It is a process of experimentation with the spontaneous, nonreactive elements that can be experienced in relationship with others.Working through abandonment depression is a complicated, lengthy and conflicted process that can be an enormously painful experience in terms of what is remembered and what must be felt. It involves mourning and grieving for the loss of the illusion that the patient had adequate support for the emergence of the real self. There is also a mourning for the loss of an identity, the false self, which the person constructed and with which he or she has negotiated much of his or her life. The dismantling of the false self requires relinquishing the only way that the patient has ever known of how to interact with others. This interaction was better than not to have a stable, organized experience of the self, no matter how false, defensive or destructive that identity may be. The dismantling of the false self "leaves the impaired real self with the opportunity to convert its potential and its possibilities into actualities." Working through brings unique rewards, of which the most important element is the growing realization that the individual has a fundamental, internal need for relatedness that may be expressed in a variety of ways.
Manfield adds "This huge discrepancy [from the ten percent reported by therapists for the condition] is probably largely because someone with a schizoid disorder is less likely to seek treatment than someone with other axis-II disorders. "A 2008 study assessing personality and mood disorder prevalence among homeless people at New York City drop-in centres reported an SzPD rate of 65% among this sample. The study did not assess homeless people who did not show up at drop-in centres, and the rates of most other personality and mood disorders within the drop-in centres was lower than that of SzPD. The authors noted the limitations of the study, including the higher male-to-female ratio in the sample and the absence of subjects outside the support system or receiving other support (e.g., shelters) as well as the absence of subjects in geographical settings outside New York City, a large city often considered a magnet for disenfranchised people.A University of Colorado Colorado Springs study comparing personality disorders and Myers–Briggs Type Indicator types found that the disorder had a significant correlation with the Introverted (I) and Thinking (T) preferences. History
The term "schizoid" was coined in 1908 by Eugen Bleuler to designate a human tendency to direct attention toward ones inner life and away from the external world, a concept akin to introversion in that it was not viewed in terms of psychopathology. Bleuler labeled the exaggeration of this tendency the "schizoid personality".