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We sometimes come across patients who react out of all proportion to comparatively trivial incidents. One reason may be that the patient really lives in his phantasy world and is quite happy and seemingly well adjusted until something—the apparently trivial incident—shatters his dream.
A schizoid patient had a friendly relation with me without any obvious transference reactions or fluctuations. After my holidays, he was slightly more withdrawn but the change was hardly noticeable. I put it to him that he was upset by my holidays and that these had brought home to him the fact that I was married. To avoid disappointment and resentment, he withdrew though still maintaining his friendly facade. He needed very little tangible reality to build up his dreams, for instance, to discuss with me a movie he had seen and recommend for me to go and see it, was a substitute for going with me to the pictures.
He was a healthy and normal child to the age of eight when he was sent to boarding school. He was terribly unhappy there and became more and more withdrawn and inhibited; it was not only the restrictions and atmosphere of the boarding-school that produced this effect but the fact that he was parted from his mother. The fact that she let him go away seems to have brought home to him the reality of his parent's marriage, and was deeply upsetting.
The mother visited him every week at school though it often entailed great sacrifice on her part, and this was the only thing that had kept him going, and probably prevented him from becoming schizophrenic or homosexual.