That's the beauty of the whole thing. I've seen grown men who appear to be perfectly happy break down and cry like children after only three days of meditation. Isolation puts you in very close contact with yourself. You can't distract yourself any longer, so you're left with your own thoughts, repeating delirious patterns, second guessing yourself, second guessing your life, and your environment. If you do meditation wrong (succumb to these patterns instead of returning to your breath), it can drive you insane, literally inducing psychotic lapses.

Yet if you do it right, your mind become incredibly calm and alert. Concentration becomes easy, your mind snaps into gear with a tiny push. And you end up playing a game that's trivial to learn and unbelievably difficult to master. Slowly, you peal away layers of your psyche, becoming intimately familiar with it in the process, until you get to the pristine awareness your mind inherently has.

There is wisdom and strength in isolation. You just have to learn how to get through the demons in the darkest corners of your mind.

It also makes a tremendous difference when isolation is voluntary, versus being held prisoner in solitary confinement.

Agreed. A lot of the "defiant" behaviors of the prisoners seemed to be efforts to exert some control over their environment. Also, the newer British system allowed more control in addition to less confinement.

I wonder if there's much overlap at all between the psychological effect of voluntary solitude and forced solitude.

yes I thought the same and it reminded me of this video by Matthieu Ricard:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1424079446171087119...

More specifcally at this point: 37 min 23 sec he shows a picture of a grinning monk who's just come out of 6 years of meditation. He seems to have had a rather pleasant time.