and the resulting poor personal and social adjustment. All these features conspire to render prisoners particularly vulnerable to the effects of isolation, reduced activity, under-stimulation and loss of control over their lives. Conversely, anecdotal evidence suggests that some prisoners are protected from the worst impact of solitary confinement by the meaning they are able to make of the experience. Some political prisoners, for example, have demonstrated remarkable resilience during prolonged periods of confinement. That does not mean that the experience was not a difficult one. Describing his time in Robben Island, Nelson Mandela writes: “I found solitary confinement the most forbidding aspect of prison life. There is no end and no beginning; there is only one’s mind, which can begin to play tricks. Was that a dream or did it really happen? One begins to question everything.” (Nelson Mandela, The Long Walk to Freedom, 1995). Leaders of the Tupamaro movement in Uruguay, who were imprisoned in strict solitary confinement (they were not allowed to communicate with anyone, meals were delivered to them through a hatch in the cell-door by guards who were instructed not to exchange a word with them) for several years during the 1970’s, reported that solitary confinement was the worst form of torture; one prisoner said that “electricity [torture] is mere child’s play in comparison to prolonged solitude” (cited in Reyes, 2007:607). Social isolation Social well-being is seen by the World Health Organisation as integral to its definition of ‘health’28. Solitary confinement removes the individual from the company of others and deprives him or her of most forms of meaningful29 and sympathetic social interaction, as well as physical contact. In most cases the isolated individual is deprived of any form of interaction with fellow prisoners, and sometimes with family and friends through restrictions on visits. Where visits do take place they can be closed, with a barrier separating the prisoner from his visitors, preventing any physical contact between them. Social learning theories highlight the importance of social contact with others not just for pleasure and play but for the individual’s very sense of ‘self’ which is shaped and maintained through social interactions. Social contact is crucial for forming perceptions, concepts, interpreting reality and providing support30. The self… is essentially a social structure and it arises in social experience. After a self has arisen, it in a certain sense provides for itself its social experiences, and so we can conceive of an absolutely solitary self. But it is impossible to conceive of a self arising outside social experience. When it has arisen we can think of a person in solitary confinement for the rest of his life, but who still has himself as a companion, and is able to think and to converse with himself as he had communicated with others…. This process of abstraction cannot be carried on indefinitely. (Mead, 1934, emphasis added). Paradoxically, social isolation can lead to further withdrawal. One study found support for the hypothesis that the “shut-in” or “seclusive” personality, “generally considered to be the basis of schizophrenia, may be the result of an extended period of ‘cultural isolation’, that is, separation from intimate and sympathetic social contact” (Faris, 1962:155). Faris adds that “seclusiveness is frequently the last stage of a process that began with exclusion or isolation which was not the choice of the patient” (Ibid. at p. 159). 18 Sourcebook on solitary confinement: The health effects of solitary confinement