Schizoidia: Schizoidia, or schizoidal psychopathy, was isolated by the very first of the famous creators of modern psychiatry. From the beginning, it was treated as a lighter form of the same hereditary taint which is the cause of susceptibility to schizophrenia. However, this latter connection could neither be confirmed nor denied with the help of statistical analysis, and no biological test was then found which would have been able to solve this dilemma. For practical reasons, we shall discuss schizoidia with no further reference to this traditional relationship.
Literature provides us with descriptions of several varieties of this anomaly, whose existence can be attributed either to changes in the genetic factor or to differences in other individual characteristics of a non-pathological nature. Let us thus sketch these sub-species' common features.
Carriers of this anomaly are hypersensitive and distrustful, while, at the same time, pay little attention to the feelings of others. They tend to assume extreme positions, and are eager to retaliate for minor offenses. Sometimes they are eccentric and odd. Their poor sense of psychological situation and reality leads them to superimpose erroneous, pejorative interpretations upon other people's intentions. They easily become involved in activities which are ostensibly moral, but which actually inflict damage upon themselves and others.
Their impoverished psychological worldview makes them typically pessimistic regarding human nature. We frequently find expressions of their characteristic attitudes in their statements and writings: "Human nature is so bad that order in human society can only be maintained by a strong power created by highly qualified individuals in the name of some higher idea." Let us call this typical expression the "schizoid declaration".
Human nature does in fact tend to be naughty, especially when the schizoids embitter other people's lives. When they become wrapped up in situations of serious stress, however, the schizoid's failings cause them to collapse easily. The capacity for thought is thereupon characteristically stifled, and frequently the schizoids fall into reactive psychotic states so similar in appearance to schizophrenia that they lead to misdiagnoses.
The common factor in the varieties of this anomaly is a dull pallor of emotion and lack of feeling for the psychological realities, an essential factor in basic intelligence. This can be attributed to some incomplete quality of the instinctive substratum, which works as though founded on shifting sand. Low emotional pressure enables them to develop proper speculative reasoning, which is useful in non-humanistic spheres of activity, but because of their one-sidedness, they tend to consider themselves intellectually superior to "ordinary" people.
The quantitative frequency of this anomaly varies among races and nations: low among Blacks, the highest among Jews. Estimates of this frequency range from negligible up to 3 %. In Poland it may be estimated as 0.7 % of population. My observations suggest this anomaly is autosomally hereditary.
A schizoid's ponerological activity should be evaluated in two aspects. On the small scale, such people cause their families trouble, easily turn into tools of intrigue in the hands of clever and unscrupulous individuals, and generally do a poor job of raising children.
Their tendency to see human reality in the doctrinaire and simplistic manner they consider "proper" - i.e. "black or white" - transforms their frequently good intentions into bad results. However, their ponerogenic role can have macrosocial implications if their attitude toward human reality and their tendency to invent great doctrines are put to paper and duplicated in large editions.
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An analysis of the role played by Karl Marx's works easily reveals all the above-mentioned types of apperception and the social reactions which engendered animosity between large groups of people. ....
Moralizing interpretation: ... Young people and less cultured circles always tend toward such interpretations (although it characterizes traditional esthetes too), which intensifies whenever our natural reflexes take over control from reason, i.e. in hysterical states, and in direct proportion to the intensity of egotism. ...
Egotism: We call egotism the attitude, subconsciously conditioned as a rule, to which we attribute excessive value to our instinctive reflexes, early acquired imaginings and habits, and individual world view.
Egotism hampers a personality's normal evolution because it fosters the domination of subconscious life and makes it difficult to accept disintegrative states which can be very helpful for growth and development. This egotism and rejection of disintegration in turn favors the appearance of para-appropriate reactions as described above.
An egotist measures other people by his own yardstick, treating his concepts and experiential manner as objective criteria. He would like to force other people to feel and think very much the same way he does.
Egotist nations have the subconscious goal of teaching or forcing other nations to think in their own categories, which makes them incapable of understanding other people and nations or becoming familiar with the values of their cultures.
Proper rearing and self-rearing thus always aims at de-egotizing a young person or adult, thereby opening the door for his mind and character to develop. Practicing psychologists nevertheless commonly believe that a certain measure of egotism is useful as a factor stabilizing the personality, protecting it from overly facile neurotic disintegration, and thereby making it possible to overcome life's difficulties. However rather exceptional people exist whose personality is very well integrated even though they are almost totally devoid of egotism; this allows them to understand others very easily.
The kind of excessive egotism which hampers the development of human values and leads to misjudgment and terrorizing of others well deserves the title "king of human faults". Difficulties, disputes, serious problems, and neurotic reactions sprout up in everyone around such an egotist like mushrooms after a rainfall.
Egotist nations start wasting money and effort in order to achieve goals derived from their erroneous reasoning and overly emotional reactions. Their inability to acknowledge other nations' values and dissimilarities, derived from other cultural traditions, leads to conflict and war.
We can differentiate between primary and secondary egotism.
The former comes from a more natural process, namely the child's natural egotism and child-rearing errors that tend to perpetuate this childish egotism.
The secondary one occurs when a personality that has overcome his childish egotism regresses to this state under stress, which leads to an artificial attitude characterized by greater aggression and social noxiousness.
Excessive egotism is a constant property of the hysterical personality , whether their hysteria be primary or secondary. That is why the increase in a nations' egotism should be attributed to the above described hysterical cycle before anything else.
If we analyze the development of excessively egotistical personalities, we often find some non-pathological causes, such as having been raised in a constricted and overly routine environment or by persons less intelligent than the child. However, the main reason for the development of an overly egotistical personality in a normal person is contamination, through psychological induction, by excessively egotistical or hysterical persons who, themselves, developed this characteristic under the influence of various pathological causes. Most of the above-described genetic deviations cause the development of pathologically egotistical personalities, among other things.
Many people with various hereditary deviations and acquired defects develop pathological egotism.
For such people, forcing others in their environment, whole social groups, and, if possible, entire nations, to feel and think like themselves becomes an internal necessity, a ruling concept. A game that a normal person would not take seriously can become a lifelong goal for them, the object of effort, sacrifices, and cunning psychological strategy.
Pathological egotism derives from repressing from one's field of consciousness any objectionable, self-critical associations referring to one's own nature or normality.
Dramatic question such as "who is abnormal here, me or this world of people who feel and think differently?" are answered in the world's disfavor.
Such egotism is always linked to a dissimulative attitude, with a Cleckley mask over some pathological quality being hidden from consciousness, both one's own and that of other people.
The greatest intensity of such egotism can be found in the prefrontal characteropathy ...
The importance of the contribution of this kind of egotism to the genesis of evil thus hardly needs elaboration. It is a primarily societal influence, egotizing or traumatizing others, which in turn causes further difficulties.
Pathological egotism is a constant component of variegated states wherein someone who appears to be normal (although he is in fact not quite so) is driven by motivations or battles for goals a normal person considers unrealistic or unlikely. The average person might ask: "What could he expect to gain by that?". Environmental opinion, however, often interprets such a situation in accordance with "common sense" and is thus prone to accept a "more likely" version of the situation and events. Such interpretation often results in human tragedy. We should thus always remember that the principle of law cui prodest becomes illusory whenever some pathological factor enters the picture.