Chapter II. A Revised Psychopathology of the Psychoses and Psychoneuroses (1941)1

Within recent years I have become increasingly interested in the problems presented by patients displaying schizoid tendencies to one degree or another; and I have devoted special attention to these problems.2 The result has been the emergence of a point of view which, if it proves to be well-founded, must necessarily have far-reaching implications both for psychiatry in general and for psychoanalysis in particular. My various findings and the conclusions to which they lead involve not only a considerable revision of prevailing ideas regarding the nature and aetiology of schizoid conditions, but also a considerable revision of ideas regarding the prevalence of schizoid processes and a corresponding change in current clinical conceptions of the various psychoneuroses and psychoses. My findings and conclusions also involve a recasting and reorientation of the libido theory together with a modification of various classical psychoanalytical concepts.

For various reasons the present survey will be for the most part restricted to a consideration of the more general aspects of the point of view to which I have been led by the study of schizoid tendencies; but it may be stated at the outset that much of the argument which follows depends upon the conclusion, to which my own analytical findings have led me, to the effect that the schizoid group is much more comprehensive than has hitherto been generally recognized, and that a high percentage of anxiety states and of paranoid, phobic, hysterical,