ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates the characteristics of schizoid pulls. It discusses some aspects of the clinician needs with people whose functioning is prevailingly schizoid. In these situations, the clinician needs to be especially attuned to fluctuations in his or her own schizoid tendencies, as well as the patient's. In a schizoid state, the world is empty, the self is hollow and the only substance exists in dreams. Dostoevsky captured the schizoid dilemma and explains that the vivid dreams made actual relationships unnecessary. Guntrip describes schizoid functioning as regressed: "The schizoid person feels overwhelmed by the external world, and in flight from it both inwards and, as it were, backwards, to the safety of the womb". For someone schizoid, any intensity can make clearer what is usually absent. Finally, the chapter notes that sometimes one's own very alive presence itself begins the process of both participants experiencing and eventually recognizing the patient's schizoid functioning.
