Zachary Wheeler – Treatment of schizoid personality: an analytic psychotherapy handbook
There is even a debate as to the legitimacy of schizoid personality as a diagnosis (Slavik, Sperry, & Carlson, 1992). Fairbairn was amongst the first to note that schizoid states are present to some degree in all people, and span a continuum from normal to severe and debilitating (Fairbairn, 1940). Recent authors assert the normalcy of temperamental introversion (Cain, 2012), the biases of object relations theory toward the primacy of relationship (Modell, 1993; Storr, 1988), the creative and regenerative functions of reclusive behaviors (Storr, 1988), and the gains and pleasures of seclusion (Rufus, 2003) as counterarguments to pathologizing schizoid-like behavior.
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Hypersensitivity & hyperpermeability. Doidge (2001) elucidates the etiological hypothesis of schizoid hypersensitivity and ‘hyperpermeability’ through an exploration of what it means to be ‘thin-skinned.’ Like autistic and bipolar patients, Doidge notes the schizoid often shows “an acute nervous hypersensitivity to stimuli, including smells, sounds, light, temperature, and motion, as though they lacked a filter or stimulus barrier” (Doidge, 2001, p. 290). The author distinguishes between (a) constitutional sensitivity (i.e. genetically-based sensitivity of the nervous system to emotional or sensory information) to stimuli and (b) post-traumatic sensitivity (i.e. nervousness, jumpiness, and agitation that results from chronic stress in the environment). Doidge suggests that while the post-traumatic sensitivity can be worked through in treatment, the constitutional sensitivity is usually a core part of the personality and relatively stable and thus, unchangeable.