PTypes - Personality Types
PTypes A Correspondence of Psychiatric, Keirsey, and Enneagram Typologies Leisurely

Rationalist



Solitary Personality Type

The Schizoid Idealized Image


Values of the Solitary Type New!



Idols

Compulsive attachment: solitude
Compulsive aversion: intimacy

Idols of the Types

more...



Strategy

Strategy: isolation

Oldham's Solitary Personality Type - Hermitary
Goals tagged "solitary" on 43 Things


I now see Dr. Oldham's Solitary Personality Style construct from a Christian perspective, whereby it represents an attempt to find our source of security in a strategy rather than a trust in God (Cooper); or, in Karen Horney's terms, it represents a search for glory.


Dr. John M. Oldham has defined the Solitary personality style. The following six characteristic traits and behaviors are listed in his The New Personality Self-Portrait.

  1. Solitude. Individuals with the Solitary personality style have small need of companionship and are most comfortable alone.

  2. Independence. They are self-contained and do not require interaction with others in order to enjoy their experiences or to get on in life.

  3. Sangfroid. Solitary men and women are even-tempered, calm, dispassionate, unsentimental, and unflappable.

  4. Stoicism. They display an apparent indifference to pain and pleasure.

  5. Sexual composure. They are not driven by sexual needs. They enjoy sex but will not suffer in its absence.

  6. Feet on the ground. They are unswayed by either praise or criticism and can confidently come to terms with their own behavior.



Source: Oldham, John M., and Lois B. Morris. The New Personality Self-Portrait: Why You Think, Work, Love, and Act the Way You Do. Rev. ed. New York: Bantam, 1995.



Idealized Image

I did conceive of "character strengths and virtues" in a positive way as Martin Seligman does in his Positive Psychology, but now see them as images of perfection that inflate the idealized self theorized by Karen Horney.



Character Strengths and Virtues (what the Schizoid type is proud of)


The "Character Strengths and Virtues" are attributes of the idealized self, or ego ideal. As "conditions of worth" they are idols.


  1. Solitude, [silence, recollection].
  2. Independence, [non-attachment], self-containment, autonomous competence, creativity.
  3. Sangfroid, even-tempered, calmness, dispassion, imperturbability, detachment; observation, concentration, clarity of vision, being-informed, science.
  4. Stoicism, indifference, self-control, self-restraint, [altruism, self-sacrifice].
  5. Sexual composure, not passionately sexual.
  6. Feet on the ground, responsibility (Oldham, 275-86).



Top Strengths*


"Curiosity [interest, novelty-seeking, openness to experience]: Taking an interest in ongoing experience for its own sake; finding subjects and topics fascinating; exploring and discovering"

"Love of learning: Mastering new skills, topics, and bodies of knowledge, whether on one's own or formally; obviously related to the strength of curiosity but goes beyond it to describe the tendency to add systematically to what one knows"

"Persistence [perseverance, industriousness]: Finishing what one starts; persisting in a course of action in spite of obstacles; "getting it out the door"; taking pleasure in completing tasks"

"Fairness: Treating all people the same according to notions of fairness and justice; not letting personal feelings bias decisions about others; giving everyone a fair chance"

"Humility / Modesty Letting one's accomplishments speak for themselves; not regarding oneself as more special than one is"

"Self-regulation [self-control]: regulating what one feels and does; being disciplined; controlling one's appetites and emotions"

"Creativity [originality, ingenuity]: Thinking of novel and productive ways to conceptualize and do things; includes artistic achievement but is not limited to it


* Selected from Christopher Peterson and Martin E. P. Seligman, (2004). Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification. Oxford: Oxford UP.




Solitariness


1. Solitary: "1. Existing, living, or going without others; alone ... 3. Remote from civilization; secluded; lonely. 4. Having no companions; lonesome; lonely." (AHD)

Synonyms: "alone, lonely, lonesome, lone, forlorn, lorn, desolate" (MW, 755)

"Alone, solitary, lonely, lonesome, lone, lorn, forlorn, desolate may all refer to situations of being apart from others or emotions experienced while apart. Alone stresses the fact of physical isolation and also may connote feelings of isolation from others ... Solitary may indicate a state of being apart that is desired and sought for ... It often connotes sadness at the loss or lack of usual or close connections or consciousness of isolation or remoteness ... Lonely may simply indicate the fact of being alone but more often suggests isolation accompanied by a longing for company ... Lonesome, often more poignant, suggests sadness after a separation or bereavement ... Lone especially in poetical use may replace either lonely or lonesome ... Lorn suggests recent separation or bereavement ... Forlorn indicates dejection , woe, and listlessness at separation from someone dear ... Desolate is most extreme in suggesting inconsolable grief at loss or bereavement ...

"Solitary, lonely, lonesome, desolate are applied to places and locations more than the other words discriminated above. Solitary may be applied to something that is either apart from things similar or that is uninhabited or unvisited by human beings ... Lonely may be applied to what is either far apart from things similar and seldom visited or to what is inhabited by only one person or group and conducive to loneliness ... Lonesome has much the same suggestion ... Desolate indicates either that a place is abandoned by people or that it is as barren and wild as never to have attracted them ... " (36-37)

Analogous: "isolated, secluded, retired, withdrawn: forsaken, deserted, abandoned" (755)

Antonyms:

Contrasted:


2. Solitary: "Single; sole." (AHD)

Synonyms: "single, sole, unique, lone, separate, particular" (MW, 755)

""Single, sole, unique, lone, solitary, separate, particular can all mean one as distinguished from two or more or all others. Something single is not accompanied or supported by, or combined or united with, another ... Something sole is the only one that exists, that acts, that has power or relevance, or that is to be or should be considered ... Something unique ... may be the only one of its kind in existence ... or it may stand alone because of its unusual character ... Something lone ... is not only single but also separated or isolated from others of its kind; the word often replaces single in technical or poetic context ... Something solitary ... stands by itself, either as the sole instance or as a unique thing ... Something separate is not only single, but disconnected from or unconnected with any of the others in question ... Something particular ... is the single or numerically distinct instance, member, or example or the whole or the class considered or under consideration ... " (740-41)

Analogous: "alone, only" (755)

Antonyms:

Contrasted:


The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1981, c.1969). William Morris, Ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Merriam-Webster (1984). Webster's New Dictionary of Synonyms: A Dictionary of Discriminated Synonyms with Antonyms and Analogous and Contrasted Words. Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster.



Activities for the Solitary type

Google Search: solitary activity OR activities



Careers and Jobs for the Solitary type

Google Search: solitary career OR careers

Google Answers: selecting the right career for me



This list represents careers and jobs people of the Solitary type tend to enjoy doing.

strategic planning
writer
staff development
lawyer
architect
software designer
financial analyst
college professor
photographer
logician
artist
systems analyst
neurologist
physicist
psychologist
research/development
...specialist
computer programmer
data base manager
chemist
biologist
investigator

Source: U.S. Department of Interior, Career Manager - INTP.



Noteworthy Examples of the Solitary personality type

Many people (and not just those of the Solitary personality type) have solitary traits or behave in a solitary manner. But the traits and behaviors of the Solitary personality type are not so inflexible and maladaptive or the cause of such significant subjective distress or functional impairment as to constitute

Schizoid Personality Disorder

The noteworthy examples of the Solitary personality type are examples of a *type*, not of a disorder. It is my opinion that the ideal type which is described above is best characterized as solitary, and that the Solitary personality type represents the pervasive and enduring pattern of the personalities of the people listed below better than any other type.

Famous persons on this list may serve as ego ideals, idealized images, and idols for individuals of the Solitary type.

 

Noteworthy examples of the Solitary personality type are:

 Index of noteworthy examples

Isaac Asimov, Jacob Bronowski, Charles Darwin, Bobby Fischer, Sigmund Freud, Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking, Alfred Hitchcock, Theodore Kaczynski, David Keirsey, Doris Lessing, James Madison, Karl Marx, Claudio Naranjo, Isaac Newton, Cynthia Ozick, Ezra Pound, B. F. Skinner, James Watson, Simone Weil

 



Weblogs







Remember that it is not merely desire for office and wealth which makes men abject and subservient to others, but desire also for peace, and leisure, and travel, and scholarship. For it makes no difference what the external object be, the value you set upon it makes you subservient to another" —Epictetus, Discourses IV.iv.1-2.




The Solitary Bird

  • carmelite.com > John of the Cross > Juan de la Cruz
    The traits of the solitary bird are five: first, it seeks the highest place; second, it withstands no company; third, it holds its beak in the air; fourth, it has no definite color; fifth, it sings sweetly. These traits must be possessed by the contemplative soul. It must rise above passing things, paying no more heed to them than if they did not exist. It must likewise be so fond of silence and solitude that it does not tolerate the company of another creature. It must hold its beak in the air of the Holy Spirit, responding to his inspirations, that by so doing it may become worthy of his company. It must have no definite color, desiring to do nothing definite other than the will of God. It must sing sweetly in the contemplation and love of its Bridegroom.




Hermit




  "Gradually it has become clear to me what every great philosophy so far has been: namely, the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir" - Friedrich Nietzsche.

I hypothesize that the personality theories of personality theorists best describe themselves and those of their own type.




Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud

Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous�to poetry. �Sigmund Freud

PTypes - Freud's quest for fame



Freud's schizoid relationship with his daughter, Anna.

Sigmund Freud disregarded psychoanalytic custom when he chose to psychoanalyze his daughter, Anna, in response to what he termed her 'father-complex'. In Why Freud was Wrong, Richard Webster explains the results of that decision and provides a insight into the schizoid form of relationship:

What is surprising, even in relation to the view of Freud which I have presented in earlier chapters, is his evident failure to understand the human implications of his own decision to take his daughter into analysis. For what he seems not to have grasped is that, in the daily psychoanalytic sessions he held with his daughter, he was steadily intensifying and deepening the very psychological predicament he was consciously seeking to resolve.

So profound was Freud's belief that psychoanalysis was a scientific technique which could be employed objectively in order to achieve medical ends, and so lacking was he in ordinary psychological insight, he appears not to have recognised that in discussing with his twenty-six-year-old daughter her supposed masturbatory fantasies, and her putative sexual fixation on him, he was entering a psychological minefield. Apart from anything else, by showing such an interest in his daughter's sexual imagination, he was clearly transgressing a powerful taboo - and doing so in a manner which evidently gratified his own sexual curiosity. Most people possessed of any degree of ordinary psychological insight would tend intuitively to judge such behaviour as misguided. In the particular circumstances which confront us here, however, it is perhaps worth considering, with rather more care than we generally take, exactly why we might come to such a judgement.

The conventional explanation might very well be that, by behaving in the manner that he did, Freud was sexualising a relationship which, for the psychological well-being of his daughter, should have been kept entirely asexual. There may be a sense in which this is true. But there is also, I believe, an important sense in which it actually inverts the truth. For, in some respects at least, the relationship between father and daughter will always tend to have a sexual dimension. One of the functions of the unwritten rules which govern such relationships is not to suppress this sexual dimension entirely but to allow it to exist, and even flourish, in an area of psychological safety. In a close relationship which is well bounded by such unwritten rules, both father and daughter may, to a certain extent, feel able to express towards one another warm affection, which is quite possibly tinged by sexual attraction, and which can be expressed physically without the danger that the relationship will ever become fully sexual. Written or unwritten rules in this area, as in many other areas of human behaviour, actually serve to safeguard a degree of relative freedom. When such rules are broken, as they evidently were in Freud's analysis of his daughter, the possibility of absolute transgression - of incest - is imaginatively opened up. Because incest is deeply threatening to most people, one of the psychological dangers of such licence is that both father and daughter, unprotected by explicit or implicit rules, will be thrown back onto the resources of the conscience. They may then feel forced to submit to the exacting and cruel demands which the conscience has a tendency to make. Unprotected by an external framework of rules, father and daughter may find themselves obsessively creating an internal framework of inhibition. In doing this there is a great danger that they may empty their relationship of the last traces of emotional warmth and physical affection in an anxious attempt to reassure themselves about their essential virtuousness. In this manner what may appear to be a dangerous attempt to sexualise a relationship, may lead to a cold and conscience-stricken desexualisation of the very bond which was once most warm and affectionate (416-17).



Freud's characterological conflict over needs for closeness and distance.

Psychoanalytic technique can be seen as expressing the needs of a schizoid character. The seemingly cold and uncaring manner that Freud and many psychoanalysts adopted (which has been the subject of much criticism and humor over the years) really originated in Freud's characterological conflict over needs for closeness and distance. Nancy McWilliams (1994) illuminated this dynamic in her defense of the schizoid character:

I do not wish to give the reader the impression that schizoid individuals are cold or uncaring. They may care very much about other people, yet still need to maintain a protective personal space. Some, in fact, gravitate to careers in psychotherapy, where they put their exquisite sensitivity to use safely in the service of others. Allen Wheelis (1956), who may be assumed to be in close touch with his own schizoid characteristics, wrote an eloquent essay on the attractions and hazards of a psychoanalytic career, stressing how people with a core conflict over closeness and distance may be drawn to the profession of analysis, a vocation that offers the opportunity to know others more intimately than anyone else ever will, while concealing the self behind the couch and the neutrality of one's interpretations (196).



Freud required emotional coldness in the analyst.

"I cannot advise my colleagues too urgently to model themselves during psychoanalytic treatment on the surgeon who puts aside all his feelings, even his human sympathy, and concentrates his mental forces on the single aim of performing his operation as skillfully as possible. Under present-day conditions the feeling that is most dangerous to a psycho-analyst is the therapeutic ambition to achieve by this novel and much disputed method something that will produce a convincing effect on other people.... The justification for requiring this emotional coldness in the analyst is that it creates the most advantageous conditions for both parties: for the doctor a desirable protection for his own emotional life and for the patient the largest amount of help that we can give him to-day" (Source).



The analyst's coolness and distance uncovers and isolates the transference.

From Paul Roazen (1976 pg. 71):

Supposedly, transference, the patient's bond onto the person of the analyst, is made up of idealization as well as suspicion, and is to be traced to the patient's irrational conflicts stemming from the past. By means of the analyst's coolness and distance, the patient is permitted to develop his own fantasies and expectations about the analyst; the analyst's job is then to interpret such transferences, helping the patient to understand his difficulties in terms of his pre-adult past. On the basis of his clinical experience Freud generalized grandly:

It must not be supposed...that transference is created by analysis and does not occur apart from it. Transference is merely uncovered and isolated by analysis. It is a universal phenomenon of the human mind, it decides the success of all medical influence, and in fact dominates the whole of each person's relations to his human environment.


Freud seems to have projected his schizoid characteristics onto Leonardo da Vinci.

Frederick Crews, a recent critic of Freud, offers this insight:

Perhaps, however, the most interesting insights to be gained from Freud's Leonardo concern not Leonardo but Freud himself. For unlike the story of Leonardo's life, about Freud we know quite a bit. And much of what we know shows that a good deal of what Freud claimed to find characteristic of Leonardo was characteristic of himself: an insatiable curiosity; a great love for his mother; a strong desire for privacy; extreme sexual repression; a very early withdrawal from all sexual activity; an acknowledged "piece of unruly homosexual feeling" and a "pronounced mental bisexuality"; a hesitancy about publishing completed works and a habit of declaring that none of his creations were complete; a rejection of "both dogmatic and personal religion"; and finally, a triumph of creativity "at the very summit of his life" to use Freud's own words in describing Leonardo - Freud was in his early fifties when he wrote the Leonardo study, almost precisely the same age at which Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa (210-211).



Crews, Frederick C. (1998). Unauthorized Freud : doubters confront a legend. New York : Viking.

McWilliams, Nancy (1994). Psychoanalytic diagnosis: understanding personality structure in the clinical process. New York: Guilford Press. [via John Suler]

Roazen, Paul (1976).Erik H. Erikson: the power and limits of a vision. New York: Macmillan.

Webster, Richard (1956).Why Freud was wrong: sin, science, and psychoanalysis. New York: Basic Books.

Wheelis, Allen (1956). The vocational hazards of psychoanalysis. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 37, 171-184.



Sigmund Freud - C. George Boeree.

The Burying Freud Web Page

Freudian Links - Links to Freud related resources - archive.org

Sigmund Freud: Conflict & Culture (Library of Congress Exhibition) [via Google]

Sigmund Freud Links



Claudio Naranjo





David Keirsey





Doris Lessing





Ezra Pound

  • Ezra Pound [via Google]
  • Ezra Pound and Roots of Treason by Torrey

    The doctors at St. Elizabeths quickly learned that psychological tests weren't going to be of much help. Dr. Torrey reports that ''the Rorschach test was interpreted as suggesting 'a marked personality disorder of long standing.' '' But we also learn that the psychologists could find ''no evidence of psychosis.''


B. F. Skinner



Reel People: Cinema's Psychological Personalities



Personal statements



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Schizoid personality resource



Authors



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Physicist



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Mathematician



Personal Sites



Corresponding Enneagram Type (see Correspondence)



Bill Gates

  • The "Unofficial" Bill Gates [via Google]
  • Life Pattern Profile of Bill Gates: INTP - Terence Duniho. [Internet Archive]

    However, the acting "like the teenage boy that he still resembles", the "grins", the "voice breaks", the tucking of "his elbows into his lap" and the rocking back and forth" all fit well with a number of INTPs I have known. But, even more revealing are the quick tantrum bursts. In my experience, none of the other 15 patterns exhibit this truly infantile trait as such a regular part of their makeup.


More Solitary personality type





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