This piece follows a recent concentration of mine regarding the effects of isolation. These piece, titled "Interference," was created to highlight the way in which isolation can bring about a feeling of detachment from one's surroundings or reality. When left purely to one's own thoughts for a prolonged amount of time, especially when the isolation is involuntary, a sense of dissociation can manifest itself physically and mentally.
Extreme, scientifically supported examples of this can be viewed from a psychoanalytic perspective: people who have secluded themselves or who have been pushed unwillingly into seclusion have been shown to express higher levels of depression, anxiety, and dissociative identity disorders. Prolonged solitary confinement, such as that which has been practiced within correctional facilities, psychiatric hospitals, and even voluntary human trials, has been seen to cause extreme anxiety disorders, behavioral deterioration, hallucinations, psychosis, and -allegedly- schizophrenia. In some of these cases, the impairments have been temporary, yet, many sufferers have continued to experience great difficulty in social interaction, and an alarming number have continued to decline mentally, exhibiting worsening forms of anxiety, dissociation, psychosis, and schizophrenia.
To a much less extreme extent, seclusion can lead to an altered perspective of the world. By separating oneself from social interaction, one can either gain a more introspective and positive outlook on their surroundings or one's mental state can decline, sometimes leading to a state nearing dissociation, in which it can be difficult or even impossible to distinguish between illusion and reality.
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