Episode 256: Schizoid Dynamics Explored: Kafka's Writings, Fear of Engulfment, and Clinical Insights for Better Empathy
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Jeremiah Stokes, Ed.D., LMHC, NCC
Introduction to the Podcast and Cohort Discussion
Puder:
Welcome back to the podcast. I am joined today with a group that is cohort number one. You know, I lead these cohorts. We look at reflective function. We look at psychodynamic concepts, and these are some of the members. We will be going through schizoid personality type and Kafka. Kafka was classically schizoid, but also very fascinating. And so I think this is going to be an interesting episode. We have Bridget Pieroni, MacKenzie Kampa, Allie Riege, Jeremiah Stokes, and Jeren Montgomery.
Puder:
Thank you guys for joining. This is great to have a bigger group here today and to be going through some cool things. So, I think we start with the why usually, like, why clinicians should understand the concept of schizoid, and I would say for empathic connectedness. Like I think if you really understand this concept and this personality type, you'll be able to be more empathic to this type of person. You'll be able to help them more. And so we are not doing this for purely academic pleasure, but for the capacity for us as clinicians to have increased empathy into the experience. And then we're gonna go through and talk about how it's different from autism, how we would consider the DSM inferior to a more psychodynamic understanding of it, and why. We're going to talk about how maybe understanding this will increase self-acceptance and the ability of someone with schizoid, if they're listening, to actually seek out therapy, how to talk to the therapist, maybe. We'll be talking about Kafka. We'll be talking about his letters, journals, works, and different ones of us have read different portions to contribute.
Puder:
So welcome to the podcast.
Montgomery:
Thank you for having me.
Puder:
Okay. So let's start with the DSM. I think that's a good place to start. Why this is important to talk about is because the DSM is very flat. How would you guys describe the DSM diagnosis of schizoid?
Stokes:
Very pathological, pathologically oriented.
Puder:
Bridget, you wanna read some of this out loud?
DSM-5 Criteria for Schizoid Personality Disorder: A Surface-Level View (02:18)
Pieroni:
Yeah. So the DSM-5 criteria is very much based on what's externally seen in people with Schizoid Personality Disorder. And I know we're gonna talk about the difference between having schizoid personality and having a schizoid personality disorder. But the DSM-5 criteria of a pervasive pattern of detachment from social relationships and a restricted range of expression of emotions in interpersonal settings, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts as indicated by four or more of the following: Neither desires nor enjoys close relationships, including being part of a family; almost always chooses solitary activities; has little, if any, interest in having sexual experiences with another person, takes pleasure in few, if any, activities; lacks close friends or confidants other than first degree relatives, appears indifferent to the praise or criticism of others; shows emotional coldness, detachment, or flattened activity.
Puder:
Yeah. So as you guys read this, let's get a little group discussion. How do you feel? How do you feel about this? How do you reflect upon this?
Kampa:
It just feels like it's not accurate, right? Like, not accurate to maybe how dynamic a person can be. And it really doesn't speak to the depth of people. Like it really is just kind of what you can see on the surface and then label somebody, with versus what's their inner experience like.
Riege:
I think too, it's, it's speaking to the expression, you know, the visible expression of what's going on internally. It speaks to nothing as to what is actually happening internally, which more often than not has very little to do with a complete lack of desire for close relationships. Usually that detachment and anxiety or awkwardness or discomfort, you know, is so protective, but there's this real longing for closeness, but also an ambivalence around it. And so, you know, if you're simply looking at these criteria thinking, “Well, this person wants relationships, right? So this isn't, this isn't maybe schizoid.” That is so far from the truth. So, it really doesn't get at all into what's driving some inner turmoil, distress.
Puder:
Yeah.
Kampa:
Can I add one more thing? I think McWilliams wrote a nice article about this, right? And in it she talked about where that term schizoid derived from. And it did seem to derive from this observation of ‘schisms’ right? Between an internal life of somebody and then that externally observable part of somebody.
Puder:
Yeah. Yeah. I think that the thing that really jumps out at me is if you were interviewing someone with schizoid for one hour and you were not very connected with them this is probably what you might see. You might not get much of the depth of their deep yearning for connectedness. You might just hear like, oh, this person seems very withdrawn from people. But I think that this fails in so many ways because of that, right? Because it's such a shallow vision of someone with schizoid. Yeah.
Let's talk a little bit about how they diagnose it in the PDM (Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual).
Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual (PDM): A Deeper Understanding of Schizoid Traits (06:15)
Kampa:
Yeah. So in the most recent PDM actually they are looking at different characterological traits and different personality types along a developmental spectrum. And so the authors go through kinda early childhood, adolescence, and then adulthood. But, what the PDM is discussing when they're talking about schizoid traits is they’re suggesting that we should be paying attention to people who are retreating in relationships where they're kind of coming close and then they're pulling back again, either physically or emotionally. They're also talking about people with schizoid traits having some conflicts around relating to other people, versus maybe potentially having some sort of deficit in relating to other people or, or understanding different kinds of relationships. And I think that in the PDM they talked about how people with schizoid dynamics may appear indifferent to social encounters, but are actually very deeply aware and paying attention and understanding of the environment that they're in and instead of not getting it and so not engaging, they're actually making an intentional choice to put some distance between themselves and maybe somebody or something in their environment.
Differentiating Schizoid Personality from Autism Spectrum Disorder (07:53)
Puder:
I think that last one is especially crucial for understanding and differentiating autism from schizoid personality style because someone with autism will not be picking up on social cues. They may have difficulty understanding others' minds, right? Or someone with schizoid personality style may really be very articulate as to how they might describe someone and what's going on interpersonally.
Riege:
I think that leads to sort of a resistance or a hesitation to disclose aspects of the self, you know. The idea of someone misreading or misinterpreting their meaning, or what they're trying to convey, has probably been experienced much of their life. Because it isn't, you know, a very common personality style. Their core dilemma internally is not shared by many others. And so this feeling of being misunderstood can feel so crushing to self-esteem or feel dismissive that way, that it's, you know, protective to maintain that sort of withdrawn stance or not share. Being othered or being sort of alone is preferable at times to like connecting and then feeling dismissed. We can get into this a little bit more in relation to psychodynamic approach, but are being sort of consumed that way.
The Schizoid Dilemma: Fear of Engulfment and Isolation (09:45)
Puder:
Yeah, I think that the fear of being consumed is one way of really understanding the deep, like what is really going on, on a deep psychological level. And when you hear that, you're like, “What do you mean fear of being consumed?” Right? And I love that you tie that to empathy. How would you guys talk about that? Like this lack of empathic experience and this fear of being consumed?
Montgomery:
I think this sort of relates to that point, and I think I talked a little bit about this in one of our meetings in that sort of schizoid dilemma, right? These are sort of what you're talking about, these two unbearable states—engulfment versus isolation, right? If I, you know, put myself out or open those doors too much, I will be entirely engulfed and have no sort of sense of self versus complete and total isolation. So what do you do when you're simultaneously experiencing those things - that fear of engulfment versus fear of isolation? And I think that's sort of what a little bit of what Allie's talking about, and it got me thinking of Kafka actually, because so much of his work was unshared, right? The letters of the father never got sent to the father. All of these deep inner thoughts never got shared. And it's such classic schizoid like, “I have so much to share, but I don't want to be seen or I'm afraid of being seen.”
Riege:
And I mean, coming back to how we opened with like, why is this relevant to talk about and to bring it to life through Kafka is because it is hard to understand this idea of fear of engulfment, right? Like, it sounds very irrational or psychotic. And, you know, we won't go deep on this, but of course a schizoid personality style can present, you know, in all ranges of functioning from the more psychotic to the more neurotic and no issues in reality testing that way. But this fear of engulfment is hard to explain, I think, to people who are organized very differently or have different psychological processes. And so that's one way that the Kafka examples we'll talk to later maybe can bring this to life.
Riege:
But, as clinicians or providers, having this information allows us to appreciate the very different lived experience of this person, where with many patients or clients you're looking to provide this empathy, this attunement, you know. Most people you're imagining want to be seen and heard. And it's this validating, very like, loving, connected experience that way. But all of a sudden you have somebody who you're reacting to that way trying to attune to, and they retreat, they shut down. And then you can start to sort of question like, “What might be going on here?” And there's multiple things that could be, but for somebody with this schizoid personality, being too seen is like a merging. Like, wait, where do I end and you begin? This closeness is threatening somehow. And they might not be able to articulate it.
Riege:
They might not say like, and likely won't, like, “I'm afraid I'm going to lose my sense of self.” Or like, you're going to, you know, “I am gonna be engulfed by you and I'll cease to exist.” Like, that's not coming into words, but it's felt as this need to put distance, right? Like, I suddenly need to go internally to my internal world or detach a little bit, because that's been really helpful in feeling safe and secure. And so as providers, us recognizing this, this path of like, too much attunement and empathy is not safe here. We have to strike a balance and recognize that that person is tolerating quite a bit of anxiety trying to convey their experience.
Franz Kafka's Letter to His Father: Exploring Engulfment and Familial Dynamics (14:22)
Puder:
You know, so one of the things that I've seen in my own clinical practice when I'm getting too close, is they might start to dissociate. So you can almost feel this haze in the room, right? I wanted to read one passage, and Jeremiah, I'm gonna, I may steal your thunder a little bit reading this, but I want you to interpret it for me, okay? But I put it in the comment here in the zoom. So this is from Kafka, and this is his letter to his father. Okay? And this is a portion of it. And he says, “As we stand, marriage is barred to me precisely because it is your special realm.” So Kafka is saying like, marriage is not allowed to me Kafka, because this is your special realm, my father, right? “At times I imagine the map of the earth spread out and you stretched over it.”
Puder:
“It then seems that only the regions you do not cover or that lie beyond your reach can be considered for my life in keeping with the magnitude I attribute to you. There are not many such regions, nor are they very comforting. And marriage is certainly not among them.” Okay. So remember this idea of consumption, this fear of consumption, this idea of unempathic immersion, right? This idea of like, there's very few parts of life left that I can say that is specifically mine, like writing was that for him, right? Like, this is a part his dad didn't write, he was a writer. Yeah. Jeremiah, any thoughts on this passage? Any thoughts on how this speaks to schizoid?
Stokes:
Yeah. Big time. Yeah. So this, so some context. So the letters to the father were written in 1919 and they were actually written after some of his earlier works. And there's theory that he wrote these letters in response to this sort of emotional collapse that he had from a prior engagement to marriage. So he had a few engagements to marriage with a couple different women. And so I think the idea is that Kafka learned, his early relational experience of closeness was really predicated on the feeling of being engulfed by his father. And so I think that was then translated into his relational experiences with intimate partners. And so I think he learned from a very early age that he sort of occupied this safe space where, although “I'm longing for connectivity,” whether it's with his father or with an intimate partner, but also “the fear of engulfment prevents me from, from accessing the closeness that I crave and I yearn.”
Stokes:
And so as a result, Kafka retreats into his writing. So the writing becomes a medium, the writing becomes a safe space. The writing becomes a place where he's able to articulate the complexity of his, of his inner psyche, the deep desire for connectivity, but doing it in a safe way. And he even talks about when he conceptualized his relationship with his father, he talked about it being contained in a glass jar. And so it was almost, he had this kind of energetic force field between him and his father, where, you know, he could see his father and his father could see him, but there wasn't that proximity. And so he really gained a lot of that sense of safety through his writing.
Puder:
Very well put. Yeah, very well put. I think from the letter, I was just rereading it this morning, and he talks about how he doesn't share any of this with his father. So he's speaking in the letter very eloquently about the dynamic and how it's dysfunctional. But then he's also speaking about how he never talks about any of this. And of course, the letter was never actually given to his father.
Stokes:
And his father never read the letter. So he died, Kafka died, before his father. His father died, I think six or seven years later. Kafka gave the letter to his mother. I think with hopes, potentially, I mean, this is just an inference that I've made, but with hopes that the mother would give the letter to the father. She never did. So there was no sort of reconciliation, unfortunately.
Riege:
In letters, Kafka, at one point, you know, puts words to what you're talking about too, in this sense of losing access to himself when his father was in the room. He was so, you know, he had a big personality and that took up space. But Kafka had this sense that he lost access to his own thoughts and ideas, because he also idealized his father in ways. And so would, you know, take on his father's beliefs and thoughts as well as being maybe true and/or his own true or both true part of him. And then when he was met with his father in the room, he felt this, this panic or this sense of like, incompleteness of himself because he could no longer grasp those ideas that he felt very strongly about and firmly in his writing. So there's a nice example, I think, of what engulfment is.
Stokes:
And you're actually referencing a really important part of the letter, and it goes like this. “What you said seemed final, and if I thought differently, I felt guilty even before I could articulate the thought. Thus, even in the bathing hut where there should have been no such thing as authority, I felt crushed. I saw myself as a nothing beside you and everything that belonged to me, my thoughts, my feelings, my opinions seemed ridiculous, unimportant, and contemptible.”
Puder:
In the bathing hut he's comparing his size. He was a small boy to his father, very strong, very, very masculine, very muscular, high musculature. And there was a level of projection. There were also parts of the letter where he talks about how his father had opinions about everything and was very certain about everything. His father was very certain that he was right about everything, even things that he didn't know much about. So you can imagine this kind of very strong figure, but Kafka kind of dwarfed and feeling small, feeling alien.
Montgomery:
Yeah. And he carried that feeling with him. He talks, he writes about that a lot, about this feeling of being ugly or, you know, people secretly believing him to be ugly or unattractive or something like that. It's a theme you sort of see throughout his writing and his letters. I mean, The Metamorphosis could be one sort of literal example of becoming ugly, this monster or this creature.
Puder:
He wakes up with an insect body, right? Yeah.
Montgomery:
Yeah.
Puder:
We will pretend as if our listeners have never read any of Kafka today so that you'll understand what we're talking about. Yeah. He wakes up with an insect body and then all of the clumsiness that comes from walking around with a huge insect body, right?
Montgomery:
The shame.
Nancy McWilliams' Perspective on Schizoid Dynamics and Therapeutic Implications (21:47)
Puder:
The otherness, the disgust, the self-disgust. Yeah. Okay I want to go back to Nancy McWilliams, and I want to talk about how she viewed schizoid. I actually think Nancy does a great job of describing schizoid. If you, if you read one chapter in her book on psychodynamic diagnosis, read the schizoid chapter, it'll open up your eyes in new ways. Who wants to talk about this? Who wrote this out, MacKenzie?
Kampa:
Yeah, I did.
Puder:
Go for it.
Kampa:
I guess where to start? There's a lot here so cut me off.
Yeah, McWilliams talks about how schizoid personality is seen in certain creative types of people, people in the arts, theoretical sciences, philosophy, spirituality, like clergy. But also she talks about, several times, how therapists with schizoid traits can be very, very effective therapists. And part of that is actually because people with schizoid character are very introspective pretty naturally and the idea of coming into contact with, you know, their own unconscious or the unconscious of other people, it's not scary to them. It's not necessarily deterring. And having therapeutic relationships kind of helps meet a need of, like, “I can connect and be close to somebody, but there's a frame, right? It's once a week, it's twice a week. And then I can kind of come back to myself.” She writes about how there are some themes that might come up as somebody works with schizoid types. And these include, you know, the high sensitivity type person, people with a high desire for solitude, maybe they are indifferent to, or not needing a lot of public admiration, even though they might be contributing in really meaningful ways that might warrant public admiration or recognition.
Puder:
Let me, let me jump in right here. It's this hypersensitivity. Imagine a child that's hyperpermeable to the affects, to the emotions, to the thoughts of others, right? They're taking everything in. So this is very different than autism, remember, where like, they don't know the mind of the other, they're not picking up on social cues, they [people with schizoid character) are picking up on everything, right? They're picking up on tons of stuff. They feel other stuff, very, very exquisitely. So much so that they need to guard against it, right? Okay. And then the other thing you mentioned…what was it? So yeah, think about the hyperpermeable, and think about the solitude actually as a solution for that hyperpermeability and the fantasy, right? They have a huge internal fantasy world. Okay, keep going.
Kampa:
And that's through life, right? So, you know, the child might be very imaginative to begin with, but then even into adolescence and adulthood, very rich fantasies that may or may not mirror what they're expressing in their everyday life. So she, you know, she talks about kind of this tension, push, pull, yin yang, whatever you wanna call it, where somebody with a schizoid psychology, they might appear disengaged on the surface, but when you get to know them on a deeper level, they are expressing these fantasies really about intimacy and deep connection, strong desire for closeness. And she goes through several of these characteristics, right? They might appear self-sufficient, but have these deep yearnings to have emotional needs be met by another and just not really be able to express that. May appear absent-minded, we've talked about this, but be very observant, almost hypervigilant, I don't know if I could say that, very vigilant about their surroundings and the people around them and the emotional states of people around them. Might appear unreactive to things going on that are very sensitive, right? The book, the Highly Sensitive Child, alludes to that book maybe being a kind of a door open to people with schizoid psychology. Like the DSM says, right, maybe uninterested in sex. But what McWilliams is saying is no, they might appear that way, but their fantasies might be very elaborate sexual fantasies that you would never, you would never think, or you would never assume or imagine this person would express.
Puder:
Yeah. And I would say it's like only in deep weekly or twice a week work that you would ever get to any of this. And so that's why I think the DSM got this so wrong is because if you just interview someone and you're a stranger, you're not gonna get any of this. You have to build pretty profound trust, and you have to be really attuned and very empathic to be able to build that trust because they're going to feel so overrun by someone who's not empathic.
Pieroni:
And, if I can add, Nancy McWilliams also talks about how they can actually pick up on feelings of others that they may not even be aware of. And so they have very good truth detection in people, and they will be able to, and this is I think, important for treatment, is that if you are not being honest, they will pick up on it. And that will, that could sever the relationship.
Puder:
Yeah. Their ability to see if you're honest is astute, right? They don't have autism. They're picking up on social cues. They're picking up on if this person is being honest or dishonest, if this person likes me or doesn't like me. And, and maybe sometimes they're also projecting their own internal world on you as well.
Montgomery:
Yeah. That’s what I'm thinking. I think broadly speaking, that's true about that BS detector truth, but so much of it is self-referential, right? This internal world that they've built is entirely within themselves, right? So you, you do, you can get that projection a lot. So, you know, so how do you tell truth from fiction, right? We know a lot about Kafka’s father from some of the other siblings and things like that, but how much of this is a construct, right? Versus how much of this is accurate? And I guess you could talk about reflective functioning and labeling and things like that and accuracy versus inaccuracy. But I think that idea that it's so much of this rich fantasy life for rich real relationships is entirely sort of constructed by them and I think that's where the threat comes from is that they're not just forming a relationship, they're sharing something so meaningful that is so core to them. It's essential to them. And it's like a world that's been entirely built by them, right? And how scary must that be to let someone into that world?
Puder:
And part of the issue is the world that they've created reinforces alienation often. Can reinforce despair. Their overly analytical, hyperactive reflections can lead to endless self scrutiny without resolution. And then if they project onto other people inaccurately, maybe the projections would work for their early attachment figures, you know, maybe Kafka's dad really was that critical, but if they project that criticalness onto everyone, right? Then, they end up kind of reinforcing this alienation and despair and cycles of like, you know, withdrawal.
Riege:
Think particularly to, oh, go ahead, Jeremiah.
Stokes:
Well, I think that's why it's so important to understand the defense system. You know, when it comes to schizoid, it's largely in part developed through the defense system in childhood. And McWilliams is very clear that it could be one end of the spectrum in terms of an attachment figure. It could be an attachment figure who's smothering, over involved, or it could be an attachment figure who's neglectful. But because the child is highly intuitive, highly perceptive you know, proximity and relationship feels very overwhelming. So when they come into treatment and you're working with them as a clinician, they sort of have this kind of window of tolerance. And it's up to us as the clinicians to know that safe space to occupy so that we don't step into that territory where they feel that engulfment. And so I think there's certain strategies and certain ways of approaching schizoid patients where we're able to kind of read, “Okay, am I in a safe distance for them or have I crossed that line?” And if I have, I need to back up.
Riege:
I think you touched on an important point too, because, you know, there are different, many different etiologies and, and if we're talking about different attachment experiences that might lead to interpersonal patterns or beliefs about self and other, you know, there is this sense of sensing that they might be too much, that the amount of their need might deplete the other. If I were to show my true self to you, it would, you know, this sense that you would never, “I would be a burden. I would be a drain. You would never be able to fill all of these needs” and this, this sense of self-esteem and self-worth that's come with being able to be self-reliant and the threat they can feel internally with developing any sense of dependency on the therapist or other people in their lives.
Riege:
And trying to get at what that fear is. You know, is it this fear that like, I will be engulfed and that might be part of it, or that my need is so great and, you know, my parents were sort of disgusted by my need, you know, showed disgust or rejection when I, when I did need them, or showed my, you know, emotions, my big emotions. Or was it, is it really totally dismissive? So getting to the core of what that fear is will be meaningful, whereas on the outside, it can present in very much the same sort of detached way. Yeah.
Kampa:
You know, this, oh,
Puder:
Go ahead. Go ahead. I wanna come back to this kind of idea of asking for a need. I have a really good example from Kafka, but go ahead.
Childhood Trauma and Rejection in Kafka's Writings: The Water Incident (32:47)
Kampa:
Well, Allie, what you're talking about reminds me of kind of the opening example or memory that Kafka writes about between him and his father, where he was a child and he says, “Maybe I was being a little annoying, maybe I was trying to be funny, but I kept asking for water incessantly.” And what happened was that his dad basically picked him up, took him outside, and set him on this balcony, and then shut the door. And so then Kafka is alone in his nightgown by himself as a child, kind of just rejected, completely rejected.
Puder:
I actually have that quote. Can I, can we read that?
Kampa:
Yeah, yeah.
Puder:
We were thinking of the same thing. Okay.
“One night I kept whining for water, certainly not from thirst, but partly to irritate you, partly to amuse myself when several stern threats failed. You lifted me out of my bed, carried me onto the open air hallway, and left me standing there for a while in my night shirt before the closed door.”
So he is basically out in the cold, is what I'm imagining, like freezing cold, right?
“I won't say that was wrong. Perhaps nighttime peace really could not have been secured otherwise. I mentioned it to characterize your educational methods and their effect on me. I was obedient afterwards to be sure, but I suffered an inner injury. My childish certainty that begging senselessly for water was harmless, could never be reconciled with the extraordinary terror of being carried outside. For years I was tormented by the thought that the giant man, my father, the final authority, could almost without cause, come at night, lift me from my bed, and set me on the open air hallway, and that I therefore meant next to nothing to him.”
Yeah, you can see it. There's so much, because he's such a good writer. There's so much gravity to this. You can imagine what this was like. Of course, this is obviously child abuse, right? This is a moment that I feel like the father went too far, right?
Stokes:
But look at the first part of this. So “one night I kept whining for water, certainly not from thirst, but partly to irritate you, and partly to amuse myself.” And so I think there's a need, there was certainly a need there, there was a need to be seen. There was a need to be understood. And because of his age developmentally, he didn't have the words. And so he engaged in this behavior, and maybe not a rebellious behavior, but he engaged in this behavior to be seen by his father. And we could say his father failed, perhaps.
Puder:
I think also as I read this, I wonder, you know, is he blaming himself, right? Is there self-referential blame that kind of precedes him telling his father the story? Like he's joining the aggressor, so to speak, right?
“I'm responsible for you doing this horrible act to me. And let me tell you, I'm responsible for that, but I'm gonna tell you, it was a horrible act as well.”
Pieroni:
He, yeah, throughout the letter, he says, you know, he says to his father, you, I hold you blameless. You know, I'm not holding you accountable or, or saying that it was wrong. Which I thought was really interesting because he would on one hand, call him out on these abusive practices, and then on the other hand, say, but I don't hold you at, you know, I don't hold you at fault. I'm not blaming you.
Riege:
Yeah. I think that, you know, this starts to speak to this idea of his engagement in reflectiveness, reflective functioning to a degree of, like, he is, on the one hand, trying to hold multiple perspectives. Okay, what would it have been like for my father to feel exhausted at the end of his day at work and be trying to sleep and have his son whining incessantly for water, despite knowing that that wasn't what it was really about? And sort of in one way, you know, that might be a way of acknowledging that something had done a lot of harm and was wrong, but also trying to take other perspectives which he does, but not very often. He really wants to come back to this place of total disavowal of any anger of his own and come back to a more idealized state of his, you know, his father without really speaking to his own experience and that his father may have been wrong. There's really, you know, a resistance to saying that. But he's playing around with it a bit here throughout his letters.
Puder:
I think one way of saying this is the reflective function gap was he failed to link his father's authoritarianism with external factors like the antisemitism of the day, immigrant struggles. Instead he internalizes it into kind of solipsistic cycle of self-blame, which inevitably stops repair and reinforces the inherent unworthiness that he holds. Hmm. Right? So this kind of inherent unworthiness doesn't, isn't able to like get untangled. And so he lacks self-compassion is one way to say it. He also lacks the anger. Allie, I think you did a great job of describing that. It's kind of disavowed anger, right? It comes out, you can feel it, but it's not very clear, right? So it's disavowed. And then he has that self-blame. And so those are areas of where he could potentially deepen his reflective function, right? He could deepen his understanding.
I like how you guys mentioned with Nancy, how she talks about how I think you, Jeremiah you were talking about how you could have a parent that's very, overly suffocating, but then also a very neglectful parent. Yeah.
Is there anything else that we wanna sort of bring out for McWilliams before we move on to some of the other people that have talked about this?
Developmental Defenses in Schizoid Personality: From Attachment to Therapy (39:40)
Stokes:
Well, maybe we could look into how those defenses develop separately, differently. So I think if you have an attachment figure who is all consuming and some sort of parental-child enmeshment, the child does not have the capacity to contain everything that is happening with the parent. And so they create this defensive distance out of a need for survival. And I think if a parent has a propensity to engage that way anyway, then they're not gonna be able to read their child's signals of “this is too much.” And so I think over time, repeated exposure of that facilitates a repeated necessity for that defense. All the while though, the child is still longing and yearning for healthy attachment and connectivity. And I think conversely, I think if you have a parent who is perhaps estranged or emotionally distanced, then you have a child who has to sort of sequester themselves in their own psychology as a defense. Because the message from that parent whose distance is basically saying where “you don't have the capacity to connect with me” is the messaging. And so that's when I think the child retreats into their own fantasy life as a way to sustain the lack of connection and attachment. And I think that's really relevant for us as therapists to think about, because we are, you know, these surrogate attachment figures.
Puder:
And Jeremiah, by the way, for those of you listening, is a specialist in high conflict divorce. And so he's seen this, he's seen this unfold literally in the children. And he's fighting to try to create the most peaceful environment.
Stokes:
Tooth and nail.
Puder:
Fighting, fighting to create peace and harmony in homes that are not harmonious.
Riege:
I think that's a really good place to sort of also add like this, you know, this is why, or this is, you know, provides a lens as to why this internal world is so sacred and has provided, you know, such a powerful protective measure. And so, you know, to foster that, but also what it makes that person vulnerable to, right? Like sometimes, oftentimes that internal world is like the most important thing or is believed to be the most important thing. And if anybody gets in, if any reality gets in, this might crumble.
And so that might be some of the therapeutic work of like, there can be some connection with someone, someone can get in without this inner rich life, this fantasy, this special place crumbling, disappearing, becoming damaged in some way. And this might feel more real or not real, depending on a person's level of functioning like how split their internal world is as far as good, bad, and that will be meaningful. But I think that a really crucial part of the work is that that can exist while there being some anxiety of the unknown in relationships with others.
Puder:
I think it's worth noting, like, as we kind of think about personality, some of these patients will be on the borderline level of functioning. Yeah. So they will have identity diffusion which I did an episode on. They will have splitting, all good, all bad, they will idealize, devalue, right? So they can have early devaluation sometimes of therapists, like, “I don't think therapy is gonna be helpful, I wanna push away, but I'm here, but I don't know why I wanna be here. I don't really want to be here.”
You know, there can be that early devaluation until they experience a lot of empathy and warmth and care and space to explore their own internal world, right? I think one thing that I'm sort of gonna emphasize here is the necessity for the therapist to have the high enough reflective function to be able to give them the space to explore their own internal world without our own projections on top of them, right?
Puder:
So, by the way, every patient is going to be incredibly different. And so don't think that although we're giving you a pattern of this type of patient, they're gonna be idiosyncratic and unique, and they're not gonna have all of these features, and they're gonna have, they may have others. So we don't want to project our own image of what they may be like. We wanna allow them to unfold what's really going on inside of them. And that allows them the space for us to not be overstretched on their world like the father was on Kafka's world.
Montgomery :
David, I wonder, you're speaking of the why, them asking themselves, “Why am I here?” got me thinking, and I had put this in the notes that what brings the schizoid patient to us into therapy? Like, how might they appear? How might they show up? I was particularly thinking about Kafka, like why would Kafka show up in my office for a session, right? Because he's not gonna come in and go, “I feel like I'm schizoid or something.” What would bring someone like this into our offices? Is it, you know, maybe we have some personal experiences we can share. Is it relationship issues where they let somebody in and it, you know, fell apart, catastrophe, you know, catastrophically? Or is it they were pushed by a family member? I am wondering what really would bring this person to us.
Kampa:
I can answer this.
Puder:
Wait, but can I just say before they may actually have watched a lot of schizoid YouTube videos because I've read the comments and a lot of them are schizoid patients who have identified as schizoid at this point.
Montgomery:
Who were like, “Oh my God.” It's like an epiphany sort of thing.
Puder:
This is totally me. A hundred percent. Okay, go ahead Mackenzie.
What Brings Schizoid Individuals to Therapy: Loss, Anxiety, and Social Goals (46:19)
Kampa:
Yeah. Well, so I guess I'll pull from my readings of Kafka with an example. But first, McWilliams does touch on this briefly about maybe some reasons that somebody with schizoid might seek treatment. And she talks about loss, devastating loss. If somebody with schizoid, right, they've got a small social circle, if one of their five, you know, people in their social circle suddenly becomes unavailable to them, that's a huge loss, right. So loss. She talks about trouble with their observation of themselves withdrawing and coming back and withdrawing and coming back and wanting help with that. Or usually there's like some sort of social goal, right? Like, “I want to go on a date with somebody. I want to not feel so socially anxious all the time” or things like that.
My Kafka reading was the diaries spanning 13 years. And if you asked me, you know, why would Kafka come see you for care?
Kampa:
I would say it's because of that schizoid dilemma of connection versus annihilation and his inability to reconcile that and start to make sense of it or work through it on his own. One of his first entries in 1910 reads, “My condition is not unhappiness, but it is also not happiness, not indifference, not weakness, not fatigue, not another interest. So what is it then that I do not know that this is probably connected with my inability to write?” And so even right from the beginning he's like, “Well, it's not this, but it's not this, but I'm somewhere in this nebulous space and I can't really quite figure it out.” And he goes through that over the next 13 years of his diaries.
In 1913, he is engaged to Felice Bauer, who he was engaged to, broke it off, became engaged to again, broke it off, and then was engaged to a different woman.
Kampa:
And in 1913, he makes this list of seven things that are arguments for and against his marriage. And can I just read three of them? I think they're just like really on the nose here, poignant. So point 3 says, “I must be alone a great deal. What I accomplished was only the result of being alone.” (What he accomplished was writing). Point 4 is, “I hate everything that does not relate to literature. Conversations bore me, even if they relate to literature, to visit people bores me, the sorrows and joys of my relatives bore me to my soul, conversations take the importance, the seriousness and the truth of everything I think.” And then point 5, this is a reason against his marriage. Okay. “The fear of connection of passing into the other, then I'll never be alone again.”
Puder:
Love it. So good. I'm so glad you pulled those things out. And you can see, you can feel the tension right, in this man, of connection, of losing his sense of self, right? Of losing, like his sense of self was fragile. It was because of his hyperpermeability. He could only really experience it in writing and being alone, and in the conversations he would feel that sense of self drain from him.
Reige:
You can also, through those points, I'm really glad you brought those up. You can see where some of these more like negative descriptors came from. Somebody who's aloof, withdrawn. Sometimes this can, you know, there's a differential here of narcissism. And again, you can see why, and you know, there's this sense of being uninterested. “Is this worth my time? I'm not engaged. I don't care about, you know, what these people are saying. I am more interested in my creative pursuits.” You know, so in this differential process, I think it was Harry Guntrip who wrote such a wonderful paper on the different schizoid qualities. But one is this sense of narcissism, but a really important difference when compared to somebody with a different personality style, whether it's narcissistic or other, is that the objects, you know, the love objects where you're garnering self-esteem or self-worth or sense of self are internal.
Reige:
And so those are protected. You know, those are to be protected and the priorities sort of put above other people's needs a lot of the time. So there's some similarities there, but coming from a very different place. But again, I think it's important to note just based on those points, he's an agony over these, but you don't see the agony. But what does come forth are sort of what might present to us in the clinical room of someone who is more aloof, is unsure of what we have to offer, do they even want to change?
Stokes:
And I think if I'm Kafka and I'm on my third failed engagement and I'm really kind of trying to figure this thing out, analytically, probably, really trying to figure out why does this continue to happen to me? Is this rooted in my relationship with my father? I think that could be the impetus for me seeking out therapy. You know, it's like, “Why does this keep happening? I'm longing for this, but yet I can't let people in. I can't get close enough. Maybe I have enough introspection to that part of things is that I want this longing, but I can't let people in. I can't let people fully see me.” I think that can draw someone in, that desire to know.
Puder:
I think when coming back to this idea as well is like, what's the difference between schizoid and narcissistic? Narcissistic people, there's a mountain they want to climb and there's a thousand steps to get up there, but they feel the entitlement that they should be able to catapult up to the top, right? I don't get that necessarily with the schizoid. Schizoid is more, it's like the mountaintop experience of a schizoid is to completely be able to express themself in a way where they get that empathy, that feels like completely right on. It's like, it's almost like a self-actualization. Like, “I finally am regaining territory of myself,” right? “I'm not being consumed by anything or anyone. I am myself.”
Yeah, interestingly with AI, one of my schizoid patients like hates AI. Because he doesn't want AI to think for him at all. It feels consumptive as well, right? So it's like this consuming force of like, or sometimes they don't like lots of short form video or like, they don't like to be barraged by inputs. You know? They want space in their own brain to think their own thoughts. Or one, one patient didn't wanna read anything from anyone. He wanted to write without reading. Because he felt like if he read anyone else's writing, he'd be just copying the other person. Right? Okay.
Montgomery:
Your talk about reading and writing reminded me of a quote that Kafka had when he was young sort of illustrating the sensitive nature of him, but where he talks a little bit about that, and I'm wondering if I could read the quote really quick. It says, “I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for, so that it will make us happy as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books. And the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to, but we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply. Like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves. Like being banished into forests far from everyone. Like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us. That is my belief.” I think he was 20 or something when he wrote that. And I just..
Stokes:
That's depth right there.
Montgomery:
It just reminded me, it just made me think about not wanting to read or here's what I need, you know, either it's gonna do this or it's gonna do nothing at all. It's like, it's very, I don't know.
Puder:
But the stabbing of himself is like, I'm going to be living closer to the truth. Right? I'm not going to be veiling reality. And that's the interesting thing about people with schizoid is they don't veil reality. They see things very clearly. They see things clearer than people with a lot of like hypomanic or grandiose delusions, right? Or grandiose defenses. They're not trying to see a happy reality. That's what he is really pointing to there. He's trying to see reality for what it is. So if a book shows you reality for what it is and helps you understand yourself better, that's good.
Reige:
And I think too, you know, there's part of seeing the inevitability of pain or feeling other people suffering, and to come back to your question, Jeren, and before you know, presenting to therapy with profound sadness or an ongoing depression, like DSM diagnoses that are like a persistent depressive disorder or something like that, where there's maybe a depressive nature there. Just because of always making a point to and being unable to see and feel the suffering around. And that was what, you know, filled so much of Kafka's fictional work, which we haven't spoken to as much. But the distress over that and then not really not having an ending, right? Like it's, it's sort of left vague and unanswered and unsettling.
Puder:
Yeah. And Jeren, I want you to speak to his works, The Trial. You spent a lot of time on The Trial, thinking about The Trial.
Kafka's "The Trial": Themes of Alienation, Guilt, and Bureaucratic Oppression (57:22)
Montgomery:
Yeah, I read the trial once when I was in my twenties and a couple times just in anticipation of this. And there's so many sort of great quotes from it. It's a little tougher with the work of fiction. I had to try to think how I was gonna interpret it. Am I looking for, you know, a quote that shows me Kafka’s schizoid sort of personality, or what am I really trying to get out of this work that I can bring into what we're talking about? And I think the biggest thing I get from the trial is this sort of sense of alienation, right? That it sort of must be like, because there's not, I mean there's not specific quotes where I say, where I would say “this is schizoid.”
Montgomery:
Right? But there are, there are interpretations of those things. And I think one of the big ones is, the trial's commonly described as being this inescapable, authoritarian bureaucracy that's sort of pointless and absurd, right? He's accused of a crime and placed under arrest without ever knowing what the crime is. So it starts off where it says, “Someone must have slandered Joseph K, for one morning, without having done anything wrong, he was arrested.” This is how it starts.
So it's confusion. It's this, “How could someone be arrested without having done anything wrong?” And then you get into these themes of sort of justice and the law. So there is that, you know, engulfment, isolation, absurd versus sort of reality.
Montgomery:
But the big thing I get from reading the trial is that I look at the law, like the bureaucratic entity in the trial is this sort of opaque system of laws that not many people know much about. And I'll actually read a quote, and this might sum it up, rather than me trying to summarize the whole story. It says, “Our authorities, as far as I know them, and I know only the lowest grades, do not go in search of guilt in the population, but are, as it says in the law, drawn to guilt and must send us warders out. That is law. Where could there be a mistake in that?” Right? This is, this is one of his arresting officers explaining to him what's going on, because he's very much like, “What am I accused of?”
Montgomery:
And they're like, “We can't tell you”. And, and the whole trial is absurd, him fighting this opaque justice system that he has little access to and cannot know what he's guilty of. But what was interesting to me is I see that opaque, bureaucratic, oppressive system is emblematic of his relationship with his father, right? I think his father is this court system: it's absurd, inescapable, overwhelming control, judgment. And it's like guilt. It makes me feel guilty. In this process of the book, he starts wondering like, “Did I do something wrong? Am I guilty? No. That can't be it.” So, you know, where does schizoid show up exactly? Hard for me to say. So I'm trying to look at it: how would that sort of influence this writing?
Kampa:
Oh, keep going.
Montgomery:
No, please, please. I'm sort of rambling here.
Kampa:
Well, I just had this thought that I guess to me, like having read these diaries, it actually seems like all of his published, well, they weren't published, right? All of his works were his inner fantasy worlds. Like as you're talking about The Trial, like that's what he's living in. That's kind of what I'm conceptualizing it as. And I want to read one more quote for why, potentially. At the end of Kafka's life, he was dying from tuberculosis and he was in and out of sanitariums. And in 1922, he made this entry as he's reflecting on his life.
“My development was a simple one. While I was still contented, I wanted to be discontented, and with all the means that my time and tradition gave me plunged into discontent and then wanted to turn back again. Thus, I have always been discontented, even with my contentment. Strange how make believe if engaged in systematically enough can change into reality.”
Kampa:
And that last sentence about how make-believe, if engaged in regularly enough, can change into reality. It's just kind of coming up to me. Like, I wonder if you're really spot on with The Trial and his relationship with his dad feeling so oppressive. Like did aspects of, what am I trying to say? How am I trying to say this? Like, aspects of his reality and relationships in his reality and this make-believe fantasy world that he kept building and writing… Did it all kind of come crashing together in some form or fashion?
Puder:
So I actually have a quote of his guilt in the letters to the fathers. He said, “You also possess a particularly lovely, rarely seen kind of quiet, contented, approving smile that you can make its recipient completely happy. I cannot recall receiving it explicitly in childhood. Yet, it must have happened. Why should you have denied it to me then when I still seemed innocent and was your great hope? Even so, such friendly impressions ultimately achieved nothing but to enlarge my sense of guilt and make the world still harder to understand.”
So it's like this guilt of this kind of, this unknowing guilt of the father. Jeren, I love how you're pulling in that guilt. He's convicted of guilt, not that he's done anything, but the guilt itself brings him into account of the law, right? And here he is with his father, realizing his father can have this effect on this, realizing that he doesn't quite remember this, but feeling guilty in the midst of it. Right? Like, “I did something bad. I am wrong.” Pointing the anger at himself, the self-blame at himself, not for any particular reason, but it's diffuse, you know?
Montgomery:
Yeah. And, you know, my thoughts around this, The Trial and the interpretation of it kept changing. Because the classical interpretation is it's, you know, written in the backdrop of World War I and these sort of needless sort of deaths and it's tied into themes more around that and, you know, the sort of justice and the law, but there is this sort of psychodynamic or psychoanalytic interpretation where this is his father. And everything that plays out there is him. And you see these different parts of himself in the character, even Joseph K. Whether that's supposed to be Kafka or not, I'm not entirely sure. Because the character in the book is sort of arrogant and impulsive, and at the same time he's also confident and dismissive.
Montgomery:
And he also has those narcissistic qualities that Allie talked about. Not the classic stuff, the type that wants to jump to the top, but there is a little of that. There's even, at the end of the trial, there are these fragments, there are a bunch of parts of the book that were never included in the original text, but they include them, you know, many of them at the end. But they didn't really fit into the book. And one of them is him sitting around a table with all the prosecutors and people in the law. And, and he says the character, the main character Joseph K - “He was soon acknowledged as an expert in business. And his views on such matters were accepted, though not without a touch of irony as the final word.”
Montgomery:
You know, there's this character, Joseph K thinks he knows more and better than all of these other people in the book, and it comes out in certain places. The other quote is, “They're talking about things of which they don't have the slightest understanding anyway. It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.” I feel like he could be talking to his father even here as well. But, but like the disavowed side, like, he's not gonna call his father stupid. He might be a little more descriptive or eloquent in his text, but maybe these are parts of himself, maybe this is that disavowed sort of anger almost in a way.
Puder:
Disavowed, disallowed, this part of his anger that maybe he couldn't even consciously or barely consciously represent. Right? It's easier to represent it in a work of art. It's easier to create or just be so blunt in the work of art, right, than to say it out loud. And if he said it out loud as he does, he starts to say it out loud in, in his letters to his father. He almost negates it soon afterwards or blames it on himself, right? There's that sort of guilt where he turns that anger towards his father on himself. And he feels that guilt. And there's also, remember coming back to this thing of like, well, why was his father this way? This antisemitism, this, you know, all of these cultural factors, you know, are other things he could have in a deeper reflective place been angry at as well as like, these are like part of the, the bath of influences, right?
Montgomery:
Yeah. I mean, he also had two sons die, right? Kafka had two younger brothers that died before he was age six, I think. So what kind of impact must that have.
Puder:
Impacted him. It impacted his father, it impacted his mother. Absolutely. Just huge losses.
Montgomery:
Yeah. I mean, I feel like I could, we could do a whole podcast talking about The Trial and some of the quotes in there.
Puder:
Keep going. I love it. Give some more quotes.
Montgomery:
Let's see. So just speaking to sort of the opaque sort of accusatory nature of the court in the trial, which, I sort of look at it as his father. He says “You can't defend yourself against the court. You have to acknowledge your guilt, acknowledge your guilt at the first opportunity. Only then are you given the possibility of escape, only then.” That's direction given to him by a character Lenny in the book who's the nurse to someone in the book, and also kind of a love interest, or they say seductress of K. But that reminds me, there is a quote in the letters and it's something along the lines of, “One would already be punished to a certain extent before one knew one had done something wrong.”
Montgomery:
There's this just innate feeling of I've done something wrong, or like, bracing to be hit almost right? That you see in this book and you see in the letters and stuff like that, where you're just waiting for it at all times. Even if I don't know what it is somebody does, you know, and someone more powerful than I, you know, who am I to sort of defy that power? And that's a theme you see throughout this as well, where he, and this brings up some of the stuff we talked about last time when we met, that the feelings that came up for me around this. And this is something that clinicians will experience in session, we all do, is that there was a lot of disgust that came up, some, you know, frustration that came up in this character, Joseph K, in the book where you just wanna shake him at times and go like, “What are you doing?”
Montgomery:
“Why are you acting this way? You're sort of arrogant when you shouldn't be, and submissive and passive when you shouldn't be.” I had to ask myself why is this coming up for me? Right? What is so strong that I, you know, and, and I do that when I read a lot of stuff, when it, what it brings up in me, right? What is this sort of saying about me? And some of it is because I can relate to a lot of those feelings that this character had, right? Especially when I was younger, those feelings of powerlessness or helplessness or wishing you had said something, you know, when you should have, or being just terrified and utterly afraid of sharing some inner part of yourself.
Montgomery:
And so there is this like, man, you can make a different choice, right? There's something to be done, right? There's help to be gotten. So some of it, it's like, maybe I'm shaking my younger self or feeling that frustration with my younger self. But it was just an interesting observation that came up. Because I didn't enjoy reading The Trial either time, really. I did find it pretty frustrating. I found some of the language and the prose kind of hard to read and I think that makes sense to some degree. This was an unfinished work sort of put together by his friend Max Brod and released after the fact. It wasn't an enjoyable experience to read. But it was an interesting experience. And this book is jarring in a lot of ways because it is so absurd. And that's another thing this sort of literature of the absurd is something that came up during this period. And “Kafkaesque” is a big term used in the sort of modern zeitgeist right now. And that's what this book is. It's absurd. It feels absurd. It's unsettling. It's destabilizing. It's what is going on here.
Riege:
You can see, right? Like, I mean, this is so important to talk about your countertransference. Like, you know, you're looking at what you might be identifying with personally, which is always relevant, but you're feeling also what you're supposed to be feeling, what Kafka needs you to feel, right? And so that is also happening with our patients in the room. Something really important is being evoked in you. Something that they need you to be feeling. That is how they are going to be known. That is the only way Kafka could be truly known in that moment. And maybe in person it was far too intolerable to be known that deeply. And so this is a really nice barrier to being seen that way. But to share this pain, this suffering, this confusion over his own identity and his, you know, his sense of the absurdity of his world at that time and the culture, the time, it speaks to both things.
Riege:
I think you're experiencing his own..this really confusing…So you talk about opaque, like so much of himself is unknown to him, which is true of everyone to varying degrees. But this sense of guilt, why do I feel this almost inborn sense of guilt? Could it be being the only surviving both of his brothers, right? This sense of guilt of like well, why did I survive when they didn't. It's probably many, many reasons of that. But, his own sense of identity is opaque in that way. And so frustrating and confusing and scary. His own imagination is terrifying, I think at times. But also safe. There are these many things going through his mind that he's expressing, that you're feeling, and you can see it, you know, in your tone and your face. And that is like a superpower, I think, of many schizoid individuals as being able to evoke this reaction. But it's not always so clear and direct. And imagery, I think more so than words, creates that, that sense.
Kampa:
And even clinically, like your schizoid patients, they might not be able to speak to you directly about what they're feeling at all. Right? They might rely very heavily on the arts or their own creative endeavors as kind of descriptors or descriptions to communicate with you.
Puder:
Projective identification, right? They project in us, we start to identify, and even his work of art in these books, you know, creates that in us, creates this empathic immersion. Even as Jeren's unfolding this, I'm like thinking to myself like, oh, I kind of know what that's like to wake up with a dream where you are guilty and you're in a court and you're found guilty. And it's like the guilt itself becomes the proof of the crime, right?
Montgomery:
The Kafka trap
Puder:
Yeah, and I wake up and I'm like, what did I do that would inspire such guilt? You know, you can't even find it. But the guilt itself is like proof of like, here's this awful, awful thing that you did. Right? So I read a lot of his writings and it's reminiscent of dreams of my patients, of myself. And I love, Allie, that you tied in like he is evoking in us the very thing that he can't maybe mentalize in words in a high reflective portion, right?
Puder:
The guilt that he can't quite grapple with in sort of a high reflective function way, he evokes in the other to empathize with. Potentially the empathy would allow for the unfolding of a higher reflective stance. One thing that I've been really wrestling with is, I think that the only way to get to a higher reflective function stance is to feel a whole lot of empathy because it softens our mind and allows us to really think and to reflect in a deeper way. Whereas if someone is shaming us, it almost makes us less reflective. It shuts us down. So how do we create that safe environment to explore, right? That becomes the challenge of the clinician, of the good friend of the, the good parent, right?
Montgomery:
I loved Allie bringing that up and that if you wanna understand what it must have felt like for him, you know, read The Trial, right? That's such a good point. There is that sort of engulfment versus isolation. That thing you see, you feel that in the book. I don't wanna say you see that in the book, but you feel this sort of push pull, like, do I go all in on defending myself and risk this certain thing? Or am I just a passive observer, that master slave? Am I all in on this? Or am I all out on this? Because It feels like those are my only two choices. It's sort of one or the other.
Pieroni:
And how frustrating his life must have been. How frustrating it must be to have these constant opposing forces within yourself—that you want closeness, yet you also fear it. So it's just, I can just imagine how frustrating that would be.
Montgomery:
Yeah. He has this interesting quote in there. It says towards the end where, because it sort of ends. I mean, I can give spoilers on The Trial. I would imagine it ends with him, you know, being guilty. He's unable to prove his innocence. Basically, whether he is guilty or innocent or not is never shown. But they come to take him and his punishment is death and they want to have him kill himself, but he's unable to. And there's even this part in there that says, “It would have been so pointless to kill myself.” That even if he had wanted to, the pointlessness would have made him unable. And I thought that was really sort of an interesting thing to hear. And they end up stabbing him at the end. And he feels immense shame, he says, “like a dog,” right? Because he can't even do that, right? Even at the end.
Puder:
Jeren, I'm wondering, you said you enjoyed this more in your twenties, but now it's like you don't enjoy it as much, which you're a therapist now.
Montgomery:
Yeah. Go on.
Puder:
But, but like, what do you feel like you've learned through your journey that has made you maybe not enjoy this as much?
Montgomery:
You know what, the sort of thing that comes up is how much suffering is necessary to live a meaningful life, right? And there is a measure of suffering necessary, I think.
Puder:
I don't, I don't understand how that connects. You're gonna have to help us understand that.
Montgomery:
So, I think reading this and seeing this character sort of go from suffering into action and inaction…I went through a lot of, I think, probably unnecessary suffering when I was younger. I made a lot of choices…The argument is I made the best choice I could, right? If I could have made a better choice, I would have. But, you know, there was a lot of that suffering. And when I think of Kafka, I think of all the other sort of existential writers like Camus and some of the other absurd writers, like Beckett and stuff like that. And there was, for me, that sort of angst as a kid where I'm sitting in the coffee shop in the corner, with my copy of The Stranger, waiting for someone to talk to me.
Montgomery:
Because I really wanted that connection, right? But was terrified of it. So I relate to Kafka a lot and I relate to a lot of those things that we see in schizoid. The rich inner fantasy life, the fear of engulfment, the fear of isolation. And so I think my frustration comes from understanding that I struggled with a lot of those same things that he did. And it seems like he never escaped any of that, right? Like, he didn't have a great therapist or a treatment center or any of the things that I had accessible to me. So maybe that should make me more empathetic right now.
Montgomery:
And it does to some degree. But I think that frustration is really like, man, I just like, I want to talk to like 20-year-old Kafka and be like, let's talk, right? Let's sit down and have a coffee. I want to help you. I want to just talk to you. I want you to know you're not alone. I want to connect with you. And that's probably me wanting to connect with my younger self in a similar way. I don't know if that makes sense.
Riege:
Nancy McWilliams speaks directly to this as a really common countertransference to people with more schizoid dynamics, of like seeing potential and wanting this person to have it all. Like, wanting them to flourish. Whether you see them as a child with a lot of potential, or this person that's closed off that you want to say like, “There's this whole world out here. It's not gonna be as scary and awful as you think, and you can tolerate the disappointments or potential rejections. There's so much more.” And really that can lead to a lot of frustration like you're experiencing or oftentimes it's more like maternal/paternal warmth. But ultimately, I think what's highly relevant here is what is realistic for this person, and what are their goals that may be fundamentally different from someone with a more depressive personality structure, or, you know, somebody who has more of a social anxiety that's very different.
Riege:
But, that a realistic closeness and connection of what's tolerable, is different. And might always come with a certain degree of anxiety over time that would hopefully change. But, yeah, your countertransference in the reading is one I couldn't help but jump in and mention because it is one of the most common ones. And I think that's why Nancy McWilliams included that to look out for.
Stokes:
Because I think it elicits this response in the therapist to lean in too quick, too hard. And I think Kafka's description of the glass container that he describes with him and his father, I think that's probably important for us to remember as clinician, is that there's this glass container that they have around themselves. And I think it's up to the person with the schizoid organization to lift that container on their own volition and in the right time. And so I think it's really important to remember that proximity and that distance, particularly as it relates to emotionality and trying to explore affect too soon, too intense. I think it's really important for the patient to really direct that component of treatment. Because if not, I think it can lead to a premature outcome that is not conducive for treatment.
Puder:
This is a rich discussion. I wanna make sure to hit on things. Allison, is there anything in the letters that you want to maybe highlight?
Kafka's Letters to Milena: Idealization, Terror, and Distant Intimacy (01:25:14)
Riege:
Yeah. In his letters to Melena, this is a group of letters written over the course of like, I think three years to this woman who is definitely like a romantic interest, but started out as business. I think that she was working on some of his books, translating them from German to Czech. And it sort of morphed into this very intense affair, emotional connection. And so similar to the diaries, you really see this side of Kafka, get a glimpse into his internal world. But, it provides, I think, a little bit more of this interpersonal angst and dilemma. He really idealizes her throughout. And I think it shows how he was able to convey intense love, his desire for love, but only only in the context of separation here.
Riege:
So that there was no, like, she was unavailable to him. Not only did she live in another country, but she was married. She was 10 years younger, at least. And he saw that the gap between them was too large. So there was safety there, in expressing himself to this woman that was really unattainable for him. But in his letters you see a real, like idealization in a way where he is only taking in parts of her that fit into his idea of what he needs her to be. This vivacious, intelligent, fiery, like, full of life person. And these letters are one-sided, so you don't see her response. They were actually burned, most of them. So, nobody knows what they said, but you can see his sort of dismissing her, any sense of her own vulnerabilities or, you know, sadness, regrets, confusion.
Riege:
And I think that's significant to some of the clinical work that we do. And particularly if somebody tends to, you know, if we're working with someone with these more schizoid dynamics that is a little bit more in the borderline range of functioning, maybe neurotic as well, but that has a really hard time tolerating connection with others for fear of sort of seeing the whole picture, holding both that people can be good and make mistakes. Having more of a challenge of really having these whole people in their lives because the pain and disappointment can feel too crushing when someone makes a mistake, like you can see with Kafka and his family with his parents. So yeah, I think that's what I really got out of the letters to Melena.
Riege:
But you know, there's the intensity of his admiration, the intensity of his love in words, you could see how deeply he feels things, how deeply he wants to connect. And then he'll say, “Now, I must go hide under my chair because I'm shaking so much by even thinking about you reading these letters that I need to retreat to the safety of my room, hide under this chair, close the windows, and then I can come back to myself.” Right? And so her intrusion, even through letters, was something that he waited by his door for, right? He could not wait to read these. They brought him to life, but as he was brought to life, this intolerable anxiety occurred. He was petrified and would flee to the shadows. So yeah, it gave a richness to this dynamic.
Stokes:
I mean, that's terror, right? That feeling that you described, that's utter and absolute terror.
Riege:
Yeah.
Puder:
I can feel the tension of like, both the intimacy of the letter, right, of the vulnerability, but then also after putting it down, it's like, and now I am in terror of the response, you know? How it's gonna be received, how it's gonna be read.
Stokes:
Have you ever sent an email and after you send it, you go, oh man, I don't know how this one's gonna be received, you know?
Montgomery:
Now imagine having to wait weeks for a letter.
Riege:
Right? Yeah. There's a good quote. I can end with that. I think I'm not really doing it justice, you know, they're really beautifully written letters and show so much of his personality and a really painful amount of self-loathing as well. But he describes here, when he gets a letter.
“Milena, I literally start to shake as if under an alarm bell. I am unable to read them, and naturally I read them anyway, the way an animal dying of thirst drinks. And with that comes fear and more fear. I look for a piece of furniture to crawl under, trembling, totally unaware of the world. I pray you might fly back out of the window the way you came storming in inside your letter. After all, I can't keep a storm in my room. In these letters, you undoubtedly have the magnificent head of Medusa. The snakes of terror are quivering about your head so wildly while the snakes of fear quiver even more wildly about my own.”
Stokes:
Wow.
Puder:
Yeah. Often he understands his own fear of intimacy, his own guilt, his ambivalence, but he often fails to mentalize the partner, Felice Bauer, Melena, and their independent emotional worlds. And rather, there's a bit of that idealizing of them, right? Yeah. And then withdrawal.
Montgomery:
Withdrawal and return, yeah.
Puder:
Right? So the self-awareness doesn't fuel intimacy and connection. It leads to isolation rather than mutuality. And letters in and of themself is a way of stemming off the fear of engulfment because it creates a separateness, it creates a distance, right? Rather than like, face-to-face, rather than that intimacy of presence.
Montgomery:
Yeah.
Montgomery:
I think that's interesting, that engulfment versus isolation, one of those compromises is long distance relationships, but even these letters, like the intensity of the feeling even just around these letters, how his tolerance for closeness was so small that just sending the letter and waiting was enough to send him under a chair. Imagine what it must have been like for him in person with someone like this, it would be unbearable.
Puder:
Yep.
Puder:
I've had a couple patients with schizoid, and the fear of any physical contact is sometimes petrifying. And so I'll use a behavioral approach. I'll use an exposure response prevention type tactic, get them to write down something like, “I'm holding hands with this person and I'm okay.” Something simple like that will actually draw up traumatic memories as well, so there's good reason why physical connectedness and intimacy is so scary, right? And so it's like the weight of the trauma sometimes from the past is present in those current relationships and needs to be kind of untangled and worked through.
Riege:
Yeah. Like that terror that you're describing Jeren, is so real and profound that I found as well, the defense of dissociation or this sense of depersonalization that happens in the room too, you know, and a behavioral approach can be really helpful, I've found even just grounding back into the room, like, I can actually be here. You know, David, you talked about this a little bit earlier, but sort of attuning to when maybe that depersonalization or dissociation might be happening. Maybe you're attuned to what is happening for you as well, but slowly physically bringing that person back for however long it feels tolerable because it can be so habitual, because that terror, that feeling of closeness has been so awful in the past.
Puder:
Yeah. And sometimes allowing yourself to use whatever the person enjoys talking about their strengths, you know, like if they're into dogs, if they're into cats, if they're into horses, whatever it is, to kind of pull them out of that dissociation a little bit to kind of ground them in the here and now, you know, not to keep pushing, right? As therapists, we need to learn to not keep pushing when there is that dissociation. We can layer on empathic words, sometimes that's enough. Sometimes just giving deep empathy, the repetitive nature of the empathy is soothing or finding where we miss them, right? So the dissociation happens sometimes if we miss them, that it's gonna be hard for them to tell us. So we have to create a safe place. You know, sometimes it's normal for me to say something that communicates, “I didn't quite hear you.” Like, “Well, when you said this, it made me think you didn't hear me.” Okay. So then we can start to untangle that. And if they can be a little bit frustrated at me for missing them, then that kind of can bring them out of that dissociation.
Puder:
I think as well, like, come back to like the basics, right? Fantasy life, rich fantasy life, fear of consumption, interpersonal highly conflictual relationships. Some idealization, some depersonalization. MacKenzie, I'm wondering in the diaries, if there's more you want to unfold.
Insights from Kafka's Diaries: Torment, Disconnection, and Inner Conflict (01:36:17)
Kampa:
Boy, pages, pages and pages we certainly could unfold. There is kind of a long, it's a long entry, not pages, but a couple paragraphs that might be interesting for me to read out. Or I could read something about him and his relationship with Felice Bauer again.
Puder:
Yeah, go for it.
Kampa:
…just like more of that stuckness that he was experiencing. So okay. Well, I'll read the long one. This is a bit well, we can talk about it. So this is from what year? I'm just gonna look. 1913.
“Agonies in bed towards morning. Saw only solution in jumping out of the window. My mother came to my bedside and asked whether I had sent off the letter. And whether it was my original text, I said it was the original text, but made it even sharper. She said she does not understand me. I answered, she most certainly does not understand me, and by no means only in this matter. So no one understands you. My mother said, I suppose I am a stranger to you too, and your father as well. So we all want only what is bad for you.”
Kampa:
This is his response. “Certainly, you are all strangers to me. We are related only by blood, but that never shows itself. Of course, you don't want what is bad for me.” And then there's a little space all in the same day. He writes this additional part, which is an entry that's part of a letter to Felice Bauer's father. “My job is unbearable to me because it conflicts with my only desire and my only calling, which is literature. Since I am nothing but literature and can and want to be nothing else, my job will never take possession of me. It may, however, shatter me completely. And this is by no means a remote possibility—nervous states of the worst sort control me without pause. And this year of worry and torment about my and your daughter's future has revealed to the full, my inability to resist.”
Kampa:
“Well, I live in my family among the best and most lovable people, more strange than a stranger. I have not spoken an average of 20 words a day to my mother. These last years hardly ever said more than hello to my father. I do not speak at all to my married sisters and my brothers-in-law, and not because I have anything against them. The reason for it is simply this, that I have not the slightest thing to talk to them about. Everything that is not literature bores me, and I hate it for it disturbs me or delays me, if only because I think it does. I lack all aptitude for family life, except at best as an observer. I have no family feeling, and visitors make me almost feel as though I were maliciously being attacked. A marriage could not change me, just as my job cannot change me.”
Puder:
Did he actually send that to the father? That's like…
Kampa:
I don't know if he sent that to Felice's father, but yeah, it's heavy.
Puder:
Yeah, it's heavy.
Stokes:
That's schizoid.
Riege:
It perfectly captures that. Yeah.
Puder:
It also allows you to see where the DSM saw that picture of like, this person's not interacting with people. But also like how he feels a lot of emotion about not interacting. Yeah.
Kampa:
I mean, like, I feel like there's so much that comes up here, right? Like he's literally writing that he's agonizing. So he's lonely. He thinks about jumping out his window and suiciding, which is something that he writes about several times in his letters. He talks about how he feels disconnected from his family, like he's a stranger. He doesn't belong. And that, yeah, his mom's right, they don't understand him. And he talks about how he doesn't fit in this job at his family’s, his family had a company of some sort, and he was working at that job, and he hated every, every second of it. It was never anything he wanted to be doing. And he felt like it would shatter him completely. That's what he writes, right? And then on top of that, all of the relational struggles that he's having with Felice noting that, you know, “I'm not cut out for this. I can't engage. I don't know how, maybe I don't want to, it's overwhelming. It's overpowering. I have to back away.”
Puder:
Yeah. And also the guilt of having to back away seems evident too. You could see the torment, the inner torment. I'm thinking of patients that come to me. The parents will sometimes say things like, rarely talks to me, few words, you know, talking through the door, they're left in their room, they're not interacting. And then some will tell me their rich fantasy lives, and then start to dissociate somewhere in the midst of that because it's overwhelming, but then want the connectedness, but then not want it. And the ambiguity there. Yeah. So it's a lot I'm thinking.
Kampa:
And some guilt too, or not guilt, but sorry, disgust. I know that we're losing people dropping left and right, but there's a lot of feelings that are coming up in that passage.
Puder:
Yeah. A lot of self-loathing and a lot of guilt, a lot of disgust. So in some ways it's like, he's very reflective. He's very, the way he writes has a beauty to it in the midst of his torment. He's very articulate. Maybe there are some places that with proper therapy, he could have had a little bit less of a fear around intimacy. Maybe he could have lessened the guilt. The internal critic that was so strong in himself. Maybe the ambivalence towards intimacy would have, you know, decreased as he felt some level of intimacy in practice, the intimacy as a behavioral extinction in the therapy itself. But we are left with his letters, with the tragedy of his death with the beautiful writing. And if you go to Prague, it's Prague, right? You'll see little mementos of him all over the place. So, okay, we're bringing this to a close. Any final thoughts, any final reflections as we kind of bring this to a close today?
Conclusion: Therapeutic Transformation for Schizoid Individuals and Final Reflections (01:43:07)
Kampa:
You know, McWilliams has a really lovely quote that I think kind of sums up, like, how can we as clinicians really support and be present with patients with a schizoid psychology? And she writes that “most of what is therapeutically transformative to schizoid individuals involves the experience of elaborating the self in the presence of an accepting, non-intrusive, but still powerfully responsive other”, and I just wanted to share that. I feel like that's a nice…
Puder:
I think that's beautiful.
Kampa:
…summation
Puder:
Yeah. I think that's a good aspiration for us as providers. And if you're someone that might have schizoid listening to this, you know, finding that provider, finding that person with that capacity, not every provider's gonna have that capacity, quite honestly. And you might have to go through a couple bad experiences to find the right fit. So yeah. And the other piece is if you are someone with schizoid and you're having a hard time expressing yourself with words, maybe through writing first, you know, and you could bring in your writings to your therapist and read them, that might be a way of getting congruent to what's going on in your inner experience, you know. And also I would say, if you find yourself schizoid and frustrated by the therapy process because you feel unheard in a way, can you write down why you feel unheard? Can you write down why the therapist is lacking empathy for you? Can you express that? And how does your therapist respond? If it's a good therapist, they're gonna respond with curiosity and openness and exploration and thankfulness that you're being honest, that you're getting to the core of what's really going on between you guys.
Puder:
So, yeah. Jeren, any final thoughts?
Montgomery:
I think you sort of summed it up nicely, what to look for in a clinician that's gonna help you here. I don't have anything poignant. I do find just an observation that I think you see a lot of schizoid show up online. I think social media has sort of become one of the safer refuges for schizoid people. So you see a lot more of it online as sort of, as that compromise between real in-person connection versus something a little bit more safer. So yeah, that's just really an observation. I think this has been an amazing experience. It's really deepened my understanding of schizoid. Because just using the DSM it was hard for me to wrap my head around. But, you know, using the PDM 3 and just having this conversation and the writing is just I mean, I feel like it's made me a better clinician already.
Puder:
Good. Good. That's great. Bridget, any final reflections?
Pieroni:
Just that, you know, there are so many of these themes that are in all of his writings, it seems. You know, I saw a lot of the guilt and the isolation and being unjustly persecuted and all of those themes in The Metamorphosis. And one thing that, in the Akhtar article that Melanie Klein talked about was that their feeling, “the feeling of being disintegrated, unable to experience emotions, losing one’s objects results in a latent form of anxiety and relief is felt when the person is able to synthesize their inner and outer worlds,” suggesting that the anxiety the person with schizoid personality experiences is that, as we all felt and saw, that tension, that constant frustrating tension. So I just wanted to add that.
Puder:
Really good.
Kampa:
A goal to be integrating.
Pieroni:
Mm-Hmm. Yeah.
Puder:
Yeah. I really appreciate you adding those things. And I feel like we all could keep talking about the various things that we saw. But we have to bring this to a close at some point. So if this was at all interesting to you and you want to let us know your thoughts, you can comment on YouTube or you can send me an email at psychiatrypodcast.com. You can go on there and I will share it with the group on your reflections. So we'll leave there for today.
Kampa:
Thank you.
Further reading and citations on schizoid personality:
Akhtar, S. (1987). Schizoid personality disorder: A synthesis of developmental dynamic and descriptive features. American Journal of Psychotherapy, 41(4).
American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Publishing.
Guntrip, H. (1968). Schizoid phenomena, object relations and the self. International Universities Press.
Lingiardi, V., & McWilliams, N. (2026). Psychodynamic diagnostic manual, Third edition (PDM-3). Guilford Press.
McWilliams, N. (2006). Some thoughts about schizoid dynamics. Psychoanalytic Review, 93(1), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1521/prev.2006.93.1.1.