"...withdrawal, emotional aloofness, hyporeactivity (emotional flatness), sex without emotional involvement, segmentation and partial involvement (lack of interest and commitment to things outside oneself), fixation on oral-stage issues, regression, infantilism and depersonalisation. These, of course, are many of the same designations that Lasch employs to describe the culture of narcissism. Thus, it appears, that it is not misleading to equate narcissism with schizoid disorder." [Page 19] We have dwelt elsewhere in this book on the developmental phases of the narcissist and on the psychodynamics of narcissistic development, its causes and reactive patterns (see the FAQs "The Narcissist's Mother", "More on the Development of the Narcissist" and "Narcissism - The Psychopathological Default"). Still, it is worthwhile to study the theoretical foundations of the comparison between narcissism and the schizoid disorder. The first to seriously consider this similarity, if not outright identity, was Melanie Klein. She broke ranks with Freud in that she believed that we are born with a fragile, easily fragmentable, weak and unintegrated Ego. The most primordial human fear is the fear of disintegration (death), according to Klein. Thus, the infant is forced to employ primitive defence mechanisms such as splitting, projection and introjection to cope with this fear (actually, with the result of aggression generated by the Ego). The Ego splits and projects this part (death, disintegration, aggression). It does the same with the life-related, constructive, integrative part of itself. The result of all these mechanics is to view the world as either "good" (satisfying, complying, responding, gratifying) - or bad (frustrating). Klein called it the good and the bad "breasts". The child then proceeds to introject (internalise and assimilate) the good object while keeping out (=defending against) the bad objects. The good object becomes the nucleus of the forming Ego. The bad object is felt as fragmented. But it has not vanished, it is there. The fact that the bad object is "out there", persecutory, threatening - gives rise to the first schizoid defence mechanisms, foremost amongst them the mechanism of "projective identification" (so often employed by narcissists). The infant projects parts of himself (his organs, his behaviours, his traits) unto the bad object. This is the famous Kleinian "paranoid-schizoid position". The Ego is split. This is as terrifying as it sounds but it allows the baby to make a clear distinction between the "good object" (inside him) and the "bad object" (out there, split from him). If this phase is not transcended the individual develops schizophrenia and a fragmentation of the self.