Clinical Variables in Schizoid Personalities

The relation between prepsychotic personality and psychotic manifestations has been observed by many writers. Especially in the consideration of the functional psychoses, the affective and schizophrenic disorders, a dichotomy of personality types has been assumed and has led, on the one hand, to the concept of the extroverted, cyclothymic, syntonic personality as associated with the affective psychoses, and, on the other hand, to that of the introverted, schizoid, shut-in type usual in schizophrenic breakdowns. Most writings on the subject fall into the domain of clinical intuition rather than science. In an attempt to approximate scientific objectivity, a statistical study of prepsychotic personality was initiated at the Boston Psychopathic Hospital in 1928. The justification for such an approach is suggested in the statement of Dorothy Swaine Thomas in an article on "Statistics in Social Research:"¹ Since experiment will always be difficult to carry out with human materials, we must look