Self Study is a genre-bending work of autophilosophy. It opens a rare, rear window into the schizoid position of self-sufficient withdrawal and impassive indifference. This inability to be enriched by outer experiences feeds the relentless suspicion that hell is other people. Laying bare his life and work, Kishik engages with psychoanalysis, philosophy, and cultural inquiry to trace loneliness across the history of thought, leading to todays shut-in society and the autonomous subject of liberal capitalism.

David Kishik is the author of To Imagine a Form of Life, a series of books in which Self Study is the fifth and final volume. Previous titles include The Book of Shem and The Manhattan Project, both published by Stanford University Press. Some of his shorter texts appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Lapham's Quarterly. He lives in New York and teaches at Emerson College.