Schizoid Personality Disorder and Buddhism

HeWhoNeverWere wrote:

OneRinger wrote:Most studies, however biased they may be, show that a person needs to have social relations to maintain a healthy mental state.

Not that there may not be a causation relationship, but correlation does not imply causation. There is a long list of potential reasons for why having social relations and maintaining a healthy mental state may be positively correlated. For example, having social relations may also be positively correlated to things that have a general positive effect on health such as going to the doctor. Or maybe, a healthy mental state is actually beneficial to fostering social relations and the reverse is also true. Don't just buy into the dogma of popular opinion, think about these things for yourself.

-- Mon Oct 01, 2012 6:21 pm --

Correlation could also be the result of definitions of mental health which are biased toward those who are more sociable.

^
I don't remember writing that, but I agree with you.

I don't want to dig up a dead thread, but I have something to say about this topic. I will try to make it short (if that is possible for me to do, considering that I am myself).

At the core, I think Schizoidism (In the broad sense of the behaviors exhibited by the PD, including the PD and non-PD behavior/thought of a similar kind) and budhism are similar but inverse. They appear similar in that they are a letting go, but they are letting go of the opposite thing.

I don't think schizoidism lets go of the ego. I think it lets go of the world, and thus satisfies the ego through internal means. Schizoidism is about withdrawing for the world because it has nothing good in it or is not rewarding, while the person's own mind is seen as a safe-haven or place of riches. The world becomes a place to be endured, while the mind becomes its own world by internalizing the outside world. Maybe this looks like ego-loss because the ego's connection to reality is severed, but it is not the ego that is done away with, but the world. Schizoids may appear timeless, but only because they are absorbed in fantasy.

Buddhism, on the other hand, is actually about loss of one's ego in favor of the present world. It is based on the thought that thought and introspection beyond simply observing are bad. To Buddhism, the internal world is a bad one because it is full of tensions, idealism that leads nowhere and anxiety/stress that causes pain. To Buddhism, the internalization of the world is bad, not the world itself (like most religions, it says that humanity is inherently the cause of all problems). Logically, the Buddhist solution is to reject the internal thought and questioning in favor of the world in a "pure" form (meaning without humanity).

Buddhism says that YOU are ruining your experience of the world, and you must let go of yourself.
Schizoidism says that the world is ruining your experience of yourself, and you must let go of the world.

It seems to me like a philosophical version of the introvert/extrovert difference.
Extroverts feel uneasy forced to be alone in their heads.
Introverts feel uneasy when forced outside of their heads.

This is not including the theoretical schizoid-subtype who thinks of nothing, not even fantasy. That, from my very limited understanding of it, would be a combination of the two, rejection of both the world and oneself.

This is what I gather from what I know about and have been told about Buddhism. Perhaps more research in needed on my part, but I have been thinking about this topic for a large portion of the day and wanted to talk about it.

By the way, I prefer schizoidism over Buddhism. The more I learn about Buddhism, the less I like it. Maybe it is just western individualism in me, but I think that the self and humanity (its introspection and "feelings") is the single most important object while the world is secondary and serves as a source for the self(s). I can, however, see the allure of Buddhism in the modern western world, as it allows for letting go of the "rat race". I think it is certainly better than being stuck in a trance-like race to the top or focus on 'things'. In that case, the self being let go of is not a good one, and I think that Buddhism in that case may allow for a paradoxical freedom of self by release of the tranced self (there never was an introspective self)

Maybe it is an issue of "different strokes for different folks".

Interesting points, brainslug.

Oh yeah, people call me calm, stoic, say I have a Buddhist outlook, but really I think I'm just a schizoid

I had a Buddhist neighbor once, a Buddhist colleague once, visited a Buddhist cloister once, tried their meditation once, dined once with them but never found any kind of familiarity therein. I never understood their beliefs (about reincarnation, for instance). Their loud prayers felt disturbing to me, their sense of community never reached out to me and their denial of life (one nun once described humans as nothing more, than skin-bags full of $#%^) disturbs me.