A profound sense of disconnection, isolation, or estrangement from others, society, or even oneself. It involves feeling like an outsider, misunderstood, or fundamentally different from those around you.
From Latin 'alienus' meaning 'belonging to another,' originally used in legal contexts for transferring property. The psychological meaning developed through existentialism and sociology in the 19th-20th centuries, describing the modern human condition of feeling disconnected from community and meaning.
Alienation is the emotional equivalent of being a stranger in your own life - it's that haunting sense that everyone else got a manual for how to be human and you missed the distribution. It often drives people to either conformity (trying desperately to fit in) or rebellion (embracing the outsider status), but both responses can deepen the very disconnection they're trying to resolve.
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