Solitary imaginings
Hope you never need this information: how to survive solitary confinement.
It seems to come down to the ability to focus imagination on positives, what is called intentional imagination rather than uncontrolled imagination:
Mental imagery can supplement perceptual input—but it can be equally useful when perceptual input is painful, tedious, or lacking. A prisoner in supermax can use mental imagery to create the space and time that confinement strips away…
He also used his imagination to time travel, imagining “alternate endings to past interactions with people—what if I said this? Or what if I would’ve invited her for coffee or something like that?” He wrote about painful relationships and episodes, reframing them and extracting a lesson. Memory is both constructive and reproductive, says Alex Schlegel, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In fact, imagination and memory run on parallel tracks in the brain. By engaging the imagination, [the prisoner in solitary] was able to “rewrite” his past in a more positive light, and reframe his future.
This is similar to a technique some therapists use called reframing, but in intentional imagination the scene is played out in great detail and the entire thing acts as a powerful reframe.
Not unlike the people who play chess against themselves in solitary.
Or recite poetry in vast volume.
Of course, you have to learn chess or poetry very well to do that.
Anyone interested in this fascinating topic (or in the literature of chess) is encouraged to read the great Stefan Zweig’s “Chess Novella”, usually translated as the The Royal Game. It is truly a brilliant piece of writing.
Sounds an awful lot like the kind of “torture” that so convulsed the Left during the Iraq war, when it was “committed” by a Republican administration against suspected terrorists — cold-blooded killers.
And yet, they cheered when Paul Manafort — white collar crime, pre-trial detention — was confined to solitary.
Think about it.
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/why-the-heck-is-paul-manafort-being-kept-in-solitary-confinement/
“The warden is concerned that someone would violently attack Paul just for street cred.”
Only if Jussie Smollett was in there too.
Vox thinks he got a better deal than most dudes in the box.
https://www.vox.com/2018/7/11/17561616/paul-manafort-solitary-confinement
“He’s being treated like a “VIP,” according to his own account on a monitored phone call.
Whether all this is akin to “waterboarding” or a strategy to “torture” Manafort into “madness,” I’ll leave for others to decide.”
During SERE training we were locked in very tight coffin-like boxes. The sensation was extremely disorienting and panic inducing. We had to stay in for a certain time, I think maybe 45 minutes. Those who didn’t last that long, and there were a few, “washed out.” I had been told that visualization was an effective way to overcome the stress and panic of such a claustrophobic experience. I had thought ahead of time about what I would visualize, and it worked very well. I visualized building my dream home. (I’ve always been in love with houses and building them.) Anyway, I began by visualizing a plan, then picking a site, excavating, pouring the foundations, laying the floor joists, screwing down the subfloor, framing the walls, etc. All in as much detail as possible. I had not even gotten the subfloor laid when my time was up. I had actually enjoyed the time in the dreaded box. A day later they decided I had to go in again. This time in a standing box. Once gain I began building my house. Time flew. I was exhausted from lack of sleep. I eventually drifted off. When the guards unlocked the box and found me asleep, they were surprised. Few “POWs” fell asleep while in the box.
It’s also a useful technique for passing time in mountain climbing bivouacs. You can worry about your isolation and it may be raining or snowing, but it works to visualize yourself doing something else that captures your complete attention. Go into as much detail as possible. Shut out the real world for as long as necessary. Time passes rather pleasantly and quickly.
I fall asleep in MRI machines.
There was a description of solitary in “From Here to Eternity”
the book, not the movie.
People submerged in body temperature pools start to hallucinate very quickly.
Once upon a time, after reading John Lilly a bit too credulously, I was heavy into isolation tanks, which are basically large enclosed boxes filled with body temperature water saturated with epsom salts so one floats . A friend and I built one out of plywood and polyethylene sheets which sorta worked but didn’t fill the bill.
Later, after moving to San Francisco in the 80s, I would go visit a nice red-haired lady in the Castro who rented out a commercial Samadhi tank for customers. That was cool.
https://www.samadhitank.com
Even later, after I pulled down a big stock option score, I bought my very own Samadhi tank and enjoyed the inner voyages quite a lot. If you’re not worried about going crazy or being confined for the rest of your life, it’s quite interesting to explore inner space that way.
Frankly I think almost everyone ought to try it once or twice.
People submerged in body temperature pools start to hallucinate very quickly.
Mike K: Come for the relaxation and stay for the hallucinations!
Once when I was in the tank I heard a loud, cracking sound like thunder and I saw white light everywhere.
The minor league stuff was wacky little reveries similar to the stuff one experiences while dropping off to sleep. Although I don’t think I slept in the tank. It was hard to tell. Time gets weird.
J.J.,
I won’t go into too much detail but I suffered a fair amount of physical abuse as a child. I was shy, the smallest boy in my class (I was 5′ feet tall and 80 lbs in my senior year; I grew 11 inches in height during my freshman year of college!), I was considered very bright but was a year younger than my classmates and consequently, a very inviting target.
One of the ways that I coped with it was I would imagine a library, with room upon room of books. Then I would imagine the books in detail, titles and covers. I would pick a book, walk myself into the deepest part of the library, a vault-like room, where nothing could hurt me and I could read all the books I wanted uninterrupted.
I would fight back when I could, which was rare; bullies are frequently pack hunters. When I couldn’t fight back, my mind would go to the “mental library” and wander to the vault and read. I found that when I did that, I could endure a significant amount of physical pain.
Also, for people who found the linked article interesting, I recommend Admiral James Stockdale’s ‘Musings of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot’. It deals with solitary confinement, physical punishment and the teachings of Epictetus. It helped me more than any therapist ever did and was quite fascinating in its own right.
sucks… got isolated at work in a 47×57 office… most of my days that way
they got rewarded…. i carry my load…
Plowing an 80 field late at night in late November, creeping across the field at 2 mph, it takes imagination to stay focused on the task at hand. You have to be the furrow. Something city folks can not imagine. Plus you have to defeat the cold and darkness to keep going. Good training for a 14 yr old riding a JD 4020. Ah, the good old days.
Reframing is also a technique Weight Watchers has asserted is helpful in managing your relationship with food and self-image. So, for instance, you go to a party intending to have one glass of wine, one chicken kabob, and the crudites, and you end up having three glasses of wine, the crudites, some chips and dip, and two chicken kabobs. You can reframe this as, “My host kept coming around with more wine and everyone was taking it, but I kept it to three ordinary sized glasses. And I skipped the desserts because I’d already had the choice, and instead of the fried eggrolls I chose chicken kabobs. So I made better choices from among the things available, and showed self-restraint in spite of a lot of pressure.” It can help you feel more successful than if you take the usual tack of beriatng yourself for failing to follow your plan perfectly (making a plan is another WW technique). And that, in theory, can provide you with some momentum for the next day.
Weight Watchers is actually very useful as cognitive behavioral therapy.
Oops, “I’d already had the chips,” not “the choice.”
Fractal Rabbit, what a great anecdote. That you came up with the visualization technique on your own is interesting. Good for you.
Admiral Stockdale was in the Hanoi Hilton with a coup[le of men that I knew – I went through SERE with one of them, CDR Fred Franke. As you know from his book, Stockdale was a remarkable leader and man.
Natan (Anatoly) Sharansky’s autobiographical account of taking on the USSR, and winning. (With first-hand descriptions of solitary confinement, Soviet style):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_No_Evil_(book)
Viktor Frankl developed his idea of “Logotherapy” while in a Nazi concentration camp. He noted those many of those who survived imagined a purpose. His was writing a book, which he did over and over. He told of one woman, a seamstress, who imagined making dresses for her daughters. The dresses had become so real to her that she became upset when she was reunited with them and they weren’t wearing the dresses she had “made.”
I wonder if this is similar to what old people do when locked in a nursing home, or something. They appear unresponsive, except that on occasion they come to life and join a conversation. I remember reading somewhere that one such old person explained that the world was not interesting enough to spend the energy to join it. Much easier to spend their declining years wandering their memories.
Waidmann