The Schizoid Disorder of the Self: “The Self-in-Exile”

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

Schizoid organization refers to a way of organizing the self in which withdrawal, emotional distance, self-sufficiency, and reliance on an internal world serve important protective functions. The individual may long for connection, while at the same time experience closeness, dependency, or emotional involvement as potentially intrusive, engulfing, disappointing, or unsafe. The resulting tension between attachment and withdrawal lies at the center of what Harry Guntrip and later theorists described as the schizoid dilemma and schizoid compromise. Fairbairn similarly emphasized the need to regulate interpersonal distance, the mobilization of self-reliant and self-preservative defenses, and the tension between attachment and distancing.

The phrase “The Self-in-Exile” is drawn from James F. Masterson and Ralph Klein’s formulation of the schizoid disorder of the self. Their formulation emphasizes the developmental, intrapsychic, and relational organization underlying schizoid functioning.

This course explores the schizoid personality not as a personality “type” but as a disorder of the self organized around survival. Integrating Harry Guntrip’s classical object relations theory with Ralph Klein’s developmental, self, and object relations approach and Loray Daws’ contemporary Independent Tradition psychoanalytic perspective, participants will learn to recognize, understand, and work therapeutically with schizoid patients whose central struggle concerns the preservation of being and the possibility of relatedness, rather than being understood primarily through conflicts around instinct or aggression.

Beginning with Guntrip’s understanding of the schizoid dilemma, withdrawal, regression, and the regressed ego, the course examines how early relational deprivation and failures of emotional responsiveness may contribute to the development of a self that seeks safety through retreat from external relationships. Guntrip described schizoid withdrawal and regression as attempts to preserve the ego and find safety when relationship itself has become experienced as threatening.

The course then follows the development of these ideas through Fairbairn, Masterson, Klein, Hedges, Orcutt, and Daws. Participants will examine the internal object world of the schizoid patient; the relationship between attachment and withdrawal; the hidden or withdrawn self; self-sufficiency and dependency; and clinical presentations involving silence, numbness, intellectualization, dissociation, pseudo-relatedness, and retreat from the therapeutic relationship. Loray Daws’ contemporary work further develops Guntrip’s emphasis on the regressed self and the importance of safety, patience, and the therapeutic relationship in working with the schizoid dilemma.

Clinical attention will be given to the particular challenges of working with patients for whom the wish for relationship may coexist with a powerful need to protect the self from closeness. Rather than prematurely confronting withdrawal, treatment requires careful attention to the patient’s experience of safety, dependency, emotional availability, and interpersonal distance. Through readings, clinical discussion, and experiential exercises, participants will explore therapeutic approaches to withdrawal, psychic deadness, silence, dissociation, hidden dependency, and fears of engulfment and abandonment.

The course concludes by considering what meaningful change may look like for the schizoid patient: an increased capacity for affect, grief, dependency, intimacy, imagination, spontaneity, creativity, and a greater sense of aliveness.

Format: Ten weekly sessions (1 hour 15 min each) with readings, clinical discussion, and experiential exercises.

Who will benefit from this course: Psychologists, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, social workers, as well as other mental health professionals and advanced trainees.

OVERALL LEARNING OUTCOMES:

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

Differentiate schizoid organization from avoidant, narcissistic, depressive, and autistic presentations.

Formulate schizoid pathology from both classical object relations and contemporary Independent psychoanalytic perspectives.

Identify developmental trauma and disorder of the self as central organizing principles in schizoid personality development.

Apply the therapeutic relationship to foster safety, vitality, and the capacity for healthy dependence and relatedness rather than prematurely challenging withdrawal.

Integrate Loray Daws’ contemporary extension of Guntrip’s work with the contributions of Fairbairn, Winnicott, Ferenczi, Bion, Hedges, Orcutt, and Eigen in formulating schizoid states organized around survival, psychic deadness, withdrawal, and the restoration of being.

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INSTRUCTOR’S BIO:

Loray Daws, PhD, Reg. Psych., is a Registered Clinical Psychologist with the Health Professions Council of South Africa and the College of Psychologists of British Columbia, Canada. Based on Vancouver Island, he works in full-time private practice as a psychoanalyst. He serves as a senior faculty member at the International Masterson Institute for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy in New York, and as a teaching faculty member and board member at ORI, and as assistant editor and faculty member at the Existential Psychoanalytic Institute and Society (EPIS). Dr. Daws also serves as assistant editor of the Canadian Global Journal of Health Sciences, and as evaluator and international advisory board member of the International Journal of Psychotherapy (IJP). He has published widely in the areas of psychoanalysis, daseinsanalysis, psychoanalytic psychotherapy, disorders of the self, psychosomatic difficulties, mental health ethics, and the Rorschach, with articles and book chapters appearing in journals including the International Journal of Psychotherapy, Issues in Psychoanalytic Psychology, South African Rorschach Journal, and Clinical Counselling and Contemporary Psychotherapy. Dr. Daws supervises and teaches internationally, with students and supervisees in South Africa, Canada, the United States, Australia, and Turkey. He is the author and editor of eight books on psychoanalysis and existential analysis; his ninth, Harry Guntrip: A Contemporary Introduction, is forthcoming in April 2026.

REGISTRATION AND FEES:

Tuition: $450/10-week course/trimester (can be paid in 2 installments)
Registration fee: $25/course (waived for ORI’s candidates in training)

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