ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the most typical aspects of the schizoid phenomenon, followed by brief case presentations showing further variations. Sigmund Freud's very theory of personal development portrays an ego capable of increasing itself through its resistance to the collective in nature and culture. The ego structure appears to be a part of what H. Elkin has called the "schizoid ego," an aspect of the self which "retreats to a hidden, detached existence" to preserve a sense of psychic freedom or safety at the time the superego is formed. The analytic situation is conceived as a paradigm of the ascetic moment. With the continued development of analytic therapy, the rule of abstinence as a specific therapeutic technique has been disregarded for both theoretical and practical reasons. A dialectic between the activation of the detached ego sense and an activation of repressed body-life eventually must go hand-in-hand in order to prevent a one-sided development.
