The Dangers of Solitary Confinement

Fifteen days. That’s as far as humans can stand being sensory-deprived. Any longer, the mind begins to slip down a dark hole. But it’s not just the incarcerated who can get it. Anyone who feels confined can lose their mind to the darkness.

Our knowledge of the psychological issues caused by solitary confinement isn’t insignificant. We’ve known for a long time that a mind loses cohesion when it’s removed from the sensory and social world around it. What we couldn’t agree on was how soon it’d happen.

Two hundred years ago, things were very different. Being sent to solitary meant going into a black hole, quite literally. There was no light, no sound. It was a silent cell full of a whole lot of nothing. Prisoners were allowed to leave it to go to church on Sunday, for an hour, and then sent straight back to the nothingness afterwards. A heavy sack covered their heads while in transit, so they couldn’t speak to or see anyone along the way. There was well-intended logic behind it.

Sensory deprivation was used as a tool to re-educate prisoners and improve their behaviour. It was believed they’d become reformed by taking everything away from them but God.

This method didn’t work. A week in the hole was enough to turn them mad. Some suicides occurred within days of being released.

To add insult to injury, those who’d passed had their bodies examined by a doctor in the most brutal of ways. Knives were used liberally to expose their innards so he could find the inner evil in their brains and flesh. The process was akin to looking for a bruise in a rotten apple. Layers were peeled away in search of the blackness below.

No, they didn’t find any badness within the remains of the dead.

Solitary confinement is a whole different thing today. There are no black pits, ongoing silences, or sensory deprivation. Lights illuminate cells so the senses have something to work with. Prisoners can hear what’s going on around them.

Mental cohesion has always fascinated me. It doesn’t take much for the average human to lose the plot. I firmly believe that psychological slippages can occur in anyone, and they don’t require visible walls or bars.

Confinement can occur within a stifling relationship, a prolonged psychological, physical or sexual abuse from a spouse, friend, parent, sibling or a work colleague. Over many years of torment, an invisible set of walls will surround the prisoner, closing in on them a little more each day. Losing one’s sense of reality in these conditions is plausible. It also results in suicide, spontaneous acts of violence, drug use, emotional outbursts and a change in one’s moral standard. It leaves me with one important question.

Can any good, kind person be made to turn evil through emotional manipulation and confinement?

Find the answer inside the pages of my novel. It’s where reality and isolation create the perfect thrilling story.

-Michael Forman (Author of SEETHINGS, downloadable and free for a limited time)

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