Abstract Drawing on interviews with self-isolated prisoners, this article explores how they make sense of their painful form of confinement. It identifies five forms of narrative work on the self—the respectable, reparable, controlled, caring and future self—through which prisoners live with the emptiness of isolation. In the absence of a better alternative, prisoners frame isolation as protection and a space for hope and reinvention, even as it remains detrimental to their well-being. The article argues that self-isolation constitutes a tragic choice in which people damage themselves, or accept harm, to protect what matters most to them: safety, dignity, care, and the possibility of a better future. It concludes by discussing the fragility of these rescripted solitary selves.
Frederik Rom Taxhjelm (Wed,) studied this question.