Evidence of Developing Personality Patterns in Childhood
By:
THEODORE MILLON and
Seth Grossman
Carrie Millon
Sarah Meagher
Rowena Ramnath
Freud
wrote that the child is the father of the man. Although this research
literature is still in its infancy, numerous points of continuity have been
found between adult disorders and early manifestations of similar problems in
childhood (Fennig & Carlson, 1995).
The
first account of schizoid personality in childhood was given by Ssucharewa in 1926
(Wolff, 1996). Symptoms included solitariness, odd thinking, flatness and
superficiality of emotions, a tendency toward automatisms, impulsive behavior,
inappropriate social behavior (clowning, rhyming, stereotypic neologisms),
obsessive-compulsive behavior, heightened suggestibility, and various motor
impairments, including clumsiness, awkwardness, abruptness of movement, and
many superfluous movements.
Contemporary
thinking is that autism, Asperger’s syndrome, and schizoid personality of
childhood
(Wolff,
1998) form a group of related disorders, a “schizoid spectrum.” Although
usually not as impaired as schizophrenic children, kids in these categories all
show impaired social relations, developmental abnormalities, and delays of
varying severity.
Wolff
(1998) suggests that schizoid children are more impaired than autistic and
Asperger’s children on “theory of mind” tasks, which test a capacity to imagine
what other people feel or think. Indeed, “lack of empathy” is a cardinal
feature of the diagnosis.
Other
core characteristics noted were “solitariness (the children were ‘loners’) . .
. increased sensitivity, at times with paranoid ideation; rigidity of mental
set, especially the single-minded pursuit of special interests (such as
electronics, architectural drawings, antiques, astronomy, dinosaurs, politics);
and unusual styles of communicating such as odd
use of metaphor, over- or under-talkativeness” (p. 124).
In
contrast to high-functioning autistic and Asperger’s children, on follow-up the
schizoid children showed better psychosocial adjustment as adults, not
significantly different from the adjustment of their clinic-matched controls.
However, they were not as able to reach their expected level of occupation or
to as easily sustain an intimate sexual relationship, both characteristics of the
adult schizoid personality.
References
Personality Disorders in Modern Life,
second edition, 2000, 2004 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Read Also
Schizoid Personality Disorder, Case vignette (1)
Schizoid Personality Disorder, Case vignette (2)
Schizoid Personality Disorder, Case vignette (3)
Schizoid Personality Disorder, Case vignette (2)
Schizoid Personality Disorder, Case vignette (3)
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