Amy writes:
I tend to think of both types as being on an axis or spectrum so that there would be many milder Schizoid types who were less introverted than the average Avoidant type, regardless of whether being Schizoid is essentially more pathological.
Why do you think Schizoid personality types are lumped together with Schizotypals and Schizophrenics? I’ve never understood why being distant, even pathologically distant, should be connected to disordered thinking & psychosis. Does being disconnected from people necessarily mean being disconnected from reality?
Schizoid PD is found at high levels in the relatives of those with schizophrenia and schizotypal personality disorder. This suggests a genetic or biological link with schizophrenia. Schizophrenics can also have a very weird flat affect especially after the fulminant phase of the illness dies down after ~5 years and schizophrenia heads into the “burnout” territory with less positive symptoms and more negative symptoms.
Also under severe stress, schizoids have a high rate of breaking down and going briefly psychotic, which indicates either that there is something wrong with them in the first place or else it is a lousy defensive system prone to breaking down under stress. Also Schizoid PD is overrepresented among serial killers, which implies that it’s not exactly a normal condition.
I checked out a Schizoid PD board on the Net for a while and it was very interesting. Most of them seemed to be put together pretty well except that could not deal with being around other humans much at all. Some said they could go to family gatherings etc, but after ~2 hours, they really needed to get the Hell out of there. Many had moved around a lot and some wanted to move, especially to foreign countries. They seemed to have the ability to move anywhere all alone, even to some foreign land, and be perfectly fine wherever they end up.
I think if I up and moved to some distant foreign land where I did not know a soul that it would be very stressful for me. I would probably feel very weird and horribly lonely for a long time and psychologically, I might decompensate.
