 This basic idea of alienation appears to give us a diverse but distinct set of social and psychological phenomena; picking out a class of entities which might have little in common other than this problematic separation of subject and object. The problematic separations here are between the self (including individual and collective agents) and other (including other selves, one’s own self, and entities which are not subjects). So understood, the basic idea of alienation seems to play largely a diagnostic or critical role; that is, the problematic separations might indicate that something is awry with the self or social world, but do not, in themselves, offer an explanation of, or suggest a solution to, those ills. 