This chapter discusses inferential, phenomenologically oriented psychoanalytic understanding of people with schizoid tendencies. Patients with schizoid dynamics are more common than is typically thought, running the gamut from psychotically disturbed to enviably robust. The term “schizoid,” as used here, refers to the complex intrapsychic life of an introverted individual, rather than to the behavioral criteria for the DSM-5 diagnosis of schizoid personality disorder. High-functioning people with schizoid psychologies are found in the arts, the theoretical sciences, and the philosophical and spiritual disciplines. Their psychology may reflect a significant genetic predisposition toward a hypersensitive temperament and feelings of hyperpermeability. Because disruption of relationship with the few people to whom they feel authentically connected can be devastating, a common precipitant to seeking treatment is loss. Schizoid individuals can be remarkably attuned to unconscious thoughts, feelings, impulses, and nonverbal processes in others. Higher-functioning, interpersonally competent schizoid individuals tend to be attracted to psychoanalytic treatment. In psychotherapy, they can become conscious of dependent longings that stimulate defensive withdrawal and aware of a hunger for recognition of their subjectivity. A successful therapy involves the elaboration and acceptance of the self in the presence of an accepting, nonintrusive, responsive therapist. A therapist’s judicious self-disclosure can catalyze the therapy with schizoid clients because it may validate their subjective experience, which has often been dismissed as incomprehensible. Therapists must be aware, however, of the tendency of patients with schizoid dynamics to use the professional relationship as a substitute for developing intimate attachments in their daily life.