Table of Contents

Introduction -- Clinical Description of the Schizoid Personality -- The Schizoid Personality and the External World -- The Schizoid Problem, Regression, and the Struggle to Preserve an Ego. -- The Regressed Ego, The Lost Heart of the Self, and the Inability to Love -- The Reorientation of Psychodynamic Theory -- Four Phases of Psychoynamic Theory -- The Clinical-Diagnostic Framework -- The Nature of Basic Ego-Weakness -- Ego-Weakness, The Core of the Problem of Psychotherapy -- Resistance, The Self-Induced Blockage of the Maturing Process -- The Nature of Primary Failure in Ego-Development -- The Ultimate Foundations of Ego-Identity -- Some Implications for Psychotherapy -- Different Levels of Psychotherapy -- The Schizoid Compromise and Psychotherapeutic Stalemate -- Object-Relations Theory and Psychotherapy -- Object-Relations Theory and Psychotherapy -- Object-Relations Theory and Ego-Theory -- The Concept of Psychodynamic Science -- Heinz Hartmann and the Object-Relations Theorists

About the Author

Harry Guntrip (1901-1975) was a psychologist known for his major contributions to object relations theory. He was a Fellow of the British Psychological Society and a psychotherapist and lecturer at the Department of Psychiatry, Leeds University, and also a Congregationalist minister. He was described by John D. Sutherland as "one of the psychoanalytic immortals".

Reviews

In Part 1, a description of the schizoid position is given, in terms of relation to the external world, internal states of ego disintegration and, the core of the problem, the dissociated and lost emotional heart of the total self.Part 2 reviews the theoretical development which makes it necessary to see manic-depressive problems in the light of the deeper and more subtle schizoid condition. Part 3, on "The Nature of Basic Ego-Weakness", seeks to assess fully the importance of Winnicott's research into the earliest beginnings of ego development, as the infant slowly grows into psychic separation from the mother, a process that involves both the opportunity for individuation and also the risk of loss of relationship, as well as the risk of possibly permanent stunting of the ego development instead of growth of basic ego relatedness in the mentally healthy person.Part 4 explores the implications for psychotherapy of the study of the schizoid problem, particularly in the matter of the personal therapeutic relationship of therapist and patient. And finally, in Part 5, the review of theory is put on a broad foundation with a chapter on "The Concept of Psychodynamic Science" and another comparing the ego theories of Hartmann and the "object-relational" thinkers, Melanie Klein, Fairbairn, and Winnicott.