The idea for a report on social isolation was born in connection with the arrival of patients in therapy who find it unbearable to be in society and interact with society. Such people experience difficulties in the team, do not feel like they belong to it, and limit themselves in their ambitions. They, like dead cells of a large organism, continue to exist and remain unnoticed by us. As a rule, work with such patients is carried out on the verge of despair, powerlessness and hope for success. It is important not to fall to either side and to “follow” the patient - since some “cells” need to be helped to overcome difficulties, recover and return to their usual active life, while others need to help them mature and develop the necessary functions, and there will also be such who will remain “dead”, but we can help them realize and accept their condition as their unconscious desire. I propose to consider social isolation as a way of survival and adaptation within the framework of a specific psychopathology or some psychopathological phenomena, such as traumatic experience, social phobia , agoraphobia, depression, autism spectrum disorder, schizophrenia. Separately, I will consider the phenomenon of hikikomori. It is known that mental trauma leads to a split personality, dissociation of traumatic content, that is, one part of the personality begins to live outside the trauma, the other remains dissociated, inside the trauma as if behind glass. If traumatization is received in society, then a person, going out into the street or in contact with people, inevitably risks approaching that very dissociated part. As a result, anxiety increases due to approaching danger, and the person seeks to return to a safe space, to avoid visiting places that cause anxiety. We can assume that thanks to psychoanalytic therapy, the method of free association, we can establish the primary source of fear, “returning” to traumatic event from a point of safe reality, thereby contributing to the inhibition of symptoms of fear. With social phobia, a person is isolated in fear of society, its assessment, the gaze and attention of another becomes unbearable. People suffering from social phobia want to hide their body from prying eyes and hide in this body themselves, to find themselves “a box in a box.” Similar fears and sensations are observed in people suffering from agoraphobia. But in the case of agoraphobia, fear also extends to open spaces and crowded places, including public transport. Fear is caused by the fact that something can happen in front of people, in a crowd. In both cases - with social phobia and with agoraphobia, a person is not free in his manifestations, in self-expression, becomes unsure of himself, perceives the world as unsafe and hides in his “home”, as if returning back “to the womb”. With depression social isolation is a consequence of loss of interest and desires: for people, for goals, for life in general. Libido stops investing in objects and turns in on itself. A person is under the pressure of his suppressed feelings, in a feeling of meaninglessness, emptiness and physical weakness. Here we can observe social isolation as a consequence of the lack of motives for social interaction. With autism spectrum disorders, a person has a desire to establish social contacts, however, there is no mental opportunity, because there is a lack of empathy and pronounced manifestations may occur, such as the inability to make eye contact, delayed or monotonous speech, echolalia (repeating words after the speaker), poor to complete lack of understanding of other people's speech, and a deficit in socio-emotional reciprocity. Such a person is isolated from society, without meeting understanding and support. Meltzer wrote about autistic people that they tend to build relationships in two-dimensional space, where the Other has no volume, so contact occurs with hissurface, temperature or texture, but without detecting the contents of the container. In schizophrenia, as the disease progresses, emotional reactions become increasingly scarce. The patient withdraws from the outside world, loses interest in life, becomes apathetic, detached. A person becomes fixated on his own inner world, does not make contact with family, loses his sense of humor, reacts negatively to tactile touches, and performs the same actions monotonously and stereotypically. Speech impairment manifests itself in the creation of a special language that is understandable only to the patient, speech is abrupt, and frequent jumps from topic to topic. With schizophrenia, it is often the relatives themselves who limit the patient’s social contacts, isolate him, and intimidate him with hospitalization, thereby limiting the possibility of recovery. We will consider such a phenomenon as hikikomori, or seclusion, in more detail. Japanese psychiatrist Saito Tamaki drew attention to complaints from parents about the strange behavior of their children, in mostly in boys. They locked themselves in their rooms and did not want to do anything or communicate with anyone. Parents thought that the children were just being lazy, but this laziness lasted for months and years. The first case of hikikomori was described in the literature in 1990: a 14-year-old boy came home from school, went into the kitchen, locked himself in there and did not come out for three years. more precisely, he left the kitchen once every six months to wash himself. He lived like this for almost three years. The parents couldn't do anything about it. They added another kitchen to the house and moved on as if nothing had happened. The mother brought her son food three times a day. When the story became known to journalists three years later, everyone was horrified. Parents were afraid of the reaction of people, especially friends and neighbors. In the article “All about hikikomori. “The Missing Million” of Japan states the following: “Although definitions vary, to be considered a hikikomori, a person must withdraw completely from society for six months or more. This occurs in the absence of any other mental disorder such as schizophrenia or agoraphobia. Diseases may develop later, but it is often unclear whether they developed before or because of hikikomori. Hickey withdraws completely from society, giving up work, school, friendships and all other social connections. They go into self-imposed exile, locking themselves in their bedrooms for most of the day. Not everyone is completely homebound. Some decide to buy food at convenience stores, doing it at night, when they are unlikely to encounter other people.” The vast majority of cases are men. Numbers vary, but hikikomori affects up to 1% of the Japanese population. The age of onset of the disorder is 12-13 years. It may be caused by some social or educational failure, a traumatic event that causes the hickey to retreat to hide from shame. This could be fear of other people, failing a university entrance exam, or not being able to find a well-paid job. One of the first symptoms of hikikomori is "futoko", the refusal of children to attend school. Hicks can also become unhappy, lose friends, become depressed and less talkative before they begin their self-imposed exile. This behavior can continue for years. There are some hikikomori who are now over 40, the so-called "first generation", who have been in exile for twenty years or more. This has led to what has been called the “2030 problem.” When the parents of these people, now over 60, start dying in the next twenty years, society will have to do something about the influx of people who haven't left home for forty years, haven't interacted with anyone, entered into real relationships, and haven't moved around. modern world all this time. Most hikikomori are completely dependent on their parents during their self-imposed exile. This is confusing to Westerners, where it is considered normal for a child to leave home at 16-18 years of age. A typical American response when confronted with the phenomenon of parents supporting their children.under 40: "Why don't they just kick them out?" Asian countries in general and Japan in particular have long extolled the virtues of being single. Religious figures such as the Buddha, Bodhidharma, and other heroes and prophets of Eastern traditions spent significant amounts of time alone contemplating the nature of the universe (Bodhidharma, the first patriarch of Chan Buddhism, once spent seven years gazing at a cave wall). The Japanese Zen tradition and Shintoism before it also celebrated the nobility of solitude, and there are many poems and literary works that illustrate this cultural habit. Attitudes toward learning and success probably have a more direct influence on the rise of the Hikikomore phenomenon. If American exams make a Russian poor student laugh, then Japanese tests are simply painful. Progression to each level of the Japanese education system is determined by tests. The scores a student scores on these tests determine which educational course he or she enrolls in. Ideally, a student should follow a path that will lead him to an elite university, such as the University of Tokyo. In Japan, it used to be that you finish your studies and get a job at a multinational corporation, where you will work for the rest of your life. For the fathers of many hikikomori, work was extremely secure. The careers they started in their youth help their sons remain isolated. It is difficult to determine the exact causes of the hikikomori phenomenon because each family has its own driving forces. In general, Japanese hikikomori parents take a gentle approach to the onset of symptoms. They think that this is just a short-term phase and that their son or daughter will grow out of it and return to normal soon. But months pass without change, and a feeling of shame arises. Many parents believe that they failed in raising their children, that if they had done things differently, things might have turned out differently. There also comes fear of their own shame. Nobody talks about this because the topic is too painful to approach. Therefore, they calmly support their son, hoping that over time everything will go away on its own. It is still not clear how to treat this (and whether it is necessary). In caring for hikikomori patients, Saito Tamaki uses the same techniques as for those suffering from depression or anxiety. Parents of such children can also undergo therapy, mainly in support groups. Saito Tamaki writes about the problem and methods of therapy in his book “Hikikomori: Adolescence without End.” A review of the book was published in the collection entitled “Mental Health and Social Isolation in Modern Japan: Beyond the Hikikomori Spectrum." Saito Tamaki first attempts to distinguish hikikomori from apathy or student apathy syndrome, bringing his research closer to addiction through the concept of vicious cycles. These vicious cycles (circles) will be present in the three systems that make up the hikikomori system: the individual, the family and society. In the last chapter, he positions hikikomori as a pathology generated by society. He recalls the discourse about apathetic youth in the late 1970s, but for him this phenomenon was nothing more than a sign of a conflict of values ​​between generations. He writes that “social isolation is a pathology of adolescence. This suggests that the problem of withdrawal is closely related to our current education system.” While this view is understandable and widely held, it is not the view that the educational system forces students to reject castration. By the term “castration,” Saito Tamaki refers to the psychoanalytic concept of the same name: he explains that castration means renunciation of the omnipotent infant. According to him, uncastrated people (in a symbolic sense) cannot participate in society. This is a universal statement based on the idea that suffering from repeated losses while growing up is suffering from emasculation. Additionally, Saito argues that the Japanese education system promotes an illusory belief.