isolation
Isolation
We have all felt alone at one time or another. Many have felt alone more often than they would care to admit. And who has never felt alone in a room full of people? As humans, we are aware of our autonomy. We are aware that we are only one. One can be a very uncomfortable place to be especially when there is a pre-existing problem with boundaries in psychical life. "Existential isolation refers to an unbridgeable gulf between oneself and any other being. It refers, too, to an isolation even more fundamental - a separation of oneself and the world" (Yalom, 1980, p. 355).
Existential isolation is rooted in human existence. We are all alone in the strongest sense of the word. We are born alone and we die alone. How many times have I heard that in conversation? Too many, yet I believe that it is just another one of those sayings that protect us. If you really think about it, being a human is a lonely existence.
When we close our eyes at night, the dark screen before us reminds us how it is. The screen that no one else can ever see that precedes our dreaming sleep is only for us. Sometimes as we drift off to another level of consciousness there is a point when, for one instant, we experience a moment of our existential situation when pure existential isolation attempts to break free into our consciousness. It comes in a jolt or a feeling of falling. Certainly, there are biological explanations for this phenomenon but even if there are, there is something primal and profound about the feelings we experience for that one moment.
There are times while we are awake when existential isolation makes itself felt. Some people are aware of it more than others and some do not know it as "existential isolation" but experience it nevertheless. "Existential isolation is a vale of loneliness which has many approaches. A confrontation with death and with freedom will inevitably lead the individual into that veil" (Yalom, 1980, p.356).
When people were asked describe the experience of isolation, more time was spent on isolation than any other. Every person had many examples to reflect upon. Seventy-three percent described a feeling of alienation, of not belonging and not feeling "at home". Eighty-six percent described feeling completely disconnected from all others and the world. Forty percent described feeling disconnected from even themselves or having parts of themselves fragmented.
The pain that they all felt was very clear. Isolation had touched them all more than once and in more than one way. Forty percent said that there is more than one kind of isolation and that feeling alone while with others is much worse than being physically alone. There were many references to fear (46.2%) as well as depression (52.8%). An experience with isolation can bring immense pain and suffering. To be alone in the world, feeling that you have no connection to others, or even to yourself is intensified when around you are reminders of how "it could be". The television becomes a "friend". A friendly voice in the background that breaks up the hopeless silence. One may fall into depression and deep despair and even become suicidal.
One 26 year old woman described her on-going experience with feeling isolation and described feeling severe anger with her neighbors, to the point of hatred, because she could hear the footsteps in the hall of the apartment building familiarly walking by and past her own door. She described the reminders of her aloneness as a complete shutdown of her entire experiential self. During the day she was a B+ student, motivated and friendly and alive while at school. She looked no different than any other college student one may encounter on any given day on campus. However, when she arrived home every evening, as soon as she closed her car door it was as though all energy and motivation was immediately expelled from her Being.
This friendly and intelligent co-ed instantly metamorphosed into a depressed, worthless, disconnected nothing who knows first hand about the solitary nature of life. We think that we know people. We think that we know who is suffering and who is not. This belief only serves to keep us more isolated. We think because someone smiles they are happy. We think that because someone socializes in school or work that they do not feel that loneliness. We think that we are the only one who suffers from the somber effects of being an autonomous individual in western society. We see others and we wish we had what they have when in reality they too, cry for connection. The belief that others are somehow immune from the effects of isolation while we are not serves to help us believe that we are defective and ultimately we increase the gap between us.
As with death, there too is a denial of existential isolation. We want to believe that we could bridge the gulf that lies between ourselves and others but on a deeper level we know it is futile. It may be said that this is for philosophers to think about and not for psychologists but to deny the influence of this isolation is to set people up for great psychical pain.
This should be a concern to the psychological community because if a person has pre-existing issues concerning isolation like abandonment on one extreme to enmeshment on the other extreme then there will undoubtedly be problems in dealing with existentially related issues.
"No relationship can eliminate isolation. Each of us is alone in existence" (Yalom, 1980, p. 363). This is a hard fact for an emotionally "healthy" individual to take in. So how difficult would it be for someone with pre-existing problems with boundaries?
"If we are overcome with dread before the abyss of loneliness, we will not reach out toward others but instead we flail at them in order not to drown in the sea of existence" (Yalom, 1980, p. 367).
In our culture, there seems to be a commitment to frenzy. Everyone seems to be "sex-deprived" In a week's time I have heard three people allude to this. One said, "Oh, I haven't had sex in three days", another it was a few weeks, and still another topped it with less than 24 hours. This is tragedy? Yes it is because it describes the frenzy; the frenzy to attach and not be alone--temporarily. One rarely, if ever, hears someone say, "no one has shown me love in three days..." Someone else did say, however, that "having sex with someone is much easier than holding their hand". What? It is less frightening to have sex with someone? To strip down naked makes you less vulnerable than holding someone's hand? Unfortunately, for many there is truth to this statement. Recently, I visited the `super highway of the World Wide Web' and when I punched in `isolation' I got citations about biological research. But when I punched in `pornography', thousands and thousands of citations became available.
"The bonds that unite another person to ourselves exist only in our mind....Man is the creature that cannot emerge from himself, that knows his fellows only in himself; when he asserts the contrary, he is lying." (Marcel Proust 1913-1927 The Sweet Cheat Gone)
Proust's image is a difficult one to incorporate into our world view. However, as difficult as it is to accept that we are in fact separate in the most despairing sense of the word, we know it is true. Nevertheless, just as the threat of death is fought through defense and denial, so is existential isolation.
In Man's Search for Himself, Rollo May (1973) wrote "I can never know exactly how you see yourself and you can never know exactly how I relate to myself. This is the inner sanctum where each man must stand alone. This fact makes for much of the tragedy and inescapable isolation in human life..." (p. 94).
Erik Fromm (1941) describes the human need to be related to the world, the need to avoid aloneness. He describes perfectly the difference between being physically alone and feeling isolated and feeling completely disconnected, even when with others. The latter may or may not be unpleasant because one still may feel a connection to ideas, values or social patterns that give a feeling of "belonging". The feeling of total isolation however is to feel "morally alone". To feel there is no connection. No relatedness.
He also describes the individual isolation and powerlessness as not being in everyday awareness of most people because it is too frightening. The daily routines we all are susceptible to help to keep existential isolation out of direct view. But he goes on to say that "Whistling in the dark does not bring light" (1941, Fromm, p.34).
Fromm believed that people go one of two possible routes to combat the feeling of isolation. The first, which many people opt for, is to give up freedom completely. This can be done through a number of ways, from religion, sado-masochistic relationships, attaching oneself to a political organization etc. The other way is to progress from negative to positive freedom, which he describes thoroughly in his book, Escape from
Freedom.
Isolation is a common theme in literature. American author, Thomas Wolfe (1929), describes the intense existential isolation in his book, Look Homeward Angel:
Unfathomable loneliness and sadness crept through him: he saw his life down the solemn vista of a forest aisle, and he knew he would always be the sad one: caged in that little round of a skull, imprisoned in that beating and most secret heart, his life must always walk down lonely passages. Lost. He understood that men were forever strangers to one another, that no one ever comes really to know anyone, that imprisoned in the dark womb of our mother, we come to life without having seen her face, that we are given to her arms a stranger, and that, caught in that insoluble prison of being, we escape it never, no matter what arms may clasp us, what mouth may kiss us, what heart may warm us. Never, never, never, never, never. (p. 31)
Isolation is strongly connected to other existential issues. Many people see death as a form of isolation. Death could be imagined as the ultimate symbol for isolation. You cannot get more "alone" than in death. Freedom is also closely related to isolation. One who must choose must ultimately choose alone. Outside influences are only part of the reality. There is a point in every decision that is characterized by a sense of solitariness. Yalom supports this by saying, "to the extent that one is responsible for one's life, one is alone. Responsibility implies authorship...Deep loneliness is inherent in the act of self-creation. One becomes aware of the cosmic indifference."
Clark Moustakas (1972) begins his book, Loneliness and Love by saying, "Every once in a while I awaken to the reality that I'm all I've got" (p. 1). It is an awakening of sorts, this feeling of being alone in one's existence. It is an awakening that can cause much anxiety.
The fear of existential isolation is the driving force behind many interpersonal relationships...On the one hand, one must learn to relate to another without giving way to the desire to slip out of isolation by becoming part of that other. But one must also learn to relate to another without reducing the other to a tool, a defense against isolation. (Yalom, 1980, p. 363)
Nineteenth century philosopher, Immanuel Kant, said that no human being should be treated as a means to an end, regardless of the value of that end. A person's inherent value and worth far surpasses any ends that may be achieved by using that person as a tool or a `means’. There is a delicate balance between reducing our feelings of isolation without reducing those with whom we attempt connection.
In The Art of Loving, Erich Fromm writes, "Mature love is union under the condition of preserving one's integrity, one's individuality. Love is an active power in man; a power which breaks through the walls which separate man from his fellow men, which unites him with others...In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two" (p.19). This is a difficult balance to strike. It is impossible if the persons involved do not recognize the need for healthy separation.
Isolation may be the core of what it means to be a human being. There are none who are spared its reality and none can ever truly escape it. "..around me extends the void, the darkness of the real world-I exist, I remain blind, in anguish; other individuals are completely different from me, I feel nothing of what they feel." (Bataille, 1954 p.64) Bataille gives a face to the abstract and personal experience of existential isolation. Are these not words that many of us as human beings have whispered in the depths of our being at some point in our lives? Is it possible to be human without the anguish of our blindness? Yet as human beings we continue to exist and we continue to reach out to others from our inner sanctums, to connect.
It is in this act of reaching where we, as humans, seem to have the most joy and the most suffering. In reaching we attempt to become more than what we are and oftentimes lose some of who we were.
"...and I would feel my gaze lingering on the world and merging with it or else turning inward and disappearing" (Genet, 1964).
Most people have experienced the feeling of being alone in a crowd; alone in the world or in the universe. In our attempts to connect we often experience the feeling of turning inward and disappearing as if we might never be recognized, as if we might never experience the connection for which we search.
For instance, one woman described her isolation as a child. She oftentimes felt alone in a crowd and her method of escape was to daydream. A profound discovery was made when she described her daydreams. This young child who was feeling very isolated and lonely in the world of others escaped into a fantasy world where there were no other people. Her immense feelings of loneliness were soothed by images of herself alone, complete in her young and fresh wisdom.
At age 8 she knew what Kant knew. She understood Genet and Bataille intuitively. On some level she knew that she was not to be fragmented and that human beings are masterful at viewing themselves and others as tools and as means to an end. Whatever "parts" do not fit, you squelch.
Unfortunately we are taught to abandon ourselves and others as well. We are taught to accept the fragmentation of our selves until we no longer understand the language of love and connection. We mourn those parts of our selves that `die' in our relations with others and with ourselves. We feel the emptiness and attempt to eliminate the pain by eliminating the isolation. Ironically, we attempt to eliminate the isolation through relationships but "no relationship can eliminate isolation. Each of us is alone in our existence" (Yalom ,1980, p.363).
This is a hard fact to take for emotionally `healthy' individuals, so imagine how it would be for someone with pre-existing problems in interpersonal relationships. Yalom (1980) said:
If we are overcome with dread before the abyss of loneliness, we will not reach out toward others but instead we flail at them in order not to drown in the sea of existence. In this instance our relationships will not be true relationships at all but out of joint miscarriages, distortions of what might have been." (p. 363)
To sum up the experience of existential isolation I offer a beautiful reflection from Irvin Yalom (1980):
There is, of course, no `solution' to isolation. It is part of existence, and we must face it and find a way to take it into ourselves. Communion with others is our major available resource to temper the dread of isolation.
We are all lonely ships on a dark sea.
We see the lights of other ships-ships that we cannot reach but whose presence and similar situation affords us much solace. We are aware of our utter loneliness and helplessness. But if we can break out of our windowless monad, we become aware of the others who face the same lonely dread. Our sense of isolation gives way to a compassion for the others, and we're no longer quite so frightened. An invisible bond unites individuals who participate in the same experience-whether it be a life experience shared in time or place or simply as a member of an audience at some event. But compassion and its twin, empathy, require a certain degree of equilibrium; they cannot be constructed on panic. One must begin to confront and tolerate isolation to be able to cope more fully with one's existential situation. (p.363)
We have all felt alone at one time or another. Many have felt alone more often than they would care to admit. And who has never felt alone in a room full of people? As humans, we are aware of our autonomy. We are aware that we are only one. One can be a very uncomfortable place to be especially when there is a pre-existing problem with boundaries in psychical life. "Existential isolation refers to an unbridgeable gulf between oneself and any other being. It refers, too, to an isolation even more fundamental - a separation of oneself and the world" (Yalom, 1980, p. 355).
Existential isolation is rooted in human existence. We are all alone in the strongest sense of the word. We are born alone and we die alone. How many times have I heard that in conversation? Too many, yet I believe that it is just another one of those sayings that protect us. If you really think about it, being a human is a lonely existence.
When we close our eyes at night, the dark screen before us reminds us how it is. The screen that no one else can ever see that precedes our dreaming sleep is only for us. Sometimes as we drift off to another level of consciousness there is a point when, for one instant, we experience a moment of our existential situation when pure existential isolation attempts to break free into our consciousness. It comes in a jolt or a feeling of falling. Certainly, there are biological explanations for this phenomenon but even if there are, there is something primal and profound about the feelings we experience for that one moment.
There are times while we are awake when existential isolation makes itself felt. Some people are aware of it more than others and some do not know it as "existential isolation" but experience it nevertheless. "Existential isolation is a vale of loneliness which has many approaches. A confrontation with death and with freedom will inevitably lead the individual into that veil" (Yalom, 1980, p.356).
When people were asked describe the experience of isolation, more time was spent on isolation than any other. Every person had many examples to reflect upon. Seventy-three percent described a feeling of alienation, of not belonging and not feeling "at home". Eighty-six percent described feeling completely disconnected from all others and the world. Forty percent described feeling disconnected from even themselves or having parts of themselves fragmented.
The pain that they all felt was very clear. Isolation had touched them all more than once and in more than one way. Forty percent said that there is more than one kind of isolation and that feeling alone while with others is much worse than being physically alone. There were many references to fear (46.2%) as well as depression (52.8%). An experience with isolation can bring immense pain and suffering. To be alone in the world, feeling that you have no connection to others, or even to yourself is intensified when around you are reminders of how "it could be". The television becomes a "friend". A friendly voice in the background that breaks up the hopeless silence. One may fall into depression and deep despair and even become suicidal.
One 26 year old woman described her on-going experience with feeling isolation and described feeling severe anger with her neighbors, to the point of hatred, because she could hear the footsteps in the hall of the apartment building familiarly walking by and past her own door. She described the reminders of her aloneness as a complete shutdown of her entire experiential self. During the day she was a B+ student, motivated and friendly and alive while at school. She looked no different than any other college student one may encounter on any given day on campus. However, when she arrived home every evening, as soon as she closed her car door it was as though all energy and motivation was immediately expelled from her Being.
This friendly and intelligent co-ed instantly metamorphosed into a depressed, worthless, disconnected nothing who knows first hand about the solitary nature of life. We think that we know people. We think that we know who is suffering and who is not. This belief only serves to keep us more isolated. We think because someone smiles they are happy. We think that because someone socializes in school or work that they do not feel that loneliness. We think that we are the only one who suffers from the somber effects of being an autonomous individual in western society. We see others and we wish we had what they have when in reality they too, cry for connection. The belief that others are somehow immune from the effects of isolation while we are not serves to help us believe that we are defective and ultimately we increase the gap between us.
As with death, there too is a denial of existential isolation. We want to believe that we could bridge the gulf that lies between ourselves and others but on a deeper level we know it is futile. It may be said that this is for philosophers to think about and not for psychologists but to deny the influence of this isolation is to set people up for great psychical pain.
This should be a concern to the psychological community because if a person has pre-existing issues concerning isolation like abandonment on one extreme to enmeshment on the other extreme then there will undoubtedly be problems in dealing with existentially related issues.
"No relationship can eliminate isolation. Each of us is alone in existence" (Yalom, 1980, p. 363). This is a hard fact for an emotionally "healthy" individual to take in. So how difficult would it be for someone with pre-existing problems with boundaries?
"If we are overcome with dread before the abyss of loneliness, we will not reach out toward others but instead we flail at them in order not to drown in the sea of existence" (Yalom, 1980, p. 367).
In our culture, there seems to be a commitment to frenzy. Everyone seems to be "sex-deprived" In a week's time I have heard three people allude to this. One said, "Oh, I haven't had sex in three days", another it was a few weeks, and still another topped it with less than 24 hours. This is tragedy? Yes it is because it describes the frenzy; the frenzy to attach and not be alone--temporarily. One rarely, if ever, hears someone say, "no one has shown me love in three days..." Someone else did say, however, that "having sex with someone is much easier than holding their hand". What? It is less frightening to have sex with someone? To strip down naked makes you less vulnerable than holding someone's hand? Unfortunately, for many there is truth to this statement. Recently, I visited the `super highway of the World Wide Web' and when I punched in `isolation' I got citations about biological research. But when I punched in `pornography', thousands and thousands of citations became available.
"The bonds that unite another person to ourselves exist only in our mind....Man is the creature that cannot emerge from himself, that knows his fellows only in himself; when he asserts the contrary, he is lying." (Marcel Proust 1913-1927 The Sweet Cheat Gone)
Proust's image is a difficult one to incorporate into our world view. However, as difficult as it is to accept that we are in fact separate in the most despairing sense of the word, we know it is true. Nevertheless, just as the threat of death is fought through defense and denial, so is existential isolation.
In Man's Search for Himself, Rollo May (1973) wrote "I can never know exactly how you see yourself and you can never know exactly how I relate to myself. This is the inner sanctum where each man must stand alone. This fact makes for much of the tragedy and inescapable isolation in human life..." (p. 94).
Erik Fromm (1941) describes the human need to be related to the world, the need to avoid aloneness. He describes perfectly the difference between being physically alone and feeling isolated and feeling completely disconnected, even when with others. The latter may or may not be unpleasant because one still may feel a connection to ideas, values or social patterns that give a feeling of "belonging". The feeling of total isolation however is to feel "morally alone". To feel there is no connection. No relatedness.
He also describes the individual isolation and powerlessness as not being in everyday awareness of most people because it is too frightening. The daily routines we all are susceptible to help to keep existential isolation out of direct view. But he goes on to say that "Whistling in the dark does not bring light" (1941, Fromm, p.34).
Fromm believed that people go one of two possible routes to combat the feeling of isolation. The first, which many people opt for, is to give up freedom completely. This can be done through a number of ways, from religion, sado-masochistic relationships, attaching oneself to a political organization etc. The other way is to progress from negative to positive freedom, which he describes thoroughly in his book, Escape from
Freedom.
Isolation is a common theme in literature. American author, Thomas Wolfe (1929), describes the intense existential isolation in his book, Look Homeward Angel:
Unfathomable loneliness and sadness crept through him: he saw his life down the solemn vista of a forest aisle, and he knew he would always be the sad one: caged in that little round of a skull, imprisoned in that beating and most secret heart, his life must always walk down lonely passages. Lost. He understood that men were forever strangers to one another, that no one ever comes really to know anyone, that imprisoned in the dark womb of our mother, we come to life without having seen her face, that we are given to her arms a stranger, and that, caught in that insoluble prison of being, we escape it never, no matter what arms may clasp us, what mouth may kiss us, what heart may warm us. Never, never, never, never, never. (p. 31)
Isolation is strongly connected to other existential issues. Many people see death as a form of isolation. Death could be imagined as the ultimate symbol for isolation. You cannot get more "alone" than in death. Freedom is also closely related to isolation. One who must choose must ultimately choose alone. Outside influences are only part of the reality. There is a point in every decision that is characterized by a sense of solitariness. Yalom supports this by saying, "to the extent that one is responsible for one's life, one is alone. Responsibility implies authorship...Deep loneliness is inherent in the act of self-creation. One becomes aware of the cosmic indifference."
Clark Moustakas (1972) begins his book, Loneliness and Love by saying, "Every once in a while I awaken to the reality that I'm all I've got" (p. 1). It is an awakening of sorts, this feeling of being alone in one's existence. It is an awakening that can cause much anxiety.
The fear of existential isolation is the driving force behind many interpersonal relationships...On the one hand, one must learn to relate to another without giving way to the desire to slip out of isolation by becoming part of that other. But one must also learn to relate to another without reducing the other to a tool, a defense against isolation. (Yalom, 1980, p. 363)
Nineteenth century philosopher, Immanuel Kant, said that no human being should be treated as a means to an end, regardless of the value of that end. A person's inherent value and worth far surpasses any ends that may be achieved by using that person as a tool or a `means’. There is a delicate balance between reducing our feelings of isolation without reducing those with whom we attempt connection.
In The Art of Loving, Erich Fromm writes, "Mature love is union under the condition of preserving one's integrity, one's individuality. Love is an active power in man; a power which breaks through the walls which separate man from his fellow men, which unites him with others...In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two" (p.19). This is a difficult balance to strike. It is impossible if the persons involved do not recognize the need for healthy separation.
Isolation may be the core of what it means to be a human being. There are none who are spared its reality and none can ever truly escape it. "..around me extends the void, the darkness of the real world-I exist, I remain blind, in anguish; other individuals are completely different from me, I feel nothing of what they feel." (Bataille, 1954 p.64) Bataille gives a face to the abstract and personal experience of existential isolation. Are these not words that many of us as human beings have whispered in the depths of our being at some point in our lives? Is it possible to be human without the anguish of our blindness? Yet as human beings we continue to exist and we continue to reach out to others from our inner sanctums, to connect.
It is in this act of reaching where we, as humans, seem to have the most joy and the most suffering. In reaching we attempt to become more than what we are and oftentimes lose some of who we were.
"...and I would feel my gaze lingering on the world and merging with it or else turning inward and disappearing" (Genet, 1964).
Most people have experienced the feeling of being alone in a crowd; alone in the world or in the universe. In our attempts to connect we often experience the feeling of turning inward and disappearing as if we might never be recognized, as if we might never experience the connection for which we search.
For instance, one woman described her isolation as a child. She oftentimes felt alone in a crowd and her method of escape was to daydream. A profound discovery was made when she described her daydreams. This young child who was feeling very isolated and lonely in the world of others escaped into a fantasy world where there were no other people. Her immense feelings of loneliness were soothed by images of herself alone, complete in her young and fresh wisdom.
At age 8 she knew what Kant knew. She understood Genet and Bataille intuitively. On some level she knew that she was not to be fragmented and that human beings are masterful at viewing themselves and others as tools and as means to an end. Whatever "parts" do not fit, you squelch.
Unfortunately we are taught to abandon ourselves and others as well. We are taught to accept the fragmentation of our selves until we no longer understand the language of love and connection. We mourn those parts of our selves that `die' in our relations with others and with ourselves. We feel the emptiness and attempt to eliminate the pain by eliminating the isolation. Ironically, we attempt to eliminate the isolation through relationships but "no relationship can eliminate isolation. Each of us is alone in our existence" (Yalom ,1980, p.363).
This is a hard fact to take for emotionally `healthy' individuals, so imagine how it would be for someone with pre-existing problems in interpersonal relationships. Yalom (1980) said:
If we are overcome with dread before the abyss of loneliness, we will not reach out toward others but instead we flail at them in order not to drown in the sea of existence. In this instance our relationships will not be true relationships at all but out of joint miscarriages, distortions of what might have been." (p. 363)
To sum up the experience of existential isolation I offer a beautiful reflection from Irvin Yalom (1980):
There is, of course, no `solution' to isolation. It is part of existence, and we must face it and find a way to take it into ourselves. Communion with others is our major available resource to temper the dread of isolation.
We are all lonely ships on a dark sea.
We see the lights of other ships-ships that we cannot reach but whose presence and similar situation affords us much solace. We are aware of our utter loneliness and helplessness. But if we can break out of our windowless monad, we become aware of the others who face the same lonely dread. Our sense of isolation gives way to a compassion for the others, and we're no longer quite so frightened. An invisible bond unites individuals who participate in the same experience-whether it be a life experience shared in time or place or simply as a member of an audience at some event. But compassion and its twin, empathy, require a certain degree of equilibrium; they cannot be constructed on panic. One must begin to confront and tolerate isolation to be able to cope more fully with one's existential situation. (p.363)
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