Anomie

Anomie is a societal condition resulting from the disintegration of a commonly accepted normative code. In the 1950s and 1960s it came to describe a concept akin to alienation, one where an individual had lost his traditional moorings and was prone to disorientation or psychic disorder.

The term comes from the Greek meaning, literally, without law, and was resurrected by the French sociologist Emile Durkheim.