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The schizoid compromise is the position a patient takes between his need for a security-giving relationship and a fear of all relationships as a threat to his separate existence. The result of this compromise is a therapeutic stalemate. The term schizoid is used in a broad sense; Guntrip states that 'all patients are schizoid at the bottom'. The cause lies in a fundamental problem of ego growth and distortion due to early experience rather than one of conflict over instinctual drives.
The author discusses forms of resistance in the schizoid, mentioning the blocked analysis itself as a compromise, the patient's 'management' of the analysis, dreaming which is a schizoid compromise par excellence, and the classical analytic situation utilized as a defense position to mark time. Guntrip feels that classical analysis fails in these cases because it does not go beyond the sexual and aggressive problems by seeing them for what they are, defenses against the deeper problems related to the most primitive fears. Instead of encouraging the patient to believe that the Oedipal loves and hates are real feelings transferred from the parents, the therapist should encourage him to