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Schizoid Shame: The Idealization of Absence

Stephanie Lewin

To cite this article: Stephanie Lewin (2020) Schizoid Shame: The Idealization of Absence,
Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 56:4, 534-561, DOI: 10.1080/00107530.2020.1856677

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Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 2020, Vol. 56, No. 4: 534–561.
# William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis & Psychology and
the William Alanson White Psychoanalytic Society
ISSN: 0010-7530 print / 2330-9091 online
DOI: 10.1080/00107530.2020.1856677

STEPHANIE LEWIN, Ph.D.

SCHIZOID SHAME: THE IDEALIZATION

OF ABSENCE

Abstract. This article illustrates the concept of schizoid shame, a self-erasing

urge arising from childhood exposure to severe parental narcissism. Schizoid
shame prohibits all pleasure-in-selfhood and silences the expression of emo-
tional needs. A child with such minimal needs is– for the domineering, narcis-
sistic parent—perfect. The author asserts that such a child ultimately conflates
being perfect with being no-one, suffering a flood of shame during moments of
independent self-expression. Schizoid shame is presented in two case illustra-
tions as an agent of self-erasure, as well as an eraser of the author’s analytic
reverie in the transference. Without reverie as a guide to these patients’ rela-
tional unconscious, their shame—so pivotal to their functioning—was initially
not palpable in the treatments. Yet, once the author perceived that these
patients’ desire to be perfect was actually a desire to be no-one, their shame-
inducing bondage to their internalized narcissistic parent emerged
through reverie.

Keywords: shame, schizoid, parental narcissism, negative narcissism, ego

ideal, reverie

Schizoid Shame

T he ideal is defined as a person or thing regarded to be perfect,

complete, and flawless. Any discussion of shame evokes the con-
cept of the ideal, because shame arises from the ideal’s opposite:
a sense of imperfection (Lewis, 1971, p. 425). Yet in many people’s
minds, the ideal reflects not only perfection, but also goodness. For
example, striving to attain an ideal is generally understood to be a
march toward, not only perfection, but also a state of goodness. It is

Address correspondence to Stephanie Lewin, Ph.D. Email: stlewin@[Link]

534
SCHIZOID SHAME 535

easy to forget that goodness is not, by strict definition, a quality of per-

fection. One can, for example, be perfectly calm or perfectly neat, yet
neither of these states are necessarily good, and in some contexts can
even be inconvenient or bad. A state of goodness is therefore just one,
albeit very compelling, context that characterizes the ideal. This article,
in an attempt to illustrate a manifestation of shame in schizoid individ-
uals, proposes a schizoid characterization of the ideal: a state of
absence rather than a state of goodness. In the familiar context of good
vs. bad, shame is an intuitively clear and natural reaction to “being
bad.” Yet in the context of schizoid shame—a concept that I will
describe here as the urge to self-erase—the duality is different: that of
absence vs. presence. If to be absent is to be ideal, then to be pre-
sent—to have interpersonal needs or impact—is a shameful fall
from grace.
I believe that this idealization of absence (and its conflation with
goodness) is a childhood response to narcissistic parenting. For the
deeply narcissistic parent, the child who behaves like no-one is as
good as perfect, because this child has no needs—feeling loved only
under the condition that parent’s relentless demand for psychic com-
pliance is gratified. Such children will perhaps evolve into adults who
assume an absent identity—an urge to be no-one—feeling shame
when they experience themselves as any specific someone.
To become no-one, by contrast, is to numb oneself to the shame
and hurt evoked by the narcissistic parent’s self-absorbed rejection. As
no-one (or, in other words, as one who has developed a constricted,
avoidant and schizoid stance toward interpersonal reality), the child
has no vulnerable expectations of love or care. This article, in describ-
ing such defensive self-erasure, explores the interaction of malignantly
narcissistic parenting with traumatic shame and schizoid behavior.

Traumatic vs. Adaptive Shame

Shame, like a lens, is a powerful modifier of vision. A lens can either

clarify or distort one’s perspective, and the same is true of shame.
Adaptive shame is like a well-functioning lens. It grabs our attention
and forces us to look at ourselves clearly, thereby holding our grandi-
osity in check. In this sense, adaptive shame, working as a metaphor-
ical lens, corrects one’s self-perception to more or less “20/20”. Yet
unbounded, traumatic shame creates a faulty lens, distorting the
536 STEPHANIE LEWIN, Ph.D.

accuracy of one’s self-perception by over-magnifying toxic mental

images. Indeed, trauma-induced shame renders a self-image so ugly,
one feels compelled to look away from what the lens reveals.
Shame impacts four key factors of personality functioning.
Specifically, shame fixates upon the ideal (Lewis, 1971, p. 430); shame
inhibits basic urges (Jacoby, 1993, p. 422); shame disorients us (Lewis,
1971, p. 425); and shame diminishes self-other differentiation (Lewis,
1971, p. 425). Each of these factors operate along a continuum, with
adaptive versions at one pole, and traumatic versions at the other.
Thus, adaptive shame, as a well-functioning lens, impels us to (1)
strive for ideals, (2) manage basic urges, (3) question our automatic
assumptions, and (4) care about others’ feelings. In contrast, traumatic
shame pushes these factors into overdrive, resulting in (1) demoraliza-
tion, (2) resisting most if not all urges, (3) relentless self-doubt, and (4)
radical enmeshment with a dominant other. Traumatic shame, a faulty
lens that produces ugly distortions in self-image, thus stimulates a
sense of self-limitation extreme enough to damage any capacity for
pleasure-in-selfhood.

Two Contexts of Traumatic Shame

Traumatic shame—evolving in response to an abusive other—can be

conceptualized in two distinct contexts: relationally, or in isolation. In
dyadic relationships, traumatic shame may manifest as projective shame
(shame that is projected and introjected in a sadomasochistic relation-
ship with a narcissistic other). In isolation, on the other hand, trau-
matic shame may manifest as schizoid shame (an impulse that drives
the individual to become no-one, or, in other words, to self-erase, in
order to please a fundamentally rejecting, narcissistic other). Both
forms of shame trigger severe self-hatred.
When the child’s shame is relationally-derived, the narcissistic parent
is likely to be aggressively sadistic—using the child as a dumping
ground for painful, humiliating affect. Overwhelmed by such cruel
sensations, the child will be driven to either project this shame into
others, or to internalize the shame, masochistically reenacting it in sub-
sequent relationships. When a child’s shame, on the other hand,
evolves in isolation, the narcissistic parent is more likely to be self-
absorbed and neglectful, abandoning the child and denying all respon-
sibility for this child’s evolving selfhood. Floating in an anxious state
SCHIZOID SHAME 537

of vulnerability, the child has been deprived of a clear roadmap for

interpersonal relating. Not developing distinct, shame-based relational
patterns, these children retreat into a bubble of introversion, beginning
to hate themselves for just being human. In exploring these dual con-
texts of traumatic shame, I suggest that aggressively sadistic parental
abuse triggers projective shame, while self-absorbed parental abuse trig-
gers schizoid shame (a need to self-erase, or to be no-one).
This duality in aggressive vs. self-absorbed narcissistic parenting
style can be illustrated by considering Erikson’s psychosocial stage of
autonomy vs. shame/doubt. According to Erikson (1959), children
between the ages of 18 months and 3 years show an innate desire for
autonomy—for mastery and independence. Yet attempts at mastery
entail a certain amount of failure, at times compounding a sense of
vulnerability, or even shame, in the growing child. It thus falls to the
parent to support the child’s inherent desire for independence, as well
as to help the child deal with the fear and vulnerability that arise
alongside occasional failures in becoming so.
Yet the narcissistic parent, whether aggressive or self-absorbed, is
incapable of such supportive accompaniment. For example, a child
struggling with mastery while learning to walk may stumble in the pro-
cess. An aggressively narcissistic parent might laugh at the stumbling
child, projecting shame into the child as “clumsy.” This exchange
etches a sadomasochistic schema, pairing vulnerability with humili-
ation, into the child’s relational psyche. Such an outcome is an
example of projective shame, because it involves the child’s projective
identification with the disowned shame of a sadistic parent. Such a
child might compulsively replay a similar sadomasochistic dynamic in
future relationships in adulthood. When, on the other hand, the child
of a self-absorbed narcissist stumbles while learning to walk, the par-
ent might be staring off into space, or looking on with no visible reac-
tion at all. This form of parental neglect creates a different sort of
shame wound in the child, not stemming from toxic merger with an
aggressive parent’s hateful qualities, but rather from a deep and abid-
ing sense of not mattering to anyone. This type of wound, in my view,
might instigate schizoid shame—a hatred and banishment of one’s
own vulnerable identity. Such a child develops an inwardly directed
masochism, in which the very right to exist as a full person is radically
questioned. Perhaps, in this case, the only way of hoping to feel as
538 STEPHANIE LEWIN, Ph.D.

good as—or even superior—to others, is to be as invisible and hidden

away as possible. Roots of this hiding-away process, what I call schiz-
oid shame, can be found in different theoretical foundations within
psychoanalysis.

Relational, Interpersonal, and Self-Psychological Roots of

Schizoid Shame

Relational and interpersonal theorists view shame as an unendurable

emotion that the psyche will do almost anything to avoid. Bromberg
(2001, p. 907), for example, posits that experiences of shame are disso-
ciated into discrete, episodic memories that are excluded from the
individual’s self-narrative. Dissociated shame, like an Achilles’ heel in
the psyche, requires vigilant protection, perhaps via retreat into schiz-
oid isolation. Mitchell (2000, p. 719) asserts that unbearable guilt
impels the individual to create masochistic systems of reparation for
shameful “crimes,” entering a twilight of self-banishment in order to
avoid ownership of hurting another. In both cases, unbearable affect
might often be denied via schizoid withdrawal.
Self-psychological theory can also provide a basis for schizoid
shame. Rather than describing the impact of shame upon psychic
structures, self-psychology focuses upon the original source of shame:
caregiver misattunement (Morrison, 1994, p. 24). A poorly attuned
caregiver creates in a child a deep sense of depletion and consequent
shame. Both Jacoby (1993, p. 422) and Schore (1991, p. 194) also
assert that pervasive lack of parental responsiveness will magnify vul-
nerability, unleashing a flood of shame in the child. Morrison (1994, p.
24) and Orange (2008, p. 85) explore psychic defenses against the tox-
icity of shame, asserting that patients with a high degree of shame
deny it by manifesting rage or bitterness. Orange (2008, p. 94)
explores the impact of these emotions when the analyst’s own shame
interacts with that of the patient, causing the analyst to isolate in a
self-protective cocoon and thus disappear as a subject in the transfer-
ence. All of these relational and self-psychological theories connect
shame with a type of negation (Green, 2002, p. 631): negation of
memories, of concepts, even of oneself. Schizoid shame is a version of
this disappearing act. The sufferer of schizoid shame compulsively
embodies a barren state of no-oneness, existing in compliance with the
SCHIZOID SHAME 539

demands of the internalized, self-absorbed and imperious, narcissistic

parent. To be no-one is therefore to be perfect.
Consciously, the sufferer of schizoid shame feels inherently defect-
ive, and longs to attain a hollow state of perfection: a state wherein all
interpersonal dynamics are beyond the reach of conflict and criticism
(a reflection of the narcissistic parent’s aversion to authenticity and
conflict in relationships). Yet of course this is impossible to achieve. In
this sense, the odds are stacked against the sufferer of schizoid shame:
despite all efforts, it will not be possible to eliminate all signs of inter-
personal need or desire. In the therapeutic setting, as the analyst
encourages schizoid patients to express themselves, they may undergo
deep and paranoia-inducing experiences of shame.

Internalized Objects and a Null Ideal

In exploring the clinical manifestation of schizoid shame, it will be
helpful to further discuss the relationship between shame and the
ideal. Whether shame is adaptive or traumatic, it is invariably fueled
by an uncomfortable sense that one has fallen below an ideal version
of oneself. “Shame is about the self; it is thus a ‘narcissistic’ reaction,
evoked by a lapse from the ego ideal” (Lewis, 1971, p. 427). Freud
(1914) asserts that the ego ideal is a generalized derivative of the par-
ent-child relationship. A primal and early sense of one’s own perfec-
tion is fostered by the mother, who intuits her infant’s needs with
extreme care, creating the fantasy of a perfect self in a perfect world.
The infant, contained by the mother’s care, need not strive and fail for
him or herself within the confines of time and space, and can there-
fore, in the ego ideal, maintain the illusion of perfection (Freud, 1914,
p. 94; Lacan, 1953, p. 14; Winnicott, 1958, p. 417).
Object relations theory expands on this concept of the ego ideal, re-
contextualizing it as an internalized object and, in a sense, customizing
it to make room for the unique imprint of each individual’s historical
objects. Klein describes the ego ideal as an intensification of the first
internalized good object, the mother’s breast (Klein, 1946, p. 103). This
internalized version of the ego ideal becomes a refuge for the subject
during periods of anxiety over events/relationships in the external
world. Fairbairn (1963, p. 224) also defined the ideal object, or ego
ideal, as an internalized object that manages existential anxiety by
blocking the subject’s awareness of badness in the external object.
540 STEPHANIE LEWIN, Ph.D.

And years later, Ferro (2002) asserted that “The ego ideal … develops
out of idealized internal objects that reflect real objects onto which the
child’s good feelings and valued parts of the self have been projected”
(p. 478).
With good enough experiences of the external object, the ego ideal
becomes a supportive internalized object: The standard it sets will
dovetail with that which is good for the individual’s development. For
example, as Rothstein and Caston (1984, p. 607) assert, “The patient
attempts to maintain the relationship with a powerful, significant pre-
oedipal object by internalizing it, and relates to his ego ideal as if it
were an actual object … the patient behaves as if an internal structure
were looking on approvingly.” Yet when the ego ideal evolves along
with the impact of an aggressive or self-absorbed caregiver, it becomes
a toxic internal object, a source of judgmental, destructive energy
within the psyche. “A tyrannical ego ideal may develop … one that is
pathologically imperious and insistent on high goals that are impos-
sible to attain” (Ferro, 2002, p. 478). Traumatizing early caregivers can
thus disfigure the nature and the functioning of the ego ideal as an
internalized object.
Aggressively sadistic caregivers lead to a destructive ego ideal.
Perhaps, on the other hand, self-absorbed caregivers, lead to an absent
ego ideal, or a null-ideal. Bollas, in his concept of the fascist state of
mind (1992, p. 193), alludes to this idealization of emptiness (wherein
any and all mental content is experienced as repulsive and perverse).
In a state of schizoid shame, to be perfect (or achieve one’s null-ideal)
means to be no-one. A superior sense of self, in this case, is built
upon the negative (Green, 2002, p. 631)—an unconscious devotion to
non-meaning—an erasure of intersubjective reality and the emotions it
evokes. Such erasure does not occur without a price. As Green (2002,
p. 637) puts it, the negative “aims at the subject’s self-impoverishment
nearly to annihilation.” No-thing becomes the child’s only something—
a tenuous, numbing connection to an absent parent (Green, 1986b,
p. 142).

Transference/Countertransference: Schizoid Shame

Those who suffer schizoid shame do not realize, in elaborated

thoughts, their need to be no-one. Their magical thinking is not con-
scious, and, as patients in therapy, both patient and therapist are likely
SCHIZOID SHAME 541

to assume that what is wanted is the very opposite (since the goal of
therapy is to become someone, or, to become more truly oneself).
Schizoid shame, and the negative force that drives it, is easy for the
therapist to miss because it blankets transference dynamics. In contrast,
projective shame stimulates clear, often sadomasochistic, transference
dynamics that are obvious manifestations of paranoid-schizoid process.
For example, in a transference characterized by projective shame, the
patient might be the “weak” one (identified with his childhood self)
while the therapist is the “powerful” one (identified with his narcissis-
tic parent). Conversely, the therapist might be “weak” (introjecting the
patient’s child self), while the patient is “powerful” (identified with the
narcissistic parent). This either/or dynamic is a form of complementar-
ity (Benjamin, 2004, p. 5)—a transference construct wherein the dyad
is locked into a predictable and maladaptive symbiosis. Schizoid
shame, on the other hand, generates a different type of either/or com-
plementarity: that of someone vs. no-one—wherein the “no-one” of the
pair (whether it is the therapist or the patient at any given moment)
negates one’s own emotional experience, rendering it invisible to the
“someone” of the pair.
I will try to illustrate schizoid shame in two case presentations,
wherein both patients’ desire to become someone, stimulated by the
analytic process (and challenging to the numbing impact of self-neg-
ation brought by schizoid shame) initially caused them much discom-
fort. As I grew to recognize the source of this discomfort (enslavement
to the null-ideal), their need to be no-one began very slowly to dimin-
ish, enabling us to find, together in the transference, the underlying
presence of projective shame—enacted in masochistic subservience to
an unloving other.
This process of recognition of the null-ideal began with my
acknowledging my own identification with these patients’ childhood
experiences of thankless servitude. In the initial phases of both treat-
ments, I resisted this awareness, disappearing into a schizoid aspect of
my own personality—a hyper-rational mother. I became mechanistic-
ally nurturing, yet unattuned to the emotional currents rushing beneath
the surface in each treatment’s transference. This shield of hyper-
rationality cut me off from my reverie (Bion, 1962, p. 306). Losing
touch with my associative enjoyment of metaphor, I became a verit-
able therapist-machine, dispensing constructive, helpful words. I
542 STEPHANIE LEWIN, Ph.D.

incessantly handed each patient advice and support that they had trou-
ble using—both because it encouraged them to defy their null-ideal
and become someone, and because it would have acknowledged that I
was someone to them.
After several years of such work, despite its schizoid aspect, both
patients had made clear improvements in their lives. Yet, as each
patient progressed toward becoming someone, each clung more
fiercely than ever to self-erasure. As this frustrating war of attrition
between their progress and their self-limitation grew more glaring, my
schizoid countertransference began to diminish. I became aware of my
own mounting feelings of anxiety, hopelessness, and shame. I began
to feel like a tiny puppet dancing before the fixed enormity of their
impenetrability, with only my feeble advice as my prop. Such gut-level
experiences of shame pushed me past the limits of my own schizoid,
hyper-rational self. I was struck by a jarring realization: I’d been des-
perately trying to feel relevant to both patients, and they, as their nar-
cissistic parents had done, were continually rejecting me as a separate
person. For the whole time, I had been no-one to them.
This realization hit hard, making room for me to identify with each
patient’s vulnerable self. Now experiencing a parallel shame, I began
to engage with both patients differently—sharing associations that had
finally begun to arise in my reverie. This more fluid, associative, and
empathic approach provided authentic images that made it possible
for both patients to begin to confront their own primal, projective
shame, as well as to begin acknowledging a sense of self apart from
their narcissistic parent.

Philip

Philip is a 45-year old architect who began treatment suffering from

chronic, obsessional attacks of self-doubt. He complained of always
being stuck in his own head, caught up in a search for the objective
truth about himself: Was he good or bad? Right or wrong? What did he
really want vs. what did he think he should want? Philip felt he could
not pin down the nature of these truths, and this not-knowing fueled a
sense of self-loathing that had been with him for as long as he could
remember. When Philip looked to others for answers to his not-know-
ing, he was unable to believe them. It was a rare thing when feedback
from the outside world helped Philip to feel optimistic.
SCHIZOID SHAME 543

In the opinion of others, Philip seemed a big success in love and

work: He was an architect in a reputable firm, and he was married to
a beautiful woman—a retired model. Yet, no matter what the world
reflected to Philip about himself, he remained convinced of his own
mediocrity, and perpetually doubted his own instincts. Philip’s painful,
obsessive self-questioning waxed and waned, but ultimately always
seemed to ruin things. When treatment began, Philip believed that his
professional life was, in an existential sense, a flop. He had also built
up a good deal of resentment toward his wife, who he increasingly
saw as cold in her beauty, and unable to give of herself. She, for her
part, felt that Philip was fault-finding and never happy. It was clear to
them both that their marriage was not working, and both were accept-
ing the idea of moving on without each other. And, notably, Philip
seemed to be more distraught by his own self-questioning than he was
by the breakup of his marriage.

Childhood

Philip was an only child, raised by a single mother. Since his teenage
years, Philip had thought of his mother as always chasing fantasies—
unhappy with life as it was. He never knew his father, who’d left with-
out turning back when Philip was a baby. Philip never got a clear
story of why this happened, but—according to his mother—Philip’s
father was the lowest of the low. Mother and son lived in a small
apartment in Minneapolis, where she worked as a mid-level bureaucrat
in a government office. Philip described himself as a child who was “a
mama’s boy” with a minimal social life. The child Philip found relief
from his isolation in the company of his uncle, a well-off family man
who was Philip’s life-raft during those years. Philip was always aware
of a stark contrast between his uncle’s vibrant, successful world and
he and his mother’s more diminished scope. Attaching to his uncle as
a father-figure, Philip became a part of that man’s family and found a
sense of safety there. But then, during Philip’s early teens, his mother
argued bitterly with his uncle, pulling Philip away from the entire fam-
ily. At the time, Philip had no choice but to take this huge loss of a
father-figure in stride—accepting it as an unavoidable fact of his child-
hood. But later on, during treatment, Philip found his rage growing.
He finally began to verbalize, both to me and to himself, a sense of
outrage toward his mother for depriving him of everything that he had
544 STEPHANIE LEWIN, Ph.D.

cared about, and an awareness that, long ago, he had decided to never
really forgive her for it. Yet he was also unable to get rid of the rage,
seeming instead to choke on it and helplessly wish it
would evaporate.
In Philip’s view, his mother was a woman with grandiose fanta-
sies—about her own stature and about how perfect she thought Philip
should be. Aside from her insensitivity to Philip’s pain about his uncle,
she was also always complaining about the imperfections of life. Philip
remembered obsessive monologues over his small mistakes during his
childhood years (the accidental breaking of a glass, or the leaving of a
dish in the sink). It was, he believed, as if she wanted to wipe away
any signs of his immaturity even while he was very young. Philip felt
she needed him to be her perfect, angelic boy, slated for brilliant suc-
cess in his future. He believed that such grandiose expectations
revealed a basic indifference on his mother’s part as to who he actu-
ally was. It seemed to Philip that her deepest need was for him to
reflect back an idealized version of herself.

Transference

From the start of treatment, I was distressed by Philip’s lonely self-tor-

ture, and wanted to save him from himself. It seemed he was caught
in an endless feedback loop—or locked in a black box. Although he
was very polite and seemed to be pleased with our work, he rejected
almost all of my ideas. I did not, at the time, experience Philip’s
impenetrability as rejecting. Instead, I kept trying to get through to
him, generating what I hoped were powerful interpretations. In retro-
spect it became clear that, with all of this activity on my part, I was
approaching Philip as if he were a puzzle that needed solving—so that
I could tell him “who he was,” based on my own analyses. I was not,
at this point in the treatment, conscious of any sense of futility, and
was defended against relating to the rawness of Philip’s pain and self-
hatred. In a kind of manic denial, I tried too hard and over-interpreted.
For example, I suggested to Philip that his mother’s disinterest in his
true self had formed the basis of his own self-questioning. And, alter-
natively, I suggested that his extreme, unmetabolized rage at his
mother—for robbing him of his uncle—had blocked his capacity to
use anger productively. Such interpretations were plausible enough,
but Philip was not ready to use them. And I, in my hyper-rational
SCHIZOID SHAME 545

countertransference identity, was not ready to see that this was so.
Philip’s null-ideal (representing his mother and embodied in his con-
stant self-questioning) concealed a deeper dynamic—in which my
thinking, as well as his, was under meaning-destroying assault.
And yet, interspersed throughout our laborious sessions were brief
moments when my words actually reached Philip and helped him to
feel grounded within his own mind. Usually this happened when we
were speaking about his earliest memories, and at such moments
Philip would relax, a brilliant smile of relief crossing his face. These
moments instantly quieted his abrasive self-questioning with the sud-
denness of water quelling a lit match. Philip referred to these moments
as our “nodes of meaning.” Yet Philip’s relief, so significant and won-
derful, was always brief, evaporating and leaving him once again to
the torment of his self-questioning. In reaction I found myself working
ever harder just to trigger his brilliant smile of relief, as if I were a con-
ditioned mouse in a lab. Yet I did not take note of this as an anxious
countertransference enactment, continuing blithely on as the hyper-
rational mother.
As our work continued past its first years, our nodes of meaning
became fewer and farther between. Now each session was 45 minutes
of hard labor—making it impossible for Philip and me to avoid our
darker and more visceral emotions. We were both aware that, as had
happened in Philip’s marriage, our relationship seemed to be sinking
into a dark and anxious pool of uncertainty. And, at the bottom of this
pool, frustration and turbulence began to grow, making our interac-
tions more charged—distinctly less “rational.” As I emerged from my
own, schizoid countertransference cocoon, I finally began to see that
Philip’s self-questioning was not a cry for help, but rather a way of
attacking any potential for meaning within the treatment.
Still, despite our mutual sense that the treatment was bogged down,
I was beginning to notice that Philip was improving in his external
world. He found a new role for himself at his firm that better show-
cased his talent, and he met a new girlfriend—one with whom he had
a deeper connection based in kindness, humor and understanding—a
connection that had never existed between himself and his ex-wife.
Still, despite these undoubtedly positive developments, Philip clung to
his irritability with a sense of despair that increasingly struck me as
grandiose. His work, he still felt, was basically meaningless.
546 STEPHANIE LEWIN, Ph.D.

His girlfriend, he was certain, would at some point recognize that he

was a zero and would leave him. Or if not, he believed, there must be
something wrong with her for staying with him.
As my frustration over finding a way to connect with Philip became more
conscious, my internalized, hyper-rational mother, already faltering, fully
relinquished her domination. I became ever more vulnerable to the toxic
feelings of Philip’s own object world and began to ask myself a key question
about Philip: Why was he so very stubborn? I was becoming more cognizant
of my own, less “nice” feelings about him—frustration, fear, anxiety and,
importantly, a shameful sense of being useless to him. I began to dread
Philip’s self-questioning, just as I might dread a lurking enemy in the room. I
began to recognize that Philip’s self-questioning was making me feel like a
zero—as if the self-questioning were itself a judging entity or, as I later
thought of it—a null-ideal. These emerging perceptions finally helped me to
attach meaning to my more recent, deep emotional plunge into Philip’s
object world. I began to see that my intense need to be of value for the
despairing, frustrating Philip was a transference-version of Philip’s own child
self, desperate to please his grandiose and despairing mother. My transfer-
ence identification with child-Philip, now that the null-ideal was diminished,
grew clear. My reverie and associations, triggered by new awareness that
Philip and I were merged in his childhood identity, began to flow.

Session

Philip, as he often did, was describing with zealous intensity how all
in his life was hopeless. No longer the hyper-rational mother, I found
myself becoming frustrated with him, and suddenly thought that he
was determined to be a professional mourner of his own life. And at
this moment—with a sense of things snapping into focus—I had in my
mind a metaphor. And I asked Philip—why did he feel the need to
hang black crepe over everything in his life?
In asking this rather provocative question, and in using imagery, I
was struck by a sense of return to my usual self as an analyst,
yet alongside this, a fear of the unknown. How would Philip respond?
Stopped in his tracks, Philip looked at me with what seemed like both
sadness and anger. I asked if he was okay. He shrugged. I asked him
if he could say how he felt about my comment. He said that he dis-
agreed with what I’d said, because it was impossible to mourn for
someone you’ve never loved.
SCHIZOID SHAME 547

SL: But why do you find so little to love in yourself?

Philip scowled at me.
P: Why should I love anything about the person she raised me to be?
A frightened little worm.
Philip said this with such disgust that I experienced his self-hatred
like a slicing knife. He was putting a basic truth into words: he was
his mother’s little worm, and this was a disgusting thing to be. His
shame was palpable. And I realized that, until now, I had not been
open to this shame, despite it being there the whole time. And with
this realization I felt ashamed as well. How could I have been
so blind?
SL: I’m sorry Philip. By mentioning black crepe, I was just trying to say
that sometimes it seems like you throw yourself into mourning your
life even before it’s over.
Philip lets out a deep breath. I think that he feels both annoyed and
relieved by my apology.
P: Look, I want to be how you want me to be—someone who values
himself. But how do I figure out what I want to be if I am always
thinking about what other people want me to be?
SL: I get why you are frustrated with me. I always just try to stop you
from hating yourself—but actually I’m not really here for you when I
do that. I feel silly for so often not seeing this!
Philip smiles.
P: I don’t want you to feel bad!
SL: But why not?
Philip found this question to be hysterically funny. He began laugh-
ing with his brilliant smile and visibly relaxed.
P: Sorry, but for some reason, I find it hysterical that you would feel
bad about making me feel bad.
SL: I think I get it. You’re used to feeling like a servant. A nobody.
P: Nobody, yes. Maybe lately I have been seeking and finding comfort
in being the ‘no person’—like last week when I talked about wanting
a job that’s as close to mindless as it is possible for an architect to be.
SL: Right. And I think that this no-person is the only thing standing
between you and all your pain … all your shame.
548 STEPHANIE LEWIN, Ph.D.

P: Yeah, it’s a bit ridiculous to be an errand boy. In general, I was her

facilitator. She would get me involved in her fights with her boy-
friend—she would tell me he was bad and then I would be mad at
him. Since he cared about me this would get him to do what she
wanted even when he didn’t want to.
SL: I think your mother needed her sense of the world to be upheld
for her by other people. By her boyfriend. By you. You don’t get to
have your own reactions. You have to serve her. You have to be the
empty vessel for her to fill. But, in fact, you are a separate person.
Philip looks at me with an expression torn between distrust
and sadness.
P: That’s awkward. And kind of sad. Such a simple thing.
SL: Yes, I know it is, but I think it’s still true.

Summary

Philip’s self-questioning reflected the dictate of his null-ideal: that he

distrusts his own subjectivity in order to be a better servant to his
mother. The self-questioning, in this sense, was a relentless taskmaster
within his psyche. Our occasional “nodes of meaning,” as well as my
encouraging (even if hyper-rational) presence, helped Philip to want
more from life. Yet, despite improvements, his self-questioning
increased—fighting hard to keep his psyche submissive to his internal-
ized narcissistic mother. The disparity between Philip’s external life
and internal questioning became so extreme that it woke me from my
slumber. I began to experience the self-questioning for what it was—
an enforcer of deprivation. Eventually I came to see that for Philip, to
self-negate (in other words, to be the perfect servant) was his only
way to feel legitimate—and to win his underlying battle for supremacy
with his narcissistic mother.
My perception of Philip’s need to be no-one grew within the trans-
ference. Gradually I gained awareness of how negated and, in a sense,
abused I felt by Philip’s self-questioning. Within the self-questioning
was an implicit and unremitting lack of acceptance of me and every-
thing I stood for, because it represented his deeply frustrating resist-
ance to figuring anything out about himself at all! Now that the dark
night of Philip’s self-negation was disintegrating, I could see and feel
that his lack of openness to me was an identification with his mother’s
SCHIZOID SHAME 549

behavior in his childhood. So I finally began to take him seriously

when he asserted he was just like his mother. In the transference, he
certainly was. As I related to Philip’s early sense of degradation, I
came into a deeper empathy with how he often felt in the world. As
these emotional undercurrents surfaced, my thinking capacity was
jolted into a different dimension—one familiar to me and most wel-
come—the realm of metaphor. I began to work more intuitively with
images (the hanging of black crepe, for example). As these metaphors
emerged and evoked in Philip a shocked sense of recognition, his vul-
nerability was available and we were then able to fully engage with
his deeper, shame-filled servitude to his narcissistic mother.

Olivia

Olivia is 47 years old—a writer with a day job as a fact-checker for a

popular magazine. Slim, graceful and gentle, Olivia radiates kindness
and intelligence. Yet when treatment began, Olivia’s sense of self was
radically different from this charming external persona. In fact, Olivia
often felt pathetic—as if her life had never gotten off the ground. For
example, her early professional start in journalism was cut short by a
permanent case of writer’s block. Although her job as a fact-checker
was interesting enough, she did not think it special in any way.
Olivia also felt unsuccessful in her romantic relationships. She had
been briefly married in her mid-twenties to a charismatic yet unreliable
alcoholic. Her marriage began on an awful note because her new hus-
band followed an impulse to break a five-year stretch of sobriety with
a celebratory glass of champagne at their wedding toast. For obvious
reasons, his actions on the wedding night threw Olivia into a tailspin,
compromising the marriage from its very onset. He never regained
sobriety while they were together. After a few years of stress, conflict
and distrust, it was clear that the couple’s will to remain married had
disintegrated. In a manner similar to Philip, Olivia sought treatment as
her marriage was coming to an end.
From the start of our work together, I saw that Olivia needed to
express her outrage at her husband for pulling his tragic bait-and-
switch on their wedding night. Yet, instead of articulating rage to her
husband, she had withdrawn from him and collapsed into self-hatred.
To me it seemed clear that it was easier for Olivia to hate herself than
550 STEPHANIE LEWIN, Ph.D.

it was to hate him. Her self-hatred overtook her in fits of hopelessness,

which she called ‘tantrums’.
Olivia’s “tantrums” were states of agitated self-loathing in which she
berated herself, cursed herself, and sometimes even hit herself. These
tantrums had been part of her functioning since childhood. The tan-
trums were triggered whenever Olivia felt “stupid, lame and hopeless.”
In childhood, they began as despairing responses to her parent’s
encouraging her to come out of her shell. But to come out of her shell
was the last thing Olivia ever wanted to do. She fought their efforts to
encourage her the same way one would fight being thrown off a cliff.
I thought of Olivia’s tantrums as implosions of rage that she was
unable to direct at others who tried to control her. Olivia had tremen-
dous difficulty dealing forthrightly with any form of anger and conflict.
When feeling thus pressured (which was often), it was impossible for
Olivia to find her voice.

Childhood

Olivia grew up an only child. Her parents, though loving, were

troubled. Her father was an alcoholic with a series of failed businesses.
Her mother struggled with depression and extreme anxiety. While her
father never seemed to be a full adult, his kindness and buoyancy
were generally uplifting for Olivia, at least in a superficial way. Her
mother, albeit more capable and responsible, was very difficult to han-
dle because she was often consumed by dark, anxious moods. And,
for as long as Olivia could remember, these moods were reflected in
her own behavior—in her “tantrums”—as well. In fact, Olivia couldn’t
remember a time when she wasn’t in a state of anxious turmoil.
Olivia’s anxiety and self-loathing evolved into an eating disorder at
age 13. She remembered that, almost as soon as she’d stopped eating,
her self-hating tantrums radically diminished. In fact, it was the first
time Olivia could remember feeling safe and good inside. At the worst
point of her anorexia, Olivia’s weight dipped below 90 lbs. The
extremity of this situation brought her parents out of their self-absorp-
tion, and they came through for Olivia, sparing no expense to find
good treatment for her.
Despite being aware that her parents were desperate for her to eat,
Olivia could not do so because, at that time, she equated her empty stom-
ach with a heightened state of goodness—with being less mean and
SCHIZOID SHAME 551

angry. (When I became anorexic I told myself that I had become nicer …
more perfect, too pure and empty to give voice to bad or angry
thoughts … ) Olivia’s empty stomach had thus become for her a source of
peace and containment. Ultimately, however, Olivia worked with psy-
chologists and nutritionists, coming out of her anorexia at age 18. As
Olivia began to eat normally, her cherished sense of peace and contain-
ment evaporated. Her inner voice of self-loathing, telling her that she
must always “do the exact right thing in the moment” (her null-ideal)
returned, as did her tantrums. A sense of herself as “living to serve”
became a core element of Olivia’s identity. As she stated, “I feel most com-
fortable when I am in the role of listening and helping rather than being
in the spotlight. I’m just so familiar with the feeling of talking to someone
and trying to be present, but instead turning into a Yes Man.”
Olivia was extremely uncomfortable when she had thoughts or feel-
ings that were not immediately agreed with or validated by another.
For example, Olivia once said, "If someone says that a person I dislike
is a jerk, I’m like, Phew! Now it’s okay for me to think so too!” This
sense of disenfranchisement made for constricted friendships and
romantic relationships. Olivia found herself eager to please her friends
and boyfriends, yet also resenting them for having such power over
her. In this way Olivia tormented herself with a slow-burning frustra-
tion that was as impossible to quench as it was to express to others.
When lost within her self-loathing, Olivia became unreachable—
taken over by a sense of futility—as if it were impossible for her to
ever win. Winning, in this sense, meant having her view of reality take
precedence in relationships with others. But Olivia felt locked in an
unwinnable, zero-sum game with everyone. It followed, therefore, that
Olivia’s only recourse was to give up on feeling recognized and under-
stood—with as little trouble as possible.
Olivia’s adult relationship with her mother was decidedly a zero-
sum game, particularly after her father’s sudden, traumatic death by
heart attack in his mid-forties, shortly after Olivia graduated from col-
lege in her early twenties. Terrified by widowhood, Olivia’s mother
was boundlessly needy, impinging upon Olivia’s time and privacy in
even the most primitive of ways. For example, Olivia received pan-
icked phone calls at all hours of day and night, as well as impatient
and relentless expectations that Olivia drop everything to give her
mother comfort. Additionally, Olivia’s mother refused to observe even
552 STEPHANIE LEWIN, Ph.D.

the most basic boundaries during their time together. For example,
whenever her mother visited, she lounged in only bra and underwear
in Olivia’s living room, or when using the bathroom would leave the
door open—despite Olivia’s repeated requests that she keep it closed.
And, to Olivia’s extreme distress, her mother at times even wet Olivia’s
bed at night when feeling too tired to get up to go to the bathroom.
In these aggressive and exhibitionistic ways, her mother acted as if
Olivia literally wasn’t there.

Transference

In the first years of treatment, Olivia’s mother was in a perpetual state

of breakdown. Olivia and I spent much time developing a vocabulary
of self-defense to keep her mother’s demands at bay. Olivia viewed
her mother as a kind of steam-roller, mowing down Olivia’s sense of
groundedness within her own life. I felt protective of Olivia, and was
outraged by descriptions of her mother’s grasping selfishness. Olivia,
though appreciative of my supportive perspective, was never able to
stand up to her mother in even the smallest of ways. Olivia’s masochis-
tic self-effacement—so firmly ensconced—was deeply disturbing to me
and, as I now see in retrospect, triggered my own schizoid, hyper-
rational aspect. I became Olivia’s tireless ‘teacher.’ Time after time she
and I discussed ways she might contain her mother’s unbounded self-
ishness with sharp, concise phrases. She even wrote them down (an
indication of dissociation that I, in my own schizoid withdrawal, did
not register as an enactment). Time and again, Olivia was unable to
use anything she’d written down. Her null-ideal—an internalized dir-
ective that forced her into being a Yes Man—made such capacity for
conflict impossible. Not heeding this, I told myself: I am lending Olivia
my voice. But I was in denial of that fact that my voice was not her
voice! Caught in an enactment, I failed to realize that, by repeatedly
giving her my words, I was exploiting the role determined by her null-
ideal: that of the Yes Man.
In spite of this general constriction in our relationship, Olivia and
I had our moments of deeper, more expansive connection. They
did not take place when Olivia was taking notes, but rather when
we laughed together. We saw irony in similar things, so when
Olivia described aspects of her world and the world around her, we
found ourselves smiling at the same moments. Although I was less
SCHIZOID SHAME 553

than optimally present from an analytic perspective, many such

moments between us provided support and warmth, stoking Olivia’s
desire to be more open, more playful, with others. She became bet-
ter equipped to assert herself, as well as to want greater success
and affirmation. During these years Olivia made strides in develop-
ing her freelance career as a writer, and, even more importantly to
her, entered into a stable relationship with her current boyfriend (a
higher functioning and more loving person than her prior boy-
friends had been).
And yet, even as Olivia grew into this calmer, sunnier life, she began
to express more, rather than less, despair and frustration with herself.
Her self-hating tantrums could still be triggered by the smallest of
things, and she continued to feel mute at the times when she most
needed to express her vulnerability honestly. The intractability of
Olivia’s self-silencing finally, like acid etching into a metal plate, began
to gnaw away at my own, hyper-rational transference shield. I began
to feel frustrated by Olivia—by her masochism and by her stubborn-
ness. Whereas I had initially thought that Olivia’s meekness reflected a
deep uncertainty, I now began to recognize in it a will of iron—a
regressive and absolute avoidance of vulnerability. And, in this new
awareness, I realized that Olivia, minus her schizoid self-effacement,
was beginning to remind me of her mother. Suddenly I perceived how
ineffectual—even how silly—it had been for me to assume that I could
(or even should!) implant my words upon this iron will of hers! To do
so would have been as impossible as it had been for Olivia to attempt
to penetrate her mother’s own indomitable will. Finally recognizing
this transference parallel, I felt ashamed of my prior blindness. My
hyper-rational complacency began to drain away. During sessions I
now felt humbled by Olivia’s stark will to be, in a sense, invisible. As
this awareness became palpable, I was finally able to identify with
Olivia’s shame. My inner dialogue became more like my usual way of
working—my emotions and associations were in play.
During a session at this time, I was taken off guard by a sharply-aris-
ing memory from my own childhood: I remembered a summer at
sleepaway camp when I was 8 years old. My bunkmates and I were
sideline spectators at a dance for teenage campers. In an attempt at a
joke, a teenage boy pulled me onto the dance floor with him.
Although the joke was not a cruel one, I felt so embarrassed by this
554 STEPHANIE LEWIN, Ph.D.

moment, that for years I couldn’t think about it without shuddering

and wishing to disappear.
The randomness of my association to my own unbounded shame
brought something vital into focus: until that moment, I had been
unable to feel how deeply Olivia longed to ease her self-hatred by dis-
appearing. She didn’t want to be perfect—she wanted to be no-one.
Or, in other words, for Olivia, to be perfect meant to be no-one. This
moment adjusted my capacity to perceive her functioning with greater
empathy. In the sessions that followed I kept this feeling and realiza-
tion close, culminating in the following interaction.

Session

Olivia is saying that she and her mother are opposites: Her mother is
an insatiable seeker of perfect care from others, while she, Olivia, is
ashamed of making even the smallest demands upon others. I ironic-
ally observe that this makes them a perfect match: Olivia is no-one just
so that her mother can be someone—a zero-sum game.
Olivia instantly tenses up. I ask what my statement had made her
think or feel. She says she’s not sure. I ask if perhaps my comment
has upset her.
Olivia thoughtfully and slowly replies that my comment seemed
inaccurate—that, in fact, she feels like an exact copy of her mother.
As she says this, I know how important her statement is. In all our
years together, Olivia has never articulated this connection.
SL: So interesting—because you were just talking about how you
are opposites!
O: I know, but actually that didn’t feel real to me as I was saying it. I
mean, I know it’s true, but it doesn’t feel true.
A: What does feel true? Can you try to put it in words?
Olivia thinks for a long moment.
O: The times I feel like I’m her are when I feel needy of other people.
SL: What do you mean by needy?
O: I don’t know … needing support, or needing company, or reality
checks … although, I suppose it’s ok to sometimes need help.
SL: But it seems to me that whenever you act like a regular human
being, you wrestle with a lot of shame.
SCHIZOID SHAME 555

O: Yes, oddly that makes sense.

SL: I wish I’d seen that sooner!
O: (Laughing uncomfortably) No, don’t say that!
SL: But why not, if it’s true? It’s my way of telling you I’m sorry for not
getting how really bad the shame can get.
O: Okay, then … To be honest, so many times, and still it happens
sometimes, your advice would feel like this terrible thing that I had to
do, but felt unable to. If you gave me an idea, I would think, “Is it
going to be me who is going to say this? But I didn’t want to
be resentful.
SL: But why wouldn’t you feel resentment about that?
O: (Laughing), I don’t want to be mad at you!
SL: You are letting me off the hook that easily?
O: Maybe. But it’s just that, compared to what I’m used to with my
mother, you were easy! To me, you don’t seem needy. That was
always the most awful thing. Her neediness was so intense. And, of
course, whenever I tried to speak about my own stuff, my needs, she
would glaze over.
Now that Olivia has begun, she starts to speak quickly—pushing
into words things she has not felt able to say before.
O: Sometimes my mother will say, “When you get older, life gets
pretty scary.” That’s such a dark thing to me. Like it’s a pronounce-
ment about how my life will be. I want to stop her from saying stuff
like that. So I always try to keep her happy—if she’s happy,
she’s quiet.
SL: To keep her happy you have to limit yourself.
O: Ugh, I really don’t feel like myself when she is visiting. I feel I’m
fighting off whatever internal drama she is feeling, and it’s just
so horrible!
SL: Can you try to describe what’s horrible about the dramas?
O: It’s what I sense is going on inside her head. And it scares me for
me—a fear that kind of lurks. I think of it during those weird tantrums.
Actually, when a tantrum comes on, the whole time I’m telling myself
that I am going to wind up being just like her!
SL: Olivia, that’s so important. I’m glad you can finally say it out loud
and to me.
556 STEPHANIE LEWIN, Ph.D.

O: Right. It’s like I hadn’t exactly made that thought clear to myself
until just now.
SL: By saying it, you become more separate from the power of the
thought—and more separate from her.
O: Maybe. And actually, guess what happened this morning? I looked
in the mirror when I was getting ready for work, and I actually
thought, “Not bad!” And then I thought, “Is this the woman that other
people see?”
Olivia and I laugh together.
O: It’s odd, these moments of … freedom!

Summary

For Olivia, to be like her mother was the most awful thing she could
imagine. Yet she felt like a carbon copy of her mother (although she
rarely acknowledged this perception in worded thoughts). Assuming
the role of Yes Man—obeying her null-ideal—meant that she did not
have to deal with the horror of being sucked into the vacuum of her
mother’s identity. Being the Yes Man also gave Olivia hope that she
might not be vanquished by her mother’s rejection of all forms of dis-
sent –that she could clear a path toward being the opposite of what
her mother was. But ultimately this did not work. The Yes Man was
no more than a disappearing act, making it all the easier for Olivia
lose herself—to conflate her mother’s pathological neediness with
her own normal need for love and connection. As Olivia began to
understand that her desire for love was not the same as her mother’s
narcissistic exploitation, she began to feel less ashamed of her own
needs—figuring out, slowly but surely, that she was entitled to be
loved. She began to see that her own approach to love and intimacy
was not malignantly narcissistic—not callous to the needs and feelings
of others. Realizing this, she felt worthier to be loved for herself.
While Olivia had been a Yes Man, her relationships were narrow
and constrained. This constraint extended to our own relationship.
Despite clear signs of enactment—her note-taking, or her unwilling-
ness to enact the advice that she herself repeatedly requested—I
remained serenely above the transference fray for a long time. In my
complacent hyper-rationality, I was in denial that it was my responsi-
bility to really be with Olivia in her darkness and pain. Had Olivia not
been eclipsed by her null-ideal, she might have shown her frustration
SCHIZOID SHAME 557

and despair with my unattuned, impossibly challenging advice. Still,

our relationship evolved over the years of treatment. When not in the
teacher/pupil enactment that denied our mutual frustration and help-
lessness, we shared a playful and expansive rapport. As her desire to
express herself freely was reinforced over time, the Yes Man ceased to
be Olivia’s sole internal model of behavior.
Never disagreeing—never causing any trouble—such behaviors
began to feel limiting. Olivia began to see them as an emptying-out, or
nullification, of her own personality. As she was able to understand
the severe limitations imposed by her null-ideal (the Yes Man), she
struggled to find new ways to relate honestly. And, while these
changes were taking place in Olivia’s internalized object world, her
external reality began to improve even as her urge to self-erase held
steady. As she revealed her inability to enjoy her new successes, my
schizoid complacency was shaken. Finally allowing myself to see that
we were in a sea of turmoil, I let go of my hyper-rational self and tried
to absorb the emotions of Olivia’s internal world. As her null-ideal
diminished, we began to notice ways that I was “being” Olivia, and
she was “being” her mother, in the transference.

Discussion

This article attempts to illustrate the possibility that, in some cases,

schizoid pathology is built on a childhood foundation of narcissistically
induced, traumatic shame. The narcissism under discussion is that of
self-absorption (as opposed to that of aggressive exploitation). The
self-absorbed, neglectful parent sends a clear message to the child:
your thoughts and feelings cannot reach me. Your needs displease me.
The child, feeling ashamed of his or her inherent desire to be cared
for and loved as a separate person, comes to idealize a state of self-
negation, acquiring the self-protective, schizoid symptoms of avoid-
ance and constriction.
The self-absorbed parent presents the child with a zero-sum game—
a construct that states: if one of us wins, then the other must necessar-
ily lose. And the narcissistic parent must always win. For the narcissistic
parent, the child exists for one reason only: to be of service—to be
subjugated to the parent’s will. The child’s null-ideal—an internalized
self-negater—upholds the self-absorbed, narcissistic parent’s definition
of the perfect child—that of an object with no need to ever win. The
558 STEPHANIE LEWIN, Ph.D.

null-ideal, through the force of the negative (Green, 1998, p. 649),

numbs the sensations of shame and rage that stem from being forced
into the role of perpetual loser. And, finally, the null-ideal provides an
unrealizable hope that the schizoid individual can find a way of being
as good as others—a worthwhile self.
Both Philip and Olivia were stuck in a relational riddle: was their
null-ideal a protection, or was it an imprisonment? It was both things.
Although being no-one was a protection of sorts—a numbing of their
humiliating internal reality—it also weakened them by placing them
beyond the reach of any other caring person, including me. And it
was only in the acknowledgment of shame—an emotion that coursed
through them like a vein of precious ore—that we were finally able to
authentically connect. Once the shame was conscious, then lens-like, it
heightened our focus upon what was most painful and therefore most
avoided: their sense of enslavement to and merger with their narcissis-
tic mothers.
As long as a null-ideal prevailed in their lives, Philip and Olivia
were in denial of “being” their mothers. And, as long as a null-ideal
prevailed over them in their treatments with me, my neglect of their
core emotions was reinforced. Our mutual subordination to a null-
ideal was stifling to our relationship. In their self-erasure, both patients
came to believe that my sense of who they were supposed to be was
the only way to be—a psychoanalytic zero-sum game. In the emo-
tional shut down that ensued from this zero-sum game, I lost touch
with my reverie (Bion, 1962)—with my openness to absorbing and
working with their most primitive, unconscious messaging (Birksted-
Breen, 2012, p. 819). Finally, when their emotional needs began to
outstrip the power of their null-ideal, I was forced to reach beyond
the limits of my hyper-rational self (a transference parallel to their
mothers’ narcissistic self-absorption). I shifted from magical thinking
to dream-thinking (Ogden, 2010, p. 317), thereby regaining access to
my reverie and connecting to each patient in the more creative realm
of our intersecting unconscious experience.

Reverie’s Relationship to the Negative

“Thought cannot be dissociated from pain, suffering, pleasure,

ecstasy.” This statement from Andre Green (1998, p. 655) dovetails
with what Bion’s concept of reverie makes explicit: Thinking can be
SCHIZOID SHAME 559

an overwhelming process that does not evolve by magic. In fact, it is a

process that must be gently learned, in collaboration with a more
mature other. This person is generally the mother, who—through her
reverie—joins with her child in an atmosphere of playful, associative
thinking, unhindered by excessive need for rationale or logic. The
mother’s capacity for reverie signifies that she is open to and engaged
in the child’s emotional world. Conversely, if the mother is depressed,
narcissistic, or unempathic, her reverie is withheld, and the child has
no one to receive and translate primitive perceptions into
worded thoughts.
I believe that, in the transference with Philip and Olivia, the negative
and reverie were inversely related. The stronger their urge to self-neg-
ate, the weaker the presence of my reverie. And, without reverie to
provide a roadmap to their relational unconscious, the treatments
became an unillumined forest where we lost each other and ourselves.
In so doing, I mistook what they said they wanted for what they actu-
ally wanted. With Olivia, I assumed she actually wanted to stop being
a Yes Man, when in fact the opposite was true. And with Philip I
assumed that he actually wanted to know his real self, when in fact
the opposite was true. As our process became more intersubjective, I
could finally perceive their compulsion to self-erase. And this compul-
sion was especially salient because the more their lives improved, the
harder they clung to an abject, barren self-image. Once I had per-
ceived the nature of this ellipsis in the transference, I was able to ask
myself: why is being someone so awful for these patients? Once the
proper question had been asked, primary emotion bubbled to the sur-
face and began to connect, via projective identification and reverie,
with my own emotional world—particularly my own shame. No longer
in denial of both patients’ experience—where the fixed glare of shame
had been avoided at all costs—I could see how nothing had become
their only something. I could see that, under the influence of schizoid
shame, I had been, as Cassorla (2013, p. 349) describes, “recruited by
the patient’s non-dream and came into an area of non-dreaming for
two (italics added).” Discovering the interweaving of shame and the
negative (Green, 1998) in both treatments helped me and these
patients to finally generate a creative and expansive state of dreaming-
for-two.
560 STEPHANIE LEWIN, Ph.D.

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Stephanie Lewin, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist who has been practicing in

New York City since 2001. She received her doctoral degree from the Derner
Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies, and since that time has been
publishing psychoanalytic articles on the subject schizoid pathology in clinical
work. Her viewpoint on schizoid functioning has been shaped by Andre
Green’s work on negative narcissism, and her most recent publications
concern the interaction between narcissistic parenting and schizoid
symptomatology.