Schizoid Personality Disorder (SPD)

Schizoid personality disorder (SPD) is a personality disorder characterized by a lack of interest in social relationships, a tendency towards a solitary lifestyle, secretiveness, emotional coldness, and apathy. Affected individuals may simultaneously demonstrate a rich, elaborate and exclusively internal fantasy world.

SPD is not the same as schizophrenia. Some psychologists argue that the definition of SPD is flawed due to cultural bias: "One reason schizoid people are pathologized is because they are comparatively rare. People in majorities tend to assume that their own psychology is normative and to equate difference with inferiority". Therefore the so-called schizoid personality disorder is one of the more blatant examples of the APA’s pathologizing of normal human differences

People with SPD are often aloof, cold and indifferent, which causes interpersonal difficulty. Most individuals diagnosed with SPD have trouble establishing personal relationships or expressing their feelings in a meaningful way. They may remain passive in the face of unfavourable situations. Their communication with other people may be indifferent and concise at times. Because of their lack of meaningful communication with other people, those who are diagnosed with SPD are not able to develop accurate impressions of how well they get along with others

Such images are believed to be important for a person's self-awareness and ability to assess the impact of their own actions in social situations. R.D. Laing suggests that when one is not enriched by injections of interpersonal reality, the self-image becomes increasingly empty and volatilized, which leads the individual to feel unreal.

When the individual's personal space is violated, they feel suffocated and feel the need to free themselves and be independent. People who have SPD tend to be happiest when they are in a relationship in which the partner places few emotional or intimate demands on them. It is not people as such that they want to avoid, but emotions both negative and positive, emotional intimacy, and self disclosure.

This means that it is possible for schizoid individuals to form relationships with others based on intellectual, physical, familial, occupational, or recreational activities as long as these modes of relating do not require or force the need for emotional intimacy, which the affected individual will reject. Donald Winnicott explains this need to modulate emotional interaction by saying that schizoid individuals "prefer to make relationships on their own terms and not in terms of the impulses of other people." Failing to attain that, they prefer isolation.

World Health Organization[edit]
The World Health Organization's ICD-10 lists schizoid personality disorder as Schizoid personality disorder.

It is characterized by at least four of the following criteria:
Emotional coldness, detachment or reduced affect.
Limited capacity to express either positive or negative emotions towards others.
Consistent preference for solitary activities.
Very few, if any, close friends or relationships, and a lack of desire for such.
Indifference to either praise or criticism.
Little interest in having sexual experiences with another person (taking age into account).
Taking pleasure in few, if any, activities.
Indifference to social norms and conventions.
Preoccupation with fantasy and introspection.


It is a requirement of ICD-10 that a diagnosis of any specific personality disorder also satisfies a set of general personality disorder criteria.

I think I might have this.

What makes you say that? What symptoms do you have? I have a friend who says he is schizoid. He is really distant sometimes but other times he is real fun to be around. I'm not sure if that fits the description though.

I have a friend who says this too but he does seem really friendly. I looked into this and found that Schizoid personalities can also imitate a social norm. This is known as a secret schizoid.

Yes, that's what I mean. So I looked up Secret Scizoid and it sound uncanny.

Isn't Sheldon from "The big bang theory" schizoid? Albeit a bit of an extreme schizoid.

Yeah Sheldon is supposed to be schizoid although i've never met a schizoid like him.