Isolation

Isolation (pronounced ahy-suh-ley-shuhn)

(1) An act or instance of isolating; the state of being isolated.

(2) In medicine, the complete separation from others of a person suffering from contagious or infectious disease; quarantine.

(3) In diplomacy, the separation, as a deliberate choice by government, of a nation from other nations by nonparticipation in or withdrawal from international relations and institutions.

(4) In psychoanalysis, a process whereby an idea or memory is divested of its emotional component.

(5) In social psychology, the failure of an individual to maintain contact with others or genuine communication where interaction with others persists.

(6) In linguistics and other fields, to consider matters without regard to context.

(7) In chemistry, obtaining an element from one of its compounds, or of a compound from a mixture

(8) In computing, a database property that determines when and how changes made in one transaction are visible to other concurrent transactions.

1830s: A compound word, isolate + -ion.  A modern English borrowing from the French isolé (placed on an island (thus away from other people)).  Isolé was derived from the Italian isolato, past participle of isolare, the root of which was the Latin insulātus & insulātes (made into an island), from insula (island).  From circa 1740, English at first used the French isolé (rendered as isole) which appeared also as isole'd in the 1750s, isolate the verb emerging in the 1830s; isolated the past participle.  Isolation is now the most familiar form, the suffix –ion is from the Latin -iō (genitive -iōnis), appended to a perfect passive participle to form a noun of action.  Words with similar meanings, often varying by context, includes solitude, desolation, confinement, segregation, remoteness, privacy, quarantine, sequestration, aloofness, detachment, withdrawal, exile, aloneness, concealment, retreat, hiding, reclusion, monkhood, and seclusiveness.

Isolation, Social Phobia and Social Anxiety Disorder

As long ago as 400 BC, Greek physician Hippocrates (circa 460–c 370 BC) noted there were people who sought social isolation, describing them as those who "love darkness as life" adding, in a hint at later understandings of mental illness, they tended also to "think every man observes them."  Such folk doubtless pre-dated antiquity, being always part of organized societies but it wasn’t until the late nineteenth century when psychiatry emerged as a distinct field that the particular human condition came to be known as social phobia or social neurosis, then thought of as a descriptor of extremely shy patients who sought isolation by choice.

Desolate: an emo in isolation.

Despite the increasing medicalization of the spectrum of the human condition, it wasn’t until 1968, in the second edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-II), that social isolation was described as a specific phobia of social situations or excessive fear of being observed or scrutinized by others but at this point the definition of social phobia was very narrow.  With the release in 1980 of the DSM-III, social phobia was included as an official psychiatric diagnosis although it restricted the criteria, noting those who sought social isolation did so because of a fear of “performance situations” and did not include fears of less formal encounters such as casual conversations.  Those with such broad fears were instead to be diagnosed with “avoidant personality disorder” which, for technical reasons defined within the DSM-III, could not be co-diagnosed as social phobia, an attitude reflecting the editors’ view that phobias and neuroses needed specifically to be codified rather than acknowledging there existed in some a “general anxiety” disorder.  This neglect was addressed in the 1987 revision to the DSM-III (DSM-III-R) which changed the diagnostic criteria, making it possible to diagnose social phobia and avoidant personality disorder in the same patient.  In this revision, the term "generalized social phobia" was introduced.

DSM-IV was published in 1994 and the term “social anxiety disorder” (SAD) replaced social phobia, this reflecting how broad and generalized fears are in the condition although the diagnostic criteria differed only slightly from those in the DSM-III-R.  The DSM-IV position remains essentially current; the modifications in the DSM-5 (2013) not substantively changing the diagnosis, altering little more than the wording of the time frame although the emphasis on recognizing whether the experience of anxiety is unreasonable or excessive was shifted from patient to clinician.