ABSTRACT
In this chapter the author focuses on the schizoid symptomatology and some of the schizoid mechanisms encountered. He also focuses on depersonalization, and examines the connexion between processes of ego disintegration and depersonalization. Schizoid processes, including depersonalization, can be used by the ego as a defence-mechanism at comparatively late stages of development. The author's patient, Mildred, is a young woman who was twenty-nine when the treatment started in March 1944. She developed one physical illness after another, such as, influenza and sore throats, until she had to be invalided from the Service. About Mildred's early development nothing abnormal was reported to the author. He gathered that she cried but little as an infant and apparently showed no reaction on being weaned. Shortly after starting treatment she took up work again, doing some hours at an aircraft factory, and later on she succeeded in getting afternoon work at a well-known bookshop.
