I wanted to suggest that you ask some similar question on RG. Sometimes there are good suggestions.

To start with, could you suggest how loneliness could be classified at all (for example on DSM-5 or ICD-10).

Most current reseachers on loneliness claim that it is caused by external conditions--environmental, cultural, situational and even chemical imbalances in the brain. This paradigm is promoted by materialists, empriicists, behaviorists, and neuroscientists like John Cacioppo and  and Patricia Churchland. It follows that loneliness is transient and avoidable. By contrast, I argue that it is innate and constituted by the activities and structures of self-conscsiousness (Kant) and intentionality (Husserl)) and therefore universal, permanent, and unavoidable. In effect I support the principles and paradigms of dualism, idealism, rationalism, phenomenology, and existentialism.

The term "loneliness" does not appear in the DSM-4 because it is an"umbrella concept" and is misdiagnosed as depression, anxiety, hostility, etc. whereas loneliness is the actual underlying dynamic. (See ben mijuskovic simplicity argument on google.)

Hope attached ones are helpful for you. Regards

Article Literature, God, & the Unbearable Solitude of Consciousness

Article The causes of loneliness and the factors that contribute tow...

Article Theories of Consciousness, Therapy, and Loneliness

Book Feeling Lonesome: The Philosophy and Psychology of Lonelines...

I agree with the comments expressed in the writngs and research referenced ed and provided in the texts above. My study, Loneliness in Philosophy, Psychology, and Literature (2012, 3rd ed., originally published in 1979) is a PDF readily available on the google website: ben mijuskovic simplicity argument. Feeling Lonesome; The Philosophy and Psychology of Loneliness is copyrighted byPraeger, July, 2015 and therefore not available but has just been reviewed by Dialogue and Philosophy in Review journals.

PS: Thank you Mustafa Tekke.

Ms. Tuval-Mashiach: My approach to the universal human fear of loneliness--and the corresponding desire to secure intimacy--derives from my publications on the relationship between theories of consciousness and loneliness, which began in The Achilles of Rationalist Arguments (Nijhoff, 1974) and an article in the journal, Psychiatry: Journal for the Study of Interpersonal Processes, 40:2 (1977), 113-133. I'm not a big fan of the cognitive behavioral approach to loneliness nor the current neurosicence trend. I don't know if you are familiar with any of my written work but I assume your emphasis is similar to Cobi Stein's. I worked for 20 years for LA County's deparment of mental health and I strongly believe the overuse of psychitric medications creates more problems than it solves. My approach to loneliness is "humanistic" as opposed to "scientific."

Dear Ben,

Your studies on loneliness are inspiring and insightful. However, I feel that you are limiting yourself to one perspective, convinced that it accounts for all aspects of loneliness. As such, I wonder if you are prepared to examine your preconceptions and be open to other views. Particularly, I would like to challenge the use of the word "or" in your question above. Loneliness is a complex multifaceted experience (a realization that may account for the fact that it is a polysemic term alluding to different things). Moreover, thinking in the lines of language and language-games, it seems that scholars, yourself included, often conflate loneliness with isolation (you do this explicitly in your writings asserting that you use the terms interchangeably). Hence, it is not a matter of is it this "or" that, but rather how may it be described from this perspective and that perspective and have some truth value (or verisimilitude).

Loneliness is an experience, it is a mode of consciousness incorporating affective and cognitive aspects. Isolation, on the other hand, is an objective external situation, a state of being. Subjective isolation or perceived isolation, or experienced isolation are closer to loneliness, but they too lack in integral component of loneliness, namely the pain aspect. If the experience is not painful or unpleasant it is not that of loneliness (phenomenologically). For instance, people experience positive isolation, typically referred to as solitude. People seek solitude at time. It was Paul Tillich who noted that the distinction between loneliness and solitude is first and foremost one made possible by language allocating different words to the distinct phenomena.

I am aware that you see things otherwise, and this is, as I argue in my paper, because you are rooted in an existentialist metaphysical tradition of consciousness. But if you never acknowledge that there are different experiences sharing this umbrella term 'loneliness, and that it may be described from different perspectives alluding to different aspects of the phenomenon, you will never be able to see the manner in which it may be addressed from these varying perspectives. Yes, there are cognitive aspects that may be attributed to loneliness. Yes, there are affective aspect, linguistic aspects, aspects of consciousness, and aspects of causality that may be used to address it. 

In sum, I feel that you are blinded to the multifariousness and polysemy of the phenomenon/concept mainly due to your convictions (prejudices) forged in decades of philosophical, psychological and literary (but not empirical, cognitive, neuroscientific, behavioral) examination. As I said in the beginning of my post, yours is a valuable perspective I truly see as insightful. However, it is inevitably only part of the picture.

Cobi.

Jacob

It looks to me that you are saying that: if we would examine the concept from the “empirical, cognitive, neuroscientific, and behavioral” perspective, then we would realize “the manner in which it may be addressed from these varying perspectives”. ("-", your words)

This looks to me as almost a perfect tautology. What do you mean by this, please?

We can also say, without making any significant proposition, that if we would examine it from a philosophical, aesthetic, literary, mathematical, electrophysiological, psychological, genetic, historical or from any other perspective we would also realize “the manner in which it may be addressed from these varying perspectives”.

What I mean is simple. As Kuhn famously noted "the answers you get depend on the questions you ask". Inquiring into loneliness from any discipline has dire ramifications for the questions one will as as well as the answrs one will achieve. It is a matter of discourse as much as it is a matter of "facts", so to speak. So, acknowledging that loneliness has neurological manifestations does not contradict observations from a consciousness focal point, but enrich them. 

Jacob

Thank you for really fast answer!

Sorry, citing « big » names does not improve on the argument. ASSUMING all what Kuhn suggested (and the same suggestion that number of other people made, starting with Aristotle, then indeed over to Cartesius and number of others, – it is a long list though) what do you want THAN (after assuminf this) to say, please?

Cobi, the study of consciousness, what David Chalmers has christened "the hard problem of consciousness," goes back at least to Plato (Republic) and Aristotle (De Anima). But its considerable force and interest can be attributed to the Epistemological Age. On the one side you have Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz representing rationalism and on the the other side Locke Berkeley, and Hume promoting empiricism. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason serves as the narrow stem of the hourglass transforming everything that came before as well as everything that follows.

You mention Kuhn (The Structure of of Scientific Revolutions?) What the above philosophers are promoting is precisely paradigms of consciousness. Do you subscribe to any of these theories of cognition?

What about psychologists? Is there someone--or several--you are following? What's your position on the unconscious? Are yoiu aware that Kant has a theory of an even deeper layer of cognition--the subconscious? Is consciousness active or passive? The rationalists opt for former and the empiricists for the latter.

Metaphysically there is also materialism (Hobbes), Dualism (Descartes), and idealism Kant). Do any of these systems appeal to you? If you wish I can define them for you.

You mention the cognitive and affective aspects of consciousness. Are you aware of the mind-body problem?

You object to my use of the term "or" in my opening question. In a dialoguue of Plato, he refers to the Battle between the Giants and the Gods, between the materialists (the neuroscientists--John Cacioppo, Paul and Patricia Churchland) on the one side and the idealists (the phenomenologists and existentialists) on the other side (Sophist, 245e-246e). This conflict has lasted throughiout the histories of philosophy and psychology.

The issue between us is one of "first priniples," "ultimate assumptions," "basic premises." These are "underived." Pascal states,"THe heart has its reasons which the head (reason) does not know'" (Pensees); Fichte declares that philosophical principles--and hence their following systems--are picked simply by "inclination and interest" (The Science of Knoweldge); and William James attributes the choice to "our passional natures"(The Will To Believe). A theist and an atheist do not argue with each other but rather past each other. And most importantly, you cannot mix first principles. Yo are either pregnant or not. You can' be a little bit pregnant.

But what's important about this is that if two disputants have opposing first priniples--you and I--they cannot argue WITH each other but rather only PAST each other. This appears to be the case between you and I. The difference is that you believe you are doing science and I'm committed to the humanist camp.

But you are very wrong when you say I don't consider the other side. I constantly define and address materialism, empiricism, phenomenalis, behavirorism, and the neurosciences. And as paradigms, they have been around since ancient Greek philosophy.

Tillich by all accounts is an existentialist. He taught at my old school, the University of Chicago. He is not a language theorist and as Aristotle opines one phrase does not a theory make nor a single swallow a summer make.. Speaking of the relation and the issue of primacy between consciousness and language my Chapter 6 in Feeling Lonesome addresses it and favors Husserl.

Pragmatically, the disagreemnt between the two of us may be reflected in the treatment we advocate. I just left a County mental health system that provided 6 therapy sessions for "patients" that were not psychotic and then referred them to medical doctors while the psychotics--schizophrenics and bipolars--we terated with anti-psychotic medication. Needless to point out the medical doctors did not provide therapy.

Try "philosophy of loneliness" through Google at the internet. Hope you find everithing you need to answer your question.

I'm way beyond that. I've written two books on the subject: Loneliness in Philosophy, Psychology, and Literature and Feeling Lonesome: The Philosophy and Psychology of Loneliness. The issue is whether Loneliness is best addressed thru the tenets of materialism, empiricism, behaviorism and the neurosciences (Paul and Patricia Churchland, John Cacioppo) or idealism, rationalism, phenomenology, and existentialism. But thanks for the reference.

Dear Ben,

I agree - we are not arguing with one another, but past one another. I myself am a) considerably less knowledgeable than you (for those following this discussion but are not familiar with your work, I dare say that you are one of the most prominent philosophers devoted to loneliness today), b ) ontologically ignorant (i.e., I contend that any ontological assertion is contingent and is inevitably one biased by one's prejudices). Hence, let's keep the discussion away from the ontological\metaphysical realm, and try to sway it towards the pragmatic, as you have done in your last post.

I maintain that one cannot answer the question "how is loneliness best addressed?" because such a question decontextualizes loneliness - a phenomenon which by definition is relational and hence embedded within context(s). 

Moreover, what aspect of loneliness do you wish do address? The pain? The depression that may come with it? The relational deficit? The cognitions festering within?

Phenomenologically, a person who has lost his wife to cancer may feel lonely in a totally different way than she who has been ostracized by her "friends". Both persons however may feel their loneliness as contingent, provisional, and solvable, or not. These convictions are rooted impersonal inclinations, and they may be addressed. I would not side, for instance, with Cacioppo or with Yalom a priori. I would however admit that in some instances the one view may be better than the other for the sake of ameliorating loneliness, and vice versa.

Cobi, I gave a talk recently at Brunel University where I tried to argue that cognitively the infant is first aware of inanimate objects before it is aware of the mother. Kant would say the same thing and Freud does say the same thing. At birth, the infant responds to its mother's breast as an inanimate object before it learns that it is attached to another self-conscious subject, which creates a dynamic struggle between dependence and independence. The talk is called "Loneliness: In Harm's Way." It's a PDF; MBS website, ben mijuskovic simplicity argument).

There are two ways to look at the formation of self-consciousness. A solitary way (me) and a social way--Hegel, Heidegger; the self learns it is a self in a social. mutually conditioning context. I argue this in Feeling Lonesome, which just received a negative book review on Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.(google).

In the paper, I discuss the case of a "feral child" in Tampa Bay in 2005. It's called "A Face in the Window." It pretty much goes along with the work of John Bowlby, Rene Spitz, Anna Freud, who point out that when infants are not nurtured, emotionally neglected they regress, they waste away, and stop caring and can die. Sometimes it's called marasmus, anaclitic depression, hospitalism, etc.

For sure individuals re-act differently to loneliness and individually people act differently to physical pain but it's always something one wishes to avoid.

The other stuff I presented in the talk/paper has to do with psychoanalysts like Zilboorg and Fromm-Reichmann, who connect loneliness with hostility and anxiety; for me these are expressions of an underlying loneliness as is depression.

If you get a chance, take a look at the paper.

My ultimate point is an existential one, namely that human consciousness is intrinsically solipsistic. But that doesn't mean I'm lonely most of the time. I've been married for 50 years to the same women; we met in a bar on Chicago's Southside and I asked her to marry me on the fourth night and she said yes. I go drinking with her every night; we go to New Orleans every two months; I live 40 yards from the Pacific Ocean. But I know that if she were to die before me, I would be incredibly lonely. That's what I mean when I say, loneliness is always there in the background, like death is.

The other thing is that in my mind the materialistic, behavioral, brain-oriented approach is tied in to psychiatric medications and I think they are dangerously over-used. School teachers who spend an hour fighting traffic before they get to school and then

I am learning from you all. Thank you very much.

Thanks , John. one of the arguments I've used in order to "persuade" people that loneliness is innate, that it is structured by the activities and structures of the mind is based on something that Kant suggests. No human being would ever wish to be immortal at the price of being the ONLY self-conscious creature in the entire universe. Who would ever wish to be all alone for ever?

In a very significant way, the entire controversy between materialism, behaviorism and the neurosciences versus dualism, idealism, and phenomenology can be reduced to the brain versus the mind; and in terms of "treatment," psychiatric medication versus insight, empathy, and intimacy. If psychiatric medications are the answer, why is it that suffering individuals are still so murderous and suicidal. If therapy is a neurological science, why is it that we still don't  and aren't able to successfully cure depression, hostility, and PTSD.

Dear Ben:

My vote is for loneliness being caused by a conjunction of individual and social factors. On the individual side, there are biological and psychological factors. On the social side, there are several kinds of condition (for instance, as you mention, if your wife dies before you do; many other situations can be discussed).

I do not think that this issue is closely related to the discussion of Idealism against Realism in Epistemology, or to the Kantian concept of 'apriori' forms. The latter are "conditions of possibility" for science (intended to account for the cognitive assumptions of Modern physics). I have expressed my views against the thesis that mind-dependent phenomena are "opaque". On the contrary, I think that phenomenal experiences are "transparent", revealing to our conscious minds some features of a mind-independent reality. Another problem with the Kantian concept of 'a priori' forms is their genesis. if not psycho-biological (as in Piaget's approach), where do they come from? From the thinking of God?

I would not state that loneliness (or the absence of it) is the "default" mode of existence of consciousness. First, not all consciousness is self-consciousness. When the child is attending to her mother's milk, she is not focusing on herself, but on the mother's breast. The infant does not feel lonely if she is in touch with her mother. Second, it seems clear to me that as "social animals" we are often focusing on "the other" (as recognized by Husserl in his Cartesian Meditatons) instead of focusing on ourselves. Third, self-consciousness has at least two meanings: thinking of ourselves, or feeling ourselves. Only when we we think of ourselves as individuals, without feeling ourselves as part of the cosmos, we do feel lonely; however, if - for instance, in meditation practices - feel ourselves as parts of a cosmos, we do not feel lonely. 

I would caution against conflating "isolation" and "loneliness" - while the former is more of a state the latter is to be invariably seen as an experience. As such, solipsism is too a state, that of an isolated consciousness, but that does not imply loneliness, at least not necessarily. One may see him or herself as isolated but not lonely, but not vice versa. Loneliness mandates that one perceives/experiences oneself as isolated, and painfully so. 

Moreover, man may be viewed as solipsistic (existentially) but at the same time considered inevitably in relation. As Heidegger notes, “The Other can be missing only in and for a Being-with. Being-alone is a deficient mode of Being-with; its very possibility is the proof of this.” Both solipsism and relationality are no more than interpretative approaches to being - they are manners of making-sense.

As for the infant, I would say that he/she/it does not view the mother as inanimate  or as a subject because both categories are meanings that I doubt the infant can maintain. For the infant, the mother/breast simply is. It is for the most part meaningless, or if you wish, it is no more than a source of nutrition. Distinctions such as inanimate objects are social categories dependent on language - a faculty the infant, so I believe, does not possess.

Americans are in love with technology and science. It's not only fashionable but the latest gadget, the latest medication, the latest medical procedure, etc. There is an interesting argument by James Ridgeway in Al Jazeera: How Big Pharma Got Americans Hooked on Anti-Psychotic Drugs (7/12/2011). It's worth a look.

Cobi, in an early article I distinguish loneliness--which is negative--from solitude--which is positive--from aloneness--which is neutral. I know I'm "alone," separated  from people who lived in different ages and places. Often people wish to be alone, the harassed mother, the overly busy worker at lunch time.

Alfredo: I work on theories of consciousness in relation to loneliness. There are at least four major theories of consciousness in Western thought grounded in different principles resulting in a quartet of paradigms and corresponding sets of theoretical constellations. Materialism, empiricism, phenomenalism, behaviorism, and the neurosciences. The model goes back to Democritus but itss found in Hobbes and John Cacioppo and the Churchlands. The second is based in dualism, idealism, and rationalism and the essential features of self-consciousness as active and it is promoted by Plato, Descartes, Kant, and Hegel among others. Husserl by contrast advocates for "intentionality," for phenomenology: consciousness is always "about" or "of" something other than its self (Sartre; The Trascendence of the Ego). It is meaning-intending. And there is William James' and Bertrand Russell's "neutral monism." "Consciousness" does not exist; it's simply the contextual intersection between two histories, e. g. the history of a room and the biography of the person in the room.

In Loneliness in Philosophy, Psychology, and Literature (PDF) and more recently in Feeling Lonesome: The Philosophy  and Psychology, I try to "account" for loneliness by unifying Kant's principle of reflexive self-consciousness and Husserl's transcendent intentionality. By the way, Kant's Critique is not simply an attempt to validate Newtonian science but ordinary consciousness as well. The pure forms of sensibility of space and time and the 12 active relational categories of consciousness apply as much to ordinary men as well as to Kant's conception of science (see ben Mijuskovic; google scholar).

Cobi: Solipsism is a major problem in certain theories of consciousness, which includes Descartes, Kant, and Husserl (see the latter's Cartesian Mediations, Fifth Meditation).

Generally speaking, there are two "aspects" to human consciousness; cognitive and affective. I have chosen to focus on loneliness because in my 30 years of working for social services and mental health, I have found it to be the major source of distress. When individuals are depressed, anxious, angry, envious, shy; when they feel abandoned, betrayed, etc., I have found the sense of loneliness to be the "underlying cause."  I have been teaching philosophy at universities since 1969. So I have tried to fuse philosophy with psychology but no less than with literature, which consistently and successfully offers insight into the universal features of man's loneiness.

I regard loneliness as an "umbrella concept." It does not appear in the DSM  and that is because of its underlying--and in the majority of situations--hidden dynamics. The first articles written on Loneliness as a subject matter in its own right are by Zilboorg (1938) and Fromm-Reichmann (1959). Together they forge an essential connection between loneliness and hostility, anxiety, failure to communicate, etc. My paper on Loneliness appeared in the same journal as Fromm-Reichmann's, Psychiatry: Journal for the Study of Interpersonal Processes (1977). Whatever loneliness, it is grounded in human consciousness. In order to understand it, one has first to focus on theories of consciousness. In order to appreciate its force and power, one must address how it impacts human functioning.

Consider for a moment the "inexplicable" murder-suicides of the Columbine klllers, Adam Lanza, Elliot Rodger, Andreas Lubitz, Dylan Roof, all these "loners," so angry that they had to kill others in order to express their anger. Consider the rash of "kidnappings" of children in the US perpetrated by the father/husband who retaliated and wanted to punish his family because of his separation from them. Both Zilboorg and Hannah Arendt blame national alienation for Nazism. Consider ISIS, their sense of disenfranchisement from the global community for years. That's what loneliness can do to an individual as well as a culture

There is an essential relation between loneliness and violence. Extreme loneliness engenders harm either to the self or to others or both. On February 2, 2000, a female schizophrenic patient came to our clinic for her medication. She was late and the psychiatrist declined to see her. She was then referred to the on-duty social worker. He told her there was nothing he could do except give her another appointment. She went home and that night she got her father's revolver and killed both parents and her self. Now one could argue, "what a shame. If only she could have gotten her medication!" My take on the incident is different. I believe she felt rejected, that she felt betrayed and abandoned by the very system that was intended to provide help for her, to provide insight and nurturance. I don't think it was the lack of medication.

For two years I met with a young woman who had been incestuously raped by her father for 3 years, from the ages of 6-8 before it was discovered. It was reported to CPS and because semen was found and a lengthy, incredibly painful trial ensued, the young girl went thru hell in court, dropped out of school, and as a teenager turned to drugs and promiscuity while searching for love and nurturance. Both these cases are discussed in Feeling Lonesome.

There is a psychiatrist in Germany, Michael Linden, who proposes that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder--in certain cases--be renamed PTED, Post Traumatic Embitterment Disorder. (It's not a stress; it's a tragedy.) There are certain cases when the damage is so extreme that the victim has lost all faith in human nature, the hurt is so severe that the damage cannot be undone. Holocaust victims are in that condition; the ISIS victims will be in that condition. In many cases, social workers, therapists, nurses, doctors, and psychiatrist have mistakenly "diagnosed" PTSD as a serious case of anxiety. The dynamics of anxiety are very different. If someone  is afraid of elevators, you can desensitize them. PTSD is not a form of sensory fear; it tears at the heart of human trust. It is a state of consciousness, not the body. That's where mistrust lives. I have attended trainings for Viet Nam and Iraq War veterans with PTSD. The desensitization and "flooding" treatments are ineffective. The problem is they trusted their government. They were exposed to Agent Orange, a defoliant, suffered severe neurological damage and the VA hospitals told them there was nothing wrong.

John Boswell. I'm sorry John. I suffer from CD--Computer Disorder and Computer Dyslexia. I don't know how to download material. A lot of my publications are PDF's. The article, "Loneliness and Intimacy," builds on the work of John Bowlby, Rene Spitz, Anna Freud, Dorothy Burlingham (Freud's colleague),  Margaret Ribble, and Margaret Mahler. Originally what triggered these studies was an incident that occurred in England during World War I. Because of the war, a great many mothers were forced to work in factories in support of the war effort. As a consequence, their very young infants were institutionalized in hospitals and physically cared for but NOT nurtured, held, cuddled, etc. As a result, half the children under the age of one-year-old died. The second part of the article is my attempt at offering insight into the qualities of consciousness promoting intimacy. I talk about this in the Brunel University lecture, "Loneliness: In Harm's Way" (PDF). There is a legend that Fredrick the Great of Sicily in the 12th century wanted to find out what was the original language of human beings. (He thought it might be Hebrew.) So he ordered that all children born would be tended by caretakers who were instructed not to talk to them and to minimally interact with them. Alas, the experiment failed. They all died. Without human mothering and nurturance, in their own childish minds they decided that life was not worth living if it only consisted of loneliness, separation. The opposite of loneliness is intimacy, a sense of belonging with others or to something greater than oneself. (religion).

Is this "loneliness" Viktor Frankl's "existential vacuum"?

As far as I understand, solipsism assumes that intersubjectivity is impossible. But, if I am not mistaken, this rests on the presupposition that understanding of the Other is only so if it is complete understanding. Given that each consciousness is enclosed within itself, solipsism claims that such understanding is impossible. However, there are two important caveats. First, on what basis are we to claim that only complete understanding constitutes understanding? Secondly, even if we accept that consciousness is enclosed within itself and that understanding is only so if complete (which I do not), we cannot assert that one cannot understand another, but merely that there is no way of verifying or corroborating that understanding has taken place. In fact, we also cannot verify that it hadn't taken place. We remain ignorant.

Furthermore, in the solipsistic framework, understanding is a state of correspondence between the intentionality of one consciousness and the apprehension of the consciousness by another consciousness. Since each consciousness is supposedly enclosed within itself, this becomes impossible, as noted above. But then, understanding may be conceptualized not only (or even primarily) as a state of being, but as an experience. One may feel understood and one may feel that he or she understand an Other. Solipsism would argue that such feelings are erroneous maybe. But experientially (i.e., phenomenologically) a moment of understanding has indeed happened. I think that as a therapist you surely try to promote such occurrences. Indeed, it is such cases wherein many people find that they are less lonely. Some existential researchers have argued that a phenomenon they call "I-sharing" may be a key to escape existential isolation (i.e., solipsism). IO would argue that at most this is a means for escaping what I term 'experiential isolation', for true existential isolation is never to be escaped. Notwithstanding, even the existentially isolated may escape the pain of loneliness, if not his or her own isolation.

 As you say, solipsism is a major problem in certain theories of consciousness. I would argue that this may be rooted in the tendency to forget that we speak in metaphors, always, to some extent. We speak of consciousness as if it were a container, and a sealed one at that. As you mention in your book, James Howard alludes to the body, 'the flesh-colored cage' as the boundaries of one's mind (so to speak). Alternatively, from a Husserlian perspective, consciousness may be conceptualized as a means of capturing an essence perhaps, or a means to view a subject and is thus intentional. What if we freed ourselves of these metaphors, and, as an intellectual exercise, think of it rather as, lets say, a generator. Consciousness then would not be directed at something nor contain something, but rather create something. Then one's consciousness may generate a certain state of mind and yet another consciousness (i.e., of another subject) may create a replica of this state of mind, perhaps even an identical state of mnd. Once again there is no way of verifying commensurability of these, but experientially it may be that both feel that they now inhabit the same state of mind, that is they understand each other.

Cobi: First of all, let me just say, I'm not arguiing for solipsism but rather for dualism. Generally speaking there are three metaphysical possibilities. Materialism, dualism, and idealism (with phenomenalism as a "trailer"). One way to approach solipsism is thru Descartes. D. defines the mind as both immaterial, simple, unextended; and active; thoughts do not have spatial dimensions; an idea is not six inches high and a pound in weight. By contrast, matter is extended and inert. Since these two substances share nothing in common, the problem of dualism arises. If they share no common property, atribute, or predicate in common, 4 impossibilities directly follow. How can we know that an exernal world beyond our thougts exsists; how can the two worlds interact; how can I know other selves; and how can I know another's mind? The mind-matter, soul body problem is taken on my Malebranche, Leibniz, and Berkeley and all three are forced to appeal to God, a theistic God for a "solution" that is unsatisfactory for obvious reasons. Kant, in his own funny way is a dualist but his dualism is of a different kind; he argues there is both a "phenomenal" world we all share in common and yet also a trasncedent noumenal world that we can conceive but not know. Husserl wants to put aside all these endless, fruitless metaphysical speculations and "bracket them," "put them out of gear." Nevertheless, in his Cartesian Meditations, he addresses solipsism and argues (following Theodor Lipps)  that EMPATHY is the solution.  I agree. The difference is that Husserl's empathy is cognitive and mine is affective  (Feeling Lonesome).

Cobi: Given the way the mind-body problem is setup, materialism "solves" it by reducing everything to matter and motion--physics and neuroscience; or idealism, which holds that matter, motion, space, time are all mental CONCEPTS and therefore ideal; or dualism that claims both exist and their real interaction is either (1) inexplicable; or (2)due to a mystery of God; or (3) due to a mystery of nature (Hume; me in Contingent Immaterialsim; and Noam Chomsky, "The Mysteries of Nature: How Well Hidden?" Journal of Philosophy (2009).

COBI; FORGET ABOUT SOLIPSISM. THINK NARCISSISM

Being  mostly ignorant philosophically,  I can let myself remain free of the constraints of metaphysical discourse. For the most part I feel that all three - dualism, materialism and idealism - have mostly led to pradoxes, absurds or aporias. The discourse of consciousness may have failed and may necessitate a paradigm shift.  I would argue that its successor may be a discourse wherein the focus is on experience. Such a discourse will favor the contextualized over the transcendental. Moreover, it will enable the governing of subjective interpretation (or experience) over the objective and pseudo-factual.

"This could be worse - at least I still have myself."

(Nothing beats narcissism!)

Dragan, if iyou read "the hitch hiker's guide to the galaxy", the answer is "don't panic".

Ben: let me ask you this, from a pragmatic perspective, what is the cash valur of treating loneliness as a derivative of narcissism? 

Cobi

But I am facing not only loneliness but a kind of "singularity", that is may be the “loneliness squared”!! (As John probably implyes!)

In connection with the picture that I posted, I suggest reading this below. It may help continue the discussion. I am sure majority of you read the essay already:

https://wagner.edu/psychology/files/2013/01/Heidegger-What-Is-Metaphysics-Translation-GROTH.pdf

http://religiousstudies.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/1929-WHAT-IS-METAPHYSICS-2013-NOV.pdf

My preferred translation is the oldest one,  by RFC Hull and Alan Crick, edited by Werner Brock:

http://www.stephenhicks.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/heideggerm-what-is-metaphysics.pdf

Dragan - thank you very much for the papers. I have not read them - but will do so now.

John

The links are various links to  the translations of a famous inaugural lecture of Heidegger from 1929. when he took over the chair of philosophy following death of Husserl.

When Ben mentioned “loneliness” I immediately recalled Heidegger’s essay because Heidegger introduces metaphysics through the “nihilation” (Nichten) of “being’ (Da-sein). I cannot read Ben’s book right now, but I am sure that book must be read. May be Ben could comment on Heidegger’s nothingness and a possible links to his concept of loneliness. I believe that there may be important links. This is why I posted Heidegger this morning.

Whether Heidegger’s concepts have a lot to do with psychology, what I have been convinced since I read for the first time his writings 30 years ago, is troubling me now – long time after I abandoned Heidegger. I always thought that this was not philosophy at all but more psychology. Now - I do not know any more…

But this is the other subject, of course.

Thanks Dragan.

The "loneliest" thought for me is the realisation that I only exist in the moment that I experience my own "consciousness".

John

Only expert around is Ben, please see with him.

Cobi et al. If you turn to a developmental theory that emphasizes infantile narcissism and it is not properly addressed by nurturance and socialization, then the ability to empathize and be intimate with others can be seriously impaired. The narcissist will tend to view others as objects rather than human beings with feelings. (Remember, narcisism in the DSM is a personality disorder.)

Cognitively--and emotionallyt; the two go together altho they can be conceoptually separated--there are two ways to look at how self-consciousness becomes aware of its self, the external world, and other selves. Kant theorizes that first the concept of the self and the concept of the  object mutually condtion each other. There can be no self-awareness without awareness of things that are not the self. Kant calls this the transcendental unity of apperception (Critique of Pure Reason). (Recall Descartes claimed an intuitive knowldge of the self and epistemologically doubted the existence of the external world and Hume reduced both the world and the self to fleeting mental impressions. (My publications on Kant and Hume)

Enter Hegel. According to Hegel, the self is mutually conditioned by other selves--say the mother's consciousness--not objects. It is socially mutually conditioned (Phenomenology of Sprit). So Heidegger's mit-sein, Dasein as being-in-the-world. We start with togetherness not a-loness. The self is already with other selves.

Similar to Kant, Freud in Civilzation and Its Discontents, in the early part of the book, describes what he calls the "oceanic feeling." At first, the infant makes no distinction between the "self" and the external world. How "it" develops this distinction between its self and the other is by first separating its self and an object before it learns there are other conscious selves with desires opposed to its self. The child at first relates to an inanimate object--the mother's breast.  Only when it is able to realize that the breast is attached to a conscious being and it becomes conscious that it has to cry in oder to be suckled and that the mother can withhold the breast does narcissism come to the fore. This is where narcissism comes in. The struggle between the ego and the other self, the Master-Slave conflict in Hegel (Marx, Sartre).

So what is the pragmatic "cash value" of reconizing narcissim? It is how the infant-child-adolescent-adult responds to her/his narcissistic/social development. But this is not science; it is unpredictable and it can change throughout life dependiing on circumstances.

In my PDF essay, "Lonleiness: In Harm's Way," I offer the case of a "feral child" discovered living under circumstances of severe neglect who could not speak (Tampa Bay Times, "A Face in the Window," 2005; followed up in 2015). It's a PDF and worth a look. Childhood emotional neglect turns children into angry adolescents. Forgive me for being so insistent on the point but I've labored in public social work and menal health settings for 30 years and I've seen the many faces of despair, violence, anxiety--all forms of loneliness, a kaleidooscpoe of pain and anger.

Enter Gregory Zilboorg, a psychonalyst. In an Atlantic Monthly article in 1938, "Loneliness," he connects, intrinsically relates narcissism>loneliness>and hostrility. When loneiness is extreme, when the self is "pathologically" exposed to intense or prolonged feelings of abandonment, alienation, neglect, rejection, it can turn to murder and suicide. He describes the dynamic as exhibiting "megalomania," entitlement issues, delusions of grandeur, and rage. Recall Andreas Lubitz, the Lufthansa pilot who had to kill 149 perfect strangers in order to kill himmself.

According to both Zliboorg and Hannah Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism--to repeat myself--both blame nationalstic, cultural, religious naricissim for Nazism and ISIS.

Agtain, Cobi, your first principle is that lonbeliness is a social "prodct"; mine is that it is innate and arises from the acctivities and and structures of individual self-consciousness (Kant) and intetionality (Husserl). We have different first principles.

Cobi: A switch in first principles is called a "conversion." For example, St. Augustine began as a Manichean, a dualist sect that believes in two co-eternal, opposing principles--goodness( Ahura Mazda) and evil (Ahriman). His mother, Monica (later to be a saint) begged him to convert to Christianity (his father was a pagan), But Augustine resisted because he was having too much fun drinking, gambling whoring, and so on. Then one day as he sat in a garden he heard a child's voice directing him to read the passsge before him in the Bible. He read and voila--converted to Christianity, commited to a God that was omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent--a single all-powerful God. My guess is that neither of us will be converting soon. It isn't simply a matter of "agreeing to disagree." Having diderent first pricples leads in different directions. My direction in terms of loneliess is humanistic. Currently the big trend in dealing with loneliness is geared toward the neurosciences and psychiatric medications.

This is a very good question. 

The inherent human dilemma- to know the limits of one's own being, that one is not only mortal, but that the brevity of their subjective experience in consciousness, may perhaps lack any greater meaning than to exist; this is an elemental and ubiquitous situation. Coupled with our drive to survive, we propell ourselves into a word of symbolic meaning through thinking, language, and culture.

Ultimately however, we will perish. Sam Keen called this "An insult to the human spirit."

In an existential sense, we see great loneliness. We inherently know great loneliness. Philosophers have asserted than one consciousness could never truly know another. What we have instead is symbols and meaning, constructions, and paradigms that provide both the syntax with which we can attempt to know another, and the means of meaning exchange.

Perhaps this is where our concept for love comes from- it is the yearning for the knowledge and experience of another in such intimate ways as to at least partially relieve our loneliness.

I would say that loneliness is not only an organic issue, where we live and think in a world of our flesh, but that many of the meaning-making existential constructs we value, are directly linked to the desire to connect with others in ways that will relieve the loneliness of our singular passage through consciousness and unto death.

Nabakov stated that existence was a sliver of light between two eternities of dark. At a deep and unconscious level, we know this to be true, and life is very much the attempt to deny the eventuality of the passage through existence as a singular identity  having a particular subjective experience, which will never occur again in the same way.

So without going into too deep of philosophical waters, I would say that we are bound in physicality which bars us from ever truly connecting, and we are then given a short time period of existence. Culture, relationships, beliefs, language, art, literature- all of it is an attempt to connect and have meaning in that connection. More than that, we cannot do, since we are limited creatures. We are all lonely in one sense or the other. Even when we are loved and adored we still die ultimately alone.

Agreed. Beautifully expressed. At the constant risk of repeating my self, the fear of loneliness and the desire to achieve iniimacy are the two guiding poles of human passion, thought, and action; in all we feel, think, say, and do. During the long history of philosophy, loneliness as an "existential" theme, was not prevalent any more than death was. Both, however, assumed a special significance as well as an increasing expression in the wrtings of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Camus, Sartre, and others. But the recognition of loneliness has always been there ever since Homer's Iliad and the Oddysey, Aristophanes' speech in Plato's Symposium., Aristotle's Politics and Nicomachean Ethics, and Sophocles' Antigone. It is the poets, tragediends, and novelists who have assumed the task of universalizing its presence.

Consciousness by its very nature is subjective. It is entrapping, It restricts us in our knowledge not only o other selves, others minds, and others hearts but worse stiil we are often strangers to our selves.

And yet there are many who through empathy, intimacy, mutual trust, respect and affection successfully forge connections sufficiently rewarding to make human exietence worthwhile.

There are many ways that we struggle against loneliness and seek recognition from an other self-conscious being.. The long reign of Western Christianity is one method. We posit a theistic God who ensures that our every thought and deed is acknowledged; that we exist. The philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach, a "left" Hegelian, on the other hand, speculates that man creates God as an indepenent being after first having endowed him with the attributes of omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence, when in fact it is man who is poweerful, wise, and good. But I think man has created God so he will not be lonely. Nevertheless, this can be a good thing--and sometimes it is not.

Often when we fail to reach another self-conscious creature, when we are unable to depend on others, we become  dependent on drugs and alcohol. Drugs and alcohol provide us with a source that we know we can depend on but it is loneliness that leads us in this direction.

And when we are thwarted in our hopes and efforts to find and secure love and understanding, we turn against others and often our selves.

Ben

In principle, I would also be very much interested how your views about loneliness are, have been or could be seen from the point of view of the existential philosophy. I suspect that number of issues have already been examined and that your book certainly addresses number of similar aspects.

However, your question seems to be much more related to the approaches that biomedical research or science of medicine or neurosciences may offer. And there, it looks to me, fortunately or not (!), that there is huge literature that is certainly hard to cope with. At least for me. Entering some keywords related to “loneliness” in PubMed the numbers of hits are as follows.

“loneliness” yields 4536: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=loneliness

“loneliness adults” yields 2921: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=loneliness+adults

“loneliness social” yields 2773: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=loneliness+social

"loneliness causes" yields 884:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=loneliness+causes

“loneliness pathophysiology” yields only 85

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=loneliness+pathophysiology

PubMed offers itself more then 20 various keywords which you could also explore.

I agree, we are not likely to convert. However, Ben, let me make one correction. I do not hold a social approach to loneliness, but rather a broader relational approach. As I state in my analysis (attached below), loneliness is the unpleasant experience of an utter dearth in any relational domain: social, intimate, existential, epistemic (consciousness), etc. It is so because people use the term so. That is, people CALL their experiences "loneliness" when they are lacking in the fulfillment of relational needs. Tying loneliness to one relational domain, while neglecting the others (or forcing the others into a mold fashioned by an overarching domain), in my eyes, delimits the phenomenon at the risk of missing the personal (phenomenological) meaning it bears for the experiencing person. From a humanistic perspective, I think, we owe it to lonely persons to understand what they feel they lack, and only then attempt to reconcile the discrepancy between their deficient relational state of painful isolation and the relational connections the desire.

Hi!

Loneliness is caused by structures of consciesness. Deegoized, one can lives peaceful filfe with him-/herself, and, of course with his/her fellows.

All the best I wish to all.

Correection:

Hi!

Loneliness is caused by structures of consciousness. Deegoized, one can lives peaceful life with him-/herself, and, of course with his/her fellows.

All the best I wish to all.

Is loneliness caused by external conditions (environment, chemical imbalances in the brain) or innate activities and structures of consciousness? - ResearchGate. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_loneliness_caused_by_external_conditions_environment_chemical_imbalances_in_the_brain_or_innate_activities_and_structures_of_consciousness#569f5e686225ff72a88b4589 [accessed Jan 20, 2016].

Whatever loneliness is, it is grounded in a theory of consciousness. The neuro-scientific approach to loneliness, championed by Paul and Patricia Churchland and John Cacioppo, is certainly in the ascendancy. It is conceptually and historically grounded in the related doctrines of materialism, empiricism (evidence based practices), behaviorism, and neuroscience. I do not believe that consciousness is reducible to brain activity--that consciousness is explainable by, or identical with brain motion in the central nervous system and in the skull. Although an electroencephalograph can tell us THAT someone is thinking, it cannot tell us WHAT they are thinking. According to empiricism, all our ideas are due to precedent sensations; there is nothing in the mind which is not given first in sensation. The "mind" is explainable by a stimulus-response mechanism=behaviorism; the "mind=brain" is like a computer programmed by the external world. We are complex machines.

The problem is what David Chalmers has called the "hard problem of consciousness." 

I represent a completely different tradition, different principles and paradigm: idealism, rationalism, and the immaterialist, active features of consciousness. This is what Plato in the Sophist has called the Battle of the Giants against the Gods. It pits Democritus against Plato, Epicurus against Plotinus, St. Augustine and Aquinas against Skeptics and Atheists (no, I'm not religious), Valla against Ficino, Hobbes against Descartes, Locke against Leibniz, Hume against Kant, Marx against Hegel, Mill against F. H. Bradley, Russell against Sartre, etc. etc.

The problem is SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. Perception is not self-consciousness. Perception is awareness of sensations but not the self; it is passive, conditioned. This is the basic theme that runs throughout my book, Loneliness in Philosophy, Psychology, and Literature. There is a critical difference between consciousness of self and consciousness of sensations. Classic empiricists are Locke and Hume. They are the inheritors of Aristotle's tabula rasa--the "mind"-brain is like a blank tablet upon which the external world writes. But "reflection upon sensations" is not the same as self-consciousness. See Feeling Lonesome: The Philosophy and Psychology of Loneliness and my argument against D. M. Armstrong. Empirical "reflection" is linear; the physical stimuli come from outside the brain and body and cause reactions. Self-consciousness is circular; the self is active, creative, spontaneous; it knows what it is thinking because it is the source of what it thinks.

It's really hard for me to summarize arguments that I have published over a 45year span--from 1970 (The Synthetic A priori in Plato, Dialogue, 1970) to Feeling Lonesome, 2015.

Cobi; it may be what you call "relational" is really a set of sensations. But relations are not reducible to sensations or what the empiricists call "the association of ideas." The empiricists reduce all consciousness to sensations. That's why Kant and Hegel are important; the relations are creative products of the mind; Kant's 12 synthetic a priori categories are relations created spontaneously from the internal resources of the mind. Blue and loud are sensations; they are not relations; the structure of, the relation of cause>

Cobi: From the beginning, in the journal Psychiatry, "Loneliness: An Interdisciplinary Approach" (May, 1977), I have claimed that the most basic motivational drive in man is the fear of loneliness. I repeat it in Feeling Lonesome quoting Kant's "Carazan's Dream" at length.

Cobi, you asked me what is the "cash value" of my recourse to narcissism. My answer is that when the narcissistic tendencies are repelled by others loneliness follows.

But let me ask you a question. Would you choose to be immortal if you were the only conscious existent in the entire universe for eternity bereft of both God and other creatures? That is what Kant's "Carazan's Dream=Nightmare" is about. That would be absolute loneliness--forever.

Would you believe me if I said yes? Or to the least, an absolute maybe? I enjoy time by myself immensely. I rarely miss people, though I truly enjoy company. I often feel as if I am self-suficient. If I could live forever, alone, and, for instance, enjoy seing the glorious world we live in, admire itss beauty. I would be content for at least the first 1000 years :-) Then, gradually, I would become bored. But I assume, and correct me if I'm wrong, that you would dismiss this boredom as a form of loneliness, and my enjoyment of the world as an attempt to avoid loneliness. So there is truly no way to refute your argument, which makes the whole debate futile. :-)

Perhaps a feeling of futility is the ultimate form of loneliness? How lonely it must be when we find our lives have no worth at all?

Yes, I believe boredom is a lesser form of loneliness.

The philosopher, Schopenhauer, in The World as Will and Representation (ca. 1840's), reports on the  prison system in Philadelphia and describes how the many prisoners frequently  commit suicide as a result of  solitary confinement but then obviously they didn't have TV's. He is mentioned in the 1st Loneliness book.

James Lynch, in The Broken Heart: The Medical Consequences of Loneliness (1977) discusses how single adults, the divorced, and the widowed experience heart attacks 5X the death rate of married partners. In A Cry Unheard: The Medical Consequences of Loneliness (2000), he talks about children and adolescents as victims of bullying and their loneliness. 

I worked for Child Protective Services for 2 years in San Diego and I became familiar with the dynamics of children being removed from parental custody and then being moved from multiple foster homes until they reached the age of maturity and the loneliness and anger it produced.

I lived in Europe and North Africa as a child during WW II and I can guarantee you that families torn apart and separated from each other and from their home during the conflict and years later generates quite a bit of loneliness.

I think most social workers, therapists, nurses, doctors and psychiatrists are familiar with the consequences of neglect, abandonment, failure to thrive babies.

In Psychiatry (1977), I suggested that "a joy unshared is no joy at all but a grief experiences alone is an unbearable sentence." I still believe that.

But the issue isn't the hurt and the ubiquitous presence and prevalence of loneliness but rather WHY is it so powerful and universal and I think the answer to that leads to a certain theory of consciousness.

John Boswell. I agree. I wrote a long article on ethics after I had been teaching it for 35 years outlining all the possible principles and systems I covered in the ethics courses over the many years. I offered what I considered to be an exhaustive matrix of possibilities in Western philosophy in "Ethical Principles, Criteria, and the Meaning of Life" (Journal of Thought, 40:4 (2005), pp.67-88).

On the one side there was relativism; subjectivism; and skepticism and on the other absolutism, objectivism, and certainty, which included fideism; rationalism; empiricism (human nature), and existentialism. (Personally I favored the latter because in the 3 former one discovered a pre-existing system whereas in existentialism the individual created his own absolute values for himself alone.

Thank you Ben for sharing your thoughts on this with us. Perhaps we survive as individuals and keep the species going because of the "in-built" fear of loneliness. Our suffering is guaranteed - but we can choose how we handle it. At the end of the day I always end up with Frankl - what more is there to life?

John Boswell. It's complicated. Self-consciousness can result in intellectual insight and ideally it's positive and you learn from your mistakes. Self-consciousness can also be-- and remain--internalized for extended periods of time. It then turns into depression. One theory of depression is basically Freudian--it's internalized aggression, that's why people have no energy because thy are fighting themselves and angry. I'm sure that's correct. (I would of course say lonely but leave that aside for the time being.) Another theory is cognitive; one has a negative beliefs about the self. others, and the future and then the therapist tries to have them question their own negative assumptions. Etc.

I've worked endlessly with severe bipolar disorders--individuals who go from depression to mania. To a certain extent, we are all bipolar and that's normal. (But there is bipolar psychosis.) But in "dysfunctional" bipolars, in their manic phase, it seems clear to me they are trying as hard as they can to keep busy, to run away from their depression so they don't have to face their depression. And at a certain level, anyone who is depressed is generally advised to keep busy and that's healthy, that's ok. Sartre will say man lives in his projects; once we've achieved a goal, we posit another goal for which to strive. Man lives beyond himself. And maybe also we shouldn't look to deeply into our selves (Heart of Darkness, Lord of the Flies, Pincher Martin).

But it's clear that many "successful" people can't shake the depression. Edgar Arlington Robinson wrote a short poem, Richard Cory. Everyone admired and envied Richard Cory; he was rich and handsome and then one day he put a bullet in his head. Look at Marilyn  Monroe; for all appearances, she had it all. Who knows? Maybe she was terrified of aging? 

The best remedy for depression is to help someone else or a creature. 

One of the great books on loneliness is Richard Styron's Sophie's Choice. He was a Marine, seemingly happily married, on his way to be awarded yet another literary prize, he had it all when suddenly he was "hit out of nowhere" with depression. He didn't know why and he went to a psychiatrist who told him to lift himself up by his bootstraps and gave him psych  meds which didn't help. This went on for quite a while when just as suddenly he recovered, "out of nowhere." 

He wrote a book about his experience--his depression--it's the best thing I've ever read on depression. It's Called Darkness Visible.

One of the subjects US therapists seldom introduce in sessions is courage. Pretty much the protocol is "...and how did that make you feel?" ("Like shit; how else?")

Sisyphus was a mortal, who twice tricked the god of death, Hades or Pluto. When the Underlord finally caught up with him, he was punished by endlessly rolling a boulder up a steep hill only to have it roll back down and then he would have to start all over again. For Camus, this symbolizes the absurdity of both the meaninglessness of suffering and death. But there is a moment, at the top of the hill, when there is a dignity in Sisyphus that gives meaning even to his punishment as a human being, a value and a worth. The theme is suicide.

In The Plague, Camus takes up the Problem of Evil and the existence of God. The Black Plague comes to Oran. Why here and now?  Father Paneloux, an Augustinian priest, offers a first sermon: "I don't know why, my brethren, but you must have deserved it." As the plague and the deaths continue, in the second sermon, Paneloux offers the choice to either accept God's punishment or reject it; either to love God or hate Him. Forget whether or not you understand it; you can will that the plague has visited the city and brought destruction on all alike..

Thanks Ben. You have given me much to think about. Perhaps for me a form of loneliness is that I will never have enough time (and the mental capacity) to find answers to all the questions I have. I recently had two operations (surgery) - and chose not to have a general anaesthetic and sedative - I chose a spinal anaesthetic so that I would be wide awake and experience what was happening to me. It was interesting. As we get older I suppose we start grieving the loss of intellect that is surely to come. The loneliness of declining intellectual capacity. Time for a coffee I think - too much loneliness for now! 

Thinking is good; drinking beer with someone you care for is even better. Best, Ben

The evolutionist perspective promoted by Cacioppo claims that loneliness is a means to promote survival - like thist and hunger. loneliness is claimed to be a biological signal to strengthen interpersonal teis. The existential perspective however would argue that one should stengthen his or her connection to the self rather than others.

A helpful book is Irvin Yalom's Existential Psychotherapy. To borrow a phrase from Paul Tillich, existentialism concentrates on man's "ultimate concerns" (The Courage To Be). These include Loneliness; Freedom (Sartre: "We are condemned to freedom"); Meaninglessness (each creates meaning for himself alone); and Death (we die alone; no one can die our death for or with us).

There are both atheistic and theistic existentialists..

I think it depends on what you mean with "loneliness". I found this is a term which is widely used without a clear conceptualization. I think it is multi-dimensional, including both the connection with the self and the others. As a nurse, I am interested in patients' loneliness and the possibility to assess it as a predictor of well-being. This may sound "materialist" but we should be able to measure what matters to patients.

Hi Valentina, thanks for your response. Generally, solitude means something positive; to be comfortable with one's self; to enjoy one's own thoughts or nature; to be tranquil and at peace when all alone. Isolation is often used as a neutral state, neither good nor bad; simply as a descriptive state. For example I am isolated from 8,000,000 New Yorkers but it doesn't make me sad; it's just a geographic fact. But I use loneliness as a negative. When loneliness is either intense, prolonged, or both it can lead to hostility and self-harm (suicide) or harm to others (murder) as in Zilboorg (Loneliness, Atlantic Monthly, 1938). This is as true of individuals as well as nations (Nazis, Fascists, ISIS, etc) as documented by Hannah Arendt (The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1948).

In Marx, loneliness is connected to the worker's sense of alienation from his own labor, he does not own it; from the product of his labor, he cannot sell it;, from from his fellow man by competition; and from the resources of nature. In Kierkegaard, loneliness is expressed by sense of estrangement from God.

The opposite of loneliness is intimacy, a mutual sharing of feelings, meanings; respect; and affection. I have been a therapist for the past 20  years.

Thanks for the explanation. I am involved in interviewing patients who are care for in isolation because of neutropenia. They may experience all of these aspects. They are hospitalized in a single room without the possibility to go out or having visits, so they are isolated and alone. Some of them refer feelings of solitude because they enjoy the privacy of the isolation room. Others suffer and experience feelings of loneliness or abandonment.

As a nurse and researcher, would you suggest me to use the UCLA scale to assess loneliness in patients during their hospital stay in isolation?

Yes, I would use the UCLA Loneliness scale. There is a short 10 question version and a longer 20 question one. Obviously the longer one is preferable if the patient is up to it. In Perlman's and Peplau's book, a number of my writings are listed. I met her when  I was a Visiting Researcher at UCLA.

Dear Valentina ,

My view is slightly differetnt than Prof. Mijuskovic's. Undeniably, as Ben has noted, loneliness is invariably a state of painful isolation (rather than neutral or positive). However, I look at loneliness not as a set experience indicative of a specific deficit (i.e., intimacy), but rather as an isolation which may be indicative of any of a myriad of relational deficits, the relevant of which is case specific (i.e., to some extent idiographic) and contextualized, and thus may only be aprehended by inquiring as to the specific manner in which a person/patient may feel isolated from others. Put otherwise, people speak of feeling lonely because they feel that no one loves them/cares for them/understands them/provides for them/wants to spend talk them/seeks their company/ listens to them/or any other relational need, When a person says that he or she is lonely, we do not know what this means until we probe further. It does not help to tell them "listen, your loneliness is not what you think it is, it is not because you lack friends, but rather because we are all existentially isolated and year for connection" (this may be good for a very reflexive and philosophically oriented person, but not for the common people. In fact, failing to realize why a person is lonely may increase his or her loneliness.

As to your question whether the UCLA scale is good, I would say yes and no. Yes, it may give you an inclination as to the extent to which one experiences a perceived social isolation; but no, it cannot tell you if they are lonely. For one, there is no indication in the questionnaire as to the unpleasantness of the experience, only to the sense of detachment/isolation. Second, it does not, and practically cannot, touch upon all manners in which people may feel isolated. That is, it cannot relate to all possible relational needs.

I would recommend other ways of assessment, but that is for another time.

Cobi.

Thank you Ben and Jacob for your kindly comments. I need a scale because I need to permit a fast and standard assessment of patients' loneliness, which is feasible for nurses. Although the UCLA scale is widely used in research, I am afraid it does not measure the type of loneliness which is appropriate to assess in patients during their hospital stay. 

I do not care to assess if they think to be isolated, because they are. I am not interested  in their feelings of despair (that would sound like depression) or their social problems in life. As Jacob noted, no scale can relate to all possible relational needs, while in the UCLA there is an "all or nothing" approach.  For example the item "no one really knows me well" considers that one is satisfied if just one person knows him/her well, without considering that an isolated patient cannot see that person.

As Jacob noted, when a person says that he or she is lonely, we do not know what this means until we probe further. However, this is true also for quality of life but a lot of instruments have been developed to assess it in clinical and research practice. Therefore, I think that scholars should agree to use tools for "loneliness related to X". For example, some scholars are interested in "loneliness related to cancer". 

What do you think about the de Jong Gierveld scale?

Hi Valentina, Feeling Lonesome is copyrighted by Praeger publishers so I'm not able to post it. An earlier book, Loneliness in Philosophy, Psychology, and Literature is a PDF and readily available on the internet on google as are other articles on loneliness. I work on the relationship between theories of consciousness and loneliness and I argue that loneliness is innate whereas most theoreticians believe it is due to environmental and situational conditions. I recently gave a talk at Brunel University in London. The talk is accessible on the internet: ben mijuskovic reimagining loneliness. The conference was dedicated to helping the elderly because of their critically vulnerable exposure. The second talk was very interesting. It was by The Very Reverend Ralph Godsall from Westminster Abbey and focused on the religious dimensions of loneliness. You might enjoy it.

Thanks for the endorsement.

Basically, I try to approach loneliness humanistically and I worry about the overuse of psychiatric medication. 

Are you from Italy?

Dea Ben, I am reading your book available as pdf. There are many references to philosophical and social literature, but I cannot find a nursing approach.

Can you suggest me a nursing theory which is in line with your argumentation?

Hi Valentina. Loneliness in Philosophy, Psychology, and Literature is intended to stress the advantages of a paradigm of self-consciousness over the current neuroscientific model of reducing human consciousness to the brain. The current book, Feeling Lonesome: The Philosophy and Psychology of Loneliness (Praeger, 2015), includes a last chapter, titled "Therapeutic Measure," which offers some strategies for dealing with loneliness. Basically, the opposite of loneliness is intimacy, promoting a sense of belonging, sharing, empathy, etc. Chapter Seven discusses empathy at length.  There is a global library link on google: worldcat--which offers a list of all libraries that own the books and they would be available thru library loan. I also gave a talk at Brunel University: ben mijuskovic reimagining loneliness (10/30/2015) where I discuss the work of John Bowlby, Anna Freud, Rene Spitz, Dorothy Burlingham, Margaret Ribble, etc. on anaclitic depression, marasmus, and hospitalism and early death in infants. There is also an article I wrote on "Loneliness and Intimacy," in a book, Intimate Autonomy: Autonomous Intimacy and in the Journal of Couples Therapy that gives all the references on the subject (1990). Basically the therapeutic approach to depression and anxiety that I favor is centered on empathy as opposed to psychiatric medications. I worked at Los Angeles County Mental Health for 20 years and we depended on psych meds exclusively. The same therapeutic measures that work for infants I believe work for adults because when we are "hurting" emotionally reduces as to children.

Dear Ben, unfortunately your current book is not available in any library in Italy.

I can see that empathy is useful in alleviating loneliness.

Also, it would be interesting for the nursing discipline, to identify a conceptual framework able to explain loneliness in human being from a caring perspective.

Many nursing scholars focused on empathy but nearly noone has addressed loneliness.

In my original article in Psychiatry: Journal for the Study of Interpersonal Processes, 40:2 (1977), 113-133, the same journal in which Fried Fromm-Reichmann published her famous article on Loneliness, I claim that loneliness can be viewed both as a feeling and a conceptual meaning. As a meaning its an unpleasant sense of separation from other sentient beings to which one desires to be related. Every meaningful concept must have a significant opposite. The opposite of loneliness is intimacy. Intimacy is promoted by empathy. Originally Teodor Lipps coined the term as an aesthetic concept; Husserl gave it a cognitive significance in relating to the other person in his Cartesian Meditations. I claim in my book that it is a MUTUAL affective relation. See if your university library will order it. It has received strong reviews in Philosophy in Review, Dialogue, Journal of Thought, The Psychologist, etc. Beyond that I don't know how to help any further.

The opposite of loneliness is connectedness, and both comes in many forms, intimacy and lack thereof being only one of them. If you want to measure loneliness adequately (if that is even possible, for what are you measuring: the intensity of pain? the deficincy of a relational need? the discrepancy of want vs. have of relational provisions? etc.) you should do the following:

1. Prepare the most comprehensive list of relational needs you can think of (e.g., support, love, intimacy, empathy, quality time, conversation time, patience, appreciation etc.).

2. Vis-a-vis each need ask: from 1 to 5 (1 being not at all and 5 being completely) is there someone providing this for oyu?

3. Vis-a-vis each provision, ask: om 1 to 5 (1 being not at all and 5 being completely) to what extent is the gratification or lack thereof of the provision mentioned previously unpleasnt?

This is how I would have gone abut it anyway.

Hope it helps.

Cobi.

Cobi, my approach to loneliness is based on philosophical and psychological theories of consciousness. I use (1) Kant's paradigm of reflexive self-consciousness (the famous transcendental unity of apperception) and immanent time-consciousness; and (2) Husserl's principle of intentionality. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is grounded on the possibility of pure concepts of relation, synthetic a priori i.e. connections, the 12 categories of the Understanding. Intimacy thus includes connections. Indeed, all consciousness universaly and necessarily involves active principles of relation/connection. Chapter VIII, "Therapeutic Measures," in Feeling Lonesome (2015), offers a number of strategies for "overcoming" loneliness. I gave an invited talk at Brunel University in Uxbridge (London) on 10/30/2015, which is available on google and it addresses loneliness as a separation and intimacy as a sharing/connection of feelings, meanings, and values with another being as based in empathy. Also, an early article, "Intimacy and Loneliness," which appeared in the Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare (1992; it's a PDF) provides an account. To your account of consciousness and "selfhood," which I take to be a version of Spinoza's and Schopenhauer's "double aspect theory," I consider them in the Introduction to Feeling Lonesome but reject them because for them ultimately the "self" is not real; for the first it is a mere mode of two attributes of what is real, namely eternal and infinite Substance, i.e., Nature or God; and for S. of an impersonal Will; the "self" is mere appearance, Maya. For me the self/ego/soul must be real otherwise loneliness seems meaningless. Best, Ben

Thank you Ben.

I am familiar with your approach, and as we know already, I see it as an extremely illuminating perspective though, paradoxically, since it aspires to be holistic and all-encompassing, is, in my eyes, partial and limited.

You see, as far as I understand, you treat loneliness as an entity which exists regardless of the meanings people attribute to it (essentialist?). I see loneliness as inevitably contextualized and thus inflected by the meanings people attribute to it. That is, loneliness is what people call a myriad of experiences sharing a "family of resemblance" as Wittgenstein would say. 

In a previous post you said "Basically, the opposite of loneliness is intimacy, promoting a sense of belonging, sharing, empathy, etc." This implies that you see the differences between "belonging, sharing, empathy etc." as negligible, and view them all together as presentations of intimacy. I don't share this notion. I think belonging, intimacy and sharing, for instance, are different phenomena deserving attention in their own right. If I were to aggregate these into some "family of resemblance" I would, as mentioned previously, categorize them all as forms of connectedness or relatedness.

Consider the following three sentences:

Person A, a 6 year old boy: "I feel so lonely because no one wants to play with me at school."

Person B, a 89 year old widower: "I feel so lonely since my wife passed away"

Person C, a veteran: "I feel so lonely ever since my best friend was killed"

Are all these lonely experiences the same? From a pragmatic perspective, would it be wise to take a "parsimonious" stance wherein they are all representatives of the same existential isolated predicament of consciousness in the "flesh-colored-cage"?

I think each of these persons needs something else, because each experiences a different deficit (from their perspective), all using the same word – lonely.

But this is only one interpretative route, no more legitimate than your own, and certainly less informed than yours.

Best, Cobi.

I  approach loneliness thru theories of consciousness and not theories of consciousness thru loneliness. I'm trying to offer a first principle for human motivation. Every first principle has an opposite. The opposite of loneliness is intimacy. There's a chapter on consciousness versus language  in Feeling Lonesome. Like the rationalists and idealists, I regard consciousness as primary and original and language as secondary and derivative, so Wittgenstein is irrelevant for me.

I'm trying to offer something similar to Freud's principle of sexual energy. What you are telling me is that can't work because Wittgenstein would say there are so many different kinds of sex that it can't be reduced to a first principle. I'm not a language theorist.

I agree with Pascal,Fichte, and Wm. James: First principle are  matter of the heart and not the head. You lie brunettes: I like blondes. We'vee been thru this before.

As I said, these are two interpretative routes, drawing on different traditions - both legitimate as representations, although neither a mandatory depiction of reality. 

I do not seek any first principle for human motivation, because I dare not reduce human motivation to one element, nor do I think that would be an adequate representation of our complex reality or a good one at that. 

Parsimony has its dowside. It serves convenience more than it does truth. Once first principles are "identified" (i.e., constructed) one seems to work very hard to make everything fit in. 

Ioneliness, any way, cannot be a first principle for human motivation, because it is a sub-example of pain, a relational pain so to speak. So, if you reduce human motivation to its most fundamental element, let it be that of avoiding pain and seeking pleasure - there we are, back to Freud.

I work on theories of consciousness in relation to human loneliness. The six studies I have authored include: The Achilles of Rationalist Arguments: The Simplicity, Unity, and Identity of Thought and Soul from the Cambridge Platonists to Kant (1974); Loneliness in Philosophy, Psychology and Literature (1979; revised 2012); Contingent Immaterialism: Meaning, Freedom, Time, and Mind (1984); Feeling Lonesome: The Philosophy and Psychology of Loneliness (2015); and Consciousness and Loneliness (forthcoming December, 2018) and supporting articles.

Your work is truly thought provoking and replete with insightful observations. Especially I enjoyed the 2012 one. Still working through the 2015 one. There is so much philosophy in there (unfirtunately there are too many names of philosopherels that their philosophies remain unexplicated when mentioned for me to comprehed).

Thank you for your contribution to the field. Looking forward to gett8ng a glimpse at the new work.

Oh hi, Cobi, the new book is published by Brill. It's pretty ambitious, 460 pages. It will be interesting to see its reception. It's an attack on both psychoanalysis and neuroscience as deterministic. Although I'm a great admired of Freud--I think he's a philosopher as well as a psychologist--I plunge into the lower depths of the subconscious--versus the unconscious--through Kant and Schopenhauer.

I wish you the best of luck.

i am sure it will be an important read for thise who wish to gain a deep understanding of the phenomenon from many perspectives. I have my own criticisms of both approaches, but I am sure that yours is much more thorough and well argued. I look forward to it.