ABSTRACT
This chapter considers a broad clinical picture of the schizoid condition. The fundamental cause of the development of a schizoid condition is the experience of isolation resulting from the loss of mental rapport with the mother, at a time when the mother is the baby’s sole environment and whole world, so that he has no alternative defense. W. R. D. Fairbairn was one of the first analysts to observe that severe hysteria has roots in schizophrenia. Hysteria symptoms are more common than frankly obsessional ones, and serious obsessional symptoms are so formidable a problem because the patient has been driven to despise and persecute the needy child within, which the hysteric is so much more aware of. Depression could still be treated as guilt over bad impulses of aggression hurtful to loved-objects, but the schizoid state of withdrawal, detachment, and flight from reality, is clearly an ego-problem, a self in the grip of fear and isolation.
