Solitude

by Anthony Storr

  Freud proceeds to compare this feeling with the height of being in love, in which a man may feel that he is one with his beloved. As might be expected, Freud regards the oceanic feeling as a regression to an earlier state: that of the infant at the breast, at a period before the infant has learned to distinguish his ego from the external world. According to Freud, this is a gradual process.

  He must be very strongly impressed by the fact that some sources of excitation, which he will later recognize as his own bodily organs, can provide him with sensations at any moment, whereas other sources evade him from time to time – among them what he desires most of all, his mother’s breast – and only reappear as a result of his screaming for help. In this way, there is for the first time set over against the ego an ‘object’, in the form of something which exists ‘outside’ and which is only forced to appear by a special action.10

  Freud is not impressed with Rolland’s claim that the oceanic feeling is the source of religious sentiments. Freud claimed that man’s need for religion originated with the infant’s sense of helplessness: ‘I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father’s protection.’11 However, he admits that the oceanic feeling may have become connected with religion at a later stage, and surmises that ‘oneness with the universe’ is

  a first attempt at a religious consolation, as though it were another way of disclaiming the danger which the ego recognizes as threatening it from the external world.12

  Although we are all subject to self-deception and to a variety of wish-fulfilling illusions, Freud’s account of the oceanic feeling and its meaning is less than satisfactory. It seems a more important experience than he admits. Defensive strategies and escapist wish-fulfilments generally appear superficial and partially inauthentic even to those who are employing them. But those who have experienced the states of mind recorded by Byrd and by William James record them as having had a permanent effect upon their perception of themselves and of the world; as being the profoundest moments of their existence. This is true both of those who have felt the sense of unity with the universe and of those who have felt the sense of unity with a beloved person.

  Freud was right in seeing a close similarity between these two varieties of unity, but wrong in dismissing them as merely regressive. Such feelings are intensely subjective, and are hardly susceptible of measurement or scientific scrutiny. But to feel totally at one with another person, or totally at one with the universe, are such deep experiences that, although they may be transient, they cannot be dismissed as mere evasions or defences against unwelcome truths.

  It is certainly possible that the oceanic feeling may be related to early infantile experience of unity with the mother. Merging of subject and object, of the self with Nature or with a beloved person, may be a reflection of the original unity with the mother with which we all begin life and from which we gradually become differentiated as separate entities. But Freud, perhaps because he himself denies ever having had such an experience, treats it as illusory; whilst those who describe ecstatic feelings of unity usually portray them as more intensely real than any other feelings which they can recall.

  Ecstatic experiences of unity are sometimes connected with an acceptance of, or even a wish for, death. Wagner, who idealized erotic passion as the prototype of ecstatic unity, ends The Flying Dutchman with the redemption of the wanderer by Senta’s love and suicide. The original stage directions demand that the transfigured couple shall be seen rising toward heaven in the glow of the setting sun above the wreck of the Dutchman’s ship. Götterdämmerung, the last of the four operas which comprise The Ring of the Nibelung, ends with Brünnhilde mounting her horse and leaping into the flames of Siegfried’s funeral pyre to join him in death. Tristan und Isolde ends with the Liebestod; with Isolde expiring in ecstasy on the corpse of Tristan. Wagner himself wrote of this:

  one thing alone left living: desire, desire unquenchable, longing forever rehearing itself – a fevered craving; one sole redemption – death, surcease of being, the sleep that knows no waking! … Its power spent, the heart sinks back to pine of its desire – desire without attainment; for each fruition sows the seeds of fresh desire, till in its final lassitude the breaking eye beholds a glimmer of the highest bliss: it is the bliss of quitting life, of being no more, of last redemption into that wondrous realm from which we stray the furthest when we strive to enter it by fiercest force. Shall we call it death? Or is it not night’s wonder world, whence – as the story says – an ivy and a vine sprang up in locked embrace o’er Tristan and Isolde’s grave?13

  In his book Beyond Endurance, Glin Bennet describes the oceanic feelings of being at one with oneself and with the universe which accompany solitary journeys. The search for such experiences constitutes one reason for such journeys; but they may carry with them the temptation of suicide. Bennet quotes the case of Frank Mulville, a single-handed sailor who, in the Caribbean, had an overwhelming desire to look back at his beautiful yacht, and let himself over the side in order to do so. The sight so inspired him that he was seriously tempted to let go the rope and merge himself for ever with the sea.14

  Bennet gives another example of the same danger which was recorded by Christiane Ritter. She spent a number of days entirely alone in a hut in the north-western part of Spitzbergen, when her husband and his companion were away hunting. She described a variety of illusions and hallucinations, including a feeling that she was somehow identified with the moonlight. She had a dream of water flowing under the ice which seemed to be enticing her. After being alone for nine days, she did not dare venture out of the hut.15

  Keats captures both ecstasy and its link with death in his Ode to a Nightingale’.

  Darkling I listen; and for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death,

  Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath;

  Now more than ever seems it rich to the, To cease upon the midnight with no pain, While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad In such an ecstasy!16

  The association of ecstatic states of mind with death is understandable. These rare moments are of such perfection that it is hard to return to the commonplace, and tempting to end life before tensions, anxieties, sorrows, and irritations intrude once more.

  For Freud, dissolution of the ego is nothing but a backward look at an infantile condition which may indeed have been blissful, but which represents a paradise lost which no adult can, or should wish to, regain. For Jung, the attainment of such states are high achievements; numinous experiences which may be the fruit of long struggles to understand oneself and to make sense out of existence. At a later point in this book, Jung’s concept of individuation, of the union of opposites within the circle of the individual psyche, will be further explored.

  4

  Enforced Solitude

  ‘The worst solitude is to be destitute of sincere friendship.’

  Francis Bacon

  In the last chapter, some of the beneficent effects of freely chosen solitude were outlined. Solitude which is imposed by others is a different matter. Solitary confinement is generally perceived as a harsh penalty, and when solitary confinement is accompanied by threats, uncertainty, lack of sleep and other measures, the victim may suffer disruption of normal mental function without being able to muster any compensatory reintegration. On the other hand, less rigorous conditions of imprisonment have sometimes proved fruitful. Being cut off from the distractions of ordinary life encourages the prisoner with creative potential to call upon the resources of his imagination. As we shall see, a variety of authors have begun writing in prison, where this has been allowed; or have passed through periods of spiritual and mental turmoil which have later found expression in their works.

  Punitive imprisonment for criminals was initially conceived as a method of enforcing repentance; a humane alternative to horrific physical punishments like amputation, branding, flogging, breaking on the wheel and other tortures or brutal met
hods of execution. Local jails, in which vagrants, alcoholics, beggars and other nuisances could be temporarily confined were in widespread use for centuries. Jails were also used to house accused persons awaiting trial, and convicted criminals awaiting punishment. But imprisonment as a specific punishment for serious offenders is a comparatively recent sanction. Norval Morris claims that

  the prison is an American invention, an invention of the Pennsylvania Quakers of the last decade of the eighteenth century … In their ‘penitentiary’ the Quakers planned to substitute the correctional specifics of isolation, repentance, and the uplifting effects of scriptural injunction and solitary Bible reading for the brutality and inutility of capital and corporal punishments. These three treatments – removal from corrupting peers, time for reflection and self-examination, the guidance of biblical precepts – would no doubt have been helpful to the reflective Quakers who devised the prison, but relatively few of them ever became prisoners. The suitability of these remedies for the great mass of those who subsequently found their way to the penitentiary is more questionable.1

  This is, of course, ironic understatement. Today, imprisonment is generally recognized as being worse than useless in the fight against crime. Its deterrent effect is dubious, its reforming effect negligible. Prisons reinforce a criminal subculture by herding offenders together. Long sentences, by separating criminals from their families, lead to the break-up of family ties. Since the availability of family and social support after release is one of the few factors known to make reconviction for further crimes less likely, protracted imprisonment actually increases the probability that subsequent offences will be committed. Availability of suitable employment after release is another factor which has been shown to diminish the chances of reconviction. But most societies are so unwilling to spend money on prisons that programmes for retraining prisoners or teaching them new industrial skills are quite inadequate.

  In ordinary British prisons, solitary confinement is seldom used except as a comparatively brief punishment for serious violence. In France, at least until recently, solitary confinement was used during the initial part of life sentences, though tempered with some participation in group activities. Originally, isolation was supposed to encourage remorse and subsequent reform by forcing the convict to confront his own conscience. The single cells in which sentences were served were modelled upon those of the monastery. But prison authorities came to realize that isolation imposed considerable stress upon prisoners, and led to mental instability and unruly behaviour. Although association with other criminals carried the likelihood of reinforcing the choice of crime as a way of life, this disadvantage came to be considered the lesser of two evils. Long periods of isolation became recognized as cruel as well as ineffective.

  Moreover, since the Second World War, prisons in Britain have become so permanently overcrowded that solitary meditation upon the evils of their crimes is no longer a practical possibility for prisoners, even if it were thought desirable. Today, cells designed for one prisoner have to be occupied by three. This contravenes the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners adopted by the United Nations Congress of 1955, which states that each prisoner shall occupy by night a cell or room by himself, except in conditions of temporary overcrowding.

  In Denmark, a high proportion of detainees awaiting trial for criminal offences are kept in solitary confinement whilst their cases are being investigated. No other European country uses isolation in pre-trial detention to this extent, although there have been recent complaints of similar practices in Sweden. Periods of isolation vary from two weeks to four weeks or more; but several instances are known of detainees spending between one and two years in isolation.

  Detainees spend twenty-three out of every twenty-four hours in a small cell. They are allowed two half-hour periods of exercise alone, but their solitude is otherwise interrupted only by visits to the lavatory and the delivery of meals. In spite of being allowed books, radio and television, letters, and, in some cases, supervised visits, even this degree of isolation often has deleterious effects upon mental functioning. Many detainees complain of restlessness, insomnia, inability to concentrate, and partial failure of memory. They find it difficult to measure the passage of time, and invent obsessional rituals to mark the hours and give structure to the day. When these rituals are interrupted by interrogation or by visits from a lawyer, they become intensely anxious. Self-mutilation and suicidal attempts are common. In 1980, seven out of ten successful suicides in prison were those of pre-trial detainees. If isolation is prolonged beyond a few weeks, many detainees complain of inexplicable fatigue. Some become almost totally apathetic; others lose control of their emotions to the point of believing that they are going mad. Even when removed from isolation, many symptoms persist. Detainees complain that they cannot remember what they read; that they cannot even follow a television programme. It is hardly surprising that some make inaccurate or contradictory statements to the police when being interrogated. After prolonged periods of isolation, many fear resuming social relationships and dare not risk intimacy. Such impairment of the ability to relate to others may persist for years.2

  If such dire mental sequelae follow short periods of isolation which, in other respects, are comparatively humane, it is not hard to imagine how much worse are the effects of solitary confinement by totalitarian regimes in which the most elementary human rights are disregarded. The paper by Lawrence Hinkle and Harold Wolff on the techniques of interrogation and indoctrination employed by Communist states has become a classic, and I have drawn heavily on their account.3

  The usual procedure is as follows. A person suspected of crimes against the State, that is, of being a political dissident, is placed under surveillance. So are his friends and associates. The suspect often becomes aware of this scrutiny, and suffers acute anxiety as a consequence. When sufficient ‘evidence’ has been accumulated, the state police proceed to arrest him. Anyone thus arrested is assumed to be guilty, although the crimes of which he is accused are never specified. The arrest usually takes place in the middle of the night. Prisoners whose cases are relatively unimportant may be confined in cells with other prisoners, who are often informers. But prisoners from whom information is required, or who are destined for public trial, are placed in solitary confinement. The cell is small. It usually has only one window which is placed above eye-level so that the prisoner can see nothing of the external world. But the door of the cell contains a peep-hole through which the prisoner can be observed at any time without his knowledge:

  At all times except when he is eating, sleeping, exercising, or being interrogated, the prisoner is left strictly alone in his cell. He has nothing to do, nothing to read, and no one to talk to. Under the strictest regimen, he may have to stand or sit in his cell in a fixed position all day. He may sleep only at hours prescribed for sleep. Then he must go to bed promptly when told, and must lie in a fixed position upon his back with his hands outside the blanket. If he deviates from this position, the guard outside will awaken him and make him resume it. The light in his cell burns constantly. He must sleep with his face constantly toward it.4

  Usually, the temperature of the cell is too cold for comfort, although it may sometimes be overheated. The food provided is unpalatable, and hardly enough to maintain nutrition. The combination of partial starvation, deprivation of sleep, uncomfortable temperatures, and continuous, intense anxiety combine to undermine the resistance of all but the most robust of prisoners.

  During the first three weeks of this regime, most prisoners become intensely anxious and restless. They are not allowed to talk to the guards, nor to have any contact with other prisoners. They are given no information about what is to happen to them, and no information about what may happen to their families and friends. Many prisoners find that uncertainty is the worst torment which they experience.

  After about four weeks, most prisoners realize that their protests, enquiries and requests are entirely fruitless. They
are experiencing in reality what, for most of us, is only a phantasy; the basic human nightmare of being entirely helpless in the hands of malignant persecutors. This, I believe, is one of the fundamental fears of mankind; dating perhaps from earliest infancy, when every human being is totally dependent upon, and at the mercy of, persons who are much more powerful than himself.

  At this point, many prisoners become profoundly depressed. Some become confused and hallucinated. Others cease from any kind of spontaneous activity, stop caring about their personal appearance and habits, and enter upon a state resembling depressive stupor.

  Since the only human relationship available is that with the interrogator, many prisoners at first welcome sessions of interrogation and seek to prolong them. When the prisoner discovers that the interrogator is invariably dissatisfied with the account he has given of himself and his ‘crimes’, and begins to suffer under various forms of coercion applied to him, interrogation sessions become a nightmare rather than a welcome relief from isolation. Prolonged standing, which causes excruciating pain, followed by impairment of the circulation and renal failure, is commonly used. Cruder methods of physical torture, though officially forbidden, may also be employed. These periods of hostile interrogation and intense pressure alternate with periods of apparently relaxed friendliness, in which the prisoner is better treated. Since the interrogator remains the only human being with whom the prisoner has any contact, a relationship springs up between them. The prisoner may even develop feelings of sympathy toward the interrogator, who may have persuaded him that he is only doing his duty; that it is as distasteful to himself as it is to the prisoner, and that, if only the prisoner will sign a full confession of the ‘crimes’ attributed to him, the unpleasant business of interrogation will be over. Hinkle and Wolff write: