ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the concept of personal isolation as central to an understanding of human development. D. W. Winnicott's work will be taken as a starting point for the understanding of personal isolation as an essential facet of the experience of being alive. The discussion of personal isolation must begin with the study of Winnicott's seminal contributions to this area of thought. The concept of isolation is an idea that evolved over the entire span of Winnicott's writing. The developmentally earlier form of isolation described by Winnicott involves the insulation of the infant from premature awareness of the separateness of self and object. Communication with subjective objects is a "culde-sac communication", a communication that is not addressed to external objects and therefore entails an isolation of the self from the necessity to be responsive to objects objectively perceived. The primitive type of isolation that will be discussed involves an isolation of the individual in a self-generated sensation matrix.
