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.
In spite of their typical deficits, or even an openly schizoidal declaration, their readers do not realize what the authors' characters are really like. Ignorant of the true condition of the author, such uninformed readers tend to interpret such works in a manner corresponding to their own nature. The minds of normal people tend toward corrective interpretation due to the participation of their own richer, psychological world view.
At the same time, many other readers critically reject such works with moral disgust but without being aware of the specific cause.
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.
When reading any of those disturbingly divisive works, we should examine them carefully for any of these characteristic deficits, or even an openly formulated schizoid declaration. Such a process will enable us to gain a proper critical distance from the contents and make it easier to dig the potentially valuable elements out of the doctrinaire material. If this is done by two or more people who represent greatly divergent interpretations, their methods of perception will come closer together, and the causes of dissent will dissipate. Such a project might be attempted as a psychological experiment and for purposes of proper mental hygiene.
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Who plays the first crucial role in this process of the origin of pathocracy, schizoids or characteropaths? It appears to be the former; therefore, let us delineate their role first.
During stable times which are ostensibly happy, albeit dependent upon injustice to other individuals and nations, doctrinaire people believe they have found a simple solution to fix the world. Such a historical period is always characterized by an impoverished psychological world view, so that a schizoidally impoverished psychological world view does not stand out as odd during such times and is accepted as legal tender.
These doctrinaire individuals characteristically manifest a certain contempt with regard to moralists then preaching the need to rediscover lost human values and to develop a richer, more appropriate psychological world view.
Schizoid characters aim to impose their own conceptual world upon other people or social groups, using relatively controlled pathological egotism and the exceptional tenacity derived from their persistent nature. They are thus eventually able to overpower another individual's personality, which causes the latter's behavior to turn desperately illogical. They may also exert a similar influence upon the group of people they have joined. They are psychological loners who then begin to feel better in some human organization, wherein they become zealots for some ideology, religious bigots, materialists, or adherents of an ideology with satanic features.
If their activities consist of direct contact on a small social scale, their acquaintances generally just consider them to be eccentric, which limits their ponerogenic role. However, if they manage to hide their own personality behind the written word, their influence may poison the minds of society on a wide scale and for a long time.
The conviction that Karl Marx is the best example of this is correct as he was the best-known figure of that kind. Frostig , a psychiatrist of the old school, included Engels and others into a category he called "bearded schizoidal fanatics". The famous writings attributed to "Zionist Wise Men" at the turn of the century begin with a typically schizoidal declaration. The nineteenth century, especially its latter half, appears to have been a time of exceptional activity on the part of schizoidal individuals, often but not always of Jewish descent. After all we have to remember that 97 % of all Jews do not manifest this anomaly, and that it also appears among all European nations, albeit to a markedly lesser extent.
Our inheritance from this period includes world-images, scientific traditions, and legal concepts flavored with the shoddy ingredients of a schizoidal apprehension of reality.
In spite of the fact that the writings of schizoidal authors contain the above described deficiency, or even an openly formulated schizoidal declaration which constitutes sufficient warning to specialists, the average reader accepts them not as a view of reality warped by this anomaly, but rather as an idea to which he should consider seriously based on his convictions and his reason.
That is the first mistake.
The oversimplified pattern of ideas, devoid of psychological color and based on easily available data, tends to exert an intense attracting influence on individuals who are insufficiently critical, frequently frustrated as result of downward social adjustment, culturally neglected, or characterized by some psychological deficiencies of their own.
Such writings are particularly attractive to a hystericized society. Others who may read such writings will be immediately provoked to criticism based on their healthy common sense, though they also they fail to grasp the essential cause of the error: that it emerges from a biologically deviant mind.
Societal interpretation of such writings and doctrinaire declarations breaks down into main trifurcations, engendering divisiveness and conflict.
The first branch is the path of aversion, based on rejection of the contents of the work due to personal motivations, differing convictions, or moral revulsion. These reactions contain the component of a moralistic interpretation of pathological phenomena.
The second and third branches relate to two distinctly different apperception types among those persons who accept the contents of such works: the critically-corrective and the pathological.
The critically-corrective approach is taken by people whose feel for psychological reality is normal and they tend to incorporate the more valuable elements of the work. They then trivialize the obvious errors and fill in the missing elements of the schizoid deficiencies by means of their own richer world view. This gives rise to a more sensible, measured, and thus creative interpretation, but is cannot be completely free from the influence of the error frequently adduced above.
Pathological acceptance is manifested by individuals with psychological deficiencies of their own: diversiform deviations, whether inherited or acquired, as well as by many people bearing personality malformations or who have been injured by social injustice. That explains why this scope is wider than the circle drawn by direct action of pathological factors.
Pathological acceptance of schizoidal writings or declarations by other deviants often brutalizes the authors' concepts and promotes ideas of force and revolutionary means.
The passage of time and bitter experience has unfortunately not prevented this characteristic misunderstanding born of schizoid nineteenth-century creativity, with Marx's works at the fore, from affecting people and depriving them of their common sense.
If only for purposes of the above-mentioned psychological experiment, it is good practice for developing awareness of this pathological factor by searching the works of K. Marx for several statements with these characteristic deficits. When such a study is conducted by several people with varied world views, the experiment will show how a clear picture of reality can be restored, and it becomes easier to find a common language.
Schizoidia has thus played an essential role as one of the factors in the genesis of the evil threatening our contemporary world. Practicing psychotherapy upon the world will therefore demand that the results of such evil be eliminated as skillfully as possible.
