Schizoid girl.

"She seemed me so detached from her emotions to it give me the impression that, just before making herself photographing, she needed to check in the mirror that she was really smiling." [... I read it somewhere ...].

Edvard Munch: "Young woman on the verandah" (1924).

Was born first the wickedness or the stupidity, the ethics or the genetics, the hen or the egg?

Are we able to produce a our volition (maybe also unhealthy), or are we slaves to our nature and our fate?

Paraphrasing Robert Heinlein, when, in one of his tales, he made a character say: "You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity", one could say better that often we all tend to attribute to the will what can be adequately explained with the more trivial and mechanistic ... "Personality"!

On the other hand, in nature, when we have to trace the cause of an event, it should always be taken into account that the most probable causes are those which, for their occurrence, they require the use of the least number of variables.

The tale of "The Frog and the Scorpion" teaches a little bit, in this regard ...

["A Scorpion asks a Frog to ferry it across a river.

The Frog hesitates, afraid of being stung; but the Scorpion argues that if it did so, they would drown both.

Convinced by this argumentation, the Frog gives its consent; but, midway across the river, the Scorpion stings the Frog, dooming both to drowning.

At that point, the Frog asks to the Scorpion: "why did you do it?"

And the Scorpion replies: "because ... is in my nature to do it"]

Basically, we act like those animals they walk on the tracks of a railway, and that, when arrived the train, they escape running endlessly in front of it but never dodging it. Well ... the "Personality" of each of us works like this.

PREAMBLE

I consider it necessary to premise that I am not a Psychiatrist and nor a Psychologist (... I am only a Lawyer!).

Yet, despite the aforementioned my formal lack of an adequate academic scientific competence, it is not only from an emotional perspective but also from a exquisitely technical and psychological point of wiew that I believe I can describe, here below (and with the certainty to provide an appreciable utility to my kind readers), a my extra-professional experience during which I had my first naive direct contact with the clinical introversion (and in particular, with the schizoid-type introversion), contact which was followed by a tiring path of progressive and always more and more full awareness of this large psychic and existential category.

Having to start identifying the Introverts, I think it is useful to contrast to them the their opposite and that is the Extroverts.

I would like to say that one of many differentiating criteria is the one for which:

1) the Introvert is far from the others (and, therefore, perceives the others collectively and has a good general vision understood as a simultaneous and whole vision of all the collectivity, but in the his distant position loses the possibility of perceiving more intimately the single individuals components the community),

2) the Extrovert is at the center of the others (and, therefore, perceives the individually and has a good vision of every their detail, but in his central position he loses the possibility of perceiving simultaneously the entire collectivity of individuals).

After that, I believe it is essential and diriment, to avoid the usual misunderstanding, to premise that the "INTROVERSION" should NOT be confused with the solely apparently related "Shyness"!

"Introvert" and "Avoidant (Shy)" are non-fungible terms (!), and them concern two well distinct conditions (despite the incredibly confusion generated to this regard, for decades until today, from a part naive and clumsy but unfortunately large of scientific literature): in fact, these are two conditions that can present a very similar symptomatic picture (and in many ways even perfectly superimposable), but which start from motivations and etiologies that are not only different but even diametrically opposite to each other (as I will try to explain later ...)!

Furthermore, in detail, I would like to use here that aforesaid my experience of first conscious contact with the schizoid personality as a sort of clinical case suitable to allow me to forward myself in the description of the two main forms of introversion (especially in their clinical declinations), and, that is:

1) the "Schizoid Personality" [S.P.D.], with its (eventual) stages progressively aggravated ("Schizotypal Personality", "Schizoaffective Disorder", "Schizophrenia") and with its cultural declension of specifically Japanese origin (the so-called "Hikikomori" people),

2) the "Asperger's Syndrome" [A.S.], which I like to define, rather, as the "Asperger's Personality".

In other words, I would like to first underline that I will try to explain the "Clinical Introversion" first of all under the emotionally subjective profile of the interlocutor of the Introvert and, only subsequently, in more theoretical, abstract and objective terms.

As far as I can and as far as I can realize, I will try to avoid writing, with regard to Schizoids and Aspergers, respectively of "Disorder" and "Syndrome" (as does the scientific literature systematically), given that I do not think that the pathologization of these two conditions can provoke virtuous effects on the awareness of the Introversion (own and of others) and on the establishment of a dialectical and reciprocal dialogue with the Introverts, since it is logically contradictory to urge the Introverts to reciprocity however speaking to them ex cathedra.

Likewise, as I will specify better at the bottom of this paper, I consider it preliminary to remove any priority or privilege to any eventual ethical (or worse moralizing) interpretative intent of the typical behaviors of Introverts, since objectively I believe the ethical reading key be it an inadequate and misleading interpretative criterion (therefore, which can only will have a function certainly unavoidable, but merely gregarious and integrative); one of my objectives, in fact, is precisely to demonstrate that the less attractive and more irritating behaviors of Introverts are not the result of their lack or absence of "Ethics" or "Formal Education" but, rather, a result of their configuration neurological (and sometimes also of their pedagogical / sociological / traumatic experience) that makes them to slide as if on an inclined plane.

It is absolutely crucial to understand that we so-called "Neurotypicals" we have a tendency to evaluate substantive attitudes of egocentrism from an ethical and formal point of view, but that this type of evaluation is in fact misleading in the face of the conduct of an extreme Introvert because he is strongly conditioned by powerful phobic and anhedonic factors that severely limit his ability to evaluate his own opportunities and, therefore, to self-determination.

But, on the other hand, I specife as of now that, here to follow, I will not use a complacent and so called "politically correct" dictionary, since, in my subdued opinion, the respect (moreover sacrosanct) has a some sense only if it disjoint to the hypocrisy.

In social life as well as medical patient, I have learned to be wary of the panders and those Doctors who claim to heal with syrups to sweet taste of cherry: the serious Doctor always prescribes bitter-tasting medicines.

So, please, that no one it feel offended or outraged or insulted from what I will write below: don't shoot the pianist!

Furthermore, to clear the field of any accusation of carrying out an analysis that is too schematic and drastic, and which, therefore, does not take into account the gradations of the Schizoid and Asperger Personalities, I am now clarifying what that I will explain better later, and that is that I am well aware that to define the Introversion it is certainly not sufficient to recognize in the subject the mere presence of some typical behaviors, but it is also necessary to take into account of:

• the number of real conducts attributable to the typical ones,
• the differentiated qualitative intensity of the single typical conducts,
• the greater or lesser frequency of typical conducts in presence or absence of other people,
• the rigidity in the maintenance of the conducts.

Therefore, the Introversion can present itself with progressively very differentiated degrees of intensity on a in an scale (continuum) that ascends from the broad phenotype (or "mere style" or "mere adaptation"), to the subclinical up to the clinical, a scale in which clinical Schizoids and clinical Aspergers represent only a mere portion (albeit substantial) of Introversion as such.

Well, I immediately say that my analysis will focuses, in an explicitly privileged way, about the EXTREME and CLINICAL Introverts (!!!), ie on those Introverts who:

1) they present many of the behaviors typical of their category,

2) they present those typical behaviors with a notable degree of qualitative intensity,

3) they present those typical behaviors above all in the presence of others,

4) by their will or by their invincible tendency, they not modify these their behaviors not even in the presence of conditions which, objectively, would make a substantial modification of their conduct clearly advantageous for them.

Likewise, when from time to time I go to list the characteristics (psychological, proxemic, kinesic, morphological, etc.) that I consider typical in Introverts, I would like it to be immediately clear (as it is immediately to me too) that nobody Introvert, however extreme and so-called clinical it may be, almost never will possess all these typical characteristics but almost always only a part (often percentually very high and openly significant) of them.

I think obviously that not all the so called "Schizoids" or "Aspergers" are 100% Schizoids or Aspergers (also because each personality, in many cases but not necessarily, can be integrated also by a "sub-personality" with a complementary, vicarious and ancillary function of the "main personality"); but, that does not mean that the attempts to identification that I have adopted here are useless or, worse, misleading.

Indeed, the DSM, like a geographic map that sets the cardinal points (North, South, West, East), is nothing more than a psychological map that sets the psichic cardinal points (Schizoid, Avoidant, Narcissistic, Borderline, Paranoid, Istrionic, etc.).

Therefore, it is clear that most of the psychic types actually present in the reality will almost never match exactly to the psichic cardinal points outlined by the DSM; but this does not imply the uselessness of these cardinal points, because, if we would eliminated them, we would never know the exact position of the actual and more or less intermediate psychic types (in the same way, it is clear that, in reality, most real geographic locations are not exactly in North, or South, or West or East; but if we did not consider the cardinal points on a geographical map, then we could not know the exact position of the intermediate points between the four cardinal points), a bit like with the Cartesian axes in Mathematics.

Therefore, my aim will also (necessarily) be that of fixing the psychological cardinal points of Introversion in a vision that already premise and recognizes of be tendential: then, to you all, my readers, the inescapable (and equally necessary) task of identifying and discerning the actual, graded and intermediate characteristics that most closely fit yours personal or interpersonal experience.

My analysis (which can only tend to synthesize my experience and my intuition trough the (inevitably and unbearably rigid) psychological  "categorisation" of the "typical" behaviors (on one side) and yours perception of every single concrete case (on other side), inevitably seem to me to be both two complementary sides of the same coin.

Therefore, any contraposition (rather than integration) between my experience and yours experience, in my opinion it would be rather sterile.

I

Well, long story short, I'll start by telling you that a few years ago, due of the onset of a my (very serious ...) medical pathology, I've had, in my quality of patient, clinicals meetings (short and coldly formal, but repeated), among others, with a girl (I would say from the apparent age of 28/30 years) which was one of my treating Doctors: therefore, I are talking about a rather adult as well as intellectually advanced person.

Moreover, said incidentally, she immediately had stood out in my eyes like gifted of a very limpid beauty (a beauty very sober and distinctly coy and full of adolescential modesty, and nevertheless, at the same time, hyperfeminilized, somewhat cheeky and exhibited; a beauty amazing and unnatural, really blinding and so ... original: somehow, she transmitting me the feeling of I had never seen anything like it before then. She vaguely resembled to the actress Romy Schneider but with long hair).

However, I had sensed, progressively and more and more sharply, that this his very powerful charm was also the result of a coexistence in her (coexistence highly unusual, as well as objectively illogical and contradictory) of:

1) features strongly avoidants (apparently ...), childishly and tenderly defensive,

2) features harshly narcissistic, hatefully dismissive and somewhat aggressive.

In her there seemed to be a incongruent and non-functional coexistence of an embarrassing shyness (and, therefore, of a colossal lack of self-esteem ... even with the addition of traits of phobia!) and, yet, also of a hypertrophic and gigantic self-esteem (as to be the prelude of who knows what huge personality). It seemed that these two internal souls they were colliding and they stomping each other's feets, they disputing the each other a narrow space and transmitting a feeling of poor mutual integration. She seemed me like a gigantic oxymoron: a bit like if anyone pretended to show me the "cold fire" or the "dry water".

Furthermore, every medical examination with her created in me, unavoidably, a clear sensation of stimulating aesthetic gratification and of subtle psychological excitement; and, however, also of ... looming uneasiness: it was as if I perceived an unusual presence and, at the same time, an unusual absence.

I felt above me a huge and nocturne cloud, stormy, black like the ink: a feeling of a further presence, incumbent like that huge rock mass in "Le chateau de Pyrenees" of René Magritte, invisible and yet perceptible, harmless and yet threatening.

René Magritte: "Le chateau de Pyrenees" (1959).

And I felt like I was in an anechoic room: there was an echo equal to zero point zero and a deafening silence. Ie, from part of her there was not only a total lack of emotional assonance (even if only minimal!) in my direction, but there was even that lack of any vital vibration (even if only dystonic and solipsistic) wherever it was aimed, as perceivable in many paintings by Edward Hopper: silence, immobility, dilatation of time, absence of mutual gazes.

It was like I was inside a doll shop, as if a spell had anesthetized and frozed her time and had tried to do the same with mine, a bit as it happens in some nightmares distressing and yet not without charm because they make you feel victim but also protagonist of an exciting and unusual magic spell.

Edward Hopper: "Morning sun" (1952)

Every time that I met her, I had a growing perception of having to face an enigma, a maze of mirrors, an image infinitely duplicated (like the one perceived in the barbershop, when you looks at their own image in the front mirror but reflected from the behind mirror, without ever understanding which it is the original and which it is his duplicates), a mystery carefully hidden, an unconfessable secret ("secret" that, I do not know why, I tended to put in relation with the history of his family or with some his pain, unknown, intimate and precocious): unsettling sensations, these, that I immediately perceived as totally independents of her dazzling aesthetics.

Due to the exercise of twenty-year practice in my legal profession, I have had relationships with a large number of people which often they owned personalities and personal stories that are also very bizarre and extra ordinem (people with Tourette syndrome - schizophrenics - fathers who do not know that those that they have recognized as own sons are not, really, their sons - fathers who discover they have children after twenty years from the birth of their children - women that they present as own sister a girl who are in reality their daughter - men married and divorced seven times with five children by five different women - formally upright and irreproachable women, police high officers, who prostitutes themselves professionally unbeknownst of their husbands and children - males completely banal but from twenty years dependent on heroin - ... and many other situations here non-referable and that, believe me, exceed your most fertile imagination!) and, therefore (undoubtedly, also by virtue of my innate curiosity and predisposition to psychic analysis), I have developed an inexorable psychological analysis skill.

Well, despite this, I had never met a person so atypical and contradictory: so stimulating and yet so boring, so fragile and yet so rough, so linear and yet so contorted, so fascinating and yet so banal, so full of charm and glamour and yet so extremely raw and coarse, so at ease and yet so clumsy, so aggressive and yet so afraid and defensive, so theatrical and yet so discreet and reserved, so laid-back and yet so tense, so calm and yet so intolerant, so bourgeois and respectable and yet so eccentric and transgressive, so adult (!) and yet so ... immature.

And never I had experienced this feeling, impalpable yet insisted, of having to face an emotional diaphragm so invisible yet so rigidly hermetic like a showcase of a luxury jewelry store.

Amedeo Modigliani: "Portrait of a woman with a black tie" (1917).

She seemed to swing between loudly aggressive attitudes (of disdain) and loudly defensive attitudes (of secretiveness), having as the only point of balance between these two extremes an irritating expression of seraphic indifference: these were its cardinal points.
And more I had tried to show her the unfoundedness and the not necessity of these her attitudes (respectively, opposing to his disdain many demonstrations of my authoritiveness, and to his secretiveness many demonstrations of my reliability), and, paradoxically, more I reached the result (unwanted and opposite) of strengthen her oppositional and resistant conduct.

Under the first profile (the disdain), she gaved me a feeling, irritating and specious, to be busy and focused, in an exaggerated and fictitious way, about the current context, or also of being (fictitiously) peripherally hyper-focused on something totally external to the current context (something always inesorably of more urgent and more important of the current context): it was as if she wanted to send me the image, merely formal, to be the only adult and smart person engaged in something of worthy (or able to establish what was worthy and what was not worthy) in a world populated by childishly and naive people, by unworthy people, by vapid and useless jerks, by ineluctable subaltern, by androids, by mere objects.

In front of her, I felt myself respected and taken into some consideration as a human being only when I limited myself to have with her a behavior strictly subordinate and devoid of initiative. But, whenever I asked her a question (also technically relevant to the medical context) or, in any case, whenever I did not related to her in a formal and impersonal way, she (implicitly and allusively) treated me like as if I was incorrect, mischievous, inappropriate, misplaced, untimely, illogical, naive, clumsy, unworthy, irrelevant, negligible, etc..

Under the second profile (the secretiveness), she seemed to be the only people in the universe to know the magic formula for changing any crap of sewer in gold 24 kt, surrounded by an infinity of curious and malicious nosy that they wanted to steal her this philosophal stone, thus depriving her of this his special privilege.

Ultimately, she coulded make me feel, always and irretrievably, or potentially harmful or otherwise useless: tertium non datur.

Well, If for me it was undoubtedly easy and instinctive to put in connection that her "disdain" with the narcissistic drift of her dazzling beauty, what thet seemed absolutely incomprehensible to me was the reason of her extreme "secretiveness" (confidentiality, circumspection), of her silence, of her hypertrophic intolerance for any interlocution, of her rigidly self-protective and distrustful behaviour: a bit like whom wants firmly to prevent any entry into his private life in order to guard an own inconfessable secret, but, in same time, it suspects of having already been discovered. I confess to having done the most bizarre hypotheses to justify such an attitude: I have seriously assumed that she could be an illegitimate daughter, or that she could have a first-degree family member with a striking criminal history, or that she could have suffered a childhood or pre-adolescential abuse, or that she could be a secret omosexual. I knew well that these my hypotheses they were a ridiculous and a bit paranoid, but they served to placate my unbearable (and unusual!) feeling of feel myself intellectually inadequate and naive.

She seemed me, always, inexplicably engaged about a his self-contained universe (so, involuntarily, proclaiming this to all), and, always, inexplicably committed to conceal the existence of this its self-sufficient universe (or, at the worse, committed to not allow access to this his private universe, if discovered by others its existence).
A universe of which she was jealous, but of which she was ashamed.
An operation unintentionally theatrical, and yet theatrically hidden (and the more she tried to conceal or to disguise this secret, the more she revealed the existence of his secret).
His strength was also his weakness: undoubtedly, a resounding and frontal paradox.

Its attitudes they seemed to me possessed a dual meaning:

• formally, very mature, (but, substantially, childish), 
• formally, very fascinating (but, substantially, clumsy), 
• formally, very uninhibited (but, substantially, rarely spontaneus), 
• formally, very self-confident (but, substantially, often uncomfortable). 
• formally, very indifferent (but, substantially, irritated by the interaction with others), 
• formally, very independent (but, substantially, continuously aimed at research of the other's intention, for preventively evading it), 
• formally, very self-controlled (but, substantially, prone to impulsive reactive acts),
• formally, very committed to proclaiming its superiority (but, substantially, very worried about hiding own narrowness and inadequacy),
• formally very focused, dynamic and productive (but substantially quite absent-minded, slow and listless).

In other words, she was, formally, so full of solid and structured personality, as, substantially, totally devoid of personality, with a unusually huge gap between these two aspects, the apparent and the real, of its relational skill.

She emanated a brightness so blinding and, yet, also a so gloomy and impenetrable darkness!

She was slight like the Botticelli's "Venus" and yet also harsh like the Caravaggio's "Salomé".

Sandro Botticelli: "Birth of Venus" (1483 - 1485), detail.

Michelangelo Merisi from Caravaggio: "Salomé with the head of John the Baptist" (1607), detail. 

His proxemics, his kinesics, her logical processes, they had revealed me, quickly and accurately (even in response to precise my stresses), its conducts as: 

• stereotyped, not spontaneous; 
• dichotomous, extremes, devoid of modulation; 
• with a strong internal contradiction (the purposes formal and pompously pursued were diametrically contradicted from the purposes substantial and clumsily ill-concealed); 
• inappropriate under a logical profile, and unsolicited from the objective needs of the context.

However, strangely enough, I had could not make a synthesis, a "reductio ad unum", an overall analysis of all these typical indicators ... even if I had sensed that I was about to discover the existence of the hidden and dark side of the Moon (but not having ever seen it, I had always thought did not exist) and that, when I finally discovered it, as an astronaut I would be afraid to go it, because I knew that in this way I would have to temporarily suspend all contact with the emotional planet from which I was coming.

II

Therefore, without specific psychological skills, after an endless series of frustrating and fruitless attempts of global understanding of these individual phenomena, I decided, as a last resort, to consult the web, typing into a search engine the salient features ("detachment", "coldness", "reservedness"), which seemed to me to be able to report immediately to the behavior of this young woman.

Well, like St. Paul on the road to Damascus, I stood suddenly thunderstruck by the uniqueness of the results obtained: Schizoid Personality Disorder (S.P.D.)! And, not by chance, when, subsequently, I have in-depth scientifically the study of S.P.D. and I has could recognize and observe other schizoids of both sexes, I found, whenever, an impressive and perfect coincidence between many other features that I had noticed in this girl and the coded features of this disorder.

Tamara de Lempicka: "Portrait de Ira P. (Sa tristesse)" (1923), detail

Far be it from me to tell if the "schizoid personality" has or does not have a pathological significance.
In the final analysis, the pathological nature or otherwise of each conduct or of each thought is substantially measured by its consequences on the physiological state of the agent or thinker as well as by its consequences on professional, emotional, affective and sentimental interpersonal relationships of that agent or thinker: therefore, if the agent or the thinker he does not objectively suffer from consequent physical pathologies and do not attributes rilevance to his interpersonal relationships, a pathological nature or not under the psichic profile of an his action or an his thought is only be the result of an others's supposition, merely subjective and projected from external.
In other terms, we could say: "if she (or he) is happy, we are all happy ...".

Rather, what leads me to write on this subject is the almost non-existent knowledge that the public has about the schizoid personality and, consequently, the need to clarify the Schizoid's internal thought, its external behaviors, and the logic underlying these thoughts and these behaviors.

Furthermore, also if I realize that I may seem highly immodest and presumptuous, I feel I can say with reasonable certainty that also a good part of Psychologists and Psychiatrists they have little knowledge of the Schizoid personality (as well as of the other horn of the introversion, that is of the "personality" Asperger), often merely passively copying, each other's, the respective (scarce) insights and knowledges and getting used to repeating them as a chain of ritual mantra, in the end, somewhat full of commonplaces and which adds little to the skimpy and telegraphic "decalogues" of the D.S.M. ("Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders") and of I.C.D. ("International Classification of Diseases"). For example, even in the direct relationships that, as a Lawyer, I have had with my clients Psychologists (three) and with recent graduates in Psychology (two), I confess that I have repeatedly obtained the clear impression that they had a superficial knowledge of the "Introversion" and that each time I tried to deepen with them this problem, they had the tendency to take refuge in the usual trite clichés as well as, immediately after, the ill-concealed annoyed tendency to hastily change the subject. The confirmation of my suspicion I received sensationally from a young woman Phisycian (Associate Professor of Hematology at the University) who, after reading this my article and having exchanged a dense and confidential correspondence with me on the subject of Introversion (Schizoids and Aspergers), wrote to me to have talked about this topic with three of her friends at university Psychiatrists and to have drawn the conclusion that none of these three Psychiatrists was able to tell her those things that, instead, I had written to her: I confess that I was obviously or deeply proud of it, but also ... completely dumbfounded!!!

However, to understand the reasons for the widespread lack of technic knowledge (also at a professional level) of the "Introversion", it must, first, be taken into account that, certainly, as for all others disorders of personality, even the Schizoid personality (and the Asperger syndrome) they are ego-syntonic (and ie, the Schizoid or Asperger subject recognizes the own symptoms but he feels in tune with they and, therefore, does not prove uncomfortable, feeling the of above symptoms as physiologically consistent with the rest of own personality); so, only a minority of subjects carriers of a personality disorder warns the unsustainability of own personality, and, therefore, feels the need to consult a Psychologist or a Psychiatrist to try to solve the own problem (tipically, especially when it falls into Depression or it realizes of suffer an abnorme limitation in the own professional realization).

But, unlike all other "personality" taken in consideration by the D.S.M. and I.C.D.:

• the "Schizoid personality", that one hard and pure, rigidly structured (and, therefore, not that of those subjects who limit themselves to expressing a generic and mere schizoid "style"), as well as the "Asperger syndrome", have both a very low percentage of incidence in the world population, percentage that (beyond the generous estimates of the classic world reference statistics, ie of the American ones) I consider to estimate realistically around:

        - the 1,5 % for the Schizoids,

        - the 1% for the Aspergers,

• compared to other "personalities" considered by the D.S.M., the "schizoid personality" has a much higher difficulty on referral to a Psychologist or a to a Psychiatrist, because him has a huge and rigid difficulty (often insurmountable) on to talk about himself with others and on to describe to the others its own emotions. Therefore, only a small percentage of Schizoids find the strength to turn to Psychologists and Psychiatrists; and, among these few, most of it tend to undergo, wearily, a few initial sessions for then retreat and vanish (for a Schizoid, going to a Psychologist / Psychiatrist and continue the therapy with it is a little like for an observant Muslim woman do a striptease before to wear a bikini on a beach: it is a profound wound to one's foreignness and invisibility, to one's intimacy). And the same problems of disclosure of the most intimate and profound self also arise (albeit to a lesser extent ...) in the "Aspergers".

On the sidelines, I consider it necessary to specify how, in my very personal experience, I noticed that:

1) in the context of the so-called enlarged Schizoid phenotype, there are in percentage many clinical Schizoids, but few subclinical Schizoids (and many people with a mere Schizoid style),

2) in the context of the so-called enlarged Asperger phenotype, there are percentagewise many subclinical Aspergers and very many people with an Asperger style (many: and among them many not diagnosed as subclinical Aspergers), but a relatively minor percentage of clinical Aspergers.

Well, all this means that Psychologists and Psychiatrists have an opportunity to examine, in corpore vivo, a very limited number of cases of Schizoid personality and Asperger's syndrome and, therefore, to produce a scientific literature, in the field of Schizoid personality (and of Asperger's syndrome), extremely reduced!

Therefore, my intention is to describe the S.P.D. and the A.S. (using, above all, the results of my practical experience and of my analysis, and not using, as much as possible, the findings of the poor scientific literature) methodologically first proceeding to patiently deconstruct (as if to dismantle) the specific figures of Introversion until we perceive their minimal, essential and fundamental elements, and then try to restructure this figures and identify possible connections between them and with respect to other apparently external figures (like when you break down the colors to try to identify the primary colors, identification necessary to then identify the secondary colors resulting from the sum of the primary ones).

All this in order to pursue three preliminary objectives:

1) to avoid to aspiring interlocutors (in particular, to those emotionally most florid and needy!) of the Schizoids (and of Aspergers) bitter misunderstandings and humiliating frustrations,

2) to explain to the same aspiring interlocutors of the Schizoids (and Aspergers) that it is not only in vain and totally useless but also maddening and cruel to ask a clinical Schizoid (or an Asperger) to learn to relate, to relate also on a non-formal and emotional level and to learn to enjoy all this, because a clinical Schizoid (or an Asperger) does not only it comes from years of calcification of his own thought structure (in which he has never used emotional hardware) but he is not even equipped with the necessary software to learn and enjoy of the use of emotions,

3) to explain to Schizoids (and to Asperger) the reasons for which they are sometimes, paradoxically, the objects of short but intense attentions, curiosity and approaches from "personalities" diametrically opposed to theirs (marginally from Histrionic and Borderline people, but above all from the Depressed/Evitants/Affective-depending).

Obviously, though here I will talk about the female schizoids, mutatis mutandis, my observations will also apply to the males schizoids (males which, in the mondial statistics, are certainly the predominant percentage among schizoids).

My further goals will also be to demonstrate the strong contiguity between Schizoids and Aspergers (as well as the highly suggestive contiguity between Narcissism and Autism ...), and the need to understand the functioning of the each of the two to can fully understand the functioning of the other of the two.

III

Well, starting with the Schizoids, I go to list below, in detail and under different aspects, all the specific factors that I feel I have enucleated in that girl (that I think, with enormously suggestive perception) Schizoid, list that, here and there, I have integrate with further elements learned by other Schizoids that I have subsequently know (or, more banally, that I already knew and whose personality I recognized only successively ... because most likely we all know some Schizoids and some Aspergers, but almost all of us do not recognize them as such):

Proxemics and Kinesics:

• intolerance at the eye contact, active and passive. Very rarely his gaze is addressed to the others, and when adressed of others is shifty or impersonal and directed to the face: if directed at the eyes (rarely), is a oblique gaze, tense and disenchanted, that lingers for no more than 1-2 consecutive seconds. When she is looked by others, his gaze diverges almost immediately or, more rarely, can also return the others's gaze but always rather briefly, with stereotyped and not spontaneous attitude, and anyway denoting discomfort, reluctance, fear and disgust, or also indifference, or also bravado and defiant air.
• intolerance to the active physical contact, above all to the tactile one.
• albeit very rarely, she may show a incredible poor perception of his body position, in a sort of involuntary and unconscious black-out of own body's awareness, carrying out actions not aware and giving rise to episodes (totally unexpected!) of physical contact active and strongly uninhibited, placing inadvertently intimate areas of own body to contact with his interlocutor (a typical autistic gaffe!) or may not noticing to show parts (accidentally discovered), evidently intimate, of her clothing or of body. Anyhow, there is a very low and inconsistent kinesthetic and proprioceptive awareness.
• marked intolerance to the passive physical contact, especially, when the physical contact is very light and slight, with manifestations of immediate phobic retraction when she is touched or with a reaction of corporeal freezing.
• rigid demarcation and unyielding defense of the own physical space (a interpersonal space such as to never allow an intimate distance). If she can not secure for herself an adequate interpersonal distance (ie, if she cannot go away or she cannot neither interposes effective physical obstacles between himself and the interlocutor), she tends to show own side or to turn one's back on in front at the interlocutor, or tends to sit and curl up, and even to mimic a kind of fetal position. If she is sitting in front of interlocutors, tends to have own arms crossed and/or own legs crossed, and/or the elevation of the two upper epiphysis, with lowering the neck and the head, or tends to sit slantwise, orienting his legs at 45° to the interlocutor.
• recurrent tendency to stay alone, sitting, longly in silence and surrounded by silence, in a state of ordered quiet and in a context devoid of potentially unexpected variables, as in a state of stalemate, maybe by carrying out (with a rather staid rhythm) elementary, trivial, mechanical and repetitive activities (for example, tidy one's some own collection, apply oneself on enigmistica games, calculate one's family budget, dedicate oneself to the own hobby, make minor repairs, etc.).
• standing, with a potential interlocutor that are approaching, tendency to join hands or to retain an any object between both hands or to put your hands on your thighs or in your pocket; in any case, all this in order to have excuse for not having to shake hands with at this potential interlocutor. If she is forced to shake hands at the interlocutor, looks elsewhere or extends much his arm, but keeping the trunk far behind, and, in any case, holding the hand concave.
• uneasiness, disquiet, discomfort and anxiety (sometimes with a veiled expression of disgust) in having to frequenting crowded environments.
• tendency to sneak off in front at the human relationships (almost to expressing a sudden desire for invisibility and, at the same, time a sens of shame for this own desire).
• recurring unperturbed composure and rigid self-control (absolute absence of facial mimicry - the so-called "poker face" - and of manual micro gestures, with the dignified imperturbability of a sphinx); however, very brief but acute and impulsive behaviors of snobbery, impatience, retreat, fugue.
• head position often or very upright (almost defiantly), or (especially when seated) contracted and crushed on the neck between the shoulders (like a turtle, as if to protect oneself), or very inclined forward and down (to avoid eye contact), or reclined to the side (to look away in case of eye contact already started).
• very wide movements of arms and of legs never spontaneous, always mechanical and almost robotic and puppet-style, somewhat lacking in plasticity and roundness (sometimes you notice, in fast walking, an oscillation of the arms which, rather than contrasting and counterbalancing the movement of the legs, accompanies it), with rigid and woody posture, with stiffness and absence or shortage of flexion in the elbows, in the knees and in the torso: the only bending point, though not gradual, seems to be the neck.
• walks putting at the ground, above all, the toes of foot (the so-called "toe-walking": a little as if were walking on ground strewn with puddles), sometimes with a slighty bouncy or creeping or kicking step; less often, walks putting at the ground, above all, the heel (with a rather martial gait). From sitting, rests on the ground above all the heels. In any case, a poor contact with the ground.

Psychology:

• considering others irrelevant, useless, foolish and potentially dangerous, has a prioritary and central concern to avoid as much as possible interpersonal relationships (especially informal ones), or, if them are unavoidable, to limit their duration and intensity,
• this social avoidance also has the inexorable function (conscious and/or unconscious) to protect the Schizoid against the risks of an potentially uncomfortable intellectual comparison,
• to achieve the goal to avoid or limit as much as possible interpersonal relationships (especially informal ones), tends to valorise his own operational autonomy,
• cocky ostentation of own operational autonomy and of own self-confidence, with reaction of undisguised and proud impatience before the offers of cooperation of others.
• as a necessary declination of one's tendency towards own operational autonomy the Schizoid also manifests the need of own financial autonomy which in turn translates into parsimony (which, not rarely, drifts even into the stinginess) in the spending on services and on consumables or perishable goods. However, the Schizoid can, albeit quite occasionally, spending conspicuous for durable goods. The excessive spending induces in the schizoid the fear of not being able in the future to meet independently his own needs, and, therefore, having to be forced to resort to the help of others, which contrasts head-on with the most general schizoid need of autonomy from the others.
• it has an objective thinking, tendentially addressed the present and aimed at the "here and now" ("Hic et nunc", the ancient Latins would have said): every speculation is relevant only if demonstrated and susceptible of a practical and not too futuristic application,
• seems to be methodically focused (with a somewhat staid cadence) on tactical, practical, minimal, current (economic management, study, work) and short-medium-term objectives, and lacking of a strategic and of long-term vision as well as of objectives that are not immediately practical and objective,
• under the strictly executive and job profile, not rarely it seems hyper focused, carefull, scrupulous, conscientious, meticulous and even punctilious and finicking, but at the same time also, paradoxically, peripherally engaged, absent-minded, superficial, hasty, careless, clearly sloppy, a little slow, like if revealing an underlying lack of emotional motivation,
• it has a dichotomous and binary thinking. Analysis and judgment always rotate between two opposites ("tertium non datur"), and every time that she is required a gradation in analysis and in judgement, she believes that these gradations not are important or are useless or misleading or malicious or instrumental (etc.). [This rigidly dichotomous structure of Schizoid and its inability to grasp the possible nuances of the others's analysis and judgment, in the long run, induces the Schizoid to a progressive cognitive detachment from reality, and ie, often: 1) to analyze and to judge the reality in very net and sharp terms (when the analysis originates from her ...), and, on the other hand, to believe that the great part of reality is not objectively analysable and judgeable (when the analysis comes from the others and it is different from its own ...), 2) to perceive the analyzes and judgments of others, when articulated and complex and not coinciding with the own, as an expression of speciousness and captiousness, and then almost like a treacherous personal attack at own intellectual dignity.].
• bare, pragmatic and dry relational demeanor, emptied, pruned and stripped of any subjective need and, in any case, of any not strictly and contingently necessary variable (sometime generating an atmosphere vaguely reminiscent of the slowness, the greyness, the asepticity and the mechanicity of certain neorealist-style films made in the countries of real socialism in the 50s and 60s of the 20th century).
• tendency to live in houses or furnished in a very bare way (most of the time) or crowded by a disordered accumulation of objects.
• It has a severe lack of emotional expression: the outward manifestations positive (affection, happiness) and negative (sadness, choler) are rare and usually of very limited intensity (when, rarely, the Schizoid incurs in emotional excess, immediately conveys the feeling of wanting to quickly regain a condition of peace and rationalization of the context). Therefore, the emotive range externally expressed it is extremely ristricted and the most recurrent visible (pseudo) emotion is (paradoxically ...) the indifference.
• upon observation, the repeated and increasingly growing sensation is that the Schizoid has not only a meager and almost absent emotional expression but also has a meager and almost absent effective emotional perception as well as an equally meager and almost absent emotional competence,
• lacks of desire; it practically never manifests desires, wishes and hopes, and betrays indifference, intolerance, discomfort and irritation in the face of other's expression of desires and of mere other's manifestations of auspiciousness and hopes,
• with highly selected (unilaterally selected) people (very often, one or two close relatives) can have very rare and sudden explosions of enthusiasm, excitation and even of euphoria (entirely unexpected and unpredictable!), much short but vibrant, really amazing, very naive and that reminiscent of those typical of the first adolescence, grossly disproportionate and exaggerated compared to the their probable cause, and in inconceivable logical contradiction with the previous behavior of absolute detachment, of ostentatious indifference and even worse of contempt. These people are considered by the Schizoid connoisseurs of his personality and, at the same time, respectful, not impulsive and not inclined to emotional initiatives, and, therefore, suitable to be elected intermediaries authorized to allow a safe contact between the Schizoid and his emotions (between the Schizoid and the out-of-self) and, by proxy, between the Schizoid and the world of interpersonal relationships.
• the choice of people whom the extreme Schizoid considers reliable in terms of formal relationships and even more so in terms of (very eventual, rare and qualitatively partial) non-formal relationships, is always an exquisitely unilateral choice. Ie, among the abstractely eligible people in this sense, the extreme Schizoid will always makes a choice in favor of interlocutors who do not actively propose themselves. So, if (for the most varied reasons) someone will aspire to a relationship with an extreme Schizoid, it need to do is appear emotionally self-controlled and non-invasive: the extreme Schizoid will or will not do everything else.
• chronic disinterestedness for the negotiation between one's own interests and the interests of others, even when such negotiation is obviously possible and likely to be fruitful and the renunciation of it constitutes a clear prejudice for the realization of one's own interests (therefore, a relational logic according to the scheme "or all or nothing").
• exterior blasé behaviors and of emotional coldness, of aloofness, of snobistic nonchalance, of neutrality, of calm but immovable extraneousness, of haughtiness, of disinterestedness, of indifference, of impassibility, of emotional detachment, of constant non-involvement (and of silent but stubborn refusal to be involved), of uncare, of unconcern, of serene imperturbability.
• with his interlocutors, appears firmly and stubbornly reluctant to empathize, with a very low tendency to compliment, to recognize merits and qualities, to thank, to encourage, and in any case to please: in this sense, the Schizoid is the worst supporter for an emotional interlocutor.
• tendency to prune one's social position of every subjective characteristic as if to denounce a secret aspiration to anonymity.
• recurrent need of take clear-cut and absolute pauses (of a few hours or of a few days) in socialization, to limit the quantity and, not less, to dilute the quality and emotional intensity of one's interpersonal relationships, as for to "recharge" himself and for to focus exclusively on own inner world: a classic behavior of this type is that of to interrupt of the receptivity of own cell phone and/or to absent himself suddenly and unpredictably, taking refuge in strictly private places or in unknown places (making lose own tracks), or, more trivially, if it is forced to move in public (on foot, by train, by plane) to resorting to the trick of wearing headphones to pretend to be engaged in listening to music. The very few married schizoids as well as the schizoids living with their parents often they tend to reserve to themselves an own additional room with strictly exclusive access, or to purchase (or rent) a further (also small) apartment to be used as hiding place and shelter (therefore, where to not to have to support the effort to reject others or where not to have to invent pretexts for not treating others or where not to have to pretend to accept others: a place that must perform a function halfway between that of Linus's safety blanket and that of Hitler's bunker).
• especially when relationship pressures are at their most pressing, tendency to periodic disappearances (the so called "ghosting") from a few hours to a few days, periods during which all multimedia communications are interrupted or ignored.
• despite the evident formal emotional detachment and the formal staid focus on its own loomings, substantially (though silently and secretly) hypervigilant, tireless and obsessive in to monitoring (out of the corner of eye) others's behaviors (as a sort of CCTV-closed circuit surveillance camera), in order to prevent their relational attempts. In any case, can indulge in very brief peeks of secret and fleeting curiosity.
• in the presence of an interlocutor (real or potential), demeanor formally hyper adult and of seriousness and maturity (sometimes sober and dry, but more often ostentatious, vaguely hieratic and solemn, not infrequently so redundant, pompous and inappropriate as to result somewhat artificial and ridiculous): demeanor, this, aimed at to rule the relational context and to making it hyper formal and, therefore, to freezing any initiative and informal behavior of the own interlocutor.
• especially with the interlocutors emotionally more spontaneous and, therefore, potentially more invasive (in front of which, that is, is more urgent and serious the need to maintain or restore adequate physical and emotional distance), unconscious and unrelenting need of to flaunt, dramatize, theatricalize, platealize and emphasize own indifference, own nonchalance, own unconcern, own non-competitiveness, own snobbery, own superciliousness, own haughty and adult detachment from the prosaic other people's affairs, own mocker smile of subtle devaluation and of contempt for others, and every other own indifferent, defensive and rejecting behaviours.
• difference (sometimes marked) between own overt manifestations and own covert and secret sensations, ie beetween the external representation (often deliberately blatant and scenographic) of one's emotional state and the effective internal perception of one's emotional state, according to a somewhat recurrent equation for which the stronger and destabilizing it is the internal emotional perception and greater it is the nature contrary, counterfeit and theatrical of his external representation (formal ostentation of indifference in the face of substantial emotional involvement, formal ostentation of superiority in the face of a substantial state of subjection, of self-sufficiency in the face of a substantial state of envy, etc. ...).
• oscillation between recurrent behaviors (very hateful and irritating!) of blatant ostentation of superiority, arrogance, cockiness, haughtiness, pompousness, snobbery, sufficiency, boredom, huff, irritation, dudgeon, snooty contempt, also almost of disgust, of mocking irony, on one side, and, on the other side, rarer but evident behaviors defiladed and a bit disconsolate, of dignified affliction, dejected and disheartened, which occasionally becomes of respect, of obsequiousness, and, unexpectedly, even of deference (attitude, the latter, that is put in place by the Schizoid when the interpersonal relationship is inevitable, especially in the professional field and in the presence of third parties, and provided the interlocutor it is intellectually advanced and socially elevated, almost as if to suggest and to propose unconsciously to the interlocutor a sort of pact of exchange: the schizoid show to accepts and to emphasize uncritically the role of the interlocutor and, correlatively, it expects that interlocutor to accept equally uncritically the anomalous relational disinterest of him Schizoid); more generally, oscillations between recurrent attitudes of exhibited and hypertrophic superiority and much rarer but in any case evident behaviors of galled and irked inadequacy and embarassed inferiority,
• sometimes (very rarely ...) it allows the presence and role of a specific interlocutor and tends to express this acceptance/tolerance to him with small and isolated gestures of a purely symbolic nature: a small regard, an informal word, a brief confidential phrase, a fleeting sign of benevolence, a slight compliment, a minimal token.
• be it as well very very rarely, capable of (unexpected and unpredicted) short moments of moderate nearness and intimacy with personalities clearly similar to own (that is, only with people who do not present any potential risk of being able or to willing to intensify the quantity and/or the emotional quality of the interpersonal relationship with them Schizoids and that, moreover, it is almost certain that they will not be irritated by the haughty and distrustful attitudes of the Schizoid) or with very few carefully selected relatives (not necessarily a parent or a brother or a sister: maybe a grandfather/grandmother or a cousin).
• tendency towards rigid conformism of a somewhat bourgeois mold, however occasionally contradicted by sudden frontally eccentric and oppositional attitudes.
• ethical inconsistency, with attitudes of remarkable dedication and of solemn moralism which can also result in judgments and interventions of firm condemnation in the face of injustice committed to the detriment of third parties, which however sometime suddenly alternating with conducts ethically very sloppy, transgressive in carefree mode (zero remorses!), frontally self-centered and in aware and open infringement of the rules: therefore, rare but perceptible recurrence of subtly antisocial conducts (sometimes of a purely symbolic and exemplary character), an expressions of reaction to social expectations, in a sort of primitive defense of one's own freedom (a bit like it happens to adolescents, when they assume apodictically oppositional behaviors in front of parental expectations and precepts, as if to defend their autonomous identity).
• cynicism somewhat smug, sometimes cruelly scornful, sharp and mocking.
• generally, secretly envious (highly dismissive of the success of others; strongly tending to ridicule the failure of others); above all, envious of spontaneous people, tends to snub or mock or hurt them, in order to induce them to a behavior formal and emotionally absolutely sober.
• resistance (silent, passive, omissive and obstinate) in not wanting to perform unwanted obligations or in the not take unforeseen responsibilities.
• resistance into answer to the direct questions when these require answers clear and source of commitment. In any case, the answer to the questions of others is never immediate or impulsive, but is always preceded by a short mute pause or by a breath, or it can be clearly late, or it must be expressly requested or urged.
• difficulty and slowness in making of quick choices.
• slight but constant formal inadequacy. If she is kind (rarely), is so in a stereotypical way, hastily, with affectation, mannerism and emotional distance.
• serious difficulties in expressing verbal or gestural delicacy and tenderness; at unease, stiff and clumsy when is being treated with verbal or gestural delicacy and tenderness; tends to adopt a gaunt and little progressive and modulated gestures, according to a module that, also on the communicative (verbal, paraverbal and non-verbal) and tactile level, reflects the dichotomy (white or black, right or wrong, all or nothing) of his thought.
• rapid oscillations between attitudes of demureness, of prudish and virginal soberty, of much redundant, inappropriate and non-conferring prudery (a composure a bit like that of a certains teenage girl pupils of a nuns's school of nineteenth-century or of certain goody-goody girls of a many novels by Jane Austen, with clothing distinctly formal, austere, colorless, vaguely outmoded, or in a style vaguely preteens or androgynous, almost as if to signify the need to desexualize own image and to protect own herself in advance and firmly from who knows what imminent sprawling sexual assault), and (rarer but evident) unconsciously seductive or vaguely exhibitionistic or also uninhibited demeanors (clothing, makeup and hairstyle, extremely sophisticated and captivating, feminine, fashionable, of clear coquetry, vain and alluring, eccentrically seductive, flashy, subtly cheeky and somewhat exhibitionist), as if to perform herself but, at the same time, if to hide herself (in a contradictory logical short circuit in which people they must look and admire her, but don't touch her and not think her): the occasional theatrical performance paradoxically has the aggressive purpose of making it clear to the interlocutor that the exhibited self will never be granted to him and that the self that will never be granted to him has such a high value that it can be exhibited and flaunted,
• preconceived, indiscriminate, non-specific, and wrong-headed distrust of others (any attempt, also calm and reasonable, to demonstrate to Schizoid the objective groundlessness of his skepticism and, therefore, to prove to her the own harmless seriousness and own objective reliability ends up strengthening, paradoxically, his mistrust), a paradoxical reaction, this, which it is very reminiscent of that of the Paranoid, although this schizoid reaction compared to the paranoid one it's more shallow and hasty, and not obsessive as it is immediately definitive, and particularly (i.e. not autonomous, but activated only by the other's presence),
• a strangely very restricted core of fundamental and non-renounceable needs (enhancement and defend one's operational and financial autonomy, outdistance physically and psycologically others), and, on the other hand, a manifest marginalisation of social, empathic, affective and sentimental needs.
• a schizoid life that gives the impression of monotony and greyness, focused on working, earning, saving and completing small daily tasks, in a context without external variables, characterised by the absence of people, by the absence of noise and by the immobility of the context,
• she does not seem gratified by any activity, context or encounter, and it never expresses some own visible satisfaction, as if she didn't knew the experience of desire and of pleasure (anhedonia), not interested in the experience of pleasure, sharing, conflict, autistically focused on itself and on self-satisfaction for one's existential and operational autonomy, with an apparent absence of any planning or strategy aimed at achieving one's own happiness. At most, one can notice a certain relief and satisfaction when the Schizoid, after a period of intense sociality, recovers own solitude,
• evident lack of motivation (anhedonia) in the interpersonal relationships (chronic, lack of motivation very marked or even absolute even when the benefits of the potential relationship are indisputably objective and sensationally enormous) that is superimposed on an unmanageable repulsion (phobia) towards the interpersonal relationships: both these factors ("lack of motivation" and "repulsion") are all the more marked the less formal and more emotional is the type of interpersonal relationship that, rispectively, abstractely prospected itself or concretely presents itself. The Schizoid substantially does not experience any autonomous and instinctive impulse to relate to others and does not experience any particular and significant emotional gratification in relating to others (even more so when the potential interpersonal relationship promises to be intimate and non-formal). Consequently, the Schizoid, given that he has no substantial drive and no substantial purpose in relating to others, projects this relational disinterest onto others (a schizoid projection that draws on the autistic projection in some ways and on the paranoid projection for others ways) and, therefore, not understands which it is the motivation of relational impulse of others in his regards. In other words, the Schizoid has a perception of the relational attempt of others towards him or as devoid of effective motivations and reasons (and as such insane, illogical, stupid, childish, futile, and therefore to be rejected) or as motivated by reasons and motivations subjectively existing in the interlocutor but that the Schizoid is unable to understand in substance (especially when the reasons and motivations of others are emotional, affective, sentimental, reasons to which the Schizoid is unable to respond because these reasons and motivations are missing in his cognitive and expressive register; relational reasons and motivations other's that the Schizoid perceives as unknowable not because of an own limitation of understanding, but because the relational reason and motivation other's are secret and, consequently, made secret by their interlocutor with the only logical aim of concealing from the Schizoid the unspeakable purpose of the relational initiative, an unspeakable purpose because it is malevolent and therefore potentially harmful for the Schizoid).
• astute and misleading inclination to accredit in others the belief that their emotive or affective or sentimental direct manifestations are, objectively and inexorably, illegitimate or unjustified or exaggerated or inappropriate or immoral or mischievous or instrumental or untimely or unclear or un-serious or childish or in bad faith or ironic (etc.), adopting a passive-aggressive and paternalistic approach aimed at verbally mocking and humiliating the interlocutor while maintaining a facade of reasonableness and maturity; therefore, the Schizoid always tries stubbornly any pretext to convince others of own objective impossibility of evaluate their social or emotive or affective or sentimental direct manifestations on their merit and on their objective substance (cowardly trying to speddling as objective an impossibility instead merely presumed and subjective, and downloading on the others the responsibility for this own alleged impossibility), in order of not to show its profound disregard for human relationship in general, but, above all, in order of not having to refuse, directly and in the merit, the emotional, affective and sentimental direct manifestations, and, thus, really get in human contact with each other, albeit temporarily.
• unexpected and clear alternation and contrast between recurring attitudes of mastery and self-confidence, iron emotional self-control and lucid management of the incumbents, of the interpersonal relationships, of the stress and of the eventual failure (on the one hand), and more isolated but striking trend to go suddenly haywire, with rigidity, clumsiness, emotional and operational short circuit, phobic paralysis and with snap and angular deviation in behavioral logic (on the other).
• the relationship (potential or real) with others produces in the Schizoid a series of sensations and of effects that are placed along a continuum along which the other can be seen, with a sensation of increasing intensity, like useless and not at all palatable, like intrusive and meddlesome, like threatening and harmful, thus generating a corresponding increasing emotional reaction of indifference, of distrust, to anxiety, to panic.
• behaviour of capillary subtraction or of reluctance (or, in the most nuanced and less compromise schizoids, behaviour of passive submission) in front to the intersexual human relationships (even against that more physiological and respectful): schizoid behaviours that the not schizoids they misunderstands inesorably (wrongly ...) as strong virginal modesty and extreme sense of sexual decency.
• expecially facing to the excessive physical closeness of others, and, above all, facing to the emotional, affective and sentimental direct manifestations of others, very inexorable attitudes of elusion, of rationalization, of intellectualization, of disapproval, of derision, of intolerance, of contempt (... may also have reactions very hard of discomfort, restlessness and anxiety and also of abrupt physic retraction and substantially of clear phobic matrix with a plateal expression of scandalized disbelief and amazement, as well as, in extreme cases, even very brief but intense psychotic-style crisis that result in panic and/or ... even physical escape!).
• while the relational initiative of others towards the Avoidant if accompanied by reassurances about the objective reliability, seriousness, usefulness and respectful delicacy of the interlocutor is of comfort for the Avoidant and lead him progressively to open up, conversely the relational initiative of others towards the Schizoid if it is accompanied by reassurances about the objective reliability seriousness, usefulness and respectful delicacy of the interlocutor paradoxically generates an exactly opposite effect and a growing distrust, according to a logic that suggestively reminiscent the confirmation bias of paranoid logic ("if it is not explaines it means that it has something to hide, but if it is explaines it means that it has something to justify and apologize for"),
• strong reservedness and reticence (which, at times, results in a rigid and impermeable secretness!) respect to own privacy, even with reference to details clearly marginal or utterly insignificant. This so rigid and generalized secrecy of the Schizoid often leads his interlocutor to mistakenly believe that said secrecy derives from his own inability to inspire sufficient trust in the Schizoid and, therefore, induces him to try to prove own reliability to the Schizoid, however paradoxically obtaining an exacerbation of the distrust of the Schizoid. At that point, the interlocutor thinks that the secrecy of the Schizoid is not due to an alleged unreliability of the interlocutor but, rather, to the existence of a serious and unspeakable secret, specific and particularly unmentionable. In reality, it suggest the existence of a more general and genuine internal psychic world, meticulously dissembled e jealously guarded by all the external intrusions because considered by the Schizoid at the same time certainly inadequate, inappropriate and embarrassing but also incredibly valuable: a world clearly unreal and fictitious which, however, is experienced by the Schizoid as more authentic because it is not shared.
• secretly proud and touchy (although externally may flaunts indifference, nonchalance, aloofness and even smug disregard), with a slow but inexorable rancorous reaction, subtle and undergrounded but perceptible.
• beyond the almost constant emotional flatness (and of premeditated and scenographic attitudes of indifference, detachment, arrogance, contempt, derision, etc.), it seems prey of only two genuine and not instrumental emotions (even if often clumsily hidden to the exterior): 1) of distrust (it is often wary), a distrust that becomes fear and even terror (sudden, refractory to any reassurance and, therefore, with phobic traits), 2) of huff, annoyance, resentment and of an suffocated anger, almost to betray a secret desire to retaliate and to give an exemplary punishment.
• a very few initiatives of irony (almost always with a cynical, derisive and sarcastic background, extremely steeped of perfidy, aimed at undermining the interlocutor's behavioral ease). Not collects ever the irony of others. Complete absence of self-irony!
• except for the attitudes of lashing and cynical irony which are often placed on the level of demeanor and overall style and which never result in an open and frank laugh, tha laugh is almost completely absent; very very rarely, may occur giggles (entirely unexpected and unpredictable, very tender and delicate, but ridiculously immature and of preadolescencential style, through clenched teeth).
• speech rare, slow, lazy, listless, tiring, weary, not infrequently with an expression that betrays boredom, disinterest, annoyance, nuisance, maybe preceded by a initial short exhalation (as of one who feels compelled to carry out, for the umpteenth time, a wasteful activity, useless and redundant), basically impersonal, concise, laconic, pragmatic, concrete, dry, of mere ascertainment of reality (understood as irremovable or uninteresting), often result of an answer to a question and with late and short replies, poor of tonal variations, in tone medium-low, sometime with a cadence slightly singsong, solemn, vaguely admonitory and professorial, with stereotyped, formal, trite, rhetorical and of circumstance phraseology,
• seemingly limited vocabulary, with poverty of terminological variety (alogia) and poverty of descriptive ability (especially in describing emotional and artistic experiences),
• excessively formal, bombastic and stilted language compared to the concrete circumstance which, on the contrary, would require a more agile and colloquial language .
• a tendency to the so-called "autocentric use of language": often, the Schizoid, when speaking (when rarely he/she speak ...) with one or more interlocutors, uses the "I" (or at least the "We"), and much more rarely the "You" or the "They", 
• very scarce frequency to asking questions to others.
• tendency to depersonalize, empty, slow down and narcotize direct and vis a vis interpersonal relationships, this to discourage the interlocutor but also to dictate a slow pace to the conversation and thus be able to inhibit or detect promptly and in time every potential impulsive initiative of the interlocutor and so to better face them,
• (a bit like of someone who must perform an activity of which not only it does not know the rules, but, also, of which it not understand the purpose) difficulty, discouragement and irritation in the face of reasoning non-binary, non-objective and purely abstract and devoid of practical fallout, to thinking in metaphor, in use of symbolic models, in understanding of verbal nuances or of puns or of verbal innuendo and allusions or of figurative or surreal or paradoxical language or of idiomatic phrases or of subtle irony, with a certain tendency to interpret literally the phraseology of others,
• on the one hand, it tends to intellectualization and rationalization one's conduct and to exalt one's will (and, therefore, among others, tends to explain and maybe even to proclaim emphatically) one's conduct as the exclusive result of one's own conscious and reasoned choices, based on rigorously logical and objective data, but, on the other hand, tends to the intellectual self-referentiality and, therefore, tends scrupulously to subtract from the scrutiny of others the effective logical foundation of those own reasoning that "obliged" him to choose those own behaviors inevitably consequent (and, if forced to an interpersonal comparison on the point and to be denied and contradicted frontally, objectively and per tabulas on the merits, it tends to trivialize the problem and to rushed and embarrassed dialectical diversion). Therefore, if first to exorcise the mechanical and dichotomous component of one's thought it tends to an abstract thought, then indulges in a reasoning aimed at finding any element that confirms its starting thesis, however excluding everything that contradicts it ("αὐτός" thought, to self-tought),
• behaviors that presuppose and imply to some hypertrophic consideration of the specialty and originality of one's intellectual capacity (in reality not rarely higher than in the average of the general population but mostly under the profile merely executive, mnemonic, notional, and analytically mechanical; but, however, often very scarce under the profile emotional, communicative and artistic), with a paradoxical (secret) tendency to consider themselves like capable of peculiar creative ideation and to not share with others the contents of this own alleged skill, as if it were an intellectual work to be protected from theft, as still copyright-free [under this profile, the Schizoid has a diametrically opposite tendency to that of the Avoidant, who, conversely, as a subject typically with low self-esteem, tends to underestimate also his own intellectual capacity]. This (always implicit) hypertrophic perception of one's (claimed) superior intellectual capacity of the Schizoid as well as the jealous protection of this (claimed) superior intellectual capacity are a direct variables of schizoid secrecy and they justifies this secrecy; both this factors ("claimed intellectual superiority" and "secrecy") respond to twofold purpose more or less conscious: 1) they provide to the Schizoid a pretext not to relate to others and, therefore, to nourish his autistic component; 2) they provide to the Schizoid a pretext to support the fragility of his "Ego" and, therefore, to nourish his narcissistic component, however without to risk to submit hisself the others's intellectual examination and, therefore, without risking to see descovered the insubstance of own personality.
• special capacity of self-diagnosis, but particular inability and reluctance to acknowledge the substantial mechanical nature and decontextualization of one's own behaviors (own behaviors that, conversely, are ascribed to one's own marked capacity for analysis and choice)
• very good average I.Q.,
• long-term memory higher than average, sometimes even formidable.
• rather scarce, formal, merely notional and not various general knowledge and culture (also in people with high professional skills), with poor eclecticism.
• cognitive process characterized by poor intuition,
• tendency to excellent school and academic performance.
• from a merely technical point of view, good level of professional competence or in any case of specialized competence.
• especially in jobs that require social interaction, tendency to the underperformance in working and professional terms (professional success not adequate to the theoretical skills possessed, dedication to work limited to the strictly necessary, progressive lowering of the hours of work and even early abandonment of work if the Schizoid is in pairs with a partner with an income).
• tendency to a rigid compartitioning of working life (which, therefore, is first of all subjected to rather rigid schedules, and which, then, is structured as a sphere sharply distinct from the sphere of private life). The aforementioned compartitioning also manifests itself inside the sphere of own private life, favoring one-to-one relationships and avoiding putting these individuals in contact with each other.
• tendency to live the social reality in a formal, detached and somewhat hasty way, giving the impression to be longing to take refuge as soon as possible in one's inner world, alternative to the real one and in which the Schizoid becomes a writer of a script almost of cinematic kind that it populates of interests, times, stories, protagonists that allow him to live (finally in safety because merely by proxy) that sociality and that emotions that his autistic component inhibits it in real life, and which, also, allow it of fully express (but avoiding the interpretations and reactions of others) those underground feelings of megalomaniac grandeur and of furious anger that feed the its narcissistic component.
• reluctant to physical activity and not motivated to practice sports (especially group ones).
• ease in carrying out of solitary and/or of intellectually mechanical activities.
• very rare hobbies and extra-professional interest or activities, often of a merely executive nature and, also if of a creative or more purely intellectual nature, carried out mechanically, lazily and without particular talent, and performed without showing particular emotional gratification (hobbies which often require a methodical and operational slowness and which seem to be pursued with the apparent aim of slowing down time, of producing a pseudo-sedative effect and, no less, of producing as long as possible an pretext for not having interpersonal relationships during the moments of professional pause), 
• severe reluctance to the verbalisation,
• severe reluctance to be photographed or filmed,
• severe reluctance to use of the phone (it may often happen that you all find, even for a long time, the mobile phone of the Schizoid turned off or that you do not receive an answer for days to a your message),
• inclination to tolerate the written communication,
• frugality in the feeding (can also prefer tasty foods, but eats them slowly and often in low quantities), with a tendency to a rather strict diet (and, sometime, to the "Avoidant-restrictive food intake disorder").
• tendency to the attention to own health or, even, to a slight hypochondria.
• especially in the females, coexistence of some psychological traits typical of the opposite sex.
• extreme prudery and scandalized embarrassment when faced with open bodily displays of affection (hugs, caresses, kisses, etc.) and in talking about sexuality or gossip of a romantic and sexual nature (thereby revealing a powerfully hypertrophic perception of one's private sphere, especially the emotional and sexual one).
• egosyntonic vision of one's personality which is perceived by the Schizoid as substantially compliant with their expectations and, therefore, not in need of modifications and adjustments. In this sense, the Schizoid will turn to the Psychologist or Psychiatrist only when he perceives that he is suffering appreciable work limitations or when he falls into major depression or when his rare and brief almost psychotic states acquire ever greater frequency and intensity, leading him towards Schizotypy.

Morphology:

• slender and asthenic body structure, with scarce fat accumulation and poor musculature.
• often, a rather gaunt face.
• long-limbed hands and feets, slender and long fingers, and thin wrists and ankles, and generally slender bone structure,
• tendency to baldness and receding hairline.
• cold hands, with a mechanical and little progressive tactility.
• absent sweating (even under stress).
• facial expressions rather standard and that can take on the features: 1) of haughty snobism (the most of the time ...), 2) of impassive neutrality and indifference, 3) of adult hyper seriousness and hyper maturity, always peripherically hyper focused (how of whom can't afford to relate to others, because he has always much more serious matters to think about), 4) of just sketched enigmatic little smirk (in Monna Lisa's style), or, most rarely, of the stereotypated and mechanical smile (in Elizabeth II's style) or vaguely clownish, 5) of boyish composure (with upper lip slightly covering the lower lip slightly), or of boyish astonishment and bewilderment (to lips just open, with a immobile and suxpended facial expression, with eyes well open).
• absence of deep and visible breathing.
• low incidence of psychosomatic diseases.

As can be seen, it is a personality full of contradictions and of rapid oscillations between diametrical opposites:

- ostentation / secrecy,

- bravado / awkwardness,

- arrogance / fear,

- maturity / childishness,

- indifference / vigilance,

- anesthesia / hyperesthesia.

William Merritt Chase: "Portrait of Virginia Gerson" (1880).

A personality that, when she feels forced to the sociality, senses that it would be socially too much disadvantageous and formally and ethically altogether unacceptable for her to going away or to intimating directly to the every potential interlocutor to move away, or of not to approach, or of not to speak to her, or do not touch to her, and consequently, to reach own goal (a physical and emotional distance of safety from others), she is forced to use (in way obstinate and stubborn and not rarely unconsciously) alternative techniques, indirect, socially obstructionistic, disincentivizing, tense to discourage and demotivate any potential interlocutor and, therefore, techniques direct to minimize the probability of human relationships and of their quantity and quality (in particular, of non-formal, intimate and intense human relationships) and the related risks of emotional and physical contact.

So, the schizoid is continuously pledged to prevent (or, in the worst of cases, to sabote) the begin the own interpersonal relationships:

• before, with the predisposition of wide physical space between himself and the other person;
• after, if necessary, with the demarcation of interpersonal distance, through the predisposition of physical obstacles between himself and the other person).

When, despite the use of the previous precautions, it is not possible to avoid the human relationship (because it is partially already started), the schizoid repeats the same two previous shrewdness, but, this time, by applying it to no longer at the physical distance but at the emotional distance, and, therefore:

• predisposes an emotional distance with the interlocutor;
• after, if necessary, interposes an emotional obstacle between himself and the interlocutor.

Much of the life of the schizoid is occupied by the adoption of these measures, applied progressively in the following order:

• the remoteness (1st)
• the surveillance (2nd),
• the delimitation (3rd)
• the deterrence (4th).

When, despite the adoption of the previous measures, the other part is able to enter into emotional and physical intimacy with the schizoid, the latter, often, goes in psychotic short circuit, and resorts to the 5th and final measure:

• the escape (principally, physically moves away; but, even, pretends to not understand the context or, suddenly and radically, change the speech, etc.).

Edvard Munch: "Two human beings (The lonely ones)" (1905).

Obviously, this compelling need of the Schizoid to avoid (and, at worst, to saboter) any chance of sociability, however, in terms of logic, obliges the same schizoid to justify (in the eyes of interlocutors, but, above all, in their own eyes!) its autarkic position, its autistic isolationism, so pervasively compulsive how so physically exhausting and mentally expensive. For this reason, the Schizoid, accordingly, unconsciously but inevitably, for make logical sense accomplished at own personality, ends to builds an own superior ego, an grandiose image of himself (in my view, also to builds a sort of mythology of himself and of its past, reworking all it in key fantastic and self-referential, with extensive use of the mechanisms of denial and of removal): an self-image that, therefore, authorizes the Schizoid to be considered himself rightly autonomous and self-sufficient (and, then, not needy of contribution of others). And, not for chance, in this way, the Schizoid reproduce, unconsciously, the maternal and paternal subliminal message (very primordial, selfish, deceitful and silly, very typical of schizoid parents or of narcissistic parents): an message tense to instilling, surreptitiously and sneakily, in the same their son, an belief to be existentially very special and absolutely higher (this in order to clean the own parental conscience, and for fictitiously indemnify their son of the own parental inability to give affection).

Well, just when the schizoid explains its isolation (autistic start) as a necessary effect of its autonomy (obsessive-compulsive transit) and, after, explains this its autonomy as a necessary effect of his claim intellectual superiority (narcissistic arrival), I think it is precisely then that the fate of the schizoid is accomplished. In this way, in fact, the schizoid repeatedly misunderstands and exchanges the cause from the effect, and acquires habituality with this pattern of thinking, and, in doing so, it abandons itself to the undoubtedly genetic component of one's style of thought but lost definitively the the ability to track down the most strictly psychological and cultural component of his psychic isolation.

Hans Rudolf Giger: "Work n.217, ELP II" (1973).

Therefore, synthesizing at the extreme the features I listed above, the "Schizoid personality" seems to me, very suggestively, above all and substantially a very bizarre mixture among the overwhelming part of the typical and essential characteristics of two opposites psychic figures:

• the NARCISSISM: except for the "susceptibility to criticism and praise" (at least not visually evident on the outside in the Schizoids) and partially for the "manipulation of others for one's own ends" (which in Schizoids is inhibited by own autistic component and is essentially indirect and of type passive-aggressive, eventually limited to marriage) and likewise partially for the "envy" (which in the Schizoids is limited to the envy of the sponaneity of others), well in the Schizoids they are found, as typical narcissistic elements the grandiose image of himself, apparent emotional self-control in the face of stress and of failure, the absent empathy, the self-centeredness, the banalized and faded vision of the others, the cynism, the indifference, superiority, arrogance, contempt, haughtiness and snobbery and the obstentation of these latter psychic states,
• the AUTISM: typical in the Schizoids the intolerance to eye contact, the intolerance to physical contact, the difficulty to understanding others psyche, the self-centeredness, the poor interest for others psyche, the accentuation of the autistic attitude of phobia for physical contact with others that in the case of Schizoids it extends also to the emotional contact with others (phobia for intimacy), the substantial anhedonia.

A binary system in which the narcissistic component appears to be somewhat prevalent on the autistic component, in a continuous and conflictual rebound between:

1) the narcissistic need to appear and to exhibit to outside own grandiosity (blatantly, also if always superficially and under a purely formal profile),

and

2) the autistic need to disappear and to hide (own grandiosity, to a large extent, is projected inside and defended against others's intrusions).

A mixture in which, anyway, each of two those elements supposes and justifies the other, in a vicious loop intended to self-feed himself. A mixing through which the narcissistic grandeur is enveloped and sealed by the autistic defense.

The Schizoid, treated in childhood not as a subject but narcissistically and therefore as an object (perhaps accurately, but still always instrumentally, as an entity without volition or with an irrelevant or otherwise subordinate volition), should tend narcissistically to do the same with others, and, therefore, should tends to treat others as objects. However, unlike the classic and non-autistic Narcissist, the Schizoid cannot project his narcissistic "sense of grandeur" on the outside and that is on others, since he is afraid of contact with others, considering them to be intrusive and potentially harmful. That is, unlike the pure Narcissist, the Schizoid cannot look for others to find confirmation of his own grandiosity (that is, he does not look for people of very little value who easily admires him and treates him with deference, or people of very high value which they accept it and frequent him, in way that he too feels himself an equally special person) just as he cannot seek others to seduce, manipulate, use them instrumentally, and treat them mechanically and as objects.

Therefore, the Schizoid not being able to implement his two above-mentioned typical dynamics towards others, he puts them into action on hitself and, therefore:

1) introjects inside himself own grandeur and hides it from the corruption of external gazes, thus validating himself independently,

2) manipulates himself, treating himself mechanically and like an object (self-control).

However, even before noticing an unknowable and ineffable monad (that all it observes and check, but that is always unnoticed by everyone), an hard shell, a personality castled and wrapped in a tangle of rusty wire, a quintessential of anti-empathy, structured to reject, you can see a tender core, a very fragile soul, as stubbornly attached to an infant stage and in eternal waiting of a decisive compensatory event that however, at the bottom, her know that will never come (as the pension of the "Colonel", in "El coronel no tiene quien le escriba" by Gabriel García Márquez).

Lorenzo di Credi: "Portrait of a young woman" (1475-80).

The narcissistic contempt for the others and fear of others (others that are perceived as useless or harmful) and the autistic indifference for others and inability to understand the others (others that are perceived as incomprehensible and unable to understand), both generate in the Schizoid an inclination to affirm his Ego, and, thus, to affirm its "right to exist and of survive", and this obliges the Schizoid, in a sort of cascade effect, to a number of consequential behaviors:

1) to foresee and monitor obsessively the behavior of others. This, leads the Schizoid to accumulate enormous amounts of data about its own, though poor, relational life and, in this way, not a few schizoids, paradoxically, they end up to thinking in good faith they've matured a remarkable psychological ability to read other people's personalities and other people's intentions, not rarely boasting this their supposed ability. However, in truth, it is a mechanical, non-organic, and non-intuitive memory, since the Schizoid has a really poor ability to read non-verbal behaviors of others. A Schizoid is able to remember every detail of a brief and insignificant dialogue of many years ago, but, easily, he might be clamorously unable to remember the emotional attitude of his interlocutor of then, or also the wider context in which that dialogue had happened;

2) to constantly postponing every other need, and removing all that she considers potentially threatening for his existence and for his psychic integrity, and, that is:

2a) the emotive (and physical) proximity to others; when you talk to a Schizoid of "feelings" or "affections" or "emotions", if you will have the rare privilege of not being pulled away briskly by her or not being openly mocked by her, you will notice that Schizoid will observe you with piety, with charity (a little as the adult people look their children at when they say that the neonates bring them the stork): the "emotions" (and, more to say, the "affections" and the "feelings") for an Schizoid are like the UFOs or the Parapsychology or the Astrology: they are all bullshit for naive people! The Schizoid believes that emotions are totally useless and, indeed, even potentially harmful (given that they distance her from the objective perception and objective management of reality). Therefore, the Schizoid has a stringent need to prevent the emotional flow both internally and externally. The Schizoid solves this problem with regard to one's emotions, suppressing these last and to anesthetized himself. However, there remains the problem of the emotions of others, that is of the get the guarantee himself not to be invaded by the emotions of others: this requirement is solved by the Schizoid limiting own interpersonal relations as much as possible, since each interlocutor is a potential emotional invader (except that it is a another Schizoid ... in which case the Schizoid will may accept to relate, knowing that she will can effectively impose snaply the end of the relationship and that, in any case, the relationship will be quantitatively and qualitatively very restricted).

2b) the recognition and the awareness of one's own emotivity, with the consequent acceptance of the impossibility of total self-control of his own emotional sphere. Then, at the Schizoid is almost totally unknown the experience of "pleasure" (namely, of gratification, of happiness, of fun, of enthusiasm), experience that the Schizoid finds incomprehensible, vague, energetically expensive and tiring, not objectivable, ephemeral, deviant and, ultimately, useless. This continuing distance from the "pleasure", generates in the Schizoid a progressive anhedonia and a growing boredom, which, at the thresholds of mature age, can easily lead to Depression.

In classical and canonical terms, we could say that the Schizoid is not a "Shy/Avoidant/Neurotic", but is a "Introvert/(potentially) Psychotic".

• The "Shy/Avoidant/Neurotic" has few or no human relationships (because, deep down, he feels inferior and to others), but aspires deeply to establish human relationships: however, he does not try to achieve concretely this his aspiration to the sociality and avoids the interpersonal relationship for fear of being rejected or snobbed or of be deemed inadequate (typical case is that of the Depressed) or for afraid to show embarrassment. Also the "Introvert/(potentially) Psychotic" has few or no human relationships (because, deep down, he perceives the others as useless and therefore inferior to him, or because he perceives the others as potentially intrusive and harmful), but, unlike the Shy/Avoidant/Neurotic, it does not aspire to overcome this his condition and, therefore, does not aspire to relate to others (a typical case is that of the Schizoid).
• The "Shy/Avoidant/Neurotic" overestimates the opinion that others have of him/her. Viceversa, the "Introvert/(potentially) Psychotic" underestimates the opinion that others have of him/her.
• The  "Shy/Avoidant/Neurotic" perceives the reality correctly, but struggles to adapt to this. Conversely, the "Introvert/(potentially) Psychotic" has difficulty already in the first stage, that of reading of the reality (a reality that in fact perceives altered).
• The "Shy/Avoidant/Neurotic" has known the Love, but then lost it (for example, for a mourning or for a surrender). Conversely, the "Introvert/(potentially) Psychotic" has never known the Love.
• The "Shy/Avoidant/Neurotic" generally lives one's personality in an ego-dystonic way (and, therefore, with the regret of wanting to change it but to fail to make it), believing it does not conform to one's expectations. Viceversa, the "Introvert/(potentially) Psychotic" generally lives one's personality in an ego-syntonic way (and, therefore, without particular regrets), considering it all things considered compliant with one's expectations.    

This (moreover simple and logical) overall observation, leads me to reject (strongly!) the theories, which are also very widespread at the academic level and which to state that a Schizoid can have a (coexisting) Avoidant subpersonality (and vice versa), and that they led in the last D.S.M. (the D.S.M. V) to the ridiculous disappearance of the autonomous category of the Schizoid and its substantial absorption in the category of the Avoidant (or in the category of the Schizotypic).

Illogical and intellectually insane is to merge the category of the Schizoid into that of the Avoidant: if it is true (and indeed it is undisputed) that the Avoidant aspires to relate, and if it is equally true (and indeed it is equally undisputed) that the Schizoid does not aspire to relate or even aspires not to relate, it is not clear on the basis of which delusional logical equation these two categories (Avoidants and Schizoids) can be considered subsumable when, clearly, they are driven by inner motivations diametrically opposites: "either you are pregnant, or you are not pregnant: you cannot be only a little bit pregnant!". Those of the "Schizoid with Avoidant subpersonality" and that of the "Avoidant with Schizoid subpersonality" they seem to me figures fantasiose and mythological like those of the Unicorn and of the Sagittarius or they evoke me certain oxymorons such as that of the "dry water". Therefore, if we were to conjecture an individual who is Introverted but also Avoidant, we could not think of an individual who, simultaneously and coevally and at the same instant, desires and does not desires to relate to others (because this is a hypotetical individual in frontal and irremediable logical contradiction, to less than reasoning in unconscious and conscious terms respectively and, therefore, to referring to Introversion as we already know it), but rather to an individual who, alternately and in rather rapid succession, desires or not desires to relate himself to others, but this would lead us to a different sector and extremely similar to bipolar disorder, and precisely to a bipolar disorder with a periodic oscillation much faster than the classic one.

The truth is that, over the years, we have gone from an excessive psychiatrization of the "personalities" (to favor the interests of pharmaceutical companies, of psychiatrists and of some political lobbies that had the aim of targeting certain conducts such as of homosexuals) to a ridiculously "politically correct" intent on demonstrating, urbi et orbi, first of all own remoteness from commercial, professional and political interests, even at the cost of sacrificing the most elementary scientific evidences.

Furthermore, returning to the area (strictly identified, and depurified from the Avoidant personality) of the ​​Introversion, I think we should further distinguish between:

1) subclinical Introvert (ie, with the Schizoid style), that has no human relations and he does not aspire to have them and which is confined himself to an apathetic and indifferent behavior; a subject who, that is, does not feel the need to get close to others, but who allows others to get closer to him/her under certain conditions. [In this case, the evolution is easier, because it would be a matter of filling an empty space, and ie, to stimulating and forming a desire previously absent];

2) clinical Introvert (ie, with Schizoid personality), that has no human relations, and that does not limit itself to not desire interpersonal relationships; a subject, that is, who not only does not feel the need to get close to others, but who does not allow others to get close to him/her whatever the pre-conditions of the relationship (pre-conditions from him/her always demeed unacceptable in pregiudicial way), and who, therefore, does not limit itself to not approach others, but that, even, aspires (explicitly and programmatically) to avoid the relationships. Therefore, from one side it drives the others away, and, on the other side, when he cannot keep the others at a distance, he moves away from others, all even accepting the high probability of appearing ethically incorrect, formally rude, psychically bizarre, intellectually stupid, empathetically obnoxious, etc.. [In this case, evolution is harder, because it would be a matter of empting an already occupied space and fill it again and in different way, and ie, to replacing an already present desire with another desire].

In my opinion, in the context of "the clinical introvert", two sub-categories of subjects should be distinguished:

2a) the Introvert who him feels always like inexorably disadvantageous the own approach to the others and the approach of others to him,

2b) the Introvert who him feels that the own approach to the others and the approach of others to him like potentially advantageous (albeit under certain conditions and in determined cases), but who, nevertheless, they don't have the strength to allow it because is overwhelmed by own cogent and opposite autistic phobia.

Therefore, and in other words, I believe that the Schizoid, even the most compromised one, realizes quite clearly, if only from an analytical and intellectual point of view, of his narcissistic component and, therefore, of his absence of desire for authentic relational and emotional experiences and of the gravity of the its relative renunciation; and I believe that not a few Schizoids, especially the more adult and/or intellectually more advanced, they conjecture to attempt a modification of this attitude of theirs.

But I also believe that their autistic defense is a very ancient defense, with a dating back to habituality and an acquired character of priority.

The Schizoid perhaps would like to gratify himself with the outside himself, but he is inhibited in this curiosity of his because he has the distorted perception of a price to pay too high for his inner self.

You may offer a Clinical Schizoid an interpersonal relationship that provides him/her with a blindingly objective and sensationally enormous utility, but the Clinical Schizoid will reject it (especially if the interpersonal relationship turns out to be non-formal or in any case not occasional). Obviously, in most cases the Schizoid will be well aware of the objective extent of the advantages to which him/her renounces in this way, but for he/she any advantage will always be inferior to his/her primary objective of avoiding the violation of own privacy, the requests, the dangers, the fatigues and in any case the wastes of time for he/she inexorably inherent in every interpersonal relationship.

Pablo Picasso: "Portrait of Olga Picasso" (1923).

IV

As for any other personality type (and, as I will illustrate later, as well as also for the Asperger's "personality"), it is possible that the Schizoid also has (eventually, but never necessarily) a "sub-personality", having to be understood for" sub-personality" a personality accessory and ancillary to the main one, and less marked, pronounced and invasive than the main one.

In particular, not infrequently it may happen that the Schizoid subject owns also an obsessive-compulsive or paranoid sub-personalities.

If is present a Obsessive-Compulsive sub-personality, there is an accentuation of the following schizoid elements:

• ostentation of autonomy and of self-confidence (which here becomes rigid operational autonomy, with reluctance to delegate the carrying out of activities).

And there is also some additional typical behaviors, such as:

• parsimony excessive and incongruous than the real economic capacity.
• tendency to accumulate the most different objects and goods, also irrespective of their actual practical use and even if objectively no longer usable (obsolete, damaged, malfunctioned, etc...).
• enhancement and mythologizing of labor and of all economically productive activity, with correlated devaluation of abstract thinking, hobbies, sport, religious activities, existential and philosophical reflection and meditation, gossip, ecc. ...
• perfectionism and sterile attention to details, also if details objectively irrelevant and also at the expense of neglecting the understanding and the care of the globality of the problem.
• stubbornness in reiterating the use of a same method, even if it is clearly not optimal.

If is present a Paranoid sub-personality, there is an accentuation of the following schizoid elements:

• susceptibility (which here becomes rancor, recurrent and persistent).
• attitude secretly vigilant (which here becomes suspiciousness, explicit and obsessive, unbreakable, self-referential and refractory to every contrary objective evidence also if blatant and indisputable).
• reservedness tending to the secrecy (which here becomes secrecy, preordained and pervasive, also with regard to informations not related to the own private sphere).

However, even in the schizoid with strong paranoid tendencies, very rarely will be present also the another very typical characteristic of the paranoid, ie, the jealousy over the sentimental partner. This is because the jealousy is structurally incompatible with the schizoid personality for two reasons: 

• the schizoid does not aspire to own people, but rather, the objects, 
• the schizoid is very unlikely which may to be afraid of remain alone.

Much more rarely, it can also happen that the narcissistic component of the Schizoid is particularly hypertrophic, as I happened to observe in the schizoid girl to whom this writing is dedicated and as, to quote famous schizoids, was characteristic of the writer George Simenon. In these subjects the exhibitionist streak is recurrent, and the theatrical display of one's own aesthetics or of one's own frontally nonconformist conduct represents (quite paradoxically) a way to show the unattainability of what in reality one does not want to grant to others: physical intimacy, emotional intimacy, ...

V

A separate discussion deserves the (alleged) sub-category (often mentioned in the clinical literature) of the "Covert Schizoid", that is, that of the Schizoid one who, despite his absence of desire for interpersonal relationships and his absence of gratification in the interpersonal relationship, it manages to ensure (albeit on a purely and merely formal level) an acceptable (and sometime maybe almost remarqable) social functioning with friends, with colleagues and sometimes even with the partner. Well, this psychic figure is (in my humble opinion) the result of an erroneous (and somewhat optimistic and illusory) doctrinal elaboration, and is (always in my very humble opinion) largely traceable to the most canonical riverbed of the different Narcissistic Personality albeit endowed with a Schizoid or Avoidant subpersonality.

VI

The recent Japanese phenomenon of the "HIKIKOMORI" (adolescents and post-adolescents, predominantly males, who withdraw and isolate themselves for months or years in their parental home) albeit filtered through the cultural peculiarities typical of Japan (father physically almost always absent, educational system highly competitive and selective, very considerable expectation of parents about the future professional success of their children, pervasive social expectation of finalization of individual behavior for the higher purposes of the community), has too many suspicious similarities with the phenomenology of schizoid personality (it also predominantly affects males) of which, rather, it appears as a marked accentuation and an aggravated form, being characterized by:

1) stubborn withdrawal at home (interrupted, only occasionally, by the mere need to go out for make the food shopping),

2) stubborn refusal to follow normal education courses and to work.

3) stubborn refusal to have direct interpersonal relationships with subjects outside the close family environment,

4) marked tendency to reverse the rhythm sleep-wake (de facto thereby minimizing the possibility of human interaction): it is a rather recurrent tendency even among schizoids, but the latter limit themselves to prefer the evening hours for carrying out intellectual and work activities, generally without reversing the circadian cycle.

The presence among Hikikomori of Aspergers (as well as of the other subjects also they with so-called "pervasive developmental disorders") appears well documented but minority (around 20% of the total).

VII

The "Schizotypal personality" represents an accentuation of the "Schizoid Personality", in a continuum that includes, with increasing severity and impairment, "Schizoid Personality", "Schizotypal Personality", "Schizoaffective Disorder" and, finally, the "Schizophrenia".

What that characterizes this progression is the accentuation of the subject's "eccentricities" but above all the accentuation of his "psychosis", with an attenuation of the typical Schizoid attitudes of contempt, snobbery, haughtiness, and theatrically exhibited emotional detachment, and a greater evidence both of social phobia in its purest form (vaguely reminiscent of that of the Avoidants) and of marked interpersonal mistrust and suspiciousness.

In particular, the "Schizotypal" is characterized, among others, by:

1) a so-called magical thinking (not typical of the Schizoid),

2) an eccentricity in language and clothing (not typical of the Schizoid), 

3) psychotic phenomena sensibly stronger, more frequent and more prolonged than happens to the Schizoids,

4) the almost constant concern for the opinions that others have about them Schizotypals (unlike Schizoids who are often completely indifferent to the opinions of others about them Schizoids),

5) a genuine desire of sociality but rare and merely occasional,

6) a more marked tendency to paranoid-like thinking and ideation,

7) a drift towards Schizophrenia in an markly higher percentage of cases than is the case to the Schizoids.

VIII

In my opinion, it is strongly necessary to clear the field of a very typical and recurring misunderstanding, namely that for which "Schizoid" is equivalent to "Schizophrenia": well, the two terms are by no means attributable to the same condition.

In fact, in the Schizoid the psychotic states are very mild, quite rare, and when they arise they last a few seconds or minutes.

Conversely, the Schizophrenic experiences quite intense psychotic states (typical is the hearing somes imaginaire "voices"), quite recurrent and even of prolonged duration.

Similarly, it should be noted that the percentage of Schizoids who, over time, become Schizophrenic is just higher than the percentage of the general population and, therefore, is frankly not particularly significant from a statistical point of view.

Rather, the risk of degeneration into Schizophrenia is somewhat more appreciable in Schizotypics.

IX

In order to pursue my declared intent to deconstruct the "personalities" and their behaviors (a bit like we, sometimes, did as children when we broke their watches to discover the internal mechanisms), I consider it useful to also address the problem of the often mentioned (and abused) category of "Social phobia", a category that is often cited by scholars as if it were a "unicum" distinguishable from mere introversion or mere shyness (or which, in any case, it is surreptitiously associated with shyness but in its extreme form).

Well, also on this point I feel I can clear the field of a persistent (and inexplicable) underlying misunderstanding, given that if the "social phobic" is, according to logic, "one who is unable to relate to others due to his own strong and insuperable phobia of others", it is clear that this (inevitable) definition potentially fits the "Introverts" (Schizoids and Aspergers) as well as the "Avoidants"; in other words, that of "Social phobic" it is a category that says a lot about behaviors, but that says nothing about the etiology of those behaviors and which, therefore, as such, is scientifically generic and imprecise (unless we state that the subject, at the same time or better alternatively, desires and does not desires to relate to the others ... but this hypothesis would refer and be adapted to very different and more complex psychic figures, namely to "bipolar disorder" and the "multiple personality"!).

X

It is interesting to note how some aspects of the "Schizoid Personality" are superimposable with those typical of the so-called nineteenth-century "Dandyism" which pushed each "Dandy" "to always show himself in full self-control and in the impossibility of being emotionally touched by events. Indifferent air becamed a necessary attitude".

As Charles Baudelaire also pointed out, "The distinctive feature of the beauty of the dandy consists above all in an air of coldness, derived from an unshakable determination not to be involved".

XI

Not lacking FAMOUS people who, I believe, can be considered like (plausible) SCHIZOIDS (not coincidentally, almost exclusively males or persons belonging to the Anglo-Saxon and northern-European culture), very often characterized by misanthropy and/or by asexuality (or, rarely, by mechanical sexuality):

Diogenes of Sinope: first exponent of philosophical "cynicism", he devoted his life to preaching the schizoid virtues of self-control and self-sufficiency/autarchy,

Michelangelo Buonarroti: known misanthrope ("I'm always alone, I go little around and I do not speak to a person"), he never had wife neither any one sentimental adventure, and he was known for his legendary and absolute avarice and frugality (even in eating), as well as his lack of personal hygiene,

Isaac Newton: chronically solitary and suspicious, he never married. Already in his time it was widely believed that he was died virgin,

Thomas Hobbes: he was a convinced misanthrope,

Blaise Pascal: He alternated short periods of worldly social life with a longer period sof deep misanthropy. He stated that "Tout le malheur des hommes vient d’une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos dans une chambre" ("All the misfortune of men come from just one thing, which is to not know remain at rest in a room"). He said he felt "Un grand mépris pour les affaires du monde et un dégoût presque insupportable de toutes les personnes qui en sont" ("A great contempt for the affairs of the world and an almost unbearable disgust for all people who are involved in it").

Jonathan Swift: had a lonely and neglected childhood (fatherless, he was kidnapped at the age of one year by his nanny and by her detained for another three years). For the women (two in particular) he had feelings of strong attraction, but had nurturing a sort of disgust for physical intimacy (he had a mania to wash himself constantly) and, therefore, ended up to have substantially platonic and intellectualized relationships with they. He has slipped, slowly but inexorably, towards the misantropy and bizarre attitudes. In his main work, "Gulliver's Travels", he represented his pessimism and his deep distrust moral and intellectual in mankind (because deemed structurally unable to relate effectively),

René Descartes,

Emily Dickinson: daughter of a chronically cold and distant mother (Dickinson called her "horrible"), from her post-adolescence she developed an increasingly intense social phobia (which lasted until her death), living in her later years as a virtual recluse (she was known for her reluctance to greet guests or, in later life, to leave her bedroom, and she she didn't come out her home even to attend her parents' funerals). Dickinson never had any romantic relationships other than purely platonic, and most of her friendships were based entirely on correspondence.

Immanuel Kant,

Charles Darwin,

Franz Kafka,

Maximilien de Robespierre,

Fryderyk Chopin,

George Bernard Shaw,

Jane Austen,

Marcel Proust,

Emily Brontë,

Karl Marx,

Sigmund Freud,

Friedrich Nietzsche,

Paul Cézanne: he suffered from strong "Haphephobia", the fear of being touched. He had given instructions to her maid of not approach him never and, if touched from someone (friends included), became furious,

Gustave Flaubert,

Henry Cavendish: taciturn, asocial and secret - he rarely publishied his works -, he communicated with his own maids only through annotations on tickets. When, one day, a maid entered erroneously in his room, he remained so upset to dismiss her from work instantly. Later, he built mezzanines and stairs to go from room to room without being seen. There is a total absence of reports on his sentimental life,

Nikola Tesla,

Hermann Hesse,

Arthur Schopenauer,

Edward Hopper: he was markedly lonely, reserved, quiet and introspective. His wife remarked: "Sometimes talking to Eddie is just like dropping a stone in a well, except that it doesn't thump when it hits bottom". His art is populated by characters who never look at each other and who very rarely observe other characters even only unilaterally: silence, solitude, immobility, waiting shine through,

Edvard Munch,

Albert Einstein: "My passionate interest in social justice and social responsibility has always stood in curious contrast to a marked lack of desire for direct association with men and women. I am a horse for single harness, not cut out for tandem or team work. I have never belonged wholeheartedly to country or state, to my circle of friends, or even to my own family. These ties have always been accompanied by a vague aloofness, and the wish to withdraw into myself increases with the years. Such isolation is sometimes bitter, but I do not regret being cut off from the understanding and sympathy of other men. I lose something by it, to be sure, but I am compensated for it in being rendered independent of the customs, opinions, and prejudices of others, and am not tempted to rest my peace of mind upon such shifting foundations." - "The solitude and peace of mind are serving me quite well, not the least of which is due to the excellent and truly enjoyable relationship with my cousin; its stability will be guaranteed by the avoidance of marriage.”

Bertrand Russell,

Alfred Hitchcock,

Doris Lessing,

Simon Weil,

Ezra Pound,

Isaac Asimov,

Bobby Fischer,

Howard Phillips Lovecraft,

Philip K. Dick: self-diagnosed as "schizoid personality". Besides, Dick's mother was cold and distant, had little capacity for empathy and inability to care for the twin sister of Philip, Jane, that died, shortly after birth, due to the malnutrition,

Jean-Paul Sartre: "l'enfer, c'est les autres" ("Hell, is other people"),

Albert Camus,

Ludwig Wittgenstein,

Emil Cioran: "Love - a meeting of two saliva ... All feelings draw their absolute from misery of glands". "The real contact between beings is established only with the silent presence, with the apparent non-communication, with the mysterious exchange and without words". "I despise the Christian because he is able to love his fellow man closely. To me, for rediscover the man, it would take the Sahara",

Georges Simenon: a somewhat atypical Schizoid, with a hypertrophic Narcissistic component and an highly promiscuous sexuality. He had a mother, daughter of a suicide father, who he define like "insensitive to the emotions of others". Also the Simenon's daughter is died suicide, as his maternal grandfather,

Carl Gustav Jung,

Lee Harvey Oswald: "the Psychiatrist of the juvenile reformatory where Oswald was examined in 1953, describes him as follows: "has a vivid fantasy life, turning around the topics of omnipotence and power, through which he tries to compensate for his present shortcomings and frustrations ... has a personality pattern disturbance with schizoid features and passive-aggressive tendencies",

Jack Kerouac: honorably discharged from the US Navy, after only 8 days of service, for "schizoid personality",

Syd Barrett: traditionally mistaken for an Asperger, him, however, showed the clearest symptoms of schizoid or of schizotypal disorder, symptoms albeit exacerbated by continued use of drugs,

Stanley Kubrick,

Joseph Ratzinger: is widespread the opinion of many of his interlocutors priests (also Germans like him) who often they refer to his difficulties and to his ineffectiveness in interpersonal relationships,

Elizabeth II: that prepackaged and tight smile, that rectilinea imperturbability, ... ,

Steven "Steve" Jobs.

In addition, can be considered schizoids also some fictional characters, such as:

• Sherlock Holmes,
• albeit in a metaphorized form, many "superheroes" loners of cartoons (Superman, Batman, etc.),
• Wednesday Addams (in the television series "the Addams family"),
• Data (in the television series "Star Trek"), not by chance an android, basically unable to feel emotions, with almost nulle empathy and theory of mind,
• Gregory House (in the television series "House M. D."), which somehow appears as a representation of a so-called "Covert Schizoid", that is, of a Schizoid who manages to ensure, even if only on a purely formal level, an acceptable social functioning,
• Mr. James Stevens (in the movie "The remains of the day"), an exemplary description of the clinical Schizoid personality, albeit concurrent with the cultural factors typical of the Victorian age,
• Lars Lindstrom (in the movie "Lars and the real girl"), albeit in a somewhat caricatural characterization of Schizoid personality,
• Rebecka Martinsson (the main character of Åsa Larsson's crime novels), apparently a strong, determined and even cold woman, in reality full of doubts and wounds lefted to her by a complicated life, and therefore not able to truly trust others and maintain too close human relationships.

XII

Often, a "schizoid personality" can be confused and misunderstood with a so called "ASPERGER's syndrome" (this is a fairly frequent mistake which is incurred by the most superficial public narration, especially the journalistic one).

In fact, the differences between these two psychic conditions are somewhat subtle, and even an expert could may find difficult to distinguish, specially in childhood and in pre-adolescence, between an Asperger and a Schizoid.

It must be premise that, as also for the "schizoid personality", the "Asperger's Syndrome" does not necessarily appear in absolute form at 100%, but, on the contrary, often (in my opinion and experience, in most cases) it shows up in partial form or, even, in very mild and subclinical form: there are slight Aspergers able to carry out high-level intellectual professions (though with some limitations in social and emotional interaction). In particular, some classical symptoms (the prolonged and one-sided verbosity, the stimming, the rigid submission to the routine, the echolalia, the insistence on certain topics or in re-proposing, as in a sort of refrain, the same pun or verbal joke, etc. ) are often strongly reduced or even completely absent in the least compromised Aspergers.

Moreover, while the Schizoids have an average symptomatic complex very often typical and composed of a somewhat reduced series of elements, the Aspergers (colloquially, also called "Aspies"), conversely, have a potentially broader and more varied symptomatic complex: each Asperger, although often and clearly it own somes of these elements, it may not possess at all many others. The analysis of the Asperger, therefore, often requires a more complex and global examination than is necessary with the Schizoid. Therefore, always much attention: many subjects will be able to very clearly possess some characteristics typical of Aspergers, but, however, not be Aspergers at all!

It should also be pointed out that, on average, Aspergers females (relatively rare, considered that Asperger's syndrome has a much greater incidence in males, much more than is already the case with the Schizoid personality), than male Aspergers, have a better capacity of camouflage and of copying as well as a better non-verbal communication (however, with smaller executive capacity than males).

Schizoids and Aspergers, of course, have in common:

• a marked aversion to the physical contact (above all the passive one),
• an aversion to the ocular contact: in the specific case of Asperger this happens (also) because the Aspie, due to his considerable difficulty in detecting the non-verbal communication of his interlocutor, tends to renounce this type of analysis (analysis that he finds expensive and not very fruitful) and, consequently, him tends to privilege the analysis of the verbal communication of the his same interlocutor,
• a very limited range of expressive and emotional features: a not brilliant prosody, a marked shortage or absence of not verbal communication (facial mimic absent/rigid for both; bodily mimic reduced/robotic in the Schizoid, absent/clumsy in the Asperger),
• a bad relationship with sociality,
• attitudes of theatrical indifference (the Schizoid) or of seraphic emotional non-involvement (the Asperger), which, beyond appearances, underlie also (also ...) an unconscious attempt to mitigate the own strong and covert anxious component,
• a substantial disinterestedness for the pleasantries and for the conventional and ceremonial forms of courtesy (hints of greeting, verbal greeting, handshake or hug, interest for health and others life, thanksgiving, take-leave, etc.), with a tendency to approach slowly but in a direct and Spartan way,
• a difficulty in feeling and expressing gratefulness and thankfulness,
• in the conversation with others, when they are objects and not subjects of interlocution (i.e. when they cannot choose the interlocutor and the object of the interlucution, since it is the interlocutor who proposes himself for the interlocution and chooses the object of the interlocution), a tendency to limiteds themselves to merely passive listening (maybe, sometimes, apparently diligent and respectful) or to the use of sketchy expressions of formal participation and of formal assent, but not infrequently not caring too much to hide signs of boredom and of impatience, and failing to hide own hurry to want conclude the conversation (this when the conversation assumes the tones of a small talk or of a chitchat about the more and the less without a practical purpose or about the gossip or when is about deepening the psyche of a third people, and, in any case, when this is prolonged),
• an ill-concealed intellectual presumption, with an hypertrophic overestimation of their knowledge (often merely technical, sectorial and notional), of their mental skills of analysis and choice (often efficient, but only in the presence of purely technical problems), and of their intellectual creations and of their hobbies,
• in the studies and in the work, a marked inclination for scientific subjects,
• a formal demeanor often pompous, bombastic and formally hyper adult (which, moreover, in the Aspie alternates with pre/neo-adolescential behaviors),
• a very good memory (often above average) and a good average level of I.Q.,
• on average, a good (and often excellent) level of results in scholastic and academic field, yet with professional and work achievements often lower than of what one would expect according on their theoretical competencies,
• a difficulty in making quick choices (or making them with effectiveness),
• a more or less unintentional egocentrism: interest rather scarce or null for the emotions of others, with little or no motivation to seize the potential usefulness of emotions of others which are considered by the Schizoid/Asperger to be substantially incapable of providing a some relevant psychic utility (attention: the "Egocentrism" not to be confused with the "Egoism"! The "Egoism" consists of a as aware contempt of the emotions and of dignity of other even when the other is recognized as intellectually and morally better; the "egoist" pursues his ends, albeit legitimate, even at the conscious cost of harming others and without suffering emotionally from the injury that he thus causes to the dignity of others. The "Egocentrism", instead, consists in placing himself and his own needs and impulses at the center of every experience, without realizing that his own experience is linked to the experience of others; the "egocentric", even when he becomes aware of the inevitable relationship between his own conduct and those of others, still has an extreme difficulty in identifying with the other and identifying the needs of others, and even when he succeeds in this latter operation, he fatigue enormously to understand utility of this operation),
• a recurrent need to exercise the environmental control and to defend oneself from the typical instability of the relationship with subjects, taking refuge in the constancy and predictability of an inanimate world, devoid of subjects and full of objects,
• a recurrent need to make (more or less long, but categorical and absolute) breaks in socialization (physically withdrawing himself in solitude and interrupting every form of communication, even indirect, with the outside), ensuring themselves a strict privacy. To a more rigid extent in the Schizoid and to a less rigid extent in the Asperger, the common existential hinge for both is one to limit one's interpersonal relationships (their number, their duration, their emotional intensity) and to try to impose the moment of beginning and the moment of end of every own interpersonal relationship,
• a certain unconscious tendency to empty, to sabotage and to make fail one's (albeit few) relationships less formal interpersonal and of greater emotional quality, according to the scheme of the so-called "self-fulfilling prophecy", but in way so that is the interlocutor the one that to detects, to points out and to objects the shortcomings and insufficiencies of the introvert and, therefore, so making sure that the responsibility for said failure falls apparently on this aforesaid their interlocutor.
• a general sense of identity (who they are and what they want) which is formally often somewhat strong and structured (a square and clear identity and that seems carved with a hatchet), but substantially somewhat inconsistent and vague, and which often reflects on their sexual identity, vaguely preadolescential in males and females, with the males often heterosexual but with a mild or purely mechanistic interest in sex or even asexuals, and the females often asexual or bisexual or mildly homosexual.
• a formal attitude that is not infrequently of solemn and proclaimed rigid respect for formal, legal and moral rules, but alternated from public conducts of seraphic, indifferent and cynic egocentrism, and from private conducts suddenly transgressive and even subtly antisocial,
• mechanical and not very fluid motor skills, with little interest in sports that require an articulated and variegated series of movements (or a physical interaction with other people),
• a more marked incidence in males: in my personal experience of direct observer of subjects clearly and unequivocally characterized and structured like Schizoids or Aspergers, the male/female ratio among the Schizoids is of 5 to 2, while among the Aspergers is of 5 to 0 (mostly maybe subclinicals).

While still ever remembering very well that every Asperger is different from the others (also because the range of typical behaviors of the Aspergers is more wide, varied and assorted than that corresponding in the Schizoids and because each Asperger can present an his own specific assortment of characteristics in the widest range of coded characteristics of this Syndrome), however, compared to the Schizoid, the average Asperger (and, therefore, the Asperger not seriously compromised), tendenzially differs in the following respects:

• has a origin more markedly organic, biological and genetic, with more specific neurological features (the most recent scientific research suggests that autistic disorders are the result of an interaction between a genetic susceptibility and a massive inflammation),
• has a frequency (compared to total population) lightly lower than that of schizoid personalities, and which, while certanly it taking into account many people that very likely they are still not diagnosed as Aspergers (above all females, even as a result of their greater aspiration to camouflage the own typical symptoms of Asperger and of their greater ability to blend socially in this way), in any case (also on the basis of my personal experience and perception) I would estimate in one 1% of the total population.
• It usually occurs already around 3 years of age, but sometimes the milder forms can evolve positively and fade considerably around 8 years of age, for example, with the complete disappearance of the so-called stimming (e.g., butterfly-like flicking of the hands) or with the strong reduction of motor dyspraxias (e.g., inability to run), whereas, instead, the extreme schizoid personality may not even appear significantly before adolescence (indeed, some extreme Schizoids during their childhood and post-childhood may even appear expressive and jovial).

Proxemics and Kinesics:

• has a glance that can often be clearly elusive and avoidant and in any case not determined and watchful: but, in many cases, the more mature and intellectually advanced Aspergers, in an attempt to suppress this their tendency, they can to themselves impose a fixed and persistent glance (the Aspie blink the lashes less frequently),
• has a more pronounced intolerance/phobia to the physical contact (both active and passive), but a lesser phobia of emotional contact,
• even more patently than in the Schizoids, presents a marked slowness in the bodily mobility and a poor fluidity; but unlike the Schizoids, it presents a certain asymmetry and a poor coordination, with difficulty in the physical skills that requires a coordinated sequence of more movements ("dyspraxia": difficulty aggravated if whether these movements so coordinated are to be performed simultaneously), with difficulty in the running (often replaced it from an much hasty crawled walk) and in the jump,
• is psychologically deep-seated indolent, lethargic and reluctant to physical activity (especially the sports one, above all if of group or if imply physical contact or performance of a coordinated and contemporary series of movements); this physical activity, if (sporadicly!) carried out, is carried out slowly and without significant variations in intensity.
• has a tendential and diffused phlegma and laziness also in the performance of daily manual activities (for example, in washing himself and in clothe himself).
• has problems of manual dexterity with regard to the coordinated use of the fingers or  to the manipulation with the fingers of thin objects (eg, make the knots at the shoelaces, buttoning up the clothes, use the scissors, peel a fruit with a knife ...),

Psychology:

• we must preliminary distinguish between Aspergers Males and Females (!). The Males they will more frequently show an approach formal, logical, dogmatic, rigid, and focused on objects, on facts and on objectivity. In Females, on the other hand, will be more frequently observed an approach spontaneous, emotional, eccentric, and focused on subjects, on ideas and on imagination. In this sense, the external observer will be able to detect sometimes even surprising differences,
• beyond the hyper adult and hyper mature demeanor with whom he often formally presents himself, the Asperger (especially the Male!), in reality, has substantially a personality of pre-adolescential or neo-adolescential mold,
• tends to relate by adopting a somewhat stereotyped, rigid and formal demeanor and by adopting an equally formal and sometimes refined vocabulary, but, at the same time, transmitting the feeling of expressing oneself with a style merely contrived, mechanically preordained and merely imitative and of using complex terminologies in a sometimes improper way, all almost to betray the attempt to regulate one's own spontaneity and to mimic common behavioral models,
• a peaceful disposition, with an evident and special attitude not to use violence or in any case physical force or simply prevarication in the resolution of interpersonal conflicts,
• has a adolescential naivety and lack of common sense (sometimes disconcerting) which, while alternating with attitudes of clear and irritating egocentrism (attention: not egoism!), they making him potentially somewhat vulnerable to the action and reaction of others (in a pre-adolescent and adolescent age it is not rarely that occur recurrent episodes of bullying to his detriment),
• in childhood and pre-adolescent age has almost none aptitude for role-playing, fiction-playing, movement-playing and group play, but had a marked preference for solitary, sedentary and mechanical games. His play is constructive and scarcely interactive: the child's friends are the objects rather than the subjects.
• has often an intent, very programmatic, genuine, deep and aware, to base one's conduct on strong ethical principles and to respect of the legal and civic rules (typical expression of his not rarely obsessive-compulsive subpersonality), intent and respect, these, which often make her behaviours markedly and admirably honest, ethic and proper, somewhat moralistic, and at times not a little naive and vulnerable, resulting it a fond legalist and loyal to the rules and to the established order, giving the impression of pursuing these principles and rules with a dogmatic spirit and in a literal way, without be able to provide a specific and detailed motivation for their need and without showing any emotional gratification in their pursuit, how to betray a need of schemes even when imitated in a stereotyped way.
• in spite of its markedly programmatic tendency to respect ethical and legal principles, howewer can appear (occasionally, but altogether unexpectedly and disconcerting!) rather ungainly, indifferent, unfeeling, self-centered, inappropriate, indelicate, tactless, impolite, sometimes a bit measly and small-minded, selfish, venal, cynic, amoral, unscrupulous, and even impassively cruel, with a psychological style clearly recognizable and that often provides that the Asperger pre-establishes for himself (in way rarely explicitated but clearly intuitable) a pseudo ethical justification (justification that he often bases on his own needs, considered as urgent and objectively prioritary compared to the needs of others).
• sometimes, has poor ability to manifest (and to feel) remorse. Even in the face of other's finding of his social error (or, in any case, even in front of the objective evidence of his error), he tends to develop a slow but perceptible attitude of denial or self-absolution. In this sense, his recurring logics are two: 1) he feels he does not deserve to be reprimanded, since he acted in a sort of superior state of necessity (generated by the alleged priority of his own needs respect to those of others), or because he acted unconsciously, or because he was induced to act, or because he acted behind a provocation, 2) if the other points out the error of him Aspie, it is because the other is specious and does not maliciously take into account his related errors; if the other does not point out the mistake, it is because he has a selfish interest to turn a blind an eye.
• often appears holed up, absorbed and by its own interests and loomings (not infrequently pursued with an all-encompassing and admirable spirit of dedication and prolonged perseverance).
• manifests a poor basic reciprocity (and emotional involvement) in the interpersonal relationships at any level (workly, friendly, sentimental) with the exception of parental relationships which most of the time are lived with tenderness and a sense of protection. The subject often slips, slowly but inexorably, into an interpersonal management in which the (inevitable ...) common rules are surreptitiously chosen by him and in any case applied in the light of his needs (real or supposed as such): there is a lack of reciprocity in the choice of activity or topic of conversation which can also be seen in the paucity of requests and questions asked of the interlocutor. Any attempt by others to replicate (from their own point of view and to their own advantage) the exact same logic, generates in the Aspie an attitude of haughtiness, of revenge, of shady fallback, of haughty detachment, as if to suggest an his unspecified reason and an his obscure interest in not accepting a truly equal relationship with others.
• has a slight but genuine aspiration to the socialization, aspiration, however, frustrated and sabotaged by: 1) a structural "Mind-blindness" and, therefore, a severe shortage in the so-called "Theory of the mind", ie in the ability to recognize, to recognize quickly, and, even, to predict the mental states (personality, previous personal story, momentary emotional state, conscious and unconscious intentions, desires, beliefs, aspirations, fears, etc.) of himself and, above all, of the others (with, in particular, the naive inability to read the others's malicious intentions, and, on the other hand, the almost paranoid suspicion in front to the others's conducts even when this others's conducts are clearly devoid of any malice and instrumentality); this specific lack of skill manifests itself in very evident way when the Asperger must recognize the mental state of others very quickly or when he finds itself having to carry out so-called "cold reading", that is to deduce the mental states of people that he meets for the first time and with respect to which he does not have prior and explicit informations: it almost seems that the Asperger, in these respects, somehow it needs of ... an instruction booklet , 2) a structural shortage of so-called "Empathy", ie in the to participate at the others's psychic state and in the to share these psychic states with them, and in the to realize which may be the effects of his conduct on others. The Asperger has a shortage of "Empathy" slightly less evident and intense than the Schizoid, but, always with respect to the Schizoid, it also has a profound "mind-blindness", 3) a motivation to the approach essentially intellectual (the curiosity to learn something from intellectually qualified people) and/or formal/ethical (the need to perceive themselves and be perceived by others as respectful) and/or practical (the need to secure to themselves a social safety net, and also the need to perceive themselves and to be perceived by others as socially integrated and therefore not "abnormal"), but rarely emotional (in the rare cases in which there is an emotional motivation, ie aimed at emotional sharing, this is always partial, minority, ancillary and auxiliary compared to the other aforementioned competing motivations), motivation that the emotional interlocutor (maybe intellectual and/or ethical and/or formal and/or pragmatic ... but emotional too!) perceives as not very gratifying and incentivizing,
• especially in females (and, however, in adults), there is a willing intent to conform to the rules of interpersonal interaction: it is certainly partly a sincere and genuine effort, but also partly formal and imitative. Well, when the Aspie incurs in some significant (involuntary) errors in his social conduct (gaffes, egocentric acts, manifestations of non-reciprocity), and when the same Aspie realizes that these errors have been detected by the own interlocutor and that this own interlocutor felt marked disappointment for such conduct, well at that point it is quite common for Aspies to experience a collapse of motivation to the social imitation and to flaunt relational disinterest, ill-concealed moral superiority, and even subtle cynicism.
• the attempt of many Aspies (especially the more intellectually advanced ones) to conform to social expectations can translate into rather imitative and formal conduct, conduct which, therefore, in the eyes of the interlocutors, can be strangely stereotyped and mechanical and, therefore, not genuine, generating a perception of insincerity.
• not rarely it can try to establish relationships with other subjects, but these are often attempts merely finalized to obtain an audience, a passive listening of one's monologues (the Aspie rarely asks questions and very often provides answers to questions never asked him), with an unilateral and prolonged one way verbosity on topics of their own interest and often technical and of mere detail (without realizing the desire of his interlocutor to reply or the disinterest of his interlocutor or the desire of his interlocutor of interrupt the farewell conversation). It should also be said that in many "subclinical Aspergers" or in many "Aspergers with Schizoid subpersonality" this aptitude for monologue and substantially one-sided conversation is often absent and it converts, rather, into a slow, thoughtful and sober conversation,
• especially in the age group between childhood and early adolescence, they tend to impose their own control of the surrounding environment (at home they tend to restore the order of objects, in the game they tend to establish the position and type of use of toys while playing with other children/teenagers, in socializing I tend to bureaucratically regulate the common activity with others including adults, etc.).
• also when does not implemente his one-sided verbosity (as in the case of less compromised and subclinical Aspergers who, on the contrary, they often tend to be sparing in conversation), in own relational attempt the Asperger it shows largely unresponsive, indifferent or poorly interested to the existential and emotional state of his interlocutor and, in large extent, equally indifferent or poorly interested also to contributions to the discussion of his interlocutor, and often delays the answer to a question addressed to him or takes refuge in sentences of circumstance and obviousness or simply repeats (in an almost echolalic way) the same concept or the same final sentence already expressed by his interlocutor, with little ability but also with very very little interest in sharing the emotions of others.
• in the social sphere (especially on informal occasions and not restricted to one-to-one relationships) it tends to engage in behaviors or eccentric and careless, or, alternatively, somewhat mechanical, implemented almost as per blocks and sections, and which appear stereotyped and imitative of abstract canons and models.
• tends to relate to others according to a formal style (presentation and farewell, speeches, posture, clothing, personal hygiene) sometimes markedly wavering and eccentric, often inconceivably unmindful to the characteristics and needs of the context and the interlocutors as well as of suggestions of third parties (hyperformal and mannerist style in contexts that require cordiality, spontaneity and informality, or, conversely, a resigned, absent, gross, sloppy, almost ostentatiously uncaring style, in contexts that require ceremonisity, respect for the roles and for the status, officiality, solemnity),
• has a etiquette and manners often (irritatingly) contradictory and alternate, with rapid (and often unexpected) oscillations between behavioral and postural rigidity, respectful hesitancy and hyper formal demeanor, on the one hand, and chilling formal roughnesses and breathtaking coarseness, impulsive and naivly accomplished without the slightest sense of self-criticism, on the other,
• has a voice with: 1) a volume often exaggeratedly high or, much more rarely, exaggeratedly low, 2) a tonality often very low or, more rarely, shrill and childish, 3) a rhythm rectilinear and devoid of modulations (a bit like that of a priest who recites for the billionth time the ritual religious orations), robotic, funereal or petulant, with an effect soporific and pseudo-hypnotic or irritating and excessively stimulating and pounding, 4) substantial invariability of volume, tonality and rhythm of the voice which appear (in the vast majority of cases) straight and devoid of variations linked to the topic or context or emotional state. In any case, slowness and monotony of prosody of the Asperger will such that, if it will tells you about the recent death of both his parents crushed under a truck or about its win of one-billion-dollar in the lottery, it often will using tones of voice and rhythms rather similar and basically undifferentiated, sometimes with a conclusion of his phrase hurried and incomplete or slowed and emphasized. Every attempt compensatory by the Asperger to diversify hues and rhythm of own speech (attempt that may be present especially in the more adult and intellectually aware Aspies) and ie, every his attempt to limit one's dysprosody (trying to adapt the volume and the tone of own voice to each specific context and to obviate to the monotony of own metrics) could create very often, in the interlocutor, an immediate feeling of strong inappropriateness, of clumsy imitation of stereotypes, of not spontaneity, of randomness (for example, an interrogative conclusion to a sentence with an exclamation tone or vice versa), of inconference with respect to the subject of the speech, of forcing, of redundancy, of singsong, giving rise to a problem that could be reduced only with a special speech therapy exercise,
• has a deficiency in the social use of language and, therefore, tends to have a mono-schematic communication (verbal, written, non-verbal) and often fails to calibrate it on the specific abilities of comprehension and on the specific needs of the his concrete interlocutor or on the characteristics required by the context (technical language with poorly educated people, formal language in friendly, emotional and sentimental situations, etc.).
• like the Schizoids (but in a much more pronounced form!), the Aspergers have difficulty to thinking in metaphor, in the use of symbolic models, in the understanding of verbal nuances, of word games, of verbal insinuations, of allusions, of figurative or surreal language, of paradoxical phrases, of idiomatic phrases, of slightly irony phrases, and, in general, also with a substantial lack of interest for all the abstract discourses and not reported to concrete facts and objectively appreciable. However, in addition and specially, they have a special tendency to interpret literally the others's phraseology (in this way being able to give rise to not a few relational misunderstandings, even serious ones): this is not only because they struggles to foresee an alternative meaning to the literal one, or not only because ethically they tends not to theorize the eventual bad faith of the speaker, but above all because this their tendence reflects their formal and objective vision of the reality and facilitates their favorite cognitive method, and that is the mechanical memorization.
• from a cognitive point of view 1) has a tendency to mnemonic learning, to schematization, to the use of categories, to the priority perception of purely formal aspects, with scarce ability to understand (entirely, but also quickly) the substantial meanings, and those underlying and derivatives, but nevertheless with a scarce interest in grasping the substantial meanings, and those underlying and derivatives. Therefore, the Aspie it tends to privilege the knowledge (and the importance) of the objective and formal aspects of information, and, therefore, of information for the examination and assimilation of which the use of symbolic or intuitive thought is not required or emotional (and, therefore, information relating to the world of objects rather than information relating to the world of subjects): this leads him to prefer the relationship with objects (with which he relates more effectively) to the relationship with subjects. This conduct responds to the needs of the Aspie personality, generally having however a minimal one obsessive-compulsive substrate, and, therefore, to the Aspies' inclination to pay attention to those cognitive data that are proposed (or in any case present) in an orderly (or, if complex in any case objectivizable), which are related to predictable and catalogable phenomena, so that such data are so suitable to neutralize the unpredictability of reality and the subsequent potential anxiety that could arise for them. 2) has a tendency to verbalization often hyper formal, perhaps in an imitative way and with the use of complex terminologies and yet used in a completely inconferring way in the specific discourse, with the use of pre-packaged slogans and phrases, and with a some lack of original thought.
• has a strong (sometimes prodigious) long-term memory, a special ability that the Aspie tend to use intensively (memorization) even with reference to substantially irrelevant data from a practical point of view,
• has a strong general visual memory but a shortage of verbal memory, with a tendency to understand and to remember more easily the notions and the instructions provided also with the aid of images (or at least written) compared to those provided in a purely verbal way. However, in contradiction with their tendential good visual memory, they can be characterized (with a certain appreciable frequency) from "prosopagnosia" (also called "face blindness"), that is they can have difficulty in recognizing the people by their faces.
• has a pedantic, stilted, professorial and ex cathedra attitude, which makes it look vaguely moralist, prig, implicitly intellettually pretentious (a bit like certain nerds, class leaders in the middle school), meticolous and detailed yet also ineffective and inefficient, competent and confident yet also mechanical and unreliable,
• transmits the feeling of using one's psychic talents not in a harmonic and choral way but, rather, in a sectoral and specialized way (the individual skills are used one at a time, with poor integration, coordination and cooperation of all overall personal skills),
• often gives the impression of having, under many aspects, a complete, physiological and sufficient psychic endowment (and, not infrequently, even more than sufficient!), and yet, sometimes, unexpectedly, denotes not a scarcity but a total (total!) disconcerting absence of some specific and sectorial psychic skills (which, instead, they would be presumed physiologically present), as if these last specific and sectorial psychic abilities had been removed (completely and in a surgical way) from his mind, or as if these had never existed in his mind, therefore showing a psychic formal consistency almost always perfectly complete and, yet, sometimes substantially more absent than the pneumatic void, a bit like a Ferrari car beautifully tuned but without petrol, or like certain royalty ceremonies in which the ringing of trumpets is particularly acute and penetrating and the roll of drums is particularly solemn and powerful but the Queen continually postpones its entry on the scene,
• has an arborescent thinking (reasoning, opening continuous subordinates, eventual and parenthesis), to distract easily, and to run into difficulties in multitasking (in carrying out several activities and tasks at the same time): to overcome these trends and difficulties (but also to indulge and to go along with your own trendbut also for his obsessive-compulsive methodical inclination and for his formal thinking which tends to objectify the reality), the "Aspie" develops a tendency to hyperfocus (prolonged concentration on one problem at a time),
• has a sense of the sexual prudery often very evident (and even clearly above average), but, at the same time, absolutely bizarre, incostant and incoherent. For example, him could take a profoundly moralistic reaction and appear blatantly scandalized from a non-conforming (even if only slightly) context (language, behavior and/or reasonings somehow related to the sentimental and/or sexual sphere) to the his religious or formal or ethical precepts or could show a very marked embarrassment and an obstinate refusal in front a while polite request of dialogue about his sentimental sphere; but, soon after, introduce, seriously, a exaggeredly intimate and inappropriate talk about the sexuality or jokingly make a sexual allusions of dreadful and spine-chilling rudeness, in both cases placing the interlocutor in very hard and objectively intolerable embarrassment,
• rarely he understand the irony and the sarcasm of others and, when he understands it, can shows unequivocal signs of profound susceptibility and touchiness. However, sometimes he himself makes use of irony and sarcasm sometimes skilled, intelligent and funny, but also non rarely deep pungent and offensive (above all in relation to his skills and abilities with respect to the interlocutor's skills, or vice versa), even when it all involves, blatantly, a very violent and very deep (and public) humiliation of this same interlocutor,
• not rarely makes use (often inappropriate, in inconferent way respect to the context or, however, unnecessarily insisting) of sarcastic, mechanical and nervous giggles,
• has a permalosity rather accentuated, not hidden and that lasts for a long time, and which, however (also, for heaven's sake, with an evident dose of good faith), he does not understand in others, denoting a very serious lack of intuition but also a lack of interest and of motivation in improving his relational skills.
• often assumes a staid, phlegmatic and self-controlled profile or stereotyped behaviours (that are also the clear result of an attempt to not committing impulsive gaffes). Conversely, when Asperger does not have the time or concentration needed to self-discipline and to gradually deploy its programmed social behavior or when the approach to the contingent social situation and to its context requires a high capacity (in terms of quality and of speed) of analysis, of non-verbal reading and of abstraction, the Asperger can to appear socially very clumsy and untactful, above all with inappropriate comments, him can make inconceivable and devastating social gaffes (atrocious social gaffes, which not rarely can produce, even in thirds, a sense of embarrassment and of moral wound even very serious!!!) or can stumbling (even in rapid succession) in coarser blunders, goofs, boners, bloopers and misunderstandings, often without minimally understand (not even retrospectively) the merit of these his crass social errors (or, when he understands it, producing further gaffes, in the clumsy attempt to amend those committed previously). These Asperger's stumbles and missteps they can happen, basically, for three reasons: 1) when there is a risk that his inadequacy or error may be detected (the average Aspie is often markedly proud...!), the Asperger is able to lie, and of continue to lie ... even if clearly aware that it has been discovered (!); but, on the other hand, it is capable of telling the truth without the slightest inhibition, even when it involves a severe and very deep injury to the dignity of others! Asperger's aspires to honesty, that is, truth, that is, objectivity; therefore, he favors naturally the truth even at the expense of the feelings of others perceived as dystonic with respect to objectivity. 2) the Aspergers often thinks aloud and, therefore, with a low capacity to filter out in advance one's thoughts and one's internal reflections (not by chance, one of the first tips that the Psychologists give to the Aspergers is of "count up to one hundred, before talking"), 3) the Asperger he is not able (if not to a minimum) to represent preventively to himself the effects of his conduct on others.
• on attempt to not committing impulsive gaffes and in order to become finally socially accepted and ultimately compliant to the expectations of others, the Asperger often becomes an observer didactically attentive (a bit like the Generals of Kim Jong-un when they obsessively take notes on their notebook) and he often copy this behaviours of others that he feel like optimal (the activity of copying and imitation of the best social behaviors of others, carries a portion consisting in the lives of Aspergers). As result of this his practice, the Asperger, sometimes, in a loudly paradoxical fashion, he end up to perceiving himself as specially capable readers of the personality of others people and as acute predictors of intentions of other people. But, on the contrary, a bit as in the case of Schizoid, the social observation of the Asperger is structurally dry and mechanical, naive and schematic, quantitatively very abundant but qualitatively highly poor and childish, maybe careful with the details, but unable to read this details together and to drop them in the whole context,
• especially if it's a female, has a recurrent behavioral camouflage (in an attempt to suppress some of its own psychological and kinetic tendencies, and thus to conform to the expectations of the interlocutors and become socially more accepted): a very tiring activity that, periodically, obliges him/her to resort to sudden and strict breaks of the socialization,
• if it's a male, often betray a male chauvinism mentality and a lack of confidence in the intellectual possibilities of women, with a related idealization and exaltation of the paternal figure (seen perhaps as overbearing or selfish, but also as competent, wise, mentally steady and adult),
• long term, it transmits a background feeling of contradictoriness and incoherence and of exhausting psychic disharmony, alternating behaviors markedly and commendably adult, ethical (and also somewhat hatefully and pedantically moralistic), intellectually advanced, organized, hard-working, with baffling behaviors suddenly childish, cynics (or worse ...), senseless, slovenly and omissive/oppositional, all this without showing particular discomfort or emotional tension, transmitting to the observer totally opposite and absolutely unpredictable sensations,
• cultivates assiduously few interests and hobbies (often of a technical and instrumental nature),
• appears patently reassured and comforted from the relationship, from the possession and from the tactile contact with the objects, especially if are mechanical or electronic tools (objects that, in the eyes of the Aspergers, have the merit of producing accurate and predictable results, as well as the further merit of providing they a good excuse for not having time to devote to interpersonal interaction or to avoid the face to face interaction),
• has an childish relationship with money: the person is often not generous with others, but for himself tends to a marked prodigality, especially for the purchase of objects of an instrumental nature (mechanical, electronic, ...), with a certain tendency to the accumulation of objects of a mechanical and instrumental nature (also, in manner merely duplicative and redundant, of multiples of same objects or of objects with the same substantial function), also even to the point of reducing to the bone the spending for the basic daily needs, all this with little strategic ability on a financial level and even at the cost to the run into a financial deficit,
• has a marked, resoundingly exaggerated, unjustified and inconferent slowness and methodicalness (sometimes frankly nerve-racking and at the limits of the rituality, and not functional to the programmed result) in the approach to the intellectual activities and in their solution (even with regard to understanding and solving problems of trivial banality), with poor insight and poor ability of synthesis: the ability to analysis of the Asperger maybe (who knows ...) work much better than the average, but only with a rather high amount of data available: therefore, with a limited amount of data available, the Asperger risks to goes stall. Then, every problem requires a prior concentration and an accurate examination of its entirety, a reflection and an weighting (with function of sedimentation of the analysis and specially purified from any emotional influence), and, only after this exhausting procedure, a solution. Therefore, him will reach almost always an exact and very accurate result (if referred to an activity purely executive), or perhaps an inaccurate result (if referred to an abstract activity); but, in any case, often will a result achieved belatedly. Consequently, the Aspie has difficulty in making rapid choices. Any attempt by the interlocutor to suggest or solicit an operational acceleration in the Asperger is from him ignored or in some way diluted and anesthetized or rejected with seriousness and firmness or arouses in him susceptibility, but in any case rarely produces its practical effect.
• the Asperger's preference for methodicalness bordering on rituality and for the predictability of other people's behavior (all aspects that have the primary function of calming anxiety) in order to be able to express themselves at their best imply the reduction of external variables: and, therefore, it is also for this reason that the Aspie limits his interpersonal interactions and relates preferably with objects (which by definition have more predictable behaviors than those of subjects) and reduces the number of his own needs (fewer needs, fewer potential variables).
• has ability to organize, with slowness but with precision, its action in the short term (tactical capacity), but it often appears lacking in forecasting, planning and implementing of its action in the medium and in the long term, just as it appears to be deficient in adapting its strategy in case of changing of conditions respect to those initially existing or initially envisaged (strategic inability).
• has an ambivalent nature that can easily lead him on the one hand to a rationalizing and calm attitude but, on the other (when he does not have a schizoid sub-personality ...), to a marked anxiety (maybe occult and well disguised, but with potential pseudo/pre psychotic effects) in the face of situations that require a quick resolution or even worse in front of new situations or even worse in the face of unforeseen situations that change its program, 
• has an "examination of the reality" not always persistent and straight, and that it seems sometimes interrupted and limited from an a refusal to learn from experience, from the bewilderment in front of the need for to develop alternative strategies, from an methodological obstinacy, and from an stubborn use of defensive mechanisms of denial of the reality and of denial of the principes of cause-effect.
• is capable of attitudes of commitment, of firm will, and even of admirable dedication and obstinacy; however, especially after repeated and prolonged social commitments, rather often it betrays, theatrically, signs psychophysical of complete tiredness, exhaustion, prostration and of emptying of energies (a bit like at the end of an strong agonistic sporting effort): its social participation, also from a working point of view, therefore, is often fragmented, syncopated and discontinuous.
• once they have completed school or academic studies and entered in the world of work, sometimes it shows: 1) a greater awareness and will to having to improve the quality of his interaction with others, 2) a much scarce ability to relate to others, a scarce impulse to cooperate with others, and a general difficulty to make play of team, tending to provide a own contribution maybe often of clear quality but autonomous, 3) a very marked intolerance to prolonged stress, 4) in highly hierarchizated workplaces or in workplaces which require an organized and coordinated collective contribution, it tends to be formally much disciplined and respectful of roles (as well as jealous of the prerogatives of own role), but, in reality, it often puts into practice (in way ostinate but silent and rather cowardly) behaviours of passive resistance and even of opposition, with a tendency to follow own rules, in a solipsistic (and subtly conceited) way, almost implicitly to affirming an own intellectual superiority: this is not only an expression of an evident difficulty in working in a team, but, also, is an expression of a very specific attitude of resistance and opposition to the Authority,
• compared to the so called "neurotypical" average, it manifests a more frequent difficulty in performing arithmetic calculations in mind ("dyscalculia"), in the speed and precision of the reading and/or of the manual writing ("dysgraphia"/"dysorthography"/"dyslexia"), in the precision of the alphanumeric typing on the PC, in to read the hands of the analog clock, in distinguishing right from left (the latter two difficulty is recurrent to a much greater extent in female persons), on recognize people already know looking their faces (prosopagnosia), on orientation in the space. On the other hand, it should be clearly stated that not all the dyscalculics, the dyslexics, the dysorthographics and the dysgraphs are autistic!
• tendially, acquires most precociously (than the average of the general population) the ability to read a text, and has the ability to read a text faster ("hyperlexia", than the average of the general population).
• has problems with the circadian rhythm wakefulness-sleep,
• often, has particular and variable sensory intolerances with respect to lights too alive or intermittent, to sounds too strong, to fabrics too tight or rough, to foods too mixed or fluid or crunchy, ecc., and, more generally, it has a certain tendency to respond in way exaggeratedly high or exaggeratedly slow to external stimuli.
• has a tendency to a poor personal and/or domestic hygiene,
• has a clothing not rarely slovenly or out of fashion,
• in a minoritarian but appreciable number of cases has a obsessive-compulsive subpersonality (20/40%) or a schizoid subpersonality (20/30%) or a bipolar desorder (10%).

Morphology:

• is more often fisically normotype than long-limbed,
• It has poor musculature but a rather robust bone structure,
• often has a skull basically rather wide and brachycephalic.
• often has a nose that it points upwards, and also shorter and wide than average.
• often has a prolabium/philtrum (the sub-nasal sulcus, ie the distance between the upper lip and nose) on average more long, wide and concave than average.
• has, on average, an interocular distance on average higher than that of the so called neurotypicals.
• has (in an appreciable number of cases) a very very slight heterophoria or latent divergent strabismus, ie a strabismus that is not constant but that is manifested only in certain directions of the gaze and in which one eye (more often) or both eyes (more rarely) they orient themselves inappropriately outward,
• quite often is characterized by a facial "neoteny" in facial morphology, ie by the persistence even in adulthood of the facial morphology typical of adolescence,
• in males, not infrequently there is a resistant head hair and with swirling spirals.

Therefore, to draw a conclusive comparison between Schizoid and Asperger, we can say that:

• the Schizoid has a potential social ability which, however, he decides not to use almost never,
• the Asperger has a structural lack (often strange and sudden, and strictly sectorial and specific) of social ability (under the emotional, intuitive, communicative and empathic profile).

• the Schizoid has contempt for the others and even has a bit afraid of others, and does not try to overcome his contempt and his fear of others,
• the Asperger has a substantial disinterest (or an interest regulated in a substantially unilateral way) for the others; the Aspie tries to overcome his indifference for others, but: 1) he makes it for satisfy the his ethical aspiration of establish fair relationship with others, for intellectual curiosity, because he senses that he can benefit from an intellectual enrichment in the relationship with any people intellectually qualified, for secure himself a some reserve of potential companionship in case that his loneliness turns out to make should too overwhelming, for the desire to get an audience (often somewhat passive) and also for to feel himself socially integrated and accepted by the others and finally ... "normal" (because he perceives that others take it for granted that he has certain basic social skill); therefore, he can dedicate himself sincerely and genuinely to the intellectual exchange with others, but he does not seem interested in receiving any emotional gratification from the interpersonal relationship and he nor does seem interested in emotionally gratifying his interlocutors (the Aspie, therefore, not implements the emotional exchange because, certanly, he doesn't knows intuitively and not understands rationally the technical rules of emotional exchange, and certainly also because he tends to want to avoid the painful frustration of to fail in an activity - the interpersonal relationship, especially non-formal one - which he often it plays badly and which often make him feel and appear inadequate, but also because he doesn't understand the function and the utility of emotional exchange), 2) he makes it almost always to their own rigid rules, terms and conditions, with an aware intellectual presumption and an unaware emotional prevention: the Asperger is certainly an "egocentric, naive and programmatically ethical", but also anyway and always an egocentric, and tends to build, over time, a growing and increasingly structured scale of own needs, perceiving them as ineluctable necessities, as urgent and priority with respect to those of others, and, therefore, as his rights (according to an implicit logic according to which what is necessary is right), and, in parallel, tends to build specious ethical justifications and alibis for this own implicit and unilateral "right of precedence". The Aspie tends to pretend, for hitself, rights and mitigating circustances (as well as, for to others, duties): rights and mitigating circustances (as well as duties) which, however, the Aspie is not able to recognize reciprocally and respectively to the other person and to hitself.

On the one hand, when the Aspie engages objectively in inappropriate or offensive conducts, it often does not realize the harmful character of his conducts (often, not even after some time) or, retrospectively, tends to deny ever having committed such conduct, or, if he admits he committed this, tends to deny or to minimize its harmful content or tends to emphasizes instrumentally (by way of reason for an alleged countervailability) some previous damaging behaviors commicted, in they turn, against him right by the people by him damaged, etc....

On the other hand, if the Aspie thinks it has suffered inadequate or offensive conduct from others, the Aspie often takes on, immediately and with solemnity, a formal and ethical attitude, emphasizing the detrimental character of the conduct of others, and maturing an attitude moralistic of haughty indignation and also a thin grudge that persists for a long time.

This double track of social awareness of Asperger, more than a mere inability to understand the social context, to read non-verbal language, and to suppress the verbalization of one's thought, makes me think, frankly, of an etiology that can be traced back to all these aforementioned causes, but mixed they with a deep intellectual narcissism and a deep ethical presumption: these last two elements (as well as the subtle but proud display of autonomy from relationships and the implicit claim to dictate the rules of the relationship), for heaven's sake, they are clearly also the result of Asperger's understandable attempt to redeem himself intellectually and ethically from his interpersonal relational failures and his own social inadequacy (with consequent tendency to strengthe own self-esteem, to value hypertrophically own intellectual skills and diminishing the importance of social skills), but they are also two innate or at least very ancient constitutive elements of the Aspergers's psyche.

Reasoning in other terms and using other parameters, we could also say that the Aspie, without being aware of it, often he expects to be treated intellectually as a subject markedly most authoritative and mature compared to what his intellectual capacity and age they would let presume (the Aspie can appears on the surface hyper-adult and hyper-serious surely for effect of a preordained demeanor  understandably aimed at attempting to compensate and mask his psychic immaturity, but alsofor effect of an own naive conviction that he can play a intellectually pre-eminent role), but, correlatively, often, in turn, tends to behave socially as a subject markedly more clumsy and immature than his age would let presume. The relational and existential difficulty of Asperger (especially of the male adult Asperger) can be summarized in the relationship between his chronological age, his intellectual age and his emotional age: the adult Aspie, let's say (for axample) the classic 30 year old, behaves formally like a 50 year old and expects to be treated intellectually like a 50 year old, yet not realizing that he has the emotional and social maturity of an adolescent of 14/18 years age group. It are precisely the dyscrasia (which over the years becomes increasingly marked) between these 3 elements and the differential attitude of the Aspie about this (him is proudly well aware and pretensive with regard to one's own intellectual skills, but, at the same time, is carefull minimizer of own emotional and social inability) that generates, in their interlocutors, first a sensation of confusion and of inconsistency, then the perception to have in front a strong naive and severe immature, and lastly, the irresistible feeling to have in front a person doubly arrogant (the Aspie not only reserve unilaterally to himself special and undeserved prerogatives, but also fails to recognize the same faculty to the others).

In this latter aspect, the Aspie is less wise and humble than the Schizoid.
In fact, the Schizoid realizes that he cannot impose his faculty on the interlocutor to choose for himself certain prerogatives since he is unable to recognize the same faculty to the same his interlocutor, and also for this reason the Schizoid renounces the interpersonal relationship.
Instead, the Aspie does not realize that it imposes on the interlocutor its faculty to choose for itself certain prerogatives, and, when he notices this, it tends to theorize an its own unilateral right or in any case an its own strict and urgent need in this sense, and does not worries much than placing in this way the interlocutor in the logical and ethical embarrassment, alternately, or to must submit himself to this implicit diktat or to must abandon the interpersonal relationship.

In other words, the Asperger it relates to others but with an lack of intellectual and emotional reciprocity (from an intellectual point of view, he tends to think that he has more to teach than to learn, and, from an emotional point of view, he appears to be little skilled in the exchange but also not very interested in the exchange, and tends to justify or minimize one's relational errors, but also to emphasize the same type of mistakes if are committed against him), which makes him perceive as pretentious and arrogant, as indifferent and insensitive and, therefore, as socially unattractive.

Definitely, to understand in depth the "Schizoid personality" I think that it is necessary to take note of the strong contiguity with it of the Asperger's Syndrome, ie of the presence of a superimposability of many symptoms between Schiozoids and Aspergers,  and (as I noted above) of the presence of a Schizoid subpersonality in quite a few Aspergers (20/30%). This, in my humble opinion, often leads that an inexperienced eye can misunderstand as Schizoid one who that, in reality, is a mild and subclinical Asperger with high intellectual functioning (and viceversa!).

We could say, simplifying, that, like the Schizoid, even the Asperger has a psychic base constituted basically by a mixture of Narcissism and Autism. However, while in the Schizoid the narcissistic component prevails over the autistic one, in the Asperger the distribution of this mix appears exactly inverse and, therefore, the autistic component prevails over the narcissistic one.

More widely, one would think that the Schizoid and the Asperger they must be placed, in a different but intermediate position, in a continuum that counts, in logical order and from one end to the other, the Narcissist > the Schizoid > the Asperger > the Autistic.

I would almost say that, in a some way:

- every Schizoid is one Asperger who has made it,

- every Narcissist is one Schizoid who has made it.

Not lacking FAMOUS people who, I believe, can be considered like (plausible) ASPERGERS:

Hans Christian Andersen: had a paternal grandfather with psychic defect, an eccentric father, with little dedication to work and an alcoholic mother. In pre-adolescence, in the first imitative theatrical performances of operas in German language that he plays at his home, not knowing this language he uses an invented vocabulary (neologisms) and then, in some of his mature works, he sometimes substitutes the words with rambling sounds and vocal expressions (grammelot). As a pre-adolescent, he rarely goes out with his peers. Apparently he seemed to suffer from dyslexia and dysorthography. His diary shows his precocious desire not to have sexual relations; homosexual or bisexual, lived essentially asexual (except, perhaps, a brief parenthesis), he probably died virgin.

Glenn Gould: is legendary his frequent tendency to vocalize in the background, even during the discography recordings, the music he was performing, so making the sound technicians go crazy. He hated being touched, and in later life limited personal contact, relying on the telephone and letters for communication. From the age of twenty-one, at home, in live performances or in the recording studio, he used only one particular chair, refusing to abandon it even when this one (rickety, without the padding on the seat and with the frame in seen) he began to creak, leaving in the incisions sound track of his squeak. "When I was six I made an important discovery: I get along with animals, much more than with humans",

Alan Turing: highly bizarre and eccentric (for example, he tied to the radiator, with a chain, his own metallic cup for morning breakfast, for fear that someone might taken away it to him or for fear to lost it). Solitary, he often preferred working at night. Scruffy in the clothing and in the personal hygiene. Infantile (at 22 he it was done give away himself a teddy bear, for Christmas). Allergic to pleasantries and conversations without a practical purpose. Dysnomic and dysgraphic,

Charles M. Schultz: of mild and gentle nature, as a boy he had to suffer bullying episodes. He suffered from anxiety, depression and agoraphobia, and preferred not to travel. His 4 children remember how he doesn't have almost never embraced and kissed them. He is described by his lover, at the time of his first marriage, substantially as self-centered and little interested in the fate of others. Some of his characters (Charlie Brown, Schroeder) seem to have a few Asperger features, and, as also in the case of Snoopy, they seem to be a sublimation and symbolization of autism,

Anthony Hopkins: known for his remarkable memory and for his artistic versatility. For decades he has been disinterested in his only daughter and, after a single specific contact with him, he has returned to completely disinterested in her. He is an ex alcoholic. In 2017 he claimed to be dyslexic and that he had been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome (albeit in the high end of intellectual functioning), and admitting (albeit indirectly) that he had an often inconsistent and obsessive thought,

Vernon Lomax Smith: self-diagnosed as Asperger,

Daryl Hannah: she herself has publicly stated that she was diagnosed as Asperger already at an early age, remembering her chronic introversion, her infantile tendency to fantasize and to swing back and forth for a long time to calm down, of her considerable difficulty (still present) in attending public events,

Daniel "Dan" Aykroyd: born, with eyes with a different color of the iris and with syndactyly at each foot, at 12 years of age he was diagnosed with Tourette's Syndrome and in adulthood the Asperger's Sindrome: he himself has told of his recurrent fixation for ghosts and for the Police (including his need to wear, as far as possible, a badge of the Police), as well as of his continued state of exhaustion psycophysic,

Clay Marzo: diagnosed Asperger at 18, he is known for some his mannerisms (often wearing headphones for music) and stimmings (quickly rubbing his hands) and for his uninhibited and abrasive sincerity,

Susan Boyle: diagnosed as Asperger in adulthood, she recognized that she had relationship and communication difficulties,

Temple Grandin: in adolescence she had a marked tendency to echolalia. She was diagnosed as Asperger only in adulthood. Often she has suffered from sensory overload providing. In her writings, she has provided an interesting contribution to understanding of thought of the Aspergers,

William Henry "Bill" Gates III: many of his fellow College members as well as many of his collaborators at Microsoft report his frequent habit of swinging clearly and long, back and forth, in the chair, when he finds himself in a state of emotional and intellectual tension (conduct also repeated in public, during his audition before the judicial authority charged with judging on the government accusations of illegal monopoly), 

Andrew Warhola ("Andy Warhol"): is evident the often repetitive and serial nature of his art,

Marcelo Rìos: he has publicly declared that as a child he was diagnosed the Asperger Syndrome and that he himself recognizes himself in the vast majority of typical symptoms of Asperger Syndrome. Often, on public occasions (informal but also official and highly formal), he it has refused to speak, 

James "Jim" Carrey: he was diagnosed the ADHD, and suffered, for years, of major depression, 

Lionel Messi: it is quite common rumor that he was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome at the age of 8/9. During his childhood he was nicknamed from his acquaintances "The little mute". In any case, is evident his discomfort in participating in non-sporting public events and in maintaining active eye contact with interlocutors in interviews, 

Greta Thunberg: she was diagnosed with "Asperger's Syndrome", with "Obsessive-compulsive disorder" and with "Selective Mutism", as well as she have suffered in the past from "Major depressive disorder",

Björk Guðmundsdóttir: in a 2011 interview she said "I think I'm probably semi-autistic or something like that",

Billie Eilish: she revealed that suffered from Tourette's Syndrome and Siniesthesia, two psychic conditions not uncommonly associated to the Asperger's Syndrome,

Elon Musk: he himself revealed publicly (on television), in 2021, that he has Asperger's Syndrome.

Michael Phelps: diagnosed with Asperger's and ADHD.

In addition, between the fictional characters, can be considered Asperger:

• Charlie Brown, Schoereder, and Snoopy: as I have already noted just above with regard to C. M Schultz, it seems to me quite evident that these characters of his "Peanuts" comic series are a sublimation of the Asperger characteristics,
• Raymond Babbitt, an extreme and severely clinical Asperger's with, in addition, a Savant syndrome (in the movie "Rain man"),
• Sheldon Lee Cooper (in the television series "The big bang theory"),
• Forrest Gump, a clinical and somewhat extremesed Asperger with low intellectual functioning (in the homonym movie).

XIII

Edvard Munch: "Inheritance II" (1897 - 1899).

Undoubtedly, about the S.P.D., there are two more problems to solve (problems inevitably suggestive): the origin of the S.P.D. and the prognosis of the schizoid.

Well, as to the origin (the etiology) of the S.P.D., I think very suggestive refer to the coexistence of a multifactorial etiology.

Precisely, it is very frequent the concomitant recurrence of fundamentally genetic and physiological origins (there is an appreciable frequency of Schizoid fathers with Schizoid males sons) with one or more factors of a pedagogical and/or psychic and/or sociological and/or cultural type (which appears to me to be confirmed by the circumstance for which the Schizoid, up to 5/10 years of age, can often appear not only not introverted but, indeed, even somewhat expressive and, albeit soberly, actively social. In other words, the schizoid personality, when it ends up manifesting itself with intensity and rigidity, often appears as such only with pre-adolescence).

As for the genetic and physiological origins:

• it is suggestive to note how there is recurring a somewhat high frequency of 1st or 2nd degree relatives who are equally Schizoids or Schizotypals, mostly males,
• it is equally suggestive (and also frankly likely) to believe that there is an implication of the Amygdala (when this is overactive and generates a constant release of adrenaline) and of the dopaminergic system (when this system is hipoactive) which cause recurrently a sense of anxiety, fear and phobia as well as anhedonia.

As for the pedagogical and/or psychic and/or sociological and/or cultural origins, the following factors can be noted:

• very traditional fathers, maybe honesty, ethical and formally loyal to their wife, but rarely physically present (not infrequently themselves too Schizoids or Narcissistic), indifferent to parenting and its logic and incumbents even if elementary, somewhat detached and impassive, with a livid and dry emotional expression; often they appear (fictitiously) peripherally engaged and also concentrated (sometime speciously) in the production of family income (and/or in alleged cultural activities or in emphasized hobbies); their physic absence in the family tends to amplify and to emphasize, for better or for worse, the maternal role.
• mothers very bad caregivers (not infrequently Narcissistic or otherwise Depressed) maybe overloaded of tasks and commitments (including those of work) or with very little ability to care of their children (not-autonomous persons par excellence) and not able to respond coherently to the their emotional demands; many of these mothers tend to develop a strong critical sense towards their Schizoid spouse, but, then, they indulge their behavior almost by electing them as their additional children.
• fathers and mothers that, for belittle the seriousness of this their very relevant pedagogical deficiencies (emotional, affective and sentimental), for to conceal their utter inability of solve these their chronic deficits, both (father and mother) tend to diminish the importance of emotions, of affectivity, of feelings and of human relationship (and, therefore, of everything that their, the parents, do not know provide or do not want provide), and are selfishly interested in promoting, in their children, the more rapid achievement of the maximum emotional self-control and emotional self-sufficiency, astutely and maliciously smuggling this two targets for pretense "maturity" and "adult autonomy". In particular, the mother is not only at times harshly deaf, evanescent and delegating, but also, at the same time, heavily obtrusive, with a marked tendency to projecting the own frustrations and the own expectations on her son/daughter, and to suppressing the personality of own children for groped to replace it with own project of personality (also this maternal intrusiveness so overwhelming, it inhibits the son/daughter and she induces it to repress own personality). Therefore, a mother-child relationship swinging between an excess of absence/permissiveness (rejection) and an excess of presence/discipline (intrusiveness), thus sending to his children a harshly contradictory message from a logical point of view and providing his children with almost the exact opposite of what they need (intrusiveness where a sober and discreet presence would be required, and absence where assiduous presence would be required). In other words, one could think that the Schizoid, having suffered prolonged moments of hard absence and emotional and relational indifference from one or both parental figures, desired and even yearned to finally receive presence and affections, but obtaining the clear and repeated feeling that precisely as a result of this his aspiration he has been then overwhelmed by one or both parents, this time intrusive, apprehensive and over-attentive (or, reasoning to the contrary, one might think that the Schizoid, having suffered prolonged moments of nagging intrusiveness and nagging and pervasive presence on the part of one or of both parental figures, he had wished a less univocal and more reciprocal relationship, but obtaining the clear and repeated feeling that precisely as a result of this his aspiration he was then inhibited and avoided by one or both parents who this time felt authorized to narcissistically invest in themselves and, therefore, he may have had the clear and repeated sensation that each of his relational requests is interpreted by the interlocutor in an extreme and non-modular way, and that his negotiation skills are bankruptcily): the primary models ontologically appointed to take care of him/her and to provide him with the emotional, affective and sentimental example, and that is his parents, have (voluntarily or not) taught the Schizoid that taking care of someone means or simply providing them some merely material cares, or to invade the other and take the place of his will ... a third way has never been shown and demonstrated to the Schizoid.
• having one of the two parents (more often the father) with a univoque narcissistic personality (personally, I feel deeply the suggestion of a "fil rouge" between Narcissism and Schizophrenia).
• being the last born (often unscheduled) by mature women, sometime in this way causing the interruption or even the loss of mother's work.
• being the last female born of a series of daughters from a father who stubbornly wanted a (male) son. A good portion of unwanted children are precisely those daughters or sons who are the result of male obstinacy in wanting a son at all costs, obstinacy resulting from the perpetuation of repeated unsuccessful attempts (read: repeated birth of only daughters) and which pushes women to procreate at a relatively advanced age to the detriment of their desires, their limited physical energy and their peaceful relationship with work (women who have to stop working, or who, vice versa, due to the birth of a new daughter or a new child and the consequent increased family economic needs are forced to start going to work at an advanced age).
• being only child.
• being born premature.
• being an illegitimate son/daughter.
• childish abuse (sexual or physical or psychological).
• families with very poor internal and external communication: this prevents parents from making a comparison between their own parental models and external ones, and also produce the amplifycation and the emphasitazion, to the eyes of the children, of the resonance and of the weight of the behaviors of own parents.
• cultural and ethnic patterns (families with rigid religiosity, families from northern Europe or Sino-Japanese area, or rural areas or areas with a low population density or mountain areas or island areas). For example: 1) there are cultures of the distance (such as the Sino-Japanese, the Indian, the Anglosaxon, the North-european, etc.) and cultures of the proximity (such as the Arab, the Latin, the South American, etc.). The first are qualified by a relevant interpersonal distance, such as to reduce the possibilities of body contact (each contact and reduction of the proxemic space are perceived as forms of intrusion and lack of respect). In the seconds, instead, the interpersonal distance is reduced, and the opportunities for physical contact increase (distance is evaluated in negative terms, such as coldness and hostility) 2) there are cultures of the word (such as those of Africa, of South America, Latin) and cultures of silence (such as Japanese, Lappish, Indian of America, etc.). Among the first, the silence is perceived as a threat. The seconds, instead, are marked by long pauses of silence (silence intended as a sign of trust and harmony) 3) there are cultures of the emotionality and of the expression of emotions (such as the Latin, Arab, etc.) in which the expression of emotions is understood as a sign of sincerity and will to cooperation, and in which the emotional coldness is understand as a sign of distrust and contempt. On the other hand, there are cultures (such as the North European, the Anglo-Saxon, the Sino-Japanese, etc.) in which the expression of one's emotions is seen as a vulgar, inestetic and intrusive behavior.
• as an exacerbating cause, albeit marginal, I would not underestimate all those situations of subjects with parents of very heterogeneous socio-territorial origins and who have experienced frequent transfers, especially from rural areas and with a very marked social culture to highly urbanized areas and with a very formal social culture.

Amedeo Modigliani: "Little girl in azure" (1918).

Edvard Munch: "The girl by the window" (1893).

Grant Wood: "American gothic" (1930), detail.

As to the prognosis schizoid, I think that:

• the frequent isolation and, in any case, the having interpersonal relationships without emotional involvement, ends up producing on the schizoid a progressive loss of social skills and a reduced intellectual growth. The long-term asociality ends up depriving the schizoid of an incredible amount of experience and, therefore, of many intellectual stimuli. I believe, trivially, that about 8 billion human beings live on the face of planet Earth and that, at least on a probabilistic level, we all have much more to learn from 8 billion human beings than not from ourselves (we are only 1). Moreover, we human beings are Mammals and not Reptiles. Unlike the Reptiles, the Mammals generally breastfeed and care for the puppies and, in addition, we Humans, unlike many others Mammals, we have no claws and we also have a very refined tactile ability (precisely aimed at a special activity of care of our puppies): in summary, we humans and the apes (objectively the two most intelligent animals that have ever inhabited the planet Earth ...!!!) we are the only ones animals that can caress and kiss and hug, and that is the the only ones species able to carry out this two fundamental social functions in an evolved way. In other words, we Humans are morphologically structured for sociality, and sociality allows us to increase our intellectual competences exponentially; rejecting sociality means rejecting our intellectual capacity for learning and gradually separates us from our corporeity and its potential ((of course, Sociality is not without potential dangers: the danger of encountering stupid, ignorant, rude, violent, useless people, etc., but if we were to be guided by the absolute criterion of avoiding the damage, we would end up thinking like those who, in order not to get their hands dirty and not having to wash them then they end up to hold their hands in their pocket): sociability, affectivity and intelligence are direct dependent variables ,
• the repeated use of emotional detachment as a defensive tactical technique, generate on the schizoid sever growing inability to recognize the most basic occasions of gratification and pleasure and, therefore, to enjoy them, slipping into a sensory lethargy (anhedonia),
• the stubborn social isolation and the lack of sentimental relationships, causes to the schizoid first an impoverishment and, then, a total loss of the social (and economic!) protection network (children do not exist, a partner do not exist, relatives are removed, friends do not exist),
• the Schizoid, progressively, builds a world (fantasy life - schizoid fantasy - mind wandering - maladaptive daydreaming) where she attempts to live, albeit in simulated mode and more deadened, the emotions that he can not live outside, in real life. In own inner world so constructed, the schizoid creates a story, a theatrical subject, suitable to vent (in harmless mode) all his old anger as well as his megalomania. To achieve this goal, the Schizoid: 1) on one side, relives its real and true story of life, however creating opposing and winning outcomes and endings with respect to those actually lived and unbearably loser, 2) on the other side, to deaden the loneliness, creates also a totally imaginary place, an its own alternate and parallel reality, populated by characters result of his pure imagination, as if he was a character in a fantasy novel, in a pattern typically pre-adolescential. In essence, the virtual schizoid inner world it seems to me fulfill a function in half between that of certain video games of war and that of certain television "soap operas".
• the tendency to look for solitary jobs and as far possible without relationships with the public of users or of customers (eg, Librarian, Night Watchman, Writer, Painter, Sculptor, Computer Technician, Warehouse Worker, Laboratory Technician, etc.), or the tendency not to take decision-making roles on work or not to be part of specific work groups or to accept only purely executive and eminently bureaucratic assignments, often leads the schizoid to not excel in hierarchical working environments, reaching hierarchical levels lower than those presupposed by its technical competence,
• the schizoid it can end up perceiving oneself as unreal, devoid of its own identity, like an automaton, dissociated from one's self, like an actor in a movie, like an external observer of his own body (a bit like in some near death experiences) dissociated from one's self (the depersonalization, well described by Jean Paul Sartre in "La nausée"), 
• the schizoid it can end up perceiving the world and the external reality as unreal, a bit as if the reality appeared fictitious like in a film (the derealisation well described by Franz Kafka in "Die verwandlung"),
• the schizoid often falls in depression, between 30/35-45/50 years of age. In fact, the spasmodic search for autonomy and independence typical of the Schizoid coincides with the physiological and virtuous typically adolescent push of build a own distinct identity and also with the equally physiological and virtuous post-adolescent push of build a own intellectual, financial and housing autonomy. In that period, the Schizoid can also experience a certainly expansive and euphorizing phase. The problem arises, however, when, towards the end of the post-adolescence, the achievement of the physiological detachment from the family of origin is no longer sufficient but new goals must be achieved and, in particular, the formation of a structured and deep circle of friends, the achievement of an economically satisfactory and productive professional status also from the point of view of relationships with colleagues (and maybe with customers or users), and the achievement of an authentic and adult love relationship. Here, the obsessive search of autarchy of the Schizoid turns from the being an advantage to the being a hard disadvantage,
• compared to the general population, the Schizoid has a slightly higher but statistically not particularly significant probability of merging into Schizophrenia: this risk, on the other hand, is somewhat more significant in Schizotypics.
• the Schizoid, albeit obsessed by the compulsory and constant need to avoid any physical and emotional relationship, you may feel impelled to find a partner by effect of the sexual urges (in post-adolescence) or by effect of the need to guarantee itself a financial protection or a social respectability/conformity (in mature age). In these cases, I think that the Schizoid tends to join in couple preferably with a partner who, for character traits (above all others Schizoids, but also Obsessive-compulsive or Paranoid or Aspergers or Narcissist), or for reasons of psychological subjection (much younger or ugly or of social class lower) or to limitations of physical type (much older) or for reasons of geographical distance (men residing or working away) or for their civil status (already married or cohabiting with other partner), are assumed to be unable to take or to give (actively and spontaneously) physical and/or emotional contacts, and, at the same time, they are capable to accept (passively and uncritically) the episodic and limited requests of contact physical and/or emotional of schizoid. Furthermore, in the case of a stable relationship, in order to hurt, to debase, to depersonalize, to demean, to dilute and empty the intensity and the quality of own emotional, affective and sentimental involvement with the own official partner, it is not uncommon for the Schizoids to have relationshpis, coeval and merely occasional and fleeting, with unknown third people, or to having coevally imaginary, fantastic, platonic and totally idealized relationships with people that it barely know each other or with public figures, or continuously entering and exiting the relationship with one's official partner. Therefore, even if the Schizoid may be interested in getting married and even (more rarely) in having children, his motivations in these senses will be of an eminently practical type (push to conform to family and/or social expectations, concern to guarantee himself in the medium-long term a familiar network of material and echonomic protection, the need to soften one's perception of feeling oneself as "abnormal" and non-compliant, etc.), and the relationship with the partner, programmatically and in practice, will foresee and in fact will have very little quantity and even more scarce quality of physical and emotional intimacy (the time devoted to family life will be virtually nil, and almost entirely filled with work, rest, hobbies, etc.), and own childcare will be almost exclusively of an economic and material nature.
• the (even marked) tendency to operational and above all financial autonomy typical of many Schizoids - autonomy which, with rare exceptions, originates from the achievement and maintenance of an adequate working position - however in the long term it may require (and often does require) obligations also relevant of sociality (still worse if not formal), sociality which, in the long run, can become increasingly tiring for a Schizoid to bear. This difficulty in bearing the weight of working sociality (employer, colleagues, clients - users), therefore, can come into open contradiction with the profound desire for financial autonomy of the Schizoid, and, not infrequently, can generate a contrary push and always more irrepressible and unmanageable to limit work commitment to a minimum or even to abandon the work. In these cases, the really Schizoid, either because they have already given up work or because they realize they run the risk of wanting to give up work in the future, will tend to get married with wealthy partners who are in any case able to support them financially.
• the (eventual) need of the Schizoid (and of the Aspie) to express in some way their sexual component but, at the same time, to avoid any direct physical contact or, at least, to avoid the emotional, delicate and slight physical contact, limiting himself to a physical contact mechanical and emptied of every affective component, in my opinion can tilt not rarely the Schizoid (as well as the Aspie) towards atypical forms of sexuality (the so-called "paraphilias") such as the self-eroticism, the exhibitionism (the act of exhibiting symbolizes the conspicuous display of one's desire not to give what one exhibits), the voyeurism, and the fetishism (to avoid any direct physical contact), and the sado-masochism that is, pretestuously or really mediated by the psychological input of inflicting or of undergo a suffering (to avoid the emotional, delicate and slight physical contact, limiting himself to a physical contact mechanical and emptied of every affective component),
• the lack of sense of identity combined with asexuality, I think that for the Schizoid can form a logical antecedent of predisposition to bland (and somewhat intellectualized) bisexuality,
• bizarrely, the Schizoid and his recurrent repulsive and disincentive attitudes (his demeanors of contemptuous haughtiness and detached self-control), attitudes aimed at frightening and discouraging any possible interlocutor (especially in the sentimental field) produce inexorably their logical repelling effect in the potentially social relationships non-sentimental and non-sexual, but they reveal themselves somewhat useless and even unexpectedly counterproductive if used in potentially sentimental and sexual social relationships, inducing in these latter cases the paradoxical effect of stimulating the curiosity, the motivation and above all the pride of the Schizoid's interlocutors. This paradoxal effect of magnetic attraction manifest it with particular intensity towards the emotionally most needy personalities, and ie with: 1) "Depressed/Avoidant/Affective dependent", 2) "Histrionic", 3) "Borderline". Therefore (paradoxically!), the Schizoid will attract (altogether unintentionally!) precisely those who, more than any others, he/she Schizoid person can't tolerate because of their repeated requests of emotional exchange! The Depressed/Avoidant/ Affective dependent, the Histrionic, and the Borderline they are attracted by three (apparent) characteristics of the Schizoid: by his emotive self-control (he/she not seems depend by emotions) and by his operational self-sufficiency (he/she not seems depend by the others), and, therefore, precisely by those features that they, Depressed/Avoidants/Affective dependent, Histrionics, and Borderline do not have and that, instead, they basically they aspire to have for balance the excesses of own emotionality (the Depressed/Avoidant/Affective dependent, the Histrionic, and the Borderline they can not hold back their emotions and end up participate at the emotions of others; in particular, the Depressed/Avoidant/Affective dependent it longs to have a partner to love and from which him be loved, the Histrionic it needs a partner who applaud him or that in any case puts him at the center of her attention, and the Borderline it needs of a partner who arouse in him emotions and who shares with him her emotional needs). In addition, particularly the Depressed/Avoidant/Affective dependent, being him very emotionally needy, he is struck (always unconsciously and unknowingly) by a third characteristic of the Schizoid, and ie by the asexuality of the schizoid, by his corporeal composure, by his emotional sobriety, by his lack of easy intersexual sociability, and tends to misunderstand (wrongly!) these schizoid characteristics, mistaking all that for demureness, strong sexual morality and extreme virginal decency (and mistaking also the silence of the Schizoid and his non-reactivity for loving will of listening), and, so, he ends to build an image of Schizoid interlocutor as of a potentially ideal person to meet own sentimental and romantic needs (necessity, this, that the Depressed/Avoidant/Affective dependent warns like unavoidable, inescapable and very deep). Furthermore, each of the three aforementioned categories of markedly emotional people thinks (naively) that they can offer the Schizoid an appreciable bargaining chip, that is, that they can teach the Schizoid the benefits of emotions, affects and feelings (albeit practiced in a manner more mature and less dysregulated) and to be appreciated by the Schizoid for this their generous offer and thrilling gift. It is clear that, in the face of such vivid emotional offers (on the part of the Histrionic, of the Depressed/Avoidant/Affective dependent, and of the Borderline), the Schizoid initially can also will appreciate the revitalizing power and the benefit of a mild and temporary emotional experience, the gratification that it involves for its narcissistic portion, or it may feel an intellectual curiosity for personalities not akin to his own, or it may feel perversely attracted to the excitement of facing the risky management of a relationship with an emotional individual and therefore with a dangerous individual (a bit like children do, when they play with fire to understand to what extent they can risk close contact without getting burn themselves); however, in the medium term, it will find these emotional pressure incomprehensibly and intolerably intense and protracted, and, therefore, will adopt inexorably attitudes of poor involvement, avoidance, intolerance and rejection. Well: the Histrionic, after being unappreciated by the Schizoid, it will not persists in own relational attempt, feeling the contempt of the Schizoid as referring to only one of its many possible spectators (because the Histrionic tends always to direct own attention, simultaneously, on more people, on a community of people) and, therefore, he will appeal elsewhere, in search of a new audience. Unlike the Histrionic, the Borderline will react with anger, disappointment and anguish in the face of the Schizoid's rejection, but, with a logic that is basically similar to that of the Histrionic (very often the Borderline have a Histrionic sub personality, and vice versa), even the Borderline will tend to react to the Schizoid detachment by turning (albeit slowly) on other people, since if it is certainly attracted to individuals, it is even more attracted to the emotional exchange itself regardless of the protagonist of this exchange (the Borderline often changes partner , albeit in a monogamic logic). Conversely, the Depressed/Avoidant/Affective dependent people will perceive the failed appreciation of the Schizoid as a personal injury (because the Depressed people will appeal always only to a single individual, and also because the contempt of the Schizoid will coincides with the vision of person of little value that the Depressed has of himself). Therefore, the schizoid reaction induces the Depressed/Avoidant/Affective dependent to believe that he not had expressed with adequate power and enough sincerity own sentimental and romantic intent (the depressed person believes always that a deep love ends up making always breach even in the toughest interlocutor) and, therefore, pushes the Depressed people to persevere, ever more intensely, in own relational request with the Schizoid and to showing more and more keenly his intent sentimental and romantic, thus triggering a loop, an escalation, increasingly exacerbated, in which at each new and always increased emotional request of the Depressed/Avoidant/Affective dependent will follow an always increase reaction of irritation and detachment of the Schizoid, until you arrive to the inevitable final deflagration: the Depressive/Avoidant/Affective dependent he will vomit on the Schizoid its own scandalized resentment for recurrent schizoid rejection of any emotional reciprocity, and the Schizoid, after having all in all cashed the benefits of a stimulating emotional parenthesis, will takes pretext from the nervous outburst full of recriminations of the Depressive/Avoidant/Affective dependent for demonstrate (from his point of view ...) the superficiality and the insufficiency of real sentimental intent of the Depressive/Avoidant/Affective dependent and for have an pretext to move away from him permanently. It may, at that point, quite often happen that, after some time, the Schizoid, to heal own slight remorse of conscience and not to feel too eccentric, feels the need to give the Depressed/Avoidant/Affective dependent a little gratification, and to offer him a symbolic gesture by way of compensation (a quite cordial greeting, a text message of good wishes, etc.): in this non-remote case, the Depressed/Avoidant/Affective dependent must have the maturity not to misunderstand these gestures of the Schizoid in order not to fall back into a same sterile vortex of before. For this reason, I believe that a true Schizoid, a pure and hard Schizoid, give the "worst" of herself in the presence of an Depressed/Avoidant/Affective dependent subject of the opposite sex: this, precisely, because she feels that the Depressed/Avoidant/Affective dependent people are the subjects potentially more threatening and dangerous for his schizoid emotive quietness. On the other side, for the Depressed/Avoidant/Affective dependent people, the encounter with a Schizoid turns out as an event undoubtedly very inspiring and instructive under an intellectual profile, but emotionally devastating and traumatic. Obviously, this type of cascading misunderstandings on the part of the Depressed/Avoidant/Affective Dependent are very frequent during their adolescence and post-adolescence, but, inevitably, tend to decrease (luckily...) with advancing their age and experience. What is certain, however, is that both the "Depressive/Avoidant/Dependent Affective" and the "Schizoid" in the short term they achieve a result diametrically opposite to what they aim for with their wasteful tactics (somewhat as described by Isaac Newton's "Third Law of Dynamics" by which "when an object exerts a force on a second object, the second object exerts a force equal in magnitude and opposite in direction on the first object"): 1) more and more the "Depressive/Avoidant/Dependent Affective" approaches the "Schizoid", and more and more is turned away by the Schizoid, 2) more and more the" Schizoid" moves away the "Depressive/Avoidant/Dependent Affective", and more and more the" Depressive / Avoidant / Affective Addict" approaches to the "Schizoid".
• if you think about it well and without intellectual prejudice, the rejection of sociality and the rejection of sex (the two cornerstones of schizoid personality) can explain many many cases of (alleged) "religious vocations", especially those of type monastic or cloistered or ascetic.

Leonardo da Vinci: "Portrait of Ginevra de' Benci" (1474-1478).

XIV

I believe that, in the face of some partial conclusions that I think I have reasonably drawn in relation to the "Introversion", one last (bulky, thorny and politically incorrect) question imposes itself in the background: on a par of the "Asperger personality", also the "Schizoid personality" can be considered a "type of Autism"?

Well, there is no doubt that in clinical experience it often emerges that Schizoids have undergone, as children, a rather typical parental experience (as I hypothesized and described above).

But there is no doubt that a statistically appreciable number of future Schizoids were raised by loving parents.

Just as it is equally incontrovertible that many of those children who have suffered the same parental story of the classical Schizoids then have not developed a Schizoid Personality but, rather, a Histrionic or Paranoid or Narcissistic or Antisocial Personality. etc..

It does not seem strange to me to add that I also know severely Schizoid children, however, with brothers and sisters with exactly the opposite personality to that of their Schizoid brother / sister.

Again, it can be noted that Schizoids are more frequent in determined cultural contexts also of a territorial type, but conversely it easily can oppose to that what not all those who live in those cultural contexts, including those of a terriotrial type, then develop a clear Schizloid personality.

Equally, it seems to me frankly difficult not to take into account not only the considerable superimposibility of the Schizoids behaviors with those typical of the Aspergers (the overlap of the so-called "symptomatology") but nevertheless the equally remarkable superimposibility of the "etiology" of those same respective behaviors.

Likewise, personally I have often (not always ...) found a morphological difference, all in all quite appreciable, between Schizoids and Aspergers, but yet also a very similar phlegm and physical slowness and an equally similar rigidity and woodiness in motor skill.

Frankly, in the case of Schizoids, I have a growing feeling to have on front neurologically strongly predisposed subjects on whom the (possible) parental or cultural experience undergone functions as an amplifier of their own pre-existing predisposition. And this further makes me think that there may be various levels of neurological predisposition, and that subjects with high neurological predisposition do not need the pedagogical or cultural detonator to develop a rigid Schizoid personality, just as subjects with low neurological predisposition can develop a rigid Schizoid personality only following a pedagogical or cultural detonator.

Well, if I were to draw a conclusion from the reasoning above, I would think that even the Schizoids can be subsumed, like the Aspergers, in the broader category of "Autism with high intellectual functioning".

More precisely, I believe that the Autism with high intellectual functioning of Schizoids is not only quantitatively less intense and less compromising than that of Aspergers, but that it is also qualitatively different, affecting not so much (as for Aspergers) on emotional skills and innate social and abstract ability to acquire these competences, but rather on the motivation to acquire these competences.

More generally, I increasingly receive the suggestion that between Autistics (typical and atypical) with high intellectual functioning and non-autistics there exists a gray area, a so-called "Broad Autism Phenotype", that seems me much more populous than one might believe (I would estimate it to be at least a further 5% of the general population).

XV

Ultimately, after trying to explain (first of all to myself) the schizoid psychology, I'm tempted to explain to non-schizoids (first of all to myself) how to approach a Schizoid and what are the limits of a emotional/affective/sentimental relationship with a Schizoid (Schizoid that, from now on, I will call "She").

• First of all, we must carefully avoid groped to establish eye contact with her: means that you must absolutely avoid of looking her in the eyes.

• Then, you have to avoid to get too close to her (a distance greater than 2 meters will be very welcome to her) and, even more, never to touch her (never groped to tighten the hands of She).

• Stoically, endure his recurrent (and often endless) silences. The deafening and rigid his silence that you perceive as indifference, it really will be the only his mode (however absurd and totally paradoxical) of to show you (albeit moderately) respect and acceptance (if her will find you only slightly unpleasant, you do not never doubt that it will begin to snort and to show, with theatrical ostentation, all the his impatient intolerance or even his contempt). This "tolerance" expressed by Schizoid through his silence will be the maximum to which you will can aspire in front an hard and pure 100% Schizoid: you maybe will can receive his trust and his respect, but never his curiosity and his affection.

• Accept his periodic need of absolute solitude and isolation. They are needs that the Schizoid will be perceived as not deferrable and absolute, and that, therefore, will cannot be postponed or diluted in any way.

• Never ask to her anything about his private life (even trivial details): otherwise, you will be branded from her as an irreducible nosy and her will put you, immediately and permanently, at distance.

• Never show to her an any affective intent, even merely empathic or succor or friendly or fraternal, because she will experience it as your attempt to take away from her the absolute command of relational exchange and, therefore, to introduce an element of unpredictability in this exchange. That your attempt of protection (maybe objectively necessary and objectively effective!), paradoxically (!!!), will generate in her only an inesorable instinct of diffidence, restlessness and also of not slight fear and panic.

• Apply, with her, an infinite dilution of the amount and of intensity of the own relational initiatives and even more of the own affective impulses, according to a logic that reminiscent, much closely, that of homeopathic medicine.

• Will have to accept that the emotional exchange will always commanded only by her: only she will decide when (maybe) to bestow you, sometimes, a sop, an almsgiving, and when to allow you, with stoical suffering, to receive a your gesture of care.

• Not hope too much of receive any one displays of affection from part of her. Even if you were to be the subject of some (rare) display of emotional attention on her part (it can happen...), you need know that this manifestation will be followed (as soon as possible) by another manifestation not only diametrically contrary, but also greater than the previous and deliberately blatant and scenographic. The final emotional result, as in a trade balance between assets and liabilities, will always be inexorably negative.

• Every love affair with her is doomed to fail inexorably (unless the Schizoid's partner is also him/her a Schizoid or an Asperger ...). The only game that you can hope to play with her is an sorte of infinite match of chess for correspondence: the distance between a move and another will be intolerably enormous. Will a match without winners ... and with two losers (both asleep in front at the chessboard).

Never and then never you must believe to someone (were it even a Psychologist or a Psychiatrist) who wants to convince you that, after all, a sentimental relationship with a 100% Schizoid (or with a 100% Asperger) can be all in all possible and rewarding: lies shamelessly about it, and well aware of own tragic lying, making what only to satisfy its maybe cultural or maybe religious or maybe superficially ethic need to represent human relationships in a key at all costs inclusive and pedagogical. The limits not only of relational competence (but nevertheless also of interest in acquiring relational skills) of a 100% Introvert are marmoree and immovable. I have witnessed too many tragedies to be able to indulge this pious lie.

The Schizoid is like a door without a lock (and therefore without a key), without an external handle and not infrequently without an internal handle: you can be the most skilled of housebreaker, but if the door does not reopen from the inside ...

Egon Schiele: "Portrait of woman" (1909).

As specific regards the practicability of an emotional/affective/sentimental relationship with an Asperger, in my humble opinion it must be taken into consideration that:

1) unlike the Schizoid, the Aspie can will show:

• a genuine curiosity to enjoy the intellectual benefits of sociality,
• a genuine ethical intent to relate equally to others,
• an emotional desire to feel "normal" and socially integrated (... and to be perceived as "normal" by others),
• a prosaic interest to reducing the impact of the periods of harsher and prolonged loneliness,
• a poor theory of the mind (poor ability to understand the psyche of others, the emotions of others, the familiar and cultural background of others);

2) like the Schizoid, the Aspie will show:

• a profound lack of interest in emotional exchange, that is, for the emotional utility of sociality and a profound conviction of the uselessness of emotional exchange.

In summary, an Asperger partner will probably be able to intellectually enjoy your presence, to feel himself ethically reassured by your correctness, to feel himself psychically comforted by your social acceptance, and to wish to return all these benefits, but all these sensations and intentions will remain substantially suspended in a highly formal, intellectualized and abstract sphere, as in a purely two-dimensional plane devoid of depth: very hardly the Aspie will manage to interact emotionally and to seek (and to endure...) your eye contact and your physical contact.

EPILOGUE

I would like to point out that my listing and my representation of the specificities and behavioral logics (both negative and positive, socially and emotionally) of the Schizoids (and of the Aspergers) certainly does not aim to pathologize Schizoids (and Aspergers) or to mark a their alleged "inferiority" or to trigger a sort of "hunting to the infector".

Vice versa, my goals are:

1) to explain to the so-called neurotypicals that Schizoids and Aspergers, on average, have capacities that are sometimes special and superior to the norm, but sometimes irreconcilable with a fluid sociality and a fluid emotionality; therefore, explain that the interaction with these two psychic categories of people will never reach a great social and emotional intensity, and that it would be even cruel to demand from the Schizoids and Aspergers a their conscious and intense aspiration to sociality and emotionality;

2) to explain that it is necessary to avoid what, in reality, often happens in the long run, namely to attribute the egocentrism of Introverts to their ethical and formal deficiency and to their bad will: in fact, the most unpleasant social characteristics in the Introverts they are the result of a more or less penetrating genetic predisposition (and, in the case of Schizoids in particular, often also of an unfortunate pedagogical and socio-cultural experience), factors which are certainly not attributable to them.

3) to explain to Schizoids and Aspergers their special gifts but also the social and emotional limitations of their characteristics; therefore, to explain to them that any possible aspiration to enrich and expand their sociality and emotionality can not be separated, apart from a collaboration of the social context, also that by a their precise desire to place themselves in deep internal discussion.

All this to drive away (like a plague!) any "politically correct" approach to this problem (approach perhaps animated by the best of intentions but who, maybe involuntarily, slips inexorably also into the hypocrisy, a bit like what happens in the "The Emperor's new clothes" of C. Andersen in which the whole people see the King naked but no one dares to say it); and, therefore, to drive away all those consequent ultrapedagogical and romantic visions (not a few) for which:

• Schizoids and Aspergers, after all, they are rather happy and, then, if they suffer (if?) it's only because the neurotypicals project, on them, own psychic physiology and own consequent expectations and claims,
• Schizoids and Aspergers they are (perhaps ...) unhappy only because their potential happiness is impeded and denied by the arrogant and selfish lack of understanding and integration by the so-called neurotypicals.

On the other hand, I also disagree with the temptation that inevitably creeps into every non-Introvert, that is to strive for the understanding of the Introvert using mainly "ethical" and "formal" tools and parameters to the detriment of psychic parameters (therefore judging the Introvert, respectively, an "asshole" or a "rude"), not understanding that the Introvert is a phobic and an obsessive and that therefore he is forced to a sort of mechanical and compulsive coaction to the repeat, and that this scarcity of options and this cyclicality provide him with an (albeit momentary but urgent) comfort and relief. The Introvert is an robbed from the life, an emotional invalid, a culprit without fault, that cannot but spend his life checking that doors and windows of his soul are closed.

In conclusion, the only possible approach seems to me the one for which to make a duet ... you need to be in two! Any intent (albeit highly commendable) to duet with a subject who does not want to do so, inexorably ends up reducing even the most willing and pious soul to the silhouette of certain drunkards that they dancing alone embraced to a glass.

"Je songe à tous ces imbéciles qui s'embrassent et je me dis que, vraiment, on a autre chose à faire dans l'existence"
["I reflect on all these imbeciles who they hug each other and I say at me that, really, there something else to do in the existence"]

Guy de Maupassant, "Bel-Ami", (1885)

Egon Schiele: "Portrait of a girl" (1906).

On the sidelines of this digression on Introversion, I must note a curious phenomenon and that is that whenever I write about Introversion (here, but much more often in other Internet Forums) strangely the following happens:

1) if I write about Aspergers, very often Aspergers write that I understand them and non-Aspergers write that I do not understand Aspergers,

2) if I write about Schizoids, very often the Schizoids they write me that I don't understand them, and the non-Schizoids (and especially many Schizotypals) write that I understand the Schizoid spectrum.

This gives me some sensations, and namely:

1) Aspergers are quite realistic and objective in self-analysis and know themselves quite well, while neurootypicals know little about Aspergers or see them as more vulnerable and, therefore, in an attempt to be protective, inclusive and politically correct, do not like that are described the less poetic aspects of the Aspergers.

2) Schizoids they tend to construct a somewhat intellectualized image of themselves, and, in any case, they do not like to be described because they experience this as a violation of their privacy (them proving open to a personal confession, albeit strictly anonymous, only when their personality overflows into major depression and/or psychosis), while neurotypicals often experience the relationship with Schizoids traumatically and they perceive the schizoid characteristics in an amplified way.

P. S.: to my generous Readers, I would like to point out that, over time, they will be able to find this paper several times modified, corrected, integrated, etc.: well, this will happen because my knowledge of the problem will require a continuous updating, a continuous sedimentation of my experiences and of my reflections, and a continuous attempt to improve my communication.

And if you all notice any errors in my English language, please let me notice it without delay (English is not my mother language!).

Thank you all ❤️

... and You, limpid and yet obscure Girl, who induced me to study and to try to understand the Introversion for years and with so much stubborn curiosity and to write obsessively about all this, well, although I guess that you has hated me because i am instealthily introduced my self in your sealed inner world, well ... try not to hate me too much: my thanks go above all to You.

... your comments (also if anonymous!) them will be highly appreciated!!!

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