the schizoid individual who becomes a patient does so often because of the twin motivations of loneliness and longing. This type of patient believes that some kind of connection and attachment is possible and is well suited to psychotherapy. The psychotherapist, however, may approach the schizoid patient with a sense of therapeutic pessimism, if not nihilism, and may misread the patient by believing that the patient's wariness is indifference and that caution is coldness. Depersonalization Guntrip describes depersonalisation as a loss of a sense of identity and individuality. Depersonalization is a dissociative defence, often described by the schizoid patient as "tuning out", "turning off", or as the experience of a separation between the observing and the participating ego. It is experienced most profoundly when anxieties seem overwhelming and is a more extreme form of loss of affect: whereas the loss of affect is a more chronic state in schizoid personality disorder, depersonalisation is an acute defence against more immediate experiences of overwhelming anxiety or danger. Regression Guntrip defined regression as "Representing the fact that the schizoid person at bottom feels overwhelmed by their external world and is in flight from it both inwards and as it were backwards to the safety of the metaphorical womb." Such a process of regression encompasses two different mechanisms: inward and backwards. Regression inward speaks to the magnitude of the reliance on primitive forms of fantasy and self-containment, often of an autoerotic or even objectless nature. Regression backwards to the safety of the womb is a unique schizoid phenomenon and represents the most intense form of schizoid defensive withdrawal in an effort to find safety and to avoid destruction by external reality, which has been conflated with the challenging parental models faced by the subject following exit from the womb upon physical birth. The fantasy of regression to the womb is the fantasy of regression to a place of ultimate safety. Published works Schizoid Phenomena, Object-Relations, and the Self (1992). Karnac Books. Psychoanalytic Theory, Therapy, and the Self: A Basic Guide to the Human Personality in Freud, Erikson, Klein, Sullivan, Fairbairn, Hartmann, Jacobson, and Winnicott (1985). Karnac Books. Personality Structure and Human Interaction (1995). Karnac Books. Psychology for Ministers and Social Workers (1949) You and Your Nerves Mental Pain and the Cure of Souls Middle Age (with L. J. Tizard) References Further reading Hazell, J (1986). H. J. S. Guntrip: A Psychoanalytical Biography, Free Association