There are many different kinds of social pain: embarrassment, betrayal, bereavement, insult, exclusion by a group or individual, loneliness, heartbreak. What they have in common is rejection. Ostracism is a capital assault on the self, sometimes described as ‘psychological death’. (It’s not for no reason that St Benedict considered ‘the cauterizing iron of excommunication’ the ultimate punishment for wayward monks.) The reason we’ve evolved to experience it with such agony is thought to go back to when we roamed the planet in vulnerable tribes.
