Isolation

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ISOLATION

"Isolation" is the defense mechanism characteristic of obsessional neurosis. The links of a thought, idea, impression, or feeling with other thoughts or behaviors are broken by means of pauses, rituals, magical formulas, or other such devices.

In "The Neuro-Psychoses of Defense," Freud conceived of defense, in hysteria as well as in phobias and obsessions, as a form of isolation: "defense against the incompatible idea [is] effected by separating it from its affect; the idea itself [remains] in consciousness, even though weakened and isolated" (1894a, p. 58).

In the case of the "Rat Man," Freud wrote suggestively of "isolation" though still without naming it as a specific neurotic defense mechanism. He wrote that, in contradistinction to hysteria, in which amnesia attests to a successful repression, obsessional neurosis reveals that "[t]he infantile preconditions of the neurosis may be overtaken by amnesia, though this is often an incomplete one. . . . The trauma, instead of being forgotten, is deprived of its affective cathexis; so that what remains in consciousness is nothing but its ideational content, which is perfectly colourless and is judged to be unimportant" (Freud 1909d, pp. 105-106). Thus, in obsessional neurosis, "patients will endeavour to 'isolate ' all such protective acts from other things" (p. 243).

In Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (1926d), Freud returned to the analysis of isolation as a defense mechanism in obsessional neurosis—a view that Anna Freud would further develop in 1936—and he emphasized how isolation involves the "the taboo on touching" to the extent that it involves "removing the possibility of contact; it is a method of withdrawing a thing from being touched in any way. And when a neurotic isolates an impression or an activity by interpolating an interval, he is letting it be understood symbolically that he will not allow his thoughts about that impression or activity to come into associative contact with other thoughts" (pp. 121-122).

Elsa Schmid-Kitsikis

See also: Defense mechanisms; Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence, The ; Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety ; Neurotic defenses; Obsessional neurosis.