What do schizoid personalities fear?
Schizoid personalities have a violated right to want, and this is what their unconscious fears express. The chief one is the fear of losing themselves, of losing their own “I”, of betraying themselves or going against themselves. In their private life it is the fear of dissolving into another person or of losing themselves in a relationship.
As long as the sense of “my ‘I’ is safe” is there, anything at all may be going on around them. There is always plenty of change, but
the core must remain inviolable.
You cannot force a schizoid, because coercion puts the safety of the “core” at risk.
“Preserving my ‘I’” is the wish to have one’s own territory, one’s own time and a place where nobody interferes and where everything is “mine only”. Schizoids need a place where they can settle down, a place they then come out of.
Once they leave that place, they get the sense that they are dissolving into the other person. On the other hand, once they have chosen someone as a partner, then as far as they are concerned all questions are settled: they are steady in a partnership. If they have freedom in the relationship, if nobody smothers them, they are happy in it. But they must have territory of their own.
The favourite defense mechanism of schizoids is Interpretation. As people say about them,
A person is never as frightening as their psychoanalyst.
What else do schizoids fear?
- Unfreedom (of action, of thought, of ideas).
- Having other people’s ideas and advice imposed on them (I know myself what to do and how), and coercion (as a form of unfreedom).
- Violation of their territory (my home, my family, my personality, my overvalued idea-desire).
- Failing to realise their main overvalued idea-desire.
- Stupidity, losing their mind, madness.
- Needing other people
- The flow, God, someone else’s influence over their life and their freedom.
