Schizoid speech

Author — A.P. Egides. The book «How to understand people, or the Psychological drawing of personality»

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​The schizoid has “porridge” in his mouth. Not the same as hyperthym — he speaks quickly and does not finish the phrases, they are confused, they overlap one another, but he articulates the words more or less well. The schizoid is bad with articulation, which causes poor diction. Intonation is often inadequate to the content of the statement. Plus, schizoid speech is replete with parasitic words, introductory words, participial and participial phrases, compound and compound sentences. Plus, he often throws a phrase and starts a new one, he changes the plan of the whole statement. Plus, a tongue twister is often observed with the repetition of certain phrases, words, syllables. And along with the tongue twister — inadequate slowdowns and pauses when pronouncing words. In a word, the speech is inarticulate, confused, inconsistent, «choking», tongue-tied. As a result, it is difficult to understand what the person is saying.

It all seems to stem from insecurity. A person is afraid that they will kill him, they will not understand. This is not yet a stuttering, but already a logo-neurosis. Although it does not reach the speech therapist. Yes, and it is unlikely that a speech therapist will help here.

The schizoid is often difficult to understand also because he is a slave to the terminology he has mastered, he is shackled by it, cannot get out of it. He does not explain the terms: this would require additional efforts. An inaccessible style of speech is imposed on the interlocutor. As a result, communication with the environment is very bad.

All this is especially evident when reading poetry. Here, a failure in logical stresses is also added. In a poem, rhythm and rhymes do not cancel logical stresses. But it is difficult for a schizoid to combine both together. And so, on a subconscious level, of course, he ignores logical stresses, emphasizing formal rhythmic stresses and rhymes. It gives the impression of unnaturalness. To imagine how schizoids read poetry, you can listen to recordings of famous schizoid poets: Andrei Voznesensky, Robert Rozhdestvensky, Joseph Brodsky … Moreover, if Voznesensky feels the brightness borrowed from hysteroids, then with all the depth of Brodsky’s poems he read them rather monotonously.

The speech of the schizoid is accompanied by inadequate facial expressions. This is paramimia — a term denoting the inadequacy of facial expressions to the content of speech. Actually, it’s a psychiatric term again. But it also fits schizoid facial expressions. “Para-”, as you know, is “about”. That is, the facial expressions are “not at the cash desk”, but “about”. And indeed, the schizoid often has a glued fixed smile, and at the same time goggled eyes, or a glance from under his brows, or raised eyebrows, like Pierrot’s, or a tick. It happens that the face is simply inactive — this is hypo-mimia.

I, as usual, exaggerated here. All together and to such a degree of severity, this is observed in schizoid psychopathy. But if you remove the exaggerations, you can get an accentuation or personality pattern.

Gesticulation in a schizoid is either almost absent, or his gestures just do not correspond to the content of speech, like facial expressions. For a handshake, a sluggish, flat, lifeless palm is given. Fancy wiggling of the fingers. Monotonous, in the rhythm of speech, wobbling of the brush. Variants of this “paragesticulation” are difficult to describe, but they are so characteristic that one can immediately see the difference from the unrestrained dance of the hands of hyperthymia, and from the “waltzing” of the hands of the hysteroid, and from the paranoid pointing finger, and from the restrained, stingy epileptoid gesture.