically attracted to the narcissist?
Why do you end up being in a couple with a narcissist?
Why do you develop intimate romantic relationships with narcissists?
That's not the topic of yesterday's video.
I will deal with it in a future video and the answer is very surprising.
Now I mentioned yesterday that covert and cerebral narcissists are craven, fearful, and I wasn't very clear and I created a lot of confusion.
I would like to disambiguate.
Covert and cerebral narcissists are cowardly because they tend to catastrophize, they are paranoid to a large degree, and because they are collapsed narcissists, they have experienced repeatedly and regularly a state of failure.
They fail to obtain narcissistic supply, for example.
They fail to attract intimate or sexual partners if they are cerebral and so on and so forth.
So they are afraid to be humiliatingly rebuffed, mortified by their female partners.
They don't feel that they have the right or the capacity to impose boundaries and rules on their intimate partners.
Now I'm saying female intimate partners because I'm giving the example of heterosexual men, but of course it applies to same sex relationships, it applies to women, and so on and so forth.
Narcissism today is a global genderless, non-gender discriminating phenomenon and applies to all types of sexual orientations.
And so in the example of heterosexual men, a heterosexual man would be terrified to confront his female partner, to try to impose boundaries, to try to establish ground rules, and to try to insist on them, or to somehow penalize her if she strays.
Because he would be afraid, because he perceives himself as inadequate.
The covert and the cerebral narcissists perceive themselves as unable to satisfy the needs of a female partner, to gratify her, especially sexually, but also romantically, as far as intimacy and so on and so forth.
So they would never ever confront the female partner because they would be terrified that she would lash out, push back, and humiliate them, and mortify them in public, in front of the competition.
The competition being other men who are out to poach the cerebral or covert narcissist partner.
So they allow their female partners to misbehave in public with other men, and they don't dare to put their foot down and to insist that the behavior should stop.
Because they're terrified that the female partner will turn around and say, "F off, I'm going to do exactly what I want.
You can't give me what I need, so I'm going to look for it elsewhere." She's going to say it in public, is going to modify the narcissist.
Equally they are not protective of women in their lives.
They're not protective of girlfriends, they're not protective of wives.
When these women are approached by other men, when other men flirt with them, or even touch them in inappropriate ways, in public, or even when these women are preyed upon by predators in the presence of the covert or the cerebral narcissist, the covert or cerebral narcissist is going to pretend that he's oblivious to what's happening.
And he's going to give his consent if his female partner asks to misbehave with the other men.
He's going to say, "Go ahead, I have no problem with it.
I don't care." And when the female partner of a covert or a cerebral narcissist is attacked by others, especially other men, criticized, mocked, ridiculed, humiliated, and so on and so forth, the cerebral or covert narcissist would never protect her, would never confront the other men because they seek approval of peers.
They are peer pleasers.
So they end up doing, they gank up on their female partner, they gank up on the woman with these other men.
They join them and attack the woman.
I hope I made it clear the cerebral and covert narcissists are not afraid of other men.
They are afraid of their own partners rejecting them, humiliating them in public if they try to establish boundaries and rules.
And they seek the approval of peers of other men.
And so they would sacrifice their own intimate partner in order to gain the approbation and the acceptance of their peers, their other men there.
So, and also, and finally, there is of course a distinction between sexual and romantic attraction.
You could be, for example, bisexual, but heteroromantic.
You could be heterosexual and be romantic.
You could have sex only with the opposite, you could sleep only with the opposite sex, but have romantic affairs with both sexes and so on and so forth.
So there's a divorce between these two issues.
That's why I separated them in the video.
Now, everything I said about a heterosexual male covert cerebral narcissist applies to a female covert or cerebral narcissist in a heterosexual relationship or in the same sex relationship.
You can easily generalize it.
Now, that's what I've just mentioned.
This cravenness, this cowardice, this fear of humiliation, modification and rejection in public by one's intimate partner, even if she misbehaves, this inability to set rules and boundaries, to call her on her misconduct and actions, to confront her when she misbehaves, for example, with other men in public, in the presence of this cerebral or covert narcissist.
This also applies to schizoids.
Schizoids behave exactly this way.
And this raises the possibility that the schizoid core is either empty, exactly like the narcissist, or essentially it's a bad object.
We are beginning to see an affinity between narcissists of some type, cerebral ones.
Cerebral narcissist, by the way, maintain a schizoid lifestyle.
Covert narcissists in the majority of cases are also schizoid.
So we're beginning to see some affinity, some common denominator between people who are schizoid in the psychopathological sense, not as a lifestyle choice, and certain types of narcissists.
And in the 90s, there was this discussion of the empty schizoid core.
But I want to propose that there are two options.
The empty schizoid core would lead to phenomena such as schizoid borderlines, but a bad object schizoid core, a schizoid core which renders the person inferior in his own eyes.
In other words, a schizoid core that keeps broadcasting your inferior, your inadequate, your bad, your unworthy, your stupid, your ugly, the bad object messages, the introjects, the voices that constellated together, constitute a bad object and put you down.
Someone who is in the possession of such a bad object, or someone who is possessed by this kind of bad object would tend to withdraw from society, would tend to avoid other people, because he would be terrified that they would somehow amplify, magnify and justify the bad object voices inside him.
What I'm trying to say is that a bad object core is likely to be a schizoid core, is likely to lead to schizoid behaviors, avoidance of other people.
And so we need to understand that there is an interface and there is an overlap between narcissistic phenomena of some types, covert, cerebral and schizoid phenomena.
Now this is not my insight, this is the insight of the British Object Relations School in the 1960s, but I think it's a brilliant and correct insight.
As you listen to the rest of this seminar, you will learn a lot more about the intersections between narcissism and schizoid phenomena and schizoid personalities.
It's like Venn diagrams, where there's a common shaded area which is the schizoid narcissist.
Consequently because schizoids behave a lot like covert narcissist and like cerebral narcissist, schizoids are often mistakenly diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder.
Every narcissist goes through schizoid phases, these are reactive phases.
When the narcissist is denied narcissistic supply on a long term basis, when the narcissist is mortified in public, when the narcissist experience a variety, three types of depression and so on and so forth, the narcissist tends to become schizoid.
He withdraws and leaks his wounds.
So schizoid behavior is a typical reactive narcissistic behavior and a diagnostician who is not sufficiently astute and acute and trained and qualified and well-read is liable to misdiagnose schizoid personality disorder or schizoid phenomena as narcissistic.
And that of course would be a serious mistake and I will explain why.
A few minutes ago I said that narcissism and schizoid personality are more or less one and the same.
They both share a core, a schizoid core, an empty schizoid core or a bad object schizoid core.
That's what I said a few minutes ago.
And here I am saying that schizoid personality is often misdiagnosed as narcissism.
So could I make up my mind?
What is it that I'm saying?
Here's what I'm saying.
Both schizoids and narcissists have an identity problem.
They have a core which is empty because of memory problems, other issues, the core is empty.
Now someone with a schizoid core, an empty schizoid core would develop borderline behaviors and in extreme cases borderline personality disorder.
Someone with a schizoid core which comprises a bad object at the core of the core, there's a bad object, this kind of person would probably become a narcissist.
Someone with a schizoid core that is not empty and not a bad object would develop schizoid personality disorder.
I hope I made the taxonomy, the classification clear.
Now there is a substantial clinical difference between schizoids and narcissists.
Schizoid personality or schizoid personality disorder in an extreme case, that's not the same problem as narcissism.
Both the schizoid person and the narcissist, both of them have problem with object relations, with the ability to relate to people out there, to other people.
Other people in psychology are called objects.
So object relations, relationships with objects, with other people.
So the schizoid and the narcissist, they have disrupted object relations.
They failed to develop mature adult regular predictable stable safe object relations.
Their relationships with other people are somehow massively disrupted.
But there's a difference as to why, difference as to the etiology.
With a narcissist, the problem is that the narcissist cannot perceive objects as external.
He cannot digest or conceive of the externality and separateness of other people.
So this is the core problem.
This is the issue with the narcissist object relations.
You can't have object relations if you don't recognize external objects.
Consequently, the narcissist develops object relations with his internal objects.
It's a kind of narcissistic libido.
The narcissist does have object relations, but with internal objects that represent in his mind the objects out there.
So the narcissist will never have a relationship with you.
He's going to have a relationship with your avatar in his mind, with your mental representation in his mind.
He's going to interact.
He's going to dialogue.
He's going to fight with.
He's going to try to modify.
He's going to idealize and ultimately he's going to devalue an internal object inside his mind and introject an icon inside his mind that stands in for you, the external object.
And that is of course a massive problem in object relations.
The schizoid also has a problem with object relations, but his problem is different.
The schizoid person does recognize and can conceive and does conceive of the externality of an object.
He does relate to other people out there externally to himself.
He doesn't understand fully and acceptfully and acceptfully that other people are separate from him, that they're external to him, that they're not extension of him.
So the schizoid has no problem with external objects.
He doesn't convert them into internal objects.
He doesn't continue to interact with internal objects in his mind and so on and so forth.
And of course when I say he, it's a she, when I say he, it's a her, etc.
Gender pronouns are interchangeable.
So what's the problem with the schizoid person?
The problem is cathexis.
Whereas the narcissist cannot perceive the external object as external.
The schizoid perceives the external object as external but cannot invest emotionally in the external object.
He has a problem with emotional investment, cathexis.
Cathexis is a very, very complex and compound process.
But in principle, it is object libido.
It's the ability to invest energy, psychological energy, mental energy in things out there.
These things could be people, could be ideas even, could be collectives, could be events, could be.
So whenever you get emotionally invested, emotionally attached, reactive emotionally to something outside yourself, you are catheting it.
You undergo a process called cathexis.
And if it is an object, another person, that would be object libido, is distinct from narcissistic libido.
The narcissist doesn't have object libido because he doesn't recognize objects.
So the only thing the narcissist has is narcissistic libido invested in internal objects.
The schizoid doesn't have object libido because he doesn't affect, he has a problem with cathexis, even though he recognizes the externality and separateness of other people.
He has no problem with that.
So this is the difference between narcissists and schizoid and why they should not be confused, even though both of them share the same schizoid core.
And with the narcissist, there is usually a bad object as well.
Now, the schizoid, exactly like the narcissist, is reactive to or develops paranoid ideation, dysphoria, anxiety, catastrophizing.
These are the engines of schizoid behavior.
If you're afraid of the future, if you catastrophize, if you believe the worst case scenario will always transpire, you're going to avoid the world. You're going to reject life, or in clinical terms, you're going to constrict life.
If you are anxious all the time, if you are depressed all the time, what energy do you have left to tackle people or to tackle the world out there?
And if you're paranoid, then you would protect yourself or defend yourself by shielding yourself from the environment, especially the human environment.
So these are important engines of schizoid behavior.
And in this sense, the schizoid is a close cousin of the schizotypal.
It is not in vain that both disorders start with the word schizo, because they are one step removed from schizophrenia.
And schizophrenia, of course, is a strong component of paranoia.
From the outside, the schizoid is perceived as inscrutable.
His avoidance, his withdrawal are misinterpreted, as shyness, for example, or gentleness, or kindness.
But in any case, he is indecipherable.
You cannot decode the schizoid, because he doesn't provide enough information about himself.
And very often, his behavioral choices, his conduct is perceived as irrational, overreactive, perhaps catastrophizing, and so on and so forth.
And people feel a bit ill, it is a bit threatened in the presence of the schizoid, because he is so not like them. He is so, if you wish, abnormal.
And this is an uncanny valley reaction, also common with narcissists and psychopaths.
But with narcissists and psychopaths, the uncanny valley reaction has to do with the fact that narcissists and psychopaths are not full-fledged humans.
They are much more akin to robots or artificial intelligence.
So that creates enormous unease, an impending tuition, a gut feeling of, I have to run away from them.
So this is the uncanny valley.
With the schizoid, the uncanny valley reaction is, Wow, he's so weird.
She's so weird.
They're so bizarre.
They're indecipherable, and it's impossible to explain their behavior.
Why are they acting this way?
This is so irrational.
So it threatens the perception of order and structure in the universe, the ability to predict.
The schizoid reifies an alternative relational model, an alternative model of existence.
It's as if the schizoid's message is, You don't have to have relationships. You don't have to desire sex. You don't need to be in contact with other people. You can survive on your own and be self-sufficient and even content and maybe even happy.
And this is threatening. It's a threatening message because it undermines the foundations of society, our social pact. We believe that our survival is contingent on collaboration and cooperation, and here comes the schizoid, and he's a survivor, and he's okay, and he doesn't invest all these efforts and energy, the sexies, in relationships. He has no costs. His costs are much lower, and it challenges the paradigm. We're beginning to ask ourselves, Maybe all these costs, some costs, investments that we make, maybe they're unnecessary. Maybe we're just being brainwashed by society. We are product of socialization. We have been told that we need to have relationships. Maybe it's not true.
The schizoid raises existential issues to which we don't have good answers, and in this sense, the schizoid threatens the social structure, social institutions.
So schizoid, schizoid are invariably perceived as either a treasure chest, if I just succeed to open him, if I just succeed to penetrate her, excuse the pun, if I just succeed to understand the schizoid, to glom him over, to establish a channel of communication, I'm going to discover what a treasure he or she is.
A treasure is like a treasure hidden in a vault with the combination long having been lost, and you are on a quest to rediscover this combination or reconstitute it or recombine it so as to open the vault and enjoy the treasures inside.
So that's the treasure chest perception of the schizoid.
The alternative is the Pandora's box perception of the schizoid.
Something is so wrong with this person that he's hiding it, he's suppressing it, he's concealing it, and even one would say deceptively so.
So there's this eerie, creepy feeling that the schizoid can erupt any minute or that you know he's a kind of hidden serial killer or something.
That's the Pandora's box attitude to schizoids.
But exactly this triggers in people grandiose defenses.
It challenges them.
The schizoid is a walking, talking, breathing challenge. Is he misunderstood?
And if I were to understand him or if I were to convince him that he is being seen and is being understood, will he be mine? Can I possess him?
It's a possession, but possessiveness. It's like I want to possess him. And I want to prove to myself that I can decipher, deconstruct and decode the schizoid.
It's an intellectual challenge as well as an emotional one.
So it's the schizoid by his mere existence, fleeting evasiveness, refusal to engage, avoidance and withdrawal without any discernible costs, any discernible adverse outcomes or impacts is happy-go-lucky all by himself, enjoying his own company, much preferring solitude and solitary pursuits to anything we have to offer.
That's humiliating. That's insulting.
So we want to force the schizoid to become normal.
But how can we obtain this outcome by understanding the schizoid, by somehow entering the schizoid's mind and informing him that finally someone grasps what it is to be a schizoid.
And of course in all these narcissistic defenses that the schizoid provokes in us, there are hidden assumptions.
The schizoid, because of this refusal or her refusal to communicate, is a blank screen.
And we can project and do project onto this screen fantasies, wishes, dreams, parts of ourselves that we either reject or either aspire to.
The schizoid becomes a fulfillment of our internal space, a flourishing and blossoming of our internal space externalized.
The schizoid in other words, provokes in us an outsourcing reaction.
We outsource the nether areas and the recesses and the nooks and crannies, unvisited cobwebed areas of our mind.
We outsource them and project them onto the schizoid.
Because the schizoid doesn't push back, doesn't provide any input or any feedback.
So the schizoid can be anything we want him to be.
He's a blank screen to be projected on.
At the same time, the schizoid is perceived as a blank, blank slate, as raw material.
We can somehow mold the schizoid.
We can somehow form the schizoid.
His reticence, his taciturn reluctance to attach, to bond, to engage, to communicate, to discuss his aloofness, his detachment, are perceived as a primitive state of being.
It is as if he lacks the skills to do all this.
It's as if he is in a kind of primordial state, at a mystic state.
And now we can extricate him from this swamp, non-differentiated swamp, and extricate him from this primordial soup.
And we can impose on him a psychological evolution.
We can mold him, form him, change him, transform him, heal him, rescue him, save him, fix him.
In other words, the schizoid provokes in us the rescuer-savier complex or reaction.
We perceive the schizoid as in need of help, to become normal, to enjoy life, and above all to enjoy us, human company, sex, love, romance, intimacy, everything, cooperation, everything one person can offer another.
And here is the poor schizoid denied all this, and we want to bring him into our paradise where everyone is with everyone, happily ever after.
It is through the schizoid that we seek to realize the fantasy of empathy and inter-human connectedness.
These are fantasies, of course.
There's no such thing.
We are all alone.
We are atoms.
Empathy is an illusion, and even worse, it's a delusion.
And yet we want to impose it on the schizoid because he threatens his mere existence, his proof, that all our beliefs about interpersonal interactions are nonsense, and we need him.
We need to eradicate him.
We need to eliminate him as he is, kill him in effect, and then resurrect him.
He's very religious.
It's a little like Jesus, you know?
Three days, and he will rise from the dead, no longer a schizoid, but one like us.
And this is an adventure.
This is a narrative.
It's like a movie.
It's thrilling.
It's technicolor.
The challenge of the schizoid poses kind of embellishes our lives.
We come alive trying to convert and transform the schizoid.
Spending time with a schizoid is often extremely excruciatingly boring.
The schizoid is not exactly a fun kind of person, and he much prefers to stay at home, read a good book, watch a great movie, go to sleep, forget sex.
He's not interested in sex.
He doesn't tell him he's not a rat.
And he regards any interactions with people as a burden, an annoyance, a nuisance.
So it's very boring to be with a schizoid.
But being invested in the project of approaching a schizoid, penetrating the schizoid's firewalls, entering the schizoid's mind, and then transforming the schizoid into a normal human being, that's a movie.
That's wonderful.
That's Hollywood.
That's the stuff of Hollywood.
And so it gives our lives meaning and makes sense of them, challenges us.
The detachment of the schizoid is misconstrued as a cry for help.
Schizoid is misperceived, as helpless and childish, when in reality the schizoid is actually highly self-sufficient, much more self-sufficient than anyone, and not in need of anyone or anything.
With a schizoid, there's no threat of intimacy, and there's lots of personal space.
And this tends to attract to the schizoid other schizoids, or people with insecure attachment styles, for example, avoidant attachment style, and people with mental health pathologies, such as, for example, narcissists and psychopaths, but especially borderlines.
Why would borderlines be attracted to someone who offers no intimacy and insists on personal space and time which are exclusive, which exclude the part?
Why would the borderline insist on this?
Because the borderline believes that if she were to convert the schizoid into a normal person, for example, if she were to introduce him to the magic of sex, then he would be hers.
She would own him and possess him, and she would be able to use him for external regulation, because the schizoid is stable, is safe.
So he's a perfect partner.
The only problem is, he never exits his shell.
He's like a turtle.
So the borderline, when she comes across a schizoid, says to herself, "Wow, had he only been normal, he would have been my perfect partner, my rock, my world."
So she tries to convert him into a normal person, because then he will be perfect for him.
Bortylines get very attached to schizoids, to their detriment, of course, because the schizoid is unable to externally regulate the borderline.
So in relationships between borderlines and schizoids, there is even more drama in emotional dysregulation than in relationships between borderlines and narcissists.
While the schizoid's detachment, avoidance and withdrawal are misconstrued as helplessness and childishness, or even a cry for help, the schizoid's self-sufficiency is misinterpreted as strength.
The borderline misinterprets this self-containment as strength.
"Wow, he's so strong, he doesn't need anyone.
He's so fearless, he doesn't need anything."
In all this, the schizoid's asexuality, the schizoid's regard sex as a chore, and not a very pleasant one.
The schizoid's essential asexuality in all this is a challenge, and the main reason why relationships with schizoids break down is especially a challenge.
But the borderline is concerned, because one of her main weapons of addiction, main ways she gets her partner addicted to her, is sex, and it means nothing to the schizoid.
Similarly, schizoids are likely to be intellectually challenged if the potential partner is highly intelligent, intellectual, insightful, with a synoptic view, innovative, creative.
Schizoid is likely to be reactive to this, but his reactivity would resemble very much the reactivity of the autistic person.
He's going to react only to the segments or sections or elements which somehow resonate with his own hobbies or concerns or ideas or wishes or plans and so on.
So he's going to be highly selective, and he's not going to resonate with the intellectual output of his partner as if it were an integral part of his partner.
He's going to react to the intellectual output of the partner as if the intellectual output were the partner.
He partners, he gets attached to, he interacts with the intellectual output, not with the source of the intellectual output, the partner.
The partner is perceived as the cost of the intellectual stimulation, the intellectual arousal.
You have, unfortunately, the stimulation and the arousal are coming from a human being, and that's the cost I have to pay.
I have to be in contact with the human being.
Okay, so this is a general introduction to schizoid phenomena and schizoid personality.
And now on to the seminar.
You don't have to watch the entire seminar all at once. It's divided to segments.
Take your time. If the topic interests you, why not watch it over a whole week, an entire week?
Schizoid phenomena, schizoid personality are fascinating because they constitute the bridge between psychotic disorders and personality disorders.
And this is where narcissism comes in.
Narcissism is on the border of psychosis, exactly like borderline.
And therefore, it seems that the foundational disorder, the basic disorder, the building block of all these disorders is schizoid, the schizoid personality.
In its various permutations and mutations, it becomes narcissism, borderline or psychosis.
Have fun.