Alienation

Alienation, estrangement from oneself, other individuals, society, or work.

The term is widely used in sometimes contradictory ways. Psychotherapists, for instance, consider alienation a self-induced blocking or dissociation of personal feelings, causing the individual concerned to become less effective socially and emotionally. The focus here is on the person’s problems in adjusting to society. However, some philosophers and sociologists believe that alienation is inevitably produced not by the individual but by the shallowness and depersonalization of modern society. The concept of alienation has been held to account for behaviour patterns as diverse as unprovoked violence and total inactivity.

The concept of alienation is an ancient one. St Augustine wrote that, because of its sinful nature, humanity was alienated from God. He believed, however, that a reconciliation could be achieved through belief in Christ. In the 19th century Karl Marx gave an economic interpretation of alienation. People were alienated from their own labour; because they did not own their means of production their work was appropriated by someone else (the owner or capitalist and the work itself was compulsory, not creative; the cause was capitalism, and the cure was socialism). To the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, alienation was self-estrangement caused by the split between the conscious and unconscious parts of the mind.

Sociology provided other viewpoints: to the French social theorist Émile Durkheim, alienation (anomie, or rootlessness) stemmed from loss of societal and religious tradition. Later sociologists further expanded Durkheim’s theme of alienation. The existentialists Søren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, and Jean-Paul Sartre saw some measure of self-estrangement and powerlessness over one’s destiny as an inevitable part of the human condition. Alienation was seen by others to be characterized by a general disintegration of traditional cultural values, as exemplified by the “generation gap” of the 1960s.