The Bloomsbury Handbook of Solitude, Silence and Loneliness (Bloomsbury Handbooks) 1350162132, 9781350162136

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The Bloomsbury Handbook of Solitude, Silence and Loneliness

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The Bloomsbury Handbook of Solitude, Silence and Loneliness Edited by Julian Stern, Christopher A. Sink, Małgorzata Wałejko and Wong Ping Ho

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain, 2022 Copyright © L J Stern, Christopher A. Sink, Małgorzata Wałejko, Wong Ping Ho and Bloomsbury, 2022 L J Stern, Christopher A. Sink, Małgorzata Wałejko, Wong Ping Ho and Bloomsbury have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. XIV constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover image © ipopba / iStock All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Stern, Julian, editor. | Wałejko, Małgorzata, editor. | Sink, Christopher A., editor. | Wong, Ping Ho, editor. Title: The Bloomsbury handbook of solitude, silence and loneliness / edited by Julian Stern, Christopher A. Sink, Małgorzata Wałejko and Wong Ping Ho. Description: London ; New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021027188 (print) | LCCN 2021027189 (ebook) | ISBN 9781350162136 (hardback) | ISBN 9781350244603 (paperback) | ISBN 9781350162150 (epub) | ISBN 9781350162174 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Solitude. | Silence. | Loneliness. Classification: LCC BJ1499.S65 B56 2022 (print) | LCC BJ1499.S65 (ebook) | DDC 155.9/2–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021027188 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021027189 ISBN: HB: 978-1-3501-6213-6 ePDF: 978-1-3501-6217-4 eBook: 978-1-3501-6215-0 Series: Bloomsbury Handbooks Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www​.bloomsbury​.com and sign up for our newsletters.

Contents

List of Illustrations vii List of Contributors viii Acknowledgements xiv Foreword, Olivia Sagan xv Introduction: Personhood, Alone and Together, Julian Stern 1 Part I: Solitude

11

Part I  Introduction,  Małgorzata Wałejko   13 1

The Philosophy of Solitude, Piotr Domeracki 19

2

Solitude and Schooling, Helen E. Lees 34

3

Solitude Practices in the Context of Catholic Education, Michael T. Buchanan 46

4

Solitude in Nature, Amanda Fulford 58

5

Working Solitude: The Value of Wilderness Time for Leaders and Would-be Leaders, David Weir 68

6

The Politics of Solitude, Henrieta Șerban and Aleksander Cywiński 80

7

The Art, Music and Literature of Solitude, Julian Stern 89

8

Solitude as a Spiritual Practice: Perspectives from the Chinese Tradition, Wong Ping Ho 104

9

Solitude and Religion: The Spaces Between, Gillian Simpson 116

Part II: Silence

129

Part II  Introduction,  Wong Ping Ho 131 10 Children and Silence, Richard E. Cleveland 137 11 Multifaceted Silences in Adolescence: Implications for Social Cognition and Mental Health, Sandra Bosacki 151 12 Creativity, Concentration and Silence, Teresa Olearczyk 162 13 Silence and Sexuality in School Settings: A Transnational Perspective, Helen Sauntson and Rodrigo Borba 174

Contents

14 Silence and Educational Places and Spaces, Eva Alerby 189 15 The Quiet Professional: On Being Alone/Together in Higher Education, Anne Pirrie and Nini Fang 200 Part III: Loneliness

211

Part III  Introduction, Christopher A. Sink 213 16 Consciousness and Loneliness, Ben Lazare Mijuskovic 218 17 The Psychological Implications of Loneliness, Christopher A. Sink 236 18 Loneliness in Childhood, Sivan George-Levi, Tomer Schmidt-Barad and Malka Margalit 250 19 Adult Loneliness, Elżbieta Dubas 261 20 The Morality of Loneliness, Jarosław Horowski 277 21 Loneliness and Dementia: The Role of Communication, Alison Wray 288 22 Loneliness and Care of the Elderly, Rafał Iwański 299 23 Mortality and Loneliness: Towards Less-lonely Grief, Sarah James and Piotr Krakowiak 310 Conclusion: Lifelong Learning of Aloneness, Julian Stern 323 Notes 335 References 340 Index 399

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Illustrations

Figures 1.1 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 13.5 19.1

The heuristic structure of the philosophy of solitude 32 Comparison of Clause 28 and 2020 RSE documents 182 Google searches for ‘Escola sem Partido’ 184 Google searches for ‘Ideologia de gênero’ 185 Google searches for ‘doutrinação ideológica’ 185 ESP-related vocabulary Jan/2020-Mar/2020 187 Aloneness – interpretation of the meaning of the term 263

Tables 13.1 Sample Concordance of promot* As It Is Used in the 2020 RSE Guidance 17.1 Sample Prosocial Enhancement Strategies Using Multisystemic Framework of Support

182 245

Contributors

Eva Alerby is Professor of Education and holds a chair at the Department of Health, Education and Technology, Luleå University of Technology, Sweden. Her research interests are relations, identity and diversity in education, as well as philosophical and existential dimensions of education, such as corporality and embodied knowledge, place and space, time and temporality, silence and tacit knowledge. Her most recent book is Silence Within and Beyond Pedagogical Settings (2020). Rodrigo Borba is Professor of Socio/Applied Linguistics at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His research interests include queer linguistics, linguistic landscapes, health communication and discourse analysis with an activist and research focus on the relations between discourse, gender and sexuality. He is Co-editor of the journal Gender and Language. Sandra Bosacki is Professor in the Department of Educational Studies at Brock University, Ontario, Canada. Her research interests focus on social cognitive development and mental health in children and adolescence. She has published on social cognition, silence and emotion within the context of education. Her most recent books are Social Cognition in Middle Childhood and Adolescence (2016) and Culture of Ambiguity: Implications for Self and Social understanding in Adolescence (2012). Michael T Buchanan is Associate Professor of Religious Education and the Deputy Head of School - Theology, in the Faculty of Theology and Philosophy at Australian Catholic University, Australia. His research interests include religious education and faith-based leadership. He has published widely in international journals, and his book publications include Global Perspectives on Catholic Religious Education in Schools (2019 and 2015); Leadership and Religious Schools: International Perspectives and Challenges (2013). He was the editor of Religious Education Journal of Australia. He is a research fellow at York St John University, UK, and an affiliate associate professor at the University of Malta, Malta. Richard E. Cleveland is Associate Professor and Program Director of the Counsellor Education Program at Georgia Southern University, USA. His research interests include mindfulness, school counselling and psycho-physiological responses to traumatic incidents. He has published on student wellness in schools, contemplative practices and mindfulness interventions with first responders, in journals including Paedagogia Christiana, the Journal of Counseling Research and Practice, the Journal of Counseling & Development and Counselling and Spirituality. Aleksander Cywiński is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Pedagogy, Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Szczecin, Poland. His research interests focus on human rights, and

Contributors

his recent book is Mutual Social Representations of Professional Probation Officers for Adults and Their Charges (2017). Piotr Domeracki is Professor in the Institute of Philosophy at Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland. His research interests focus on philosophy of solitude, ethics (with particular emphasis on psychology of morality, environmental ethics, business ethics), axiology, philosophy of dialogue, philosophical hermeneutics, philosophy of religion (philosophy of mysticism) and medieval philosophy. He has published on philosophy of solitude and ethics of kindness. He is the originator of the term and the initiator of ‘monoseology’ as an interdisciplinary science of solitude. His most recent book is Horizons and Perspectives of Monoseology. A Philosophical Study of Loneliness (published in Polish, 2018). Elżbieta Dubas is Professor of Social Sciences and Director of the Department of Andragogy and Social Gerontology, University of Łódź, Poland. She was previously Vice Dean of the Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Łódź, Poland. She publishes in adult and old-age education problems, lifelong learning, informal learning, existential problems of human life, solitude and loneliness, universals of human life in adult education, andragogy and gerontology biographical research, and biographical learning. Publications include Edukacja dorosłych w sytuacji samotności i osamotnienia (Adult Education in Solitary and Lonely Situations) (2000), Warsztaty przyszłości w naukach o wychowaniu (Future Workshops in Educational Sciences) (1997), and she is Editor of two series, Biography and Biography Research and Reflections on Old Age. Nini Fang is Lecturer in Counselling and Psychotherapy at the University of Edinburgh, UK. Her work foregrounds lived experiences, examining how the sociopolitical bears upon the personalsubjective. She works with creative, qualitative methodology in composing evocative accounts of the other and their lived domains. Her teaching pushes for a more politically sensitive curriculum that addresses social inequality in the consulting room. She sits on the Executive Board for the Association for Psychosocial Studies, the Editorial Board for New Associations (British Psychoanalytic Council). She is also the Associate Director for the Centre of Creative-Relational Inquiry at the University of Edinburgh, UK. Amanda Fulford is Professor of Philosophy of Education and Associate Dean for Research and Impact in the Faculty of Education at Edge Hill University, UK. Her research interests focus on the philosophy of higher education, higher education policy and practice, public philosophy and philosophy with communities. Her research is informed by the works of Stanley Cavell, Gabriel Marcel and Henry David Thoreau. She has published on relationships in education, and the aims of higher education. Her most recent edited book is Philosophy and Community: Theories, Practices and Possibilities (2020). Sivan George-Levi is Senior Lecturer in psychology at the School of Behavioural Science at Peres Academic Center, Rehovot, Israel. Her research interest is in coping with stress and in personal and social resources among children, parents and couples. She has recently published with Margalit and others: ‘Hope during the COVID-19 Outbreak: Coping with the Psychological Impact of Quarantine’ in Counselling Psychology Quarterly (2021). ix

Contributors

Jarosław Horowski is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences, in the Institute of Education Sciences, Department of Theory of Education at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland. He is Editor-in-Chief of the scientific journal Paedagogia Christiana, and is author of Moral Education According to Neo-Thomistic Pedagogy (published in Polish, 2015). He is interested in the philosophy of education, moral and religious education, neo-Thomistic notions in pedagogy, education for moral virtues and education for forgiveness. Rafał Iwański is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Pedagogy, Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Szczecin, Poland. He chairs the Szczecin branch of the Polish Gerontological Society and a secretary of the ISRS (the International Society for Research on Solitude). His research interests focus on social and economic gerontology and social welfare, mainly longterm care of dependent senior citizens. He has published widely in Polish and international journals; books include Long-term care of elderly people (published in Polish, 2016) and Palliative and hospice care in social and economic context (in Polish, with A Jarzębińska and E Sielicka, 2018). Sarah James is an independent researcher and secondary school teacher specialising in the fields of health and social care; wellbeing; loss and bereavement; and mental health support. She worked for many years as a lecturer in Education at the University of Hull, UK. Her doctoral and postdoctoral research activities are in the fields of thanatology, child bereavement support and children’s well-being. She is also actively involved in Child Bereavement UK (CBUK). Piotr Krakowiak combines academic work in the field of education, social work, psychology and spirituality, with a variety of pastoral care activities in the hospice movement, including with bereaved families and carers. He has considerable experience in palliative care as a chaplain, volunteers’ coordinator and manager at a hospice in Gdansk, Poland. He is currently Lecturer in Education and Social Work at Nicolaus Copernicus University (UMK) in Toruń, Poland. His postdoctoral research activities are in the fields of end-of-life care, thanatology and bereavement support. He is also actively involved as a lecturer for the European Palliative Care Academy. Helen E. Lees is an independent scholar of Education based in Italy. She is an associate research fellow at York St John University, UK. Her research interests focus on alternative education, self-care and silence. She has published books and articles on positive silence, alternative education and higher education, including Silence in Schools (2012), Education without Schools: Discovering Alternatives (2014) and The Handbook of Alternative Education (2016, with Nel Noddings). She is founding Editor-in-Chief of the online journal Other Education and the book series Palgrave Studies in Alternative Education (with Michael Reiss). Malka Margalit is Professor and Dean at the School of Behavioural Sciences, Peres Academic Center, Rehovot, Israel. She is Professor Emeritus at the Constantiner School of Education, TelAviv University, Israel, and is a laureate of the Israeli prize in the field of education research. She has published widely on lonely children and adolescents, hope theory and students with special needs. Her research is examining the relationships between hope, social support and loneliness. x

Contributors

Her book Lonely Children and Adolescents: Self-Perceptions, Social Exclusion, and Hope (2010) is a scene-setter for research on childhood loneliness. Ben Lazare Mijuskovic is a retired associate professor of Philosophy and the Humanities. He has taught at Southern Illinois University, USA (tenured), San Diego State University, USA, Long Beach State University, USA, the University of California at San Diego, USA, California State University at Dominguez Hills, USA, and Chapman University, USA. In 1975–6, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University, USA, and became fascinated about theories of consciousness in relation to human loneliness. He has published The Achilles of Rationalist Arguments: The Simplicity, Unity and Identity of Thought and Soul from the Cambridge Platonists to Kant, followed by Loneliness in Philosophy, Psychology and Literature, Contingent Immaterialism: Meaning, Freedom, Time and Mind, Feeling Lonesome: The Philosophy and Psychology of Loneliness, and Loneliness and Consciousness: Theoria and Praxis. Teresa Olearczyk is Professor at the Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski Krakow University, Kraków, Poland. She teaches courses on general pedagogy and the pedagogy of culture, didactics and ethics, and runs a workshop on educational skills at the Faculty of Psychology, Pedagogy and Humanities, Faculty of Early School Education, and Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences: Nursing, Rescue and Physiotherapy. Anne Pirrie is Reader in Education at the University of the West of Scotland, UK. Her recent book, Virtue and the Quiet Art of Scholarship: Reclaiming the University (2019), explores the conditions for human flourishing in an environment blighted by managerialism. She considers her role as a teacher in the same terms as Nan Shepherd (1893–1981), the author of The Living Mountain: to try to prevent a few of the students who pass through the institution from conforming altogether to the approved pattern. Helen Sauntson is Professor of English Language and Linguistics and Director of the Centre for Language and Social Justice Research at York St John University in the UK. She specializes in teaching and researching sociolinguistics and applied linguistics. She has a special interest in language, gender and sexuality, particularly in relation to educational contexts, and has published numerous books, chapters and journal articles in this area. She is Co-editor of the Palgrave Studies in Language, Gender and Sexuality book series and Co-editor of the Cambridge Elements in Language, Gender and Sexuality book series. Tomer Schmidt-Bara is Lecturer in Psychology at the School of Behavioural Science, Peres Academic Center, Rehovot, Israel. His research focuses on person–environment interaction in relation to social behaviour. He has published on power-incongruence, self-control and compliance to soft and harsh influence tactics. He has recently published ‘When (State and Trait) Powers Collide: Effects of Power-Incongruence and Self-control on Prosocial Behaviour’, in Personality and Individual Differences (2020). Henrieta Șerban is Senior Researcher at the Institutes of Philosophy and Psychology, ‘Constantin Rădulescu-Motru’, and of Political Sciences and International Relations, ‘Ion I. C. Brătianu’, xi

Contributors

at the Romanian Academy, Romania. She is a PhD Hab. and a correspondent member of the Academy of Romanian Scientists. Her research interests focus on ideology, feminist theory, social epistemology and Romanian philosophy. Her most recent published book is Symbolical Forms and Representations of Socio-Political Phenomena (published in Romanian, 2017) and Neopragmatism and Postliberalism. A Contemporary Weltanschauung (published in Romanian and English, 2021). Gillian Simpson was previously Senior Lecturer in Theology and Religious Studies at York St John University and is now researching at Bishop Grosseteste University, UK. Her research interests include Judaism and Holocaust fiction, reflective learning and approaches to the study of religion through autoethnography. Her most recent journal publication, Beyond the Lonely Leaner: Towards an Autoethnographic Method in Studying and Researching Religion (2020), focuses on the dangers of isolation in higher education, and one potential solution which involves a holistic and integrative approach to study through the individual’s self-understanding, using an autoethnographic method. Christopher A. Sink is Research Associate and Instructor in Counsellor Education in the Department of Psychology at Western Washington University, USA. His previous academic appointments include Professor and Batten Endowed Chair of Counselling in the Department of Counselling and Human Services at Old Dominion University, USA; Professor of Counsellor Education at Seattle Pacific University, USA; and Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Northwest Missouri State University, USA. Prior to serving in academia, he worked as a school-based professional counsellor. He has published and presented extensively on various topics related to strengths-based and systems approaches to school counselling, social–emotional development, spirituality, as well as psychometrics, programme evaluation and research methods, writing Mental Health Interventions for School Counselors (2011) and editing Contemporary School Counseling: Theory, Research, and Practice (2005). Julian Stern is Professor of Education and Religion at Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln, UK. He is President of the International Society for Research on Solitude, Editor of the British Journal of Religious Education and researches the philosophy of schooling, issues in religion and education, research methods, and solitude and loneliness. His recent books include A Philosophy of Schooling: Care and Curiosity in Community (2018), Teaching Religious Education: Researchers in the Classroom: Second Edition (2018), Virtuous Educational Research: Conversations on Ethical Practice (2016), and Loneliness and Solitude in Schools: How to Value Individuality and Create an Enstatic School (2014). Małgorzata Wałejko is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Pedagogy, Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Szczecin, Poland. She has a PhD in pedagogy, specializing in philosophy of education and an MA in theology, specializing in family sciences. She is Vice-President of the International Society for Research on Solitude, and her research interests focus on pedagogy of solitude, pedagogical ethics, personalism and spiritual theology. She has published Separately and Together: Personalistic Education to Solitude and Community (published in Polish, 2016). David Weir is Visiting Professor in International management at the University of Lincoln, UK, Professor of Enterprise at University of Huddersfield, UK, and Professor of Intercultural xii

Contributors

Management at York St John University, UK. His research interests include the Middle East, risky work, and vulnerable systems, autoethnography and critical management. His published books include The Sociology of Modern Britain (with Eric Butterworth, 1975) and Ethnographic Research and Analysis: Anxiety, Identity and Self (co-editor, 2018). He also writes and performs poetry. Wong Ping Ho is Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of International Education at the Education University of Hong Kong (formerly the Hong Kong Institute of Education), Hong Kong, China, and serves as coordinator of the EdD in Life and Values Education programme. Before moving into teacher education, he had been a secondary school teacher for ten years. He founded the Hong Kong Institute of Education’s Centre for Religious and Spirituality Education in 2006, and was its Director prior to his retirement in 2016. He is Chief Editor of the Chinese volume Life Education: Its Intellectual, Emotional, Volitional and Practical Dimensions (2016). Alison Wray is Research Professor in the Centre for Language and Communication Research at Cardiff University, UK. Her research interests include formulaic language (linguistic units supporting fast-track processing) and the patterns of language and communication used by people living with a dementia, as they navigate reduced processing efficiency. She has published widely on both topics, and her most recent monographs are The Dynamics of Dementia Communication (2020) and Why Dementia Makes Communication Difficult: A Guide to Better Outcomes (2021). She has also scripted three animated films about dementia communication which are available on YouTube: https​:/​/ww​​w​.you​​tube.​​com​/c​​hanne​​l​/UC6​​kMlO8​​mkB09​​GN​CLm​​1zbaH​​Q.

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Acknowledgements

All the editors would like to express their gratitude to Alison Baker and the other editorial staff at Bloomsbury for their valuable oversight of and support for the book. Julian Stern would like to thank both Marie Stern and Mike Bottery, for reading and commenting on his chapters, and the anonymous reviewers for Bloomsbury, who were positive and helpful with respect to the whole book. He would also like to thank all the members of the ISRS: the International Society for Research on Solitude (http://isrs​.usz​.edu​.pl/), who have organized conferences and seminars, and journal special editions, along with much of this Handbook, notwithstanding the extraordinary challenges of working through the Covid-19 pandemic. Małgorzata Wałejko would like to thank Julian Stern for inviting her to edit the Handbook and for his constant faith in her. Wong Ping Ho wishes to express his immense gratitude to his late father Wong King Por (1930–2001) and late mother Chau Yeung Ting (1934–2021) for their formative influences on his life, which have permeated and undergirded all his work, not least the work on this volume.

Foreword

The pandemic year of 2020–21 revealed us to ourselves. As observed by Yuval Harari among others, the pandemic sped up the future, hastening awareness of what we have become, on what planet the becoming was unfolding and at what cost. Resilient species that we are we adapted. We learned, superfast. Yet vulnerable and precarious as we also are, we suffered, pined and many died, are dying still – the shock waves of Covid-19 on a global scale set to reverberate many years after the publication of this book. In that revealing and adapting many words gained a new poignancy. Among them: ‘solitude’, ‘silence’ and ‘loneliness’, the subject of this timely anthology. Those of us fascinated by the loneliness study were challenged during the pandemic even more than during the preceding years in which loneliness had been branded an epidemic and a public health issue. Mental health problems were rapidly foregrounded as an inevitable effect of being alone (Killgore et al., 2020) with rather less positioning of aloneness as a possible opportunity for reflection and re-basing proposed action, as Weir, in this volume, points out. Silence swiftly became something to be drowned out as though threatened by an impending and interminable performance of 4’33” with none of its nuanced lessons about what constitutes music. Solitude, for centuries the stronghold aspiration of the hermit, the creative, the luminous and the dreamer, became further tainted by lazy discourse that collapsed it with loneliness, the grand taboo of hyper-connected, frenetically networked, group thinking neoliberal society. The pandemic challenged us to grapple with and make sense of sudden-onset isolation; quarantine; social distancing; and states of loneliness that for many were entirely new and menacing human experiences. Covid-19 demanded with new fervour that we keep back the dreaded tide of loneliness using the well-honed tools of connected society and its sophisticated toys of distraction and affluence and ward off the echo in our four walls of silence once we grudgingly switched off Netflix on another lockdown Zoombie day. Yet out of this, we also saw the power in learning to be with ourselves, and the magic of private quietness in nature – gifts that Fulford and Weir explore in this volume. Arguably we now know more about solitude, silence and loneliness than ever. Our understanding of each, as Wong Ping Ho, Mijuskovic and others in this anthology remind us, is predicated on a long history; a history that bears cicatrices of inveterate fascination on the part of poets, artists, naturalists, philosophers, theologians, psychoanalysts and spiritualists. We know each is culturally inflected, historically and socially constructed. We know that solitude wears a shroud of association with punishment and renunciation as well as a gown of awe, creativity and the numinous (Vincent, 2020). We know that silence, a ‘cold, pure blessing’ (McGregor, 2021) can feel as though it ‘unskins’ you (Maitland, 2009), and that every silence, as observed by Sartre, has its consequences. We know that loneliness is a fidgety emotional cluster with ambivalence and oscillations (Dubas, this volume); an expensive psychosocial and medical problem faced by its own strategies, policies and ministers. It is derived from ‘oneliness’ (Bound Alberti, 2019), the word loneliness only having picked up currency post-1800, as industrial society began dispersing

Foreword

us, capitalism fragmenting us and consumerism isolating us, leaving us to bowl alone (Putnam, 2000), live alone, age alone and die alone (Nelson-Becker & Victor, 2020). We also know quietly, that despite its ubiquity, loneliness, as Olivia Laing baldly states, is also difficult to confess. This book is part of an important sense-making and reckoning process. It is a sense-making not just of the current, transient situation with its new lexicon of shielding; waves; super-spreader events; quaranteams; covidiots; social bubbles; vaccine nationalism, but a sense-making of what this volume reminds us are three enduring human experiences, and their unique textures; impacts; exuberant rewards and soul-touching challenge. A long overdue sense-making too, of what we lose, or stand to lose, when in panic we throw out developing the capacity to be alone (Winnicott, 1958) in what Melanie Klein (1963) called a ‘ubiquitous yearning for an unattainable perfect internal state’. The authors in this volume have turned down the volume on the panic of the loneliness ‘epidemic’, the attendant horror of silence bouncing off the walls of isolation and the existential angst of misunderstood solitude. When you turn that noise down and turn up the granular view of these human states and experiences, you find complexity, richness and depth. You find something core to the human condition and necessary to our survival, and yet something that the twentyfirst century in particular has been masterful in building sophisticated structures, technological solutions, systems and spaces to protect us from – seemingly at any cost. I’ll make a pitch for what the constituent parts are of this sense-making. This sensemaking, like any making sense of the sometimes senseless, needs to be an unfolding, un- and re-making, divergent, macro and micro holistic perspective, one that takes a bird’s-eye and a worm’s-eye view; one that takes risks; is playful and irreverent, respectful and learned. It requires multidisciplinary thinking that embraces the arts, which can, as pointed out by Stern in this volume, explore topics ‘failed’ by conventional research. We need both solitary and group creativity and polymorphic, ruthless deconstruction. As the powerful field of medical humanities urges us (Fitzgerald & Callard, 2016), bringing body and mind and their attendant constellations into alignment is an interdisciplinary endeavour and one that needs scholarship, imagination, play, wit and generosity (Frank, 2004). This book is one such contribution. Drawing on an international and multidisciplinary team of writers it explores the history, philosophy and experience of solitude, not as an end in itself, as described by Wałejko, but a path. Of silence, a multifaceted phenomenon, inextricably linked, particularly in the East Asian cultures, with solitude and stillness – as pointed out by Wong Ping Ho. Loneliness, the very notion of which Sink urges us to grasp in the broad tapestry of personhood, being aware of how it meshes and juxtaposes from the contours of solitude and silence. In the hard revealing of us to ourselves during the pandemic of 2020–1, we saw the hunger of our social species for connection; for a return of the myriad anchor points of human exchange, of validation, of being seen and heard. We saw the default of our raucous noisiness and how when it abated, birdsong changed in richness (Derryberry et al., 2020) and animals boldly reclaimed places fallen quiet; we saw the sheer privilege inherent in the choices we have had and how such choices were and are withheld from so many. The choice, for example, of solitude is frequently one of privilege, an index of power, as pointed out in this volume by Șerban and Cywiński. But we also discerned that when left alone, that state that Heidegger (1962) held to be no less than an ontological necessity, we grew in unexpected ways. Solitude forced us in on ourselves

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Foreword

and paralysed but then revived us. Silence frightened us but disclosed its secrets and thrilling power of balm. We expanded, unexpectedly, even as we were cast adrift by solitude, silence and loneliness. That very contradictory ability is part of their deep mystery, explored here, in what Stern refers to as a research archipelago. Olivia Sagan Queen Margaret University, UK

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Introduction Personhood, Alone and Together – Solitude, Silence and Loneliness in Context Julian Stern

Introduction Being alone is one of the central experiences of every person. Indeed, a person’s life can be described in terms of the ebb and flow of togetherness. Birth itself is a separation (for the mother and for the child), and throughout infancy, togetherness and separation dominate the emotional and cultural formation of the person. The game of peekaboo is typically an infant’s playful first lesson in how other people appear and disappear. Psychologists such as Bowlby (2005; Bowlby in Weiss, 1973) and Winnicott (1964, 1971) put separation and togetherness at the heart of their developmental theories, but all disciplines and all people are familiar with both separation and togetherness, in ‘good’ and ‘bad’ forms. ‘Bad’ separation may be experienced as loneliness, as bereavement, as rejection, as exile; ‘good’ separation may be experienced as exciting independence, freedom or as growing up. Likewise, togetherness may be experienced as love or as troubling co-dependency, as a comfort or as a trap, as friendship or as abuse. (A person may experience the opposites, together: a bereavement, for example, may be experienced, somewhat guiltily, as exciting freedom.) Social organizations recognize and often celebrate coming together and separating. Families welcome new members (e.g. through birth or marriage) and commemorate loss (through leaving home to join another family, or through death). Workplaces, likewise, often have arrival and departure ceremonies, formal and informal, as do religious communities and friendship groups. Through the giving and taking away of citizenship or legal rights, nations, too, recognize coming together and departing. The experience of exile and of seeking refuge in a new country was as familiar to ancient societies as it is today. At every life stage, personhood is learned in large part through these experiences alone and together. This chapter – like this Handbook – focuses on various forms of aloneness, rather than togetherness. Aloneness appears to be less well understood than the togetherness. Loneliness may be a ‘taboo’ subject (White, 2010: 237), while exiles and refugees may, similarly, be politically taboo in some political climates (Kromolicka & Linka, 2018). There is, therefore, a need to explore the experience of aloneness in all its forms. There are some (Hobbes, 1968; Stirner, 1963; Mijuskovic, 2012) who believe that aloneness, even loneliness, is the central characteristic of personhood; there are others (Macmurray, 1991, 2012; Buber, 1958, 2002; Stern, 2018a, 2018b; Wałejko, 2016) who see personhood as existing primarily in and through dialogue and community. Both of these positions – and much in

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between and beyond these positions – are represented in this Handbook, and we as editors and contributors do not take a unified collective position on the fundamental (individual or social, alone or together) character of personhood. What should be emphasized, though, is that aloneness is important across the spectrum of philosophies from the most individually focused to the most communally focused. That is why we have attempted to bring together in a single volume a wide range of research on solitude, silence and loneliness (three forms of aloneness), to bring together research from a range of academic disciplines, and to bring together research from the whole lifespan. The chapter, therefore, describes some of the ways of understanding how aloneness is learned and develops over time, with implications for how it can be appropriately hosted, or mitigated or responded to – depending on its form and quality. The chapter attempts to pick apart the three forms of aloneness (solitude, silence and loneliness) used to structure many people’s accounts of the topic, and the processes involved in understanding aloneness are explored – both in disciplinary terms and in terms of various practice settings. The purpose of this Handbook is to bring together research of all kinds, and the development of the volume is itself described in the conclusion of this chapter. Being Alone: Solitude, Silence and Loneliness in Context How are solitude, silence and loneliness best described, and how are they related to each other and to other forms of aloneness and separation? It is a complex field. Even the words themselves are dangerous friends of scholars. ‘Lonely’ derives from being ‘alone’ or ‘all one’ (OED, 2005), and for centuries was barely differentiated from aloneness or solitude. ‘Solitude’ itself has similar historic roots in being separate or alone or ‘all one’. The two words seemed to develop their distinctive and – for many – contrasting meanings only in the nineteenth century. And in languages other than English, there may be one word covering all the various meanings of both solitude and loneliness, as in the French seul, or there may be a range of different words and meanings covering negative, neutral and positive senses of the terms. In Arabic and Hebrew, loneliness (i.e. words regarded as translations of the English word ‘lonely’) is particularly associated with the loss or absence of family, while in Hindi the synonyms ‘dull’ and ‘surly’ indicate a more grumpy emotion. Finnish loneliness seems to indicate distance (‘out-of-the-way’, ‘remote’) while Spanish has a whole set of rather positive characteristics (‘serene’, ‘poised’, ‘easy’) (Stern, 2014: 83–5). The word ‘silence’, meanwhile, has meanings related to the absence of all sound, the absence of speech, and the omission of a particular topic (OED, 2005), and has been categorized by Lees as either ‘strong’ or ‘weak’ – with weak silence involving denial, shame or fear (and, therefore, not being ‘true’ silence) (Lees, 2012: 59–60). Silence may be as much about disengagement as it is the absence of sound (Stern, 2014: 147–8), or the ‘unsayability’ or ineffability of particular topics (as in Wittgenstein, 1961, described in the Conclusion of this Handbook). The words are embedded in cultures that can disguise as much as reveal their meanings (as described in Chapters 7 and 8). Here, some descriptions of the three terms are given in contexts – the contexts being both disciplinary (e.g. how loneliness is seen differently by psychologists or theologians) and social (e.g. how silence is experienced in different practice settings). Solitude: From Exile to Ecstasy and Enstasy Solitude has been described in two contrasting ways, as a form of punishment and as a state to be sought for the sake of spiritual or personal development. One of the great ancient accounts of punitive 2

Introduction

solitude is that of Ovid (2005). His poems of exile echo to the present day, with Green writing of exile as ‘an all-too-familiar risk’ in the light of the ‘ruthless demands of two world wars and, worse, a variety of totalitarian ideologies’ which ‘have made the exile, the stateless person, the refugee, the dépaysé, a common feature of our social awareness’ (Green, in Ovid, 2005: xiv). Ovid describes his ‘sickness, senility and lassitude, but also . . . sloth, depression, [and] accidie’ (Green, in Ovid, 2005: xxxiii), but not – it seems – loneliness, at least not in its fullest sense. Exile is loss, loss of place and of people. Even Ovid’s own writings can go where he cannot go: ‘Little book – no, I don’t begrudge it you – you’re off to the City / without me, going where your only begetter is banned!’ (Ovid, 2005: 3, from Tristia). Alongside loss, Ovid describes rejection: ‘I have lost all: only bare life remains to quicken the awareness and substance of my pain’, he says, adding, ‘[w]hat pleasure do you get from stabbing this dead body?’ concluding, ‘[t]here is no space in me now for another wound’ (Ovid, 2005: 200, from Black Sea Letters). It is the combination of separation/loss and rejection that makes exilic solitude a punishment. Some punitive forms of solitude involve separation from all social contact, as in some types of solitary confinement in prisons. Whether an imposed solitude is in fact a punishment is, in part, a subjective matter. Many will be familiar with parents punishing a child with solitude – sending the child to their room, for example. In a loners’ manifesto, Rufus (2003) describes her puzzle over why this would be a punishment: When parents on TV shows punished their kids by ordering them to go to their rooms, I was confused. I loved my room. Being there behind a locked door was a treat. To me a punishment was being ordered to play Yahtzee with my cousin Louis. I puzzled over why solitary confinement was considered the worst punishment in jails. (Rufus, 2003: xxviii) Rufus’s prison example is a very old puzzle. Webb (2007) recounts the twelfth-century Cistercian William of St-Thierry, noting how a prisoner and a monk may both spend time in solitude in a cell. How can such an existence be a punishment for one and a time of freedom and happiness for the other? ‘He who lives with himself’, William says, ‘has only himself, such as he is, with him’, and this is a punishment for a bad person as in such solitude ‘[a] bad man can never safely live with himself, because he lives with a bad man and no one is more harmful to him that he is to himself’ (quoted in Webb, 2007: 72). In contrast, a monk in solitude, of course, has a good person for company. Weir (in Chapter 5 of this Handbook) writes of the value of solitude to managers in industry – whether or not they are good people – but his hope is that it is a monkish reward. Non-punitive forms of solitude are particularly common in religious discourses. In the Christian tradition, roughly at the time the religion became accepted within the Roman Empire, mystics developed a way of seeking solitude as hermits. St Antony is the best known of these, made famous by a biography describing his life, starting as a child who was ‘wishing . . . to stand apart from friendship with other children’ (Athanasius, 1980: 30) and continuing for many years living in a desert cave. That was a life of many hardships, yet one that is described as bringing Antony his wisdom. The Christian traditions of hermits, anchorites/anchoresses and monasteries since the fourth century have involved different forms of solitude – all described positively and often ecstatically: escaping from the limits of the self. (See also Chapter 9 of this Handbook.) Similarly, in Hindu and Buddhist traditions, there are positive solitude traditions, notably the yogic attempt to achieve ‘enstasy’ (samādhi), being at one with oneself – in contrast to ecstasy, in which a person escapes from the self. In the Bhagavad-Gītā (Zaehner, 1992), enstasy is achieved 3

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‘[w]hen a man puts from him all desires’ and ‘[h]imself contented in the self alone’, and ‘when he draws in on every side . . . [a]s a tortoise might its limbs’ (Zaehner, 1992: 326). Therapeutic solitude is recommended in many contemporary accounts, from Rufus (2003) extolling the virtues of solitude for ‘loners’, to Shepherd (2011, writing of her time in the Cairngorms), Sarton (1973, writing of her garden, for example), Koller (1990, in an isolated rural community), Kagge (2019, on polar exploration and mountain climbing) – all of whom describe relationships to ‘nature’ as central to human solitude (in the tradition of Thoreau, 2006). A whole genre of ‘living with’ or ‘living like’ non-human animals has added to positive accounts of solitude in recent years. Lindén (2018) provides a shepherd’s diary, and this account, along with those of Jamie (2005, 2012), Foster (2016), and Wohlleben (2017), describes human solitude as rich in interaction – albeit not with other human beings. In such ways, solitude can be positive or negative. It can also, paradoxically, be achieved in company – in human company at times (Webb, 2007: 67, for example, describes solitude achieved in a busy family home while reading), but especially in the company of non-human animals and nature (Morton, 2017, and see Chapter 4 of this Handbook). Given the variety of solitudes, how can solitude be best described? Koch’s comprehensive account defines solitude as ‘the state in which experience is disengaged from other people’ (Koch, 1994: 44), with disengagement being fourfold, ‘in perception, thought, emotion, and action’ (Koch, 1994: 57). There is no ‘pure’ or ‘perfect’ solitude as ‘the world is ultimately inescapable’ (Koch, 1994: 76) except perhaps through death. But one can achieve more solitude the greater the disengagement, and the more ways in which one is disengaged. In Koch’s account, solitude is an experience, neither positive nor negative – it can be chosen or enforced, an experience accompanied by pleasure or pain, joy or suffering. Although he extolls the value and the virtues of solitude, he is aware of its dangers and harms. This seems to be a tremendously broad definition of solitude, and yet it hangs on one characteristic that is all-too-often taken for granted. The disengagement is disengagement from ‘other people’. Thoreau’s solitudinous engagement with loons (Thoreau, 2006: 148), Shepherd’s (2011) engagement with the Cairngorms or Lindén’s (2018) engagement with sheep: are they really solitudinous? Naess (2008) describes a personal world in his deep ecology. Drawing on Spinoza (1955), he does not differentiate contact with (and, therefore, withdrawal from) human beings from contact with and withdrawal from other animals, plants and non-living objects. ‘Personhood’ in his account is therefore radically post-human – and closer, in that way, to Hindu accounts, where humanity is not as central to personhood as it is in most Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions. And even the Hindu/Buddhist enstasy, in which a person withdraws from the whole world, is, in such a withdrawal, an achievement, also, of oneness with the whole world. As a result of enstasy through yoga, the person ‘now . . . sees the self in all being standing, all beings in the self’ (Zaehner, 1992: 348). So solitude involves disengagement from people (for Koch, 1994) and – in some traditions such as those of Hinduism/ Buddhism – from all of the world, but in these senses it is ultimately impossible. Even in death, when it could be said (for those without a belief in reincarnation or the afterlife) that we achieve total disengagement, we also (at least) return – ashes to ashes, dust to dust – to the earth from which we came (see also Chapter 23 in this Handbook). Researching Solitude in Settings The literature on solitude includes a number of accounts in practice settings and across the lifespan. Positive versions of solitude in religious communities are described by theologians 4

Introduction

such as William of St-Thierry (quoted previously), Georgianna (1981) on anchoress traditions (and see also Savage and Watson, 1991) or Julian of Norwich’s (1966) writings as herself an anchoress. Hide (2001) describes Julian’s use of ‘oneing’, a unity – the ‘oneness’ implied by ‘alone’ (‘all one’) and by ‘solitude’ – related, he says, to the modern word ‘atonement’ (i.e. ‘at-one-ment’) (Hide, 2001: 53). Jantzen writes of Julian’s approach to solitude in the modern world, suggesting there might be ‘part-time’ anchoresses and anchorites ‘of the heart’ (Jantzen, 2000: xxiii). Negative portrayals of solitude are more common, unsurprisingly, in prison settings. Solitary confinement in prisons is a well-established practice, and there is some research there, such as Smith (2006) and Eastaugh (2017) which focus on the harm typically done by solitude in prison. The interesting work by O’Donnell (2014) addresses solitary confinement and also the ‘pathological’ loneliness of prisoners and the role of silence – and the ways in which some prisoners in solitary confinement are able to survive and live well beyond or even in prison, notwithstanding their incarceration. O’Donnell’s work also refers to the work on solitude in monastic settings, mentioned previously. Another setting in which punitive solitude is studied is schooling. Barker et al. make an explicit link to prisons in their account of the practice in schools of isolating individual children or young people in ‘isolation booths’ or ‘seclusion units’ (also perversely referred to by many schools as ‘inclusion units’), asking whether these forms of seclusion make the inhabitants ‘pupils or prisoners’ (Barker et al., 2010). There are positive accounts of solitude in school too, notably Lees’s account of spaces for silence, away from others, as ‘[t]here is something magical about having a place to retreat to; a sanctuary for the mind that is laden with thoughts’ (Lees, 2012: 100, and see Chapter 2 of this Handbook). Similar accounts can be found in Kessler (2000) and Lantieri (2001). In old age, solitude may be portrayed as inevitable as older generations and then contemporaries die, and the elderly are ‘[l]essened, impoverished, [and] in exile in the present day’ (de Beauvoir, 1972: 498). That presents an interesting idea of being historically, rather than geographically, exiled. Silence: Soundless, Unvoiced or Quietude The overlap between solitude and silence in the work of Lees (2012), O’Donnell (2014) and many other quoted previously may suggest that silence is itself simply an oral/aural form of solitude, linked to dictionary definitions referring to the absence or omission of speech as well as the absence of all sound (OED, 2005, mentioned previously). I use that approach myself, saying that although silence is often described simply as the absence of sound, when people talk of silence they usually refer to a kind of disengagement. As Kierkegaard says, ‘because the human being is able to speak, the ability to be silent is an art, and a great art precisely because this advantage of his [sic] so easily tempts him’ (Kierkegaard 2000: 333). If solitude is a form of disengagement ‘in perception, thought, emotion, and action’ (Koch, 1994: 57), then silence may be experienced as primarily perceptual (not listening or hearing: aural) and actional (not speaking or making other intentional sounds: oral) disengagement (Stern, 2014: 147–8, Stern & Wałejko, 2020). This oral/aural disengagement is one way of understanding silence, among many ways – as with solitude. (Some of these various understandings are represented in this Handbook.) And, like solitude, silence can be a positive or negative, chosen or imposed, experience (Lees, 2012, and Chapter 2 of this Handbook). Silence is also, like solitude, ultimately impossible to achieve, at least for those with hearing. Those who have had hearing and who lose all hearing may experience this as total silence, although most people described as having profound hearing 5

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loss will retain experiences of some sounds.1 (It is difficult to describe those who have never had any hearing as experiencing ‘silence’, any more than human beings’ inability to directly experience radioactivity can be experienced as a ‘loss’ of a sense that has never existed.) The phrase ‘silent as the grave’ does not indicate that the dead experience silence, but rather that the living can no longer hear from or communicate with those in the grave. Even that is an ambiguous phrase, as people may talk to the grave of friends or relatives, and find their ‘silence’ an encouragement to further talk. For that and related reasons, silence seems – more than solitude – to indicate the ineffable, as described with respect to Wittgenstein’s silence (in the Conclusion to this Handbook). Researching Silence in Settings There are various settings in which silence is researched. St Augustine talks of his infancy, being ‘quietened by bodily delights’ (Augustine, 1991: 7). A small but growing current literature on silence for children and young people includes the work of Lees (2012), mentioned previously, which provides a particularly useful distinction between what she refers to as ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ silence, the former being framed in this chapter as negative or punitive, the latter as positive and sought. Lees also distinguishes between ‘techniqued’ and ‘untechniqued’ silences, with the former including meditative and mindfulness practices, the latter simply taking opportunities for a quiet and reflective time. (See also Chapter 11 in this Handbook, on adolescent silences.) Alerby writes about schools while drawing on the whole lifespan of experience of oppressive silencing. ‘Whoever has been forced into silence’, she says, ‘for example through repression and the exercise of power, can eventually experience him or herself to have no voice, and therefore unable to be heard’ (Alerby, in Hägg & Kristiansen, 2012: 71, and Chapter 14 of this Handbook). Sauntson and Borba (Chapter 13 of this Handbook) write of the relationship between silence/ silencing and sexuality. Alongside oppressive silence is the silence of complicity: ‘[i]t is not the evil nature of evil people, but the silence of good people that is dangerous, according to Hannah Arendt’ (Alerby, in Hägg and Kristiansen, 2012: 71). Fanon, similarly, writes of political silences and ‘the silenced nation’ (Fanon, 1963: 57, and see also Chapter 6 of this Handbook). Alerby also describes positive uses of silence such as increasing the length of time teachers wait for a response, which leads to not only longer answers but also more reflective and speculative answers (Alerby, in Hägg & Kristiansen, 2012: 73, and see also Chapter 10 of this Handbook). Both positive and negative versions of adult silence are described, such as in the idea of the ‘quiet professional’ (in contrast to the ‘silenced’ professional) as promoted by Pirrie (2019, and see Chapter 15 of this Handbook). References to silence in old age are more often negative. The ‘unvoicing’ of the elderly is commonly described, with Arendt casually referring to ‘marginal social conditions like old age’ (Arendt, 2004: 615). One form of silence that is, to an extent, ‘chosen’ and yet usually portrayed as negative is that of selective mutism. Although such self-silencing may be portrayed in popular fiction as experienced as a response to trauma (as in Hannibal Lecter’s portrayal in Harris, 2006), there is evidence that it is more symptomatic of extreme social anxiety without prior trauma (Black, 1995). Loneliness: Emotion or Existential State Solitude and silence are both ‘experiences’, and are both at least somewhat subjective experiences of aloneness. Wordsworth writes of wandering alone, and in noticing some daffodils, achieves 6

Introduction

a sense of solitude, an example of ‘the . . . communion with the natural and the spiritual world that can be reached through contemplation in solitude’ (Bound Alberti, 2019: 207, and see also Chapter 7 in this Handbook). Both solitude and silence can be associated with and experienced alongside a whole range of emotions, positive and negative. Loneliness, in contrast, is itself an emotion, at least in current usage (Bound Alberti, 2019). The origins of the words ‘lonely’, ‘alone’ and ‘solitude’ are similar (as described previously), all relating to ‘oneness’. Yet, as it has developed since the nineteenth century (in some social contexts), loneliness has become an emotion and, as an emotion, combines a negative affect (i.e. pain or suffering) with an associated interpretation of that pain (as in the theory of emotions of Spinoza, 1955: 173–85). One of my own definitions of loneliness in this form was ‘loneliness is pain accompanied by the idea of love that is now absent, when that pain is accompanied by self-rejection, for example because the absence is thought to be “deserved”’ (Stern, 2014: 182). More recently (Stern, 2021), I have written of the ‘three dimensions’ of loneliness, these being, first, a sense of separation (whether physical or attitudinal); second, a sense of rejection; and third, a sense of self-rejection – with all accompanied by pain or suffering. Such an emotion-definition of loneliness is clearly contextdependent, and there are – as mentioned previously – several authors (notably Mijuskovic, 2012 and Domeracki, 2018, and Chapters 16 and 1 of this Handbook) who describe the ‘lonely’ situation of human beings as a necessary existential state. In that model, loneliness is no longer seen as an emotion – as people may not experience pain or suffering (or may not recognize their pain/suffering) but are still essentially lonely. Researching Loneliness in Settings There seems to be a much larger (and rapidly increasing) literature on loneliness, in contrast to the literatures on solitude and silence, perhaps because many see loneliness as an ‘ailment’ to be ‘cured’. The loneliness literature includes extensive accounts of professional approaches in psychology (Margalit, 2010, Chapters 17 and 18 of this Handbook), counselling (Moustakas & Moustakas, 2004), public health (Hammond, 2018) and education (Stern, 2014) (mentioned previously). Childhood loneliness research has a shorter history than adult loneliness research. Rotenberg notes how some deny any loneliness exists prior to adolescence (in Rotenberg & Hymel, 1999: 5), and he notes that there was little research literature on the topic until the 1980s (in Rotenberg & Hymel, 1999: 3), albeit with a much larger literature now available. However, the foundations were laid in the psychotherapeutic literature of Winnicott and Bowlby in the 1960s and 1970s (described above, and see also Chapter 16 of this Handbook). Adult loneliness research was given a considerable stimulus by the popularity of the idea of the ‘lonely crowd’ (Reisman et al., 2000, first published in 1961) and Yates’s (2009) eleven short stories on the theme of loneliness first published in 1957, 1961 and 1962 (including one account of childhood loneliness). Weiss’s (1973) account is perhaps the most influential early book of research on loneliness, and it explores adult and elder loneliness (and see also Chapters 19 and 22 of this Handbook). On elders, Townsend notes the difference between being ‘socially isolated’ and having ‘an unwelcome feeling of lack or loss of companionship’ (Townsend, in Weiss, 1973: 181, original emphasis). For him, ‘[o]ne of the most striking results of the whole inquiry was that those living in relative isolation from family and community did not always say they were lonely [, even if a] . . . few people liked to let their children think they were lonely so the latter would visit them as much as possible’ (Townsend, in Weiss, 1973: 181). That finding – based on the observation 7

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that elderly respondents were more likely to say they were lonely if their children were present – is an excellent example of how context can affect how a person responds to research questions. Loneliness is an ethical as well as political issue for people of all ages (see Horowski, Wray, and Iwański, in Chapters 20, 21 and 22 of this Handbook). More recently, along with ‘ministers of loneliness’ (described previously), concerns over loneliness in old age has also led to the setting up of the ‘campaign to end loneliness’, which quotes Holt-Lunstad in saying that ‘lacking social connections is as damaging to our health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day’.2 Similarly, The Silver Line3 is a helpline for lonely, isolated, elderly people – founded by Esther Rantzen, who had previously set up Childline for children and young people.4 It should be said, however, that some of the accounts of loneliness in recent research and practice – including that of The Silver Line – conflate various forms of social isolation with loneliness. Research based on the UCLA Loneliness Scale (such as Cacioppo & Patrick, 2008) ask about ‘the subjective experience known as loneliness’ (Cacioppo & Patrick, 2008: 5), and yet the scale never asks about loneliness itself (e.g. ‘have you felt lonely?’) but instead asks about various forms of social isolation (see Stern, 2014: 49–50). Conclusion: A Handbook There is a growing body of research on solitude, silence and loneliness, from various academic perspectives and practitioner and public policy contexts. The disciplines and fields in which I have found valuable work on the topic include education, philosophy, psychology, theology, history, sociology, literary and cultural studies, gender and sexuality studies, health and gerontology – and there are no doubt many more accounts in other disciplines and fields. Currently, the significant bodies of research tend to reside in separate disciplinary ‘islands’. As editors of and contributors to this volume, we hope to respect each of the islands while at the same time recognizing the separate ‘islands’ as forming an archipelago.5 That is, we believe there is now a need for a book that brings together the various ‘aloneness’ issues, and we wish to create an alliance out of the archipelago. This sets out to be the first book to do that comprehensively, providing a serious overview of the field that might be termed ‘solitude studies’, or for Domeracki (2018, and Chapter 1 of this Handbook) ‘monoseology’. What brings all of the authors together is a concern for how the experiences of solitude, silence and loneliness develop over time across the lifespan. It is therefore a distinctly ‘educational’ project, not because the authors are all educationalists or because we focus on formal educational institutions, but in the sense of considering how we learn to be alone, in good and bad ways – whether in families, communities, workplaces, care homes or, of course, in schools and higher education. We do not attempt a single view of being alone, or of the separate concepts of solitude, silence or loneliness. As this chapter has attempted to demonstrate, that would be impossible if we are to reflect the different perspectives and cultures represented in the literature. Yet this is still an ‘alliance’, an alliance that recognizes the importance of understanding solitude, silence and loneliness in their social contexts, and that recognizes the value of bringing disciplines, settings and cultures together in dialogue. There are other types of aloneness or separation that this Handbook does not address in such detail (if at all), such as boredom, various ‘separating’ forms of mental health concerns (such as schizophrenia), conditions on the autism spectrum, shyness and social anxiety, or sensory and other physical impairments (e.g. related to hearing or speaking). There are specialist disciplines 8

Introduction

and practice settings that will be covered in more detail than others, given a Handbook written by thirty authors based in eleven different countries across five continents. Yet we do hope to provide an anchor text that is the result of collaboration and dialogue, as well as systematic disciplinary research across the range of both positivist and interpretive research methodologies. There is, we believe, a critical mass of scholars researching in this area and we hope to stimulate further growth in the study of, and professional practice related to, solitude, silence and loneliness. Each of the three core concepts has its own section of the Handbook, introduced by one of the editors. All the authors of chapters will specialize in one of the concepts, yet – as I know from my own research – it would be impossible to keep all the loneliness out of solitude studies, or all the silence out of loneliness studies, and so on. We invite readers to join us in asking how the ‘aloneness’ aspects of personhood can be understood, together. Some of our own conclusions are drawn together in the final Conclusion chapter to this Handbook.

9

10

Part I

Solitude



12

Part I

Introduction Małgorzata Wałejko

The Good Space Now I see how much time I spent to fill the space which doesn’t need to be filled that way, because it is a good space – my space. (Student, University of Szczecin) Part I of this Handbook is devoted to solitude, described as ‘the good space’ by a university student. At the time this chapter was written, students had just submitted assignments based on giving up using their mobile phones that eat up most of their free time, for five days. The assignments illustrated the process and results of ‘disengagement from other people’, as Koch has defined solitude (1994: 44). Solitudinous disengagement might involve perception, thought, emotion and action (Koch, 1994: 57) and can be either enforced or chosen. (The students’ task was voluntary.) Thus, solitude has been described in two contrasting ways, as a form of punishment (exile, solitary confinement or disciplinary techniques in education) and as a state to be sought for the sake of personal or spiritual development (as hermits or – the students again). ‘I left my home to read a book on a bench. I was reading, looking up to the sky now and then. It was beautiful, gently blue. Clouds were moving fast. The bench, book and me. Silence all around me. Just a bench under my block became my place, where I could focus and be alone’. ‘Listening to sounds of classical music I wasn’t thinking of any missed messages. I’ve notices a significant improvement in mood’. ‘I’m learning to value my time and devote a part of it to a talk to myself, to considerate’. ‘I admired the last autumn leaves on the trees. I haven’t spot them before’. ‘I reminded myself how I love to paint, what kind of pleasure it gives me’. ‘During my walk I encountered a few lovely places, which I necessarily wanted to register, but I had no mobile with me . . . So, I “registered” them in my head to possess beautiful memories’. We read in their diaries that the ‘experiment’ opened them up to see the beauty of nature, literature and art, their (forgotten) talents and passions, their inner world of thoughts. It revealed a deeper attention, when a person doesn’t take a quick photograph, often never to be seen again, but looks to see and to remember. But the first step, the primary condition to set up a process of chosen

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Solitude, Silence and Loneliness

solitude, is an agreement to disengage. That agreement is to restrain from filling up the ‘good space’ with what randomly comes from outside: people, stimuli, superficial turmoil. Only then can you accept the space, and can fill it in with what is truly yours, coming from the inside. As the Polish poet, Anna Kamieńska wrote, ‘We must internally accept / solitude, / to be able to fill it with / effort, / love, / prayer. // The solitude / which is not accepted / can not be filled’ (Kamieńska, 1995: 40). It takes effort to accept the space – as we read in some of the following chapters – whether this is at schools, to provide solitude practices (Chapters 2 and 3), at work, to be, for example, a reflective leader (Chapter 5), in nature (Chapter 4), in our spiritual lives (Chapters 8 and 9) and through art, music and literature (Chapter 7). Because of the effort and its possible fruits, Paul Tillich named solitude ‘the glory of being alone’, in contrast to ‘the suffering of being alone’, that is loneliness (Tillich, 1991: 4). According to Bréhant, strong souls will strengthen in solitude, and these deserve ‘the glory’, whereas ailing souls will get stuck in it (Bréhant, 1980: 31). On the other hand, solitude might also entail suffering, especially if it is enforced, leading to the emotion of loneliness. In Part I we encounter such descriptions taken from the world of politics, with the marginalized (Chapter 6), and from the world of art, music and literature, with the experience of exile (Chapter 7). The first of the accounts in Part I is by Piotr Domeracki, who provides us with a panoramicsynthesizing introduction to the philosophy of solitude, which emerged in the twentieth century, although with its origin (in its modern form) going back to the eighteenth century. Domeracki refers to the study of solitude as ‘monoseology’, from the Greek. The increase of interest in the issue at the beginning of the twenty-first century, he believes, is related to a ‘loneliness pandemic’, a shared experience and ‘our collective trauma’. There are two public responses to the phenomenon, optimistic and pessimistic, and it is pessimism that has been the more dominant. Domeracki argues that contemporary culture promotes narcissistic individualism, which, alongside community-creating attitudes, leads to a ‘society of individuals’, units in fact strictly isolated by modern communication techniques. Modern times typically involve a narcissistic concentration on oneself (and having an audience), with a deconcentration on the other, resulting in a ‘society of the spectacle’. Chapters 2 and 3 consider schooling. Helen Lees in Chapter 2 presents an approach to solitude in education as a neglected human right. We have a right to education, but do not yet have a right to solitude. The lack of attention to solitude in schooling – however popular mindfulness and other meditative practices have become – might be partly caused by the association with its negative, punitive forms. Lees describes how in school, where cooperation and collaboration are promoted, solitude may be seen as political resistance, a rebellion against manipulation. So solitude can play a role of protector in a busy school community, as it enables children to keep a comfortable distance from each other, preventing some violence. Standing apart from others, reference to the norm of the learning community supports constructing otherness. Lees refers to the problem of technology, specifically exacerbated by the remote education resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic. The distinction is made between solitudinous ‘busyness’ and solitude as an experience of enstasy, protected from the harmful influence of others. According to Lees, students need to realize what ‘productive solitude’ can be, in a hyper-connected world. She goes on to consider the status of solitude in ‘alternative education’, but returns at the end of the chapter to consider possible spaces for solitude in schools and the contribution to health and well-being of the right to think in peace and privacy, undisturbed. 14

Introduction

In Chapter 3, Michael T Buchanan provides insights from a qualitative study of solitude and the goals of Catholic education. Because social interaction is a basic feature of humanity, isolation has often been viewed negatively. But too much sociality can be stressful and oppressive. Schools are learning communities, where dialogical interaction is referred to as the main method of education, while solitude has been associated with disciplinary strategies. Buchanan’s study on Religious Education leadership in Catholic schools identifies the need for planned solitude opportunities for leaders, teachers and students at all levels of schooling. Buchanan describes how solitude practices can help foster positive socialization (and, paradoxically, the sense of inclusion), creativity, and independent thought. Therefore, teachers should seek for these practices. Solitude experiences in the Catholic tradition are described in terms of the life and teachings of Jesus, along with monastic traditions. Although Catholic schools in Australia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries used to offer various forms of solitude (such as retreats and worship), now they concentrate more on communal settings rather than on solitude. Amanda Fulford in Chapter 4 explains what it means to experience solitude in nature. By studying key works on the theme by Henry David Thoreau, the nineteenth-century American philosopher, and Nan Shepherd, the twentieth-century author and poet, Fulford asks if solitude can be equated with solitariness. Their ways of perceiving are compared and solitude is described as a kind of communion and presence stemming from attentiveness to what surrounds us. Both Thoreau and Shepherd are richly poetic and philosophical, as is Fulford’s Chapter 4. Solitude is not just being without human others in the outdoors: we are opened up to the possibilities of society with nature herself. Fulford finds some remarkable lines connecting Shepherd’s and Thoreau’s works, with solitude described by both as ‘less an absence than a form of presence’. For Shepherd it was not solitude in the mountains that she craved; it was rather the friendship and company of the mountains. Moreover, she walked with an unnamed companion and it did not distract from but enhanced the silence. Thoreau’s preference for solitude was not a simple aversion to society and a rejection of hospitality of people, animals and ideas: he drew readers’ attention to the unfamiliar and the foreign. They both pursued relationships with others and sought solitude in nature apart from people. Although solitude in nature, as described by Thoreau and Shepherd, may not be a model for everyone, we can instead experience solitude in nature in urban locations ‘as communion with one’s surroundings that foster a particular kind of engagement and attention that brings the ordinary into presence such that we see things in a new way’. Attention of this kind involves a lack of intention, just pure waiting without judgement. Attention is our hope for solitude in the midst of the ordinary life. Chapter 5 by David Weir presents solitude as a chance for business leaders to build latent strength, to work on reflection, critique, introspection and, in consequence, improve their leadership capabilities. Part I reviews theories of leadership emphasizing judgement skills as the core of effectiveness when a leader faces wicked problems. Readers will find here an analysis of leadership as connected with action, a list of capabilities – cognitive, intuitive, charismatic – that a good leader should possess. According to conventional theories, leaders need to focus on response mechanisms, but concentrating on ‘how to get things done’ instead of ‘whether they are worth doing’ is problematic. ‘Wicked problems’ require emotional intelligence as well as good judgement, and solitude provides a chance to confront who you (really) are, a foundational state of being human. Weir believes that the value of solitude is increasingly recognized in leadership and management training. He focuses on the need for ‘wilderness’ in leadership education. 15

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Solitude, Silence and Loneliness

Wilderness takes its inspiration from the biblical account of Jesus and Essene philosophy. This is the ‘temptation’ takes place, a ‘trying out’, ‘testing’ or ‘practising for future’. In the wilderness one learns new ways and better methods, as Jesus preparing himself for the ultimate test. Thus, solitude is an opportunity for leaders to create latent capability made possible by ‘the open mind, open heart and open will’. Finally, Weir enumerates the benefits that leaders might acquire from wilderness time. Henrieta Șerban and Aleksander Cywiński in Chapter 6 describe how solitude is a political issue for individuals and for states. Individuals in solitude, as described by Hobbes and Machiavelli, seem to have a ‘need’ for states and yet they cannot avoid a fundamental loneliness. The philosophy of Blaga helps explain how solitude can lead to action, while Arendt, Honneth and Habermas tie this into the possibilities of democracy. In the pandemic, are the positive or negative aspects of political solitude – the estrangement or the activism – going to predominate? And just as solitude is an important lens through which to consider individual people in political systems, so, also, are whole states. Countries may be described both positively and negatively, actively and passively, as alone on the world’s stage. Terms like ‘loneliness’ and ‘solitude’ are appropriate when considering how states reject or are rejected by other states, just as sociability and intimacy would be relevant to considerations of international political alliances. The macroand micro-political aspects of solitude and loneliness provide new ways to consider politics and new ways to consider aloneness. Chapter 7, by Julian Stern, explores solitude in literature, music and art, starting with an explanation of why art can be used alongside conventional research to help understand solitude. In the pre-Romantic period exile and ecstasy are described as the most characteristic forms of solitude. The Roman writer Ovid, exiled himself, created a body of exile literature. Stern notes that the very first use of the word ‘lonely’ was by Shakespeare, associated with exile, and Shakespeare also helped create a modern, emotional, sense of loneliness. The second solitude theme of that time was ecstasy, commonly described in religious traditions of the desert, alone in a cave or living as hermits or anchoresses. In the Romantic period we encounter the artist as a solitary figure and solitude itself as sought, mainly in nature. Wordsworth, one of the most significant Romantic poets of solitude, eagerly used the word ‘lonely’ but in the meaning related to a place more than to an emotion; Hölderlin, in contrast, is seen as describing more emotional loneliness. For visual representations of the solitary-artist-in-nature, Friedrich is well known. Romantic musicians of solitude include Liszt and Paganini, both charismatic virtuoso performers, standing on the concert stage as on a solitary mountain-top – in danger of falling into solipsism. In post-Romantic arts, solitude has three faces. Lonesomeness, related to a risk of the loss of nature, is artistically described through images of American cowboys, outlaws and frontiers, and through the poetry of Dickinson and Whitman. There is a return of exilic literature, too. The second face of post-Romantic solitude is that of suppressed/oppressed sexuality leading to the sense of isolation or rejection (in literature represented by Hall, Wilde and Larkin). And the third solitude theme is that of alienation, considered in theology, philosophy and literature (Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx, Kierkagaard, Satre, Dickens, Rilke, Kafka, Thoreau). Stern finishes his analysis with solitude in post-Romantic music – as more solitary than social. Although the chapter does not attempt a comprehensive account of solitude, it illustrates a wide range of traditions influential on the human experience of solitude. 16

Introduction

Chapters 8 and 9 touch on the issue of spirituality and solitude. Chapter 8, by Wong Ping Ho, describes how Confucianism, as one of pillars of Chinese culture, on one hand describes solitude as not the ultimate way to human fulfilment, but on the other hand puts a great emphasis on solitudinous practices of self-cultivation. The cultivation of personal life including making the will sincere, extending knowledge, improving the mind – all these involve solitude and form the foundation of an active and social life. Wong notes the ubiquity of the solitude motif in Chinese culture, evidenced with examples from the classical canon, painting and poetry. The term ‘xianju’ (‘dwelling at ease’, ‘living alone away from people’) frequently appears in Chinese poetry as well as in titles of numerous Chinese paintings and lute music. The plot of wild solitude with perhaps a few contemplative figures is the norm for Chinese landscape paintings, and many poems present their authors being alone, usually in a melancholic mood. The melancholy is caused by following one of Confucius’s remarks, that although social life is generally seen as most praiseworthy, good people should not accept the corrupt world and may appropriately retire in solitude instead. It does not mean a rejection of society, but a critical reflection on one’s social roles and self-reflection in the service of the community. Furthermore, the Confucian idea of ‘vigilance in solitude’ (‘shendu’) is introduced, a way of using solitude to check on and refrain from improper thoughts that might lead to evil acts, and a way of achieving spiritual well-being. As well as supporting selfmonitoring, vigilance is also interpreted as a meditative practice; these two practices might be complementary. Although Confucianism is focused on the interpersonal dimension, it allows ‘worthy people to go into reclusion’ with the well-being of humankind in mind; but, in fact, human subjectivity is as important as relationship. It is traditional in China to withdraw regularly from social ties for the sake of self-cultivation, turning to the ancients, great authors of the past, to lute playing, landscapes painting, poetry or contact with nature. All these practices cultivate a spiritual solitude and lead to the attainment of full humanity. Gillian Simpson in Chapter 9 explores and assesses two perspectives on solitude in religion: ordinary or ‘structured’ solitudes, from within religious traditions, offering to enhance spiritual growth by ‘strictly’ regulated forms, and deep solitude, proposed by inspirational religious writers who dared to move beyond the ‘structured’ forms and encountered their own traditions in non-conventional ways. Simpson starts by explaining historical approaches to solitude, focusing on Judaism and Christianity. The differences between them are evident. Judaism is defined as ‘peoplehood’, so personal solitude is considered problematic. Yet, notwithstanding the ‘peoplehood mentality’, there is evidence of contemplative solitude within the Jewish tradition. Christian spirituality built on the unity of the community and common liturgy, but a growing need to retreat to the desert emerged. The early pioneers sought a balance between spiritual insight through solitude and the communal nature of the church. After the eighteenthcentury wave of collective approaches to social welfare, voices emerged expressing the need for seclusion together with the broad cultural movement towards subjectivity. In the modern church, an increased interest in personal devotion is observed. Simpson then introduces approaches to solitude in contemporary Judaism and Christianity, finding ‘the spaces between’ and presenting manifestations of the growth of deep solitude in both traditions. She makes a distinction between ordinary solitude through organized disciplines and deep (free) solitude chosen by the ‘religious virtuosos’, who ‘from within the boundaries of their own traditions form bridges between religious affiliations and secular life’. 17

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Solitude, Silence and Loneliness

Both the free thoughts from student assignments referred to at the beginning of this chapter, and the specialist chapters that follow, lead to one conclusion: solitude is not an end in itself, but a path (Wałejko, 2016: 98). ‘The good space, my space’ seems to be a place that helps a person flourish – whether morally and spiritually (as in the chapters by Wong and Simpson), or aesthetically (as in Fulford and Stern), or in terms of caring of various kinds (as in Lees, Buchanan, Șerban and Cywiński). Nouwen maintains that we cannot just divide people to two groups: those who enjoy solitude, and those who feel lonely. ‘Each of us is constantly moving between these two poles, . . . but if we can recognise the poles . . . we don’t have to feel lost anymore and we are able to see the direction we want to pursue’ (Nouwen, 1994: 54).

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1

The Philosophy of Solitude Piotr Domeracki

To the memory of John Gregory McGraw (1934–2019), ‘Professor of aloneness’ Introduction Solitude is one of those issues that probably leave no one indifferent. This happens if not because it arouses natural curiosity, then at least because it concerns every human being without exception. It fits – which is one of the guiding theses of this chapter – into the framework of human existence, being its inalienable component and distinguishing feature. It is possible that solitude does concern not only people but all social beings in general, capable of perceiving their own situation and the states associated with it in terms of ‘pleasant – unpleasant’. In view of the material subject matter of this study – solitude as framed within and in the context of human life – as far removed as possible from anthropocentric declarations, I only signal the possibility, or the need, of extending or complementing the study of solitude with elements of zoology, especially primatology, oriented ethologically. The philosophy of solitude is an extremely vast and intriguing field of knowledge, providing a conceptual basis and substantive framework for every field of science that makes solitude the object of its interest. This relatively young sub-discipline of philosophy, which emerged only in the twentieth century, although with historical roots dating back to the distant past, and entering into cooperation with other sciences, initiates the development of a promising field of research, multi-area focused on solitude. I call it from the Greek ‘monoseology’. Contemporary Solitude in Pandemic Times The temporal aspect of the matter is not accidental here. Without going into details – undoubtedly important, but more from the point of view of a historian of science or a historian of ideas than a philosopher – a clear increase in interest in the issue of solitude on the part of science occurred at the beginning of the twenty-first century. One can try to see some regularities in this fact.

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Solitude, Silence and Loneliness

They do not necessarily testify to the emergence of a certain scientific fashion, although it is otherwise known that science can also succumb to periodic fashions. Basically, there are three such regularities that I think deserve attention. However, I will only mention one of them because of the specific gravity it has. It refers to the scale of the phenomenon. It is no coincidence that many authors decide to talk about the loneliness pandemic that characterizes our times, covering the whole world. The American futurologist Toffler was the first to predict and describe this phenomenon in his 1980 work entitled Third Wave. It contains several key passages, which are worth quoting in full to illustrate the issue: The net effect is to carry us away from the Huxleyan or Orwellian society of faceless, de-individualized humanoids that a simple extension of Second Wave tendencies would suggest and, instead, toward a profusion of life-styles and more highly individualized personalities. We are watching the rise of a ‘post-standardized mind’ and a ‘post-standardized public’ (Toffler, 1980: 273). [. . .] Community offsets loneliness. It gives people a vitally necessary sense of belonging. Yet today the institutions on which community depends are crumbling in all the techno-societies. The result is a spreading plague of loneliness (Toffler, 1980: 383). [. . .] loneliness is no longer an individual matter but a public problem created by the disintegration of Second Wave institutions [. . .] (Toffler, 1980: 385). [. . .] The hurt of being alone is, of course, hardly new. But loneliness is now so widespread it has become, paradoxically, a shared experience (Toffler, 1980: 384). [. . .] This will bring its own social, psychological, and philosophical problems, some of which we are already feeling in the loneliness and social isolation around us. (Toffler, 1980: 273) From Toffler’s words, there is an observation worth emphasizing: this is not why solitude intrigues contemporary researchers as if it were a completely new phenomenon – after all, it is, as McGraw notes, to whose memory I dedicate this chapter, ‘the eternal and immortal human Nemesis’. (McGraw, 2000: 11) – but because it has historically been underrecorded. Loneliness has nowadays become a global phenomenon, commonly felt and experienced – as Toffler says – collectively (Toffler, 1980: 384). We live in an era of loneliness which has become our collective trauma, but also an opportunity and challenge. Toffler’s observation, however, narrowed down to loneliness, allows for a philosophical generalization towards solitude, which in the most fundamental sense is an inalienable element of human destiny, defining – as José Ortega y Gasset is convinced to say – ‘what is the most human’ (Ortega y Gasset, 1982: 376). The loneliness virus (Kruczyński, 2010) is now spreading not only in terms of time and space (occurring simultaneously in different parts of the world) but also mentally and culturally. In this way, it acquires the meaning of a contemporary cultural universal, becoming a sign of our times, their emblematic distinguishing feature. In the public space, in the media, in cultural products, in educational programmes and practices – which on the one hand serve as a catalyst for changes taking place in every sociocultural and political-economic system, and on the other hand, in a way, these changes absorb and transform into their own codes – two general moods dominate, piercing through their dominant attitude to solitude. The author of the term ‘general moods’, Dilthey, includes optimism and pessimism (Dilthey, 1993: 43). Depending on which of these moods prevails, such interpretations of solitude arise: either optimistic or pessimistic, which then rival each other. Needless to say, that as a rule the latter prevails over the former, although the 20

The Philosophy of Solitude

proportions between them are not so obvious. The result is an adversarial cultural mechanism that generates contradictory lifestyles and models of behaviour whose negative consequences and resulting difficulties – speaking in the spirit of the somewhat ironic maxim of Kisielewski – are then heroically overcome (Kisielewski, 1990: 42). Both Connected and Disconnected On the one hand, we are now dealing with a strong emphasis on expansive individualism (Bokszański, 2008: 59–63), which the Renaut and his colleague Ferry call hyperindividualism (Renaut, 2001: 68; Ferry, 1994: 34–5); on the other hand, there are loud and firm calls from all over the world for integration, cooperation and the expansion of areas of solidarity (Rorty, 2009: 292–3) in order to build a modern, cosmopolitan (Appiah, 2008) but not collective society and state, focused on the individual, which will be inclusive and not exclusive (Szahaj, 2008: 83–94). Popper called such a society ‘open’, and obsessively excluded from it all organic, tribal ties, until it became an ‘abstract society’ (Popper, 1993: 197). To illustrate his idea, Popper resorted to a deliberate exaggeration in his description in order to emphasize the constitutive features of such a creation. Imagine a society whose members practically do not meet face-to-face, where all matters are handled by strictly isolated individuals, communicating with each other by letter or telegraph and moving from place to place in closed cars. (Artificial insemination may enable reproduction without human intervention.) Such a fictional society could be called a ‘totally abstract or depersonalised society’. (Popper, 1993: 197) Popper’s prophetic vision is only two steps away from reality and probably only because it was created in 1945: ‘strictly isolated’, and therefore lonely individuals no longer use telegraph, but mobile phones and the internet to make contact with each other more effective, and a society made up of such individuals – which Elias described as a ‘society of individuals’ (Elias, 2008) – it is not fictional anymore. Just look around. In Popper’s image, special attention is paid to the ambivalence of the role that modern communication techniques, tools and vehicles play in people’s lives. Modern information and communication technologies (ICT) appear to bring people closer to each other; however, it seems that people have become unprecedentedly distant from and alien to each other. At least three elements have changed in this context, illustrated by significant changes to the ontological triad (person – tools – world) and the communication triad (sender – medium – recipient). First of all, there has been the virtualization of reality and the realization of the virtual (Korab, 2010; Sobczak, 2014, 19; Morbitzer, 2016). Contemporary humanity functions not so much at the intersection of the two worlds – real and virtual, as a person penetrates and becomes established in the cybernetic augmented reality, finding in it an asylum and a springboard from the ills of the real world of life, from which the person consequently alienates himself/herself. Second, we are dealing with an empowering humanization of ICT and an objectifying technicalization of people, their world and human relations. From people and networks of relations with them, devices, carriers, gadgets, accessories, in a word, technical equipment become more important. It ceases to be seen as a mere means of communication and begins to be treated as an end in itself. Accordingly, the relationship with the person loses its importance. Much more important turns out to be the contact with a personalized device, which becomes deanonymized as an object. Turkle provides valuable confirmation of this issue: 21

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Solitude, Silence and Loneliness

While my computer science colleagues were immersed in getting computers to do ingenious things, I had other concerns. How were computers changing us as people? My colleagues often objected, insisting that computers were ‘just tools.’ But I was certain that the ‘just’ in that sentence was deceiving. We are shaped by our tools. And now, the computer, a machine on the border of becoming a mind, was changing and shaping us. (Turkle, 2011: X) Augé writes that one of the four basic characteristics of contemporary Paris, and more broadly of the contemporary Western world, is ‘the intensification of the feeling of loneliness, paradoxically accompanying the expansion of communication technology’ (Mikułowski Pomorski, 2009: 6). Third, finally, we observe an increase in individuals’ narcissistic concentration on themselves with a simultaneous deconcentration on the other. He or she is needed only as a viewer, observer, follower, subscriber, commentator, admirer or flatterer. In fact, it is not about any relationship, let alone a bond, but about having an audience, about being able to show oneself, about being noticed, about coming out of the shadows, about finding uncritical followers. This is unfortunately not an isolated case, but a general and intense tendency, probably involving all electrified, computerized and networked societies. Debord rightly reserves for them the name ‘the society of the spectacle’ (Debord, 2006). Its key and most desirable feature is ‘visibility as a sign of prestige and personal meaning’ (Szahaj, 2015: 11–12) of an individual who builds his or her self-esteem ‘by presenting himself or herself in the media’ (Szahaj, 2015: 12), even social ones. The thing is – what the narcissistic individual, absorbed by self-presentation and the search through it for approval, appreciation and admiration from others who are reduced to the role of (re)viewers, usually does not see – that, as Debord states, ‘the alpha and omega of the spectacle is separation’ (Debord, 2006: §25, 40), understood here as a common alienation, producing the abstract seclusion of ‘lonely crowds’ (Debord, 2014: §28, 10). [§29] The spectacle was born from the world’s loss of unity [. . .]. [. . .] In the spectacle, a part of the world represents itself to the world and is superior to it. The spectacle is simply the common language of this separation. Spectators are linked solely by their one-way relationship to the very center that keeps them isolated from each other. The spectacle thus reunites the separated, but it reunites them only in their separateness (Debord, 2014: 10). [§30] The alienation of the spectator, which reinforces the contemplated objects that result from his own unconscious activity, works like this: the more he [sic] contemplates, the less he lives; the more he identifies with the dominant images of need, the less he understands his own life and his own desires. The spectacle’s estrangement from the acting subject is expressed by the fact that the individual’s gestures are no longer his own; they are the gestures of someone else who represents them to him. The spectator does not feel at home anywhere, because the spectacle is everywhere (Debord, 2014, 10–11). [. . .] [§28] The reigning economic system is a vicious circle of isolation. Its technologies are based on isolation, and they contribute to that same isolation. From automobiles to television, the goods that the spectacular system chooses to produce also serve it as weapons for constantly reinforcing the conditions that engender ‘lonely crowds’. (Debord, 2014: 10) The abstract object of Popper’s desires is materialized here in the empirical concrete of Debord. He shows that the essence of the spectacle, which is the hallmark of the contemporary society (which no longer belongs only to the Euro-Atlantic civilization, but also to the global one) and consists in people being seen by others only to be admired by them for their appearance and 22

The Philosophy of Solitude

personality (Lasch, 1979: 59) – not necessarily for knowledge, competence, merit or actions, these are not the source of social prestige and recognition today – despite its concreteness, is the abstraction that produces abstractions (Debord, 2014: §29, 10). It should be understood that although every form of ICT-mediated social self-presentation seems concrete, because it is always done by a concrete person at a specific time and place, it is nevertheless, due to its carefully directed, theatrical, spectacular character, in which the authentic, concrete Self gives way to the currently simulated (created) and thus abstract Self, the physical concreteness of self-presentation is abolished and replaced by its imaginative, abstract embodiments, one after another. The categories developed by Debord, which characterize ‘the society of the spectacle’, prove surprisingly topical and very helpful while trying to describe the impact that ICT are having on the consolidation of information-based societies in the twenty-first century – which Marian Golka, as a sociologist, suggests calling more appropriately ‘technological society’ or ‘high-tech society’ (Golka, 2005: 255), and Zbigniew Brzeziński as a ‘technotronic society’ (Brzeziński, 1970: 10) – extremely individualistic cultures and practices, leading to social isolation and various forms of solitude. Minimal Self – Maximal Solitude Lasch completes the picture of the whole, developing the concept of a ‘minimal self’ which perfectly fits into the realities of Popper’s ‘minimal society’ (Pietrzyk-Reeves, 2012: 248). ‘Minimal’ is synonymous with ‘narcissistic’. What, according to Lasch, characterizes the minimal self most fully is the fearful uncertainty as to what it is or rather what it would like, should or may become. Individuals, absorbing their surroundings with themselves and their constant metamorphoses, want either to transform the world into their own image or to blend into it in a blissful union (Lasch, 1984: 19). ‘The minimal self is not just a defensive response to danger but arises out of a more fundamental social transformation: the replacement of a reliable world of durable objects by a world of flickering images that make it harder to distinguish reality from fantasy’ (Lasch, 1984: 19). In Lasch’s perspective, we are confronted with further troublesome paradoxes. Contemporary humans cannot accept themselves as they are in reality or the world around them in its given condition. Perhaps there would be nothing surprising or problematic about it, if it were not for the fact that – as Lasch claims – people are narcissists. There is little more ridiculous than the sight of narcissists not reconciled with their own reflections. But such is the peculiarity of the contemporary narcissist. The person looks with pleasure not so much at the mirror image of his or her own Self, but at the imaginary Self, each time created and constantly corrected until a temporary aesthetic satisfaction is achieved, raised to the power of abstraction. Modifying the term, introduced to philosophy by Sellars (1968: 222 et passim), we can precisely describe the narcissist understood in this way as ‘I-intention’. It is the intended Self (Krokos, 2013: 190–1; Rosiak, 2009), that is to say, that to which the individual’s attention is directed, spontaneously or purposefully; that which is the object of his or her desire, the result of plasticity and mobility of his or her imagination. In a word, it is the Imagined Self, constructed, and therefore – following the rhetoric of Rorty – it is the contingent ego (Rorty, 2009: 50–80; in the original: Rorty, 1989: 23–43). 23

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The concept of Lasch’s ‘minimal self’ has lost little of its relevance and continues to stimulate researchers to redefine it. The era of the individualism of ‘psychological man’ – as Larry D. Nachmann (Nachmann, 1979: 176) has put it extremely aptly and eloquently – not only has reached its end, but it now seems to be reaching its peak. Its symptom is the scourge of solitude. In order to highlight the scale and seriousness of the problem, Imogen Tyler describes the cultural history of narcissism as a transition from the contemporary Lasch’s ‘The Me decade’ (1970s and 1980s) to the twenty-first-century ‘The Me Millennium’ (Tyler, 2007: 358). Tyler leaves no illusions that Narcissism is not only central to popular and academic histories of America in the 1970s, but is now widely attributed to a transnational generation of ‘baby-boomers’, a new generation of new media users (television viewers, web-bloggers and game players), celebrity culture, therapy culture and, more recently, cultures of terror. (Tylor, 2007: 358) It is worth knowing that recently there have been appearing works that not only creatively develop the Lasch’s concept, but which are increasingly critical of it. One such work is undoubtedly Elizabeth Lunbeck’s book from 2014 entitled The Americanization of Narcissism. The author accuses the American researcher of being too reductionist and obscure in his approach to narcissism (Lunbeck, 2014). Recent research by Mads Gram Henriksen, Josef Parnas and Dan Zahavi (Henriksen et al., 2019) shows that the minimal self – characterized by these scholars as ‘for-me-ness’ or as ‘ipseity’ (the primordial, pre-reflexive, inconceivable phenomenal Self, which unites and unifies the experiences of the humans, giving them a sense of existence and rootedness – Kapusta, 2007) – is ‘a necessary, universal feature of phenomenal consciousness’ (Henriksen et al., 2019: 102770). Contingent Ego – Casual Solitude It is interesting to see Rorty’s career-making concept of contingency (Czerniak, 2006), especially – though not only – in the postmodern world, rendering its services in the field of epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophical anthropology, social philosophy, political philosophy, philosophy of culture and even ethics. Eulogists of contingency made it an inalienable feature of practically everything that can be embraced by thought, without excluding the latter itself. Contingency means here: everything unnecessary, unpredictable, random, relative, contextual, variable, impermanent, surprising, undetermined, uncontrolled, happening or accidental. According to the contingentists such as Marquard, this is what constitutes the human condition (Czerniak, 2006: 20). Marquard formulates a position opposed to the ‘program of human absolutization’ (Marquard, 1994: 120–5) and states that people are the result of accidental circumstances more than rational, well-thought-out decisions (Marquard, 1994: 122–3; Czerniak, 2006: 20–1). Such a view, as all the others presented so far, entails important consequences from the point of view of the philosophy of solitude. It allows us to recognize solitude in terms of contingency as something that simply happens to a person. Like everything that happens to us in life, solitude appears unenquired and goes away equally unenquired. It cannot be predicted or prepared for, just as one cannot predict or prepare for the possibility of an accident, suffering, illness, loss of job, bankruptcy, disloyalty from a friend, deception, betrayal, unfulfilled desires, disappointed hopes, misguided investments or death. Somebody may decide to spend their life alone, but in 24

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the meantime, unfathomable fate will ridicule them and put them on their path as an inseparable companion. Others will intend avoiding solitude when they suddenly – contrary to their intentions – find themselves trapped in it. Thus, there is no justification even for the most rational and devout strategy of meticulous and consistent planning of everything in life, because, as a matter of fact, no one has power over contingent life which goes on blindly. So what is left for a troubled person to do, is to try to reconcile with the course of successive accidents, accepting them with an awareness of the common contingency of things, states, processes, phenomena and events. Czerniak includes Rorty in the anti-fundamentalist discourse based on the idea of contingency (Czerniak, 2006: 29–39). Rorty distinguishes three basic categories of contingency: the contingency of language (Rorty, 2009: 21–49, 1989: 3–22), the contingency of selfhood (Rorty, 2009: 50–80; 1989: 23–43) and the contingency of a liberal community (Rorty, 2009: 81–117; 1989: 44–69). All three categories are linked, but Rorty seems to attach the greatest importance to the third. All of them, in fact, find their culmination in it. At the same time, the category of adventure, used to understand the organizational structure, functions and goals of social life, appears to be relevant to philosophy of solitude. It is worth noting that Rorty – unlike Marquard – gives a normative (postulative) meaning of contingency, not a descriptive (factual) one. This has got a direct impact on the way the author of Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity views the contingency of social forms of life and individual participation in them. Contingency here becomes a synonymous with human finiteness and mortality (Rorty, 1989: 45). They indicate the inscribed a priori in every human existence, its manifestations and the forms it takes, its limitations, ordinariness, impermanence, spontaneity and occasionality. It follows that nothing in human life occurs in its finished form (but requires an effort of creative commitment and work); nothing is given once and for all (because it can be lost or destroyed); nothing is completely certain (identifiable or predictable with any accuracy) or definitive (everything is labile, subject to constant change, redefinition, renegotiation and redistribution). Since human life remains elusive in its essence – including for the person to whom it belongs – and thus inscrutable, it is all the more unlikely to be acknowledged or guided by any image, idea, standard or doctrine recommending a particular model of life claiming universality, timelessness and indisputability. Leaving aside the undeniable debatability of Rorty’s statements – without refusing, of course, their validity in some aspects – let us note that they lead to conclusions of paramount importance to the starting point of any theory of solitude developed in philosophy and, more broadly, any philosophical reflection on humanity. It is expressed in the finding that one cannot reasonably claim that people, by virtue of their species nature, are determined either to be alone or to live in a community. After all, there is no substantial nucleus of existence that would constitute an objective criterion and at the same time a universal norm of humanity. The anti-essentialist stance of Rorty harmonizes in this respect partly with the view of Heidegger, and partly with that of Sartre, abstracting from the similarities and differences between them (Puszko, 1992; Michalski, 1998: 140–6). For example, there is an association between Rorty’s ‘contingency’ and Heidegger’s ‘thrownness’ (Geworfenheit). From the ontologicalexistential point of view (Baran, 2004: XV–XVII), the basic situation of a person in the world is primordially defined by the fact of being ‘given’ to this world (Heidegger, 2004: § 29, 173, 1962: § 29, 174). It consists, in short, in identifying one’s place in the world and the role we have to play in it from birth to death, as being contingently thrown into it (Rymkiewicz, 2002: 142). What is important, it has no sense-creative metaphysical basis, explanation, justification or direction. This thrownness belongs 25

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to the essence of a person (Heidegger, 1977a: 207, 1977b: 90). However, it is not ‘an essence’ in the traditional philosophical sense (Heidegger, 1977a: 208, 1977b: 91; Rymkiewicz, 2002: 77; Drwięga, 2012, 43–4), understood as a permanent and universal substratum of being, determining its given in advance identity, defined as belonging and generic, species or individual specificity. This is not at all about ‘essence’ in the sense of actualitatis existentiae (actuality of existence through the realization of an essence), which makes it possible to grasp the being as ‘fully present, here and now perceptible’, ‘as a material thing or a spiritual thing, as Someone or as Something’ (Rymkiewicz, 2002: 75). We are only talking about ‘essence’ in the sense of the ‘characteristic of human way of being’ (Rymkiewicz, 2002: 77; Baran, 2004: XVI; Heidegger, 2004: § 5, 21; § 54, 337 et al.; 1962, § 5, 37; § 54, 312 et al.), reduced in its interpretation to the current situation in which individuals live within their own lives’ possibilities, without ultimately exhausting their own potential or reaching the maximum limit of their possibilities, let alone their total fullness. As a result, a person is not so much the one who becomes each time, but what that person can (still) become until the last of the possibilities that is death, the end of all possibilities (Heidegger, 2004: § 53, 320–36, 1962, § 53, 306–11; Rymkiewicz, 2002: 149). ‘I am always not someone anymore, I have just stopped being someone, although at the same time I am not yet someone, I am just going to be someone’ (Rymkiewicz, 2002: 75). Being a human being is irrevocably marked by the stigma of negativity (Nichtheit)1 (Heidegger, 2004: § 58, 359, 1962, § 58, 331; Rymkiewicz, 2002: 145), which inevitably causes existential discomfort and a feeling of anxiety (die Angst) (Heidegger, 2004: § 53, 335, 1962: § 53, 310). In anxiety being becomes Nothing. This Nothing does not mean the negation of the whole of being, it is not also the lack of something – an object or a tool – and it is also not emptiness in the sense of an empty three-dimensional place after something (Rymkiewicz, 2002, 145). [. . .] Anxiety opens up to us our openness: that Nowhere – which we make our home, that Nothing – from which we only make our life, that Nobody – from which we emerge. (Rymkiewicz, 2002: 147) As we can see, neither solitude nor communitiveness is an essential human characteristic; they do not belong to the essence of humanity but are merely existential possibilities into which a person is ontologically thrown and between which the person can projectively choose or into which they can unwillingly fall.2 In this sense, referring to Sartre (Sartre, 1998: 62, 1948: 45–6), one can say that solitude, like communitiveness, is an inalienable element of ‘a human universality of condition’ (Sartre, 1998: 62, 1948: 46). As such, it can happen in our lives only as an opportunity but not as an inexorable necessity. Its occurrence or absence is a result of the way in which life is organized, the conditions in which it runs and the circumstances in which it develops. Essential Solitude – Existential Loneliness The Rortian recognition of solitude and communitiveness (Rorty, 2009: 106, 1989: 61) as ‘contingent events’ (Czerniak, 2006: 30) significantly contributes to their being demystified. Solitude is naturalized, and communitiveness is no longer absolute: it is demythologized. This philosophical position is, however, on a collision course with the equally important, if somewhat unfashionable, approach to solitude that uses essentialist categories3 – that of Tillich (O’Meara, 1968: 251; Tillich, 1951: 163, 1955: 5; 1966: 86, 2004: 25–34, 1967: 19–28). Tillich created a ‘philosophical theology’ (Tillich, 1966: 83, 92–3; Tolvajčić, 2019: 314–17), which presents his own concept of alienation, situated in a decisive opposition to Hegel’s one 26

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(Tillich, 1967: 44–75, 125–35, 2004: 48–75, 120–8). This provides a conceptual framework for Tillich’s analysis of solitude. Alienation, or more accurately ‘estrangement’, is a ‘quality of the structure of existence’ (Tillich, 1967: 74, 2004: 74). Tillich describes alienation as a human ‘predicament’, that is, a nagging, difficult and embarrassing position that is the inevitable destiny of all people, without exception. To be more precise, it should therefore be stated that ‘alienation [or estrangement] points to the basic characteristic of man’s predicament’ (Tillich, 1967: 45, 2004: 48) and ‘indicates a fundamental characteristic of the human predicament’. (Tillich, 1967: 45, 2004: 48). This is the estrangement of a person ‘from what he [sic] essentially is’ (Tillich, 1952: 127, 1983: 126), ‘of his true being’ (Tillich, 1952: 75, 1983: 78, 1967: 45, 2004: 48). It is, in turn, according to Tillich, the original union of a person with God, with other people and with oneself, the ontological bond resulting from the essential belonging of a person to ‘God, his own self, our world’ (Tillich, 1967: 46, 2004: 49). That union is violently invaded and brutally torn apart by original sin, the inevitable consequence of this existential state of ‘man’s estrangement from God, from men, from himself’ (Tillich, 1967: 46–7, 2004: 49–50). Hence Tillich’s ‘existential estrangement’ (Tillich, 1952: 77, 127, 1983: 79, 126). Tillich constructs a philosophy of solitude based on the distinction between the ‘essential and existential structure of aloneness’ (Tillich, 1967: 71, 2004: 72). This distinction has not only a substantive value but also a normative one. Aloneness in its essential aspect is valued by Tillich moderately positively. The existential variant of it, on the other hand, is unequivocally negatively valued by him, entailing his decisive disapproval. In fact, we are dealing here with two different phenomena, not just as one might think – two sides of the same phenomenon. He describes this difference by contrasting ‘essential solitude’ and ‘existential loneliness’ (Tillich, 1967: 71, 2004: 72). The former has an ontological colouring and is linked to the individual character of every human existence, concentrated around a guiding principle of structurally, completely centred self, which is ‘alone in his world and the more so, the more he is conscious of himself as himself’ (Tillich, 1967: 71, 2004: 72). This centredness, indeed, ‘cuts man off from the whole of reality which is not identified with himself’ (Tillich, 1967: 71, 2004: 72), but it does not bear the signs of a pathologized, misanthropic egotism. On the contrary, solitude – which Tillich describes positively – determines the individual’s community-forming reflex. ‘Only he who is able to have solitude is able to have communion’, he says, ‘for in solitude man experiences the dimension of the ultimate, the true basis for communion among those who are alone’ (Tillich, 1967: 71, 2004: 72). Paradoxically, therefore, solitude, which is a consequence of the individual separateness of each man, his ‘being alone in essential finitude’ (Tillich, 1967: 71, 2004: 72), not so much closes the individual to communion with others as it opens up communion from the source, enabling the person to go out towards it. Existential loneliness, in contrast, grows and is structured from the universal predicament of alienation. Tillich describes such loneliness as the source of ‘meaningless suffering’ (Tillich, 1967: 71, 2004: 72). The negative form of loneliness is described thus: In existential estrangement man is cut off from the dimensions of the ultimate and is left alone – in loneliness. This loneliness, however, is intolerable. It drives man to a type of participation in which he surrenders his lonely self to the ‘collective’. [. . .] Therefore, the individual continues to seek for the other one and is rejected, in part or in full; for the other one is also a lonely individual, unable to have communion because he is unable to have solitude. Such rejection 27

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is the source of much hostility not only against those who reject one but also against one’s self. In this way the essential structure of solitude and communion is distorted by existential estrangement into a source of infinite suffering. (Tillich, 1967: 71–2, 2004: 72) Tillich’s philosophy of aloneness can be extended a more comprehensive philosophy of solitude. The origin, directions and methodological basis of the philosophy of solitude Systematic philosophical reflection on solitude has a relatively short pedigree, dating back only to the eighteenth-century work of Zimmermann (1785). The content of this treatise is a wide and interrelated spectrum of issues and problems: from the influence of solitude upon the mind and feelings; through the general advantages of solitude in exile, the benefits of solitude in exile, the benefits of solitude in old age and on the deathbed, the motives that lead to the choice of solitude; to the dark sides of solitude, its influence on the imagination, its links with melancholy, its influence on passions; to the threat of falling into an idleness in solitude. Beck notes that Zimmermann propagated the ideal of a life lived in withdrawal from superficial society, while at the same time criticizing monastic isolation as being conducive to fanaticism. Solitude, for Zimmermann, was the occasion for reflection on permanent values, and for observation of the self. (Beck, 2016: 880) Zimmermann’s work on solitude was also known to and influential on Schopenhauer (Schopenhauer, 1970: 183, 285 footnote 140). Zimmermann’s historical merit is to raise solitude to the rank of an independent philosophical issue in which the nodal problems of human life are concentrated, as in a lens. However, this is not an analytically in-depth study, but a general reflection of the character of a reverie on the phenomenon of solitude and its place and role in human life, maintained in the convention of practical philosophy. Nevertheless, it makes sense to divide the philosophy of solitude into periods before and after Zimmermann. Solitude intrigued philosophers almost from the very beginning of their discipline. As a rule, however, it was only mentioned, with philosophers rarely making longer statements and not going beyond the narrow limits of an occasional diatribe or essay. The oldest surviving text of this kind, which is a peculiar monument to the philosophy of solitude, is one ascribed to Epictetus entitled What Is Loneliness and Who Is Lonely (Epictetus, 1961: 252–6). In the early modern era, Montaigne devoted an essay to solitude (Montaigne, 2004: chapter XXXIX, 192–200). After Zimmermann, solitude found a distinct place in Schopenhauer’s philosophy (Schopenhauer, 1970: 167–83) – ‘the work of old age’ (Garewicz, in Schopenhauer, 1970: 15) of this philosopher. Otherwise, solitude is a somewhat marginal philosophical topic, although its very marginality makes it liable in time to become more and more important and receive full philosophical citizenship. Lîiceanu (1975, 2018) describes the fragmentary nature of the philosophy of solitude as not so much its disadvantage as a valuable advantage. The unavoidable fragmentariness, limitedness, particularity, in a word, the peratological (the ‘study of the margins’) character of philosophy as such, and even more so of monothematic philosophies such as the philosophy of solitude, Lîiceanu explains in terms of the inevitably fragmentary ‘condition of a finite conscious being’ (Lîiceanu, 2017: 350). Due to it, ‘the only honest course of action can be expressed as such: to write fragmentarily in the perspective of a single idea – this is our highest (and only) form of coherence’ (Lîiceanu, 2017: 350). The philosophy of solitude should therefore take the 28

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form of peratology. This means that it is governed by a ‘logic of limit’, ‘which recognizes its own limits, abandons the obsession with the Text, and naturally weighs down to a fragment, to a text that has fallen from a paradise of thought, from a paradise that cannot be mourned because it has never been lost and can never be found’ (Lîiceanu, 2017: 351). Philosophies of solitude are often moderately laudatory, perhaps stemming from the personal beliefs of the philosophers as from their observation of human existence more generally. It was only in the twentieth century that solitude received a kind of philosophical ennoblement as a fullfledged philosophical discourse engaging with ontology, philosophical anthropology and ethics, along with epistemology and axiology. Ontology as a general theory of being makes it possible, on the one hand, to embrace solitude in the broad plan of existence and, on the other hand, to capture its own specificity. The general ontology of solitude seeks an answer to the question of what are the existential determinants of solitude (Heidegger, 1994: § 14, 89–94, § 15, 94–102, § 16, 102–8, § 18, 118–26, § 43, 283–5, 1962: § 14, 91–5, § 15, 95–102, § 16, 102–7, § 18, 114–22, § 43, 244–6; Buczyńska-Garewicz, 2005: 12, 16, 18; Hoły-Łuczaj, 2013). Ontological specificity explores the modes of solitude’s existence, being a given in human experience. Philosophical anthropology as the philosophy of humanity recognizes solitude as an essential element of what is specifically human, in the context of the entirety of the conditions of human life and the place of people in the universe. It focuses on the question of who is human in context and in confrontation with solitude or how solitude determines the human condition. To a narrower extent, philosophical anthropology, transformed into the anthropology of solitude, asks about the specific human determinants of solitude; about how the human being, the structure of human existence and the habitus created (in the sense given to this term by Bourdieu, 2008: 72–89, 2001: 106–8; Matuchniak-Krasuska 2015) influence the formation of the content components of solitude and its course and effects. In turn ethics, as a philosophy of moral action, problematizes solitude in terms of an important motivator of intentions, attitudes, behaviours and acts, manifested by an individual in relations with others and with himself/herself. This is accompanied, on the one hand, by the question of the influence of solitude on the chosen direction (goal), the choices made and the moral quality of people’s lives, and, on the other hand, by the moral quality of the phenomenon of solitude itself and the ethical criteria for its moral recognition or rejection. Epistemology penetrates solitude from the angle of its cognitive qualities or, more precisely, its conditioning or influence on the quality, scope, course and efficiency of cognitive acts of a general nature – extraspective (view of the world), as well as a specific, that is introspective (insight into oneself). Enquiring about the nature of solitude in the cognitive-knowledge aspect, epistemology poses questions about its intellectual value and carrying capacity, its influence on the formation of human self-knowledge, its rank and role in the cognitive process, both common (prephilosophical) and philosophical or scientific. The history of philosophy provides many examples of such discussions, the greatest in terms of significance and fame is Descartes’s Ego cogito and Husserl’s Transcendental Self. These have both been accused of solipsism, of reducing the objectivity of the world being known to the subjective content of sensations, impressions and experiences of the individual subject getting to know it. Finally, axiology as a theory of values explores solitude in the aspect of its value, answering the question of what kind and sign it is, what is its place in the intersubjectively communicative hierarchy of values, what affects one or another of its positioning in this hierarchy, how solitude 29

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impacts on the constitution and condition of axiological consciousness, and, in the end, what is its strength, scope and character of determining individual axiological preferences. The twentieth-century philosophy of solitude found its leadership especially in the figures of Levinas, Berdyaev and Ortega y Gasset. Fuller accounts of their philosophies of solitude can be found in Domeracki (2016 and 2018). It is enough to mention that all the philosophers emphasized the negative character of solitude – tempered by nostalgia for the Other, activating the layers of dialogue and striving for contact and community – as well as its ontological-existential absoluteness, expressed in its inevitability and inalienability throughout human life. In this approach, solitude acquires a crucial meaning, as the foundation legitimizing and co-determining the typical human way of existence in the world with all its consequences. The Heuristic Structure of the Philosophy of Solitude The philosophy of solitude is not only internally highly differentiated but also susceptible to constantly new interpretations, revising or deepening our understanding. My own research developed a heuristic structure of a philosophy of solitude (Domeracki, 2016: 44–9, 57–9), intended to enable an understanding of the breadth of the field and the problematic diversity of this increasingly important and progressively autonomized research area. The skeleton of the philosophy of solitude is formed by two antagonistic grand narratives:4 individualistic and communal. The former focuses on the individual in three fundamental aspects: ontological, relating to the individual character of a person’s existence; ethical, concerning a person’s self-development in the context of formed moral abilities; and anthropological, directed towards the constitutive dynamism of freedom for the individual. If following Berdyaev (Berdyaev, 2003: 384; Krasicki, 2009: 105), and especially Levinas, who directly formulates such a thesis (Levinas, 2002: 45, 52, 55, 57, 128), one considers that the essence of solitude is separation (Levinas, 2002: 128; Domeracki, 2016: 49, 98–9, 286, 2018: 50–1, 55–6, 334, 352), understood as closing in the cocoon of the immanence of the Self (called in philosophy ‘selfishness’ – see: Domeracki, 2016: 49, 51, 86–7, 2018: 60), radical separation (disconnection), then the ontological fact of the unbridgeable individual character of human existence can be interpreted in Levinasian terms as a source, pre-relational, primary and irremovable separation of the Self from Others, taking place on a plan of uniquely belonging to every human individual existence. In fact, we are dealing here with a pre-psychological and pre-sociological – because ontological – phenomenon of solitude. Contrary to usual thinking habits, and in a way arguing with common sense, it should not be identified with the type of personality (e.g. introversion in the sense of Jung, 1960: 159, Nowak, 1969: 252–6), nor should it be associated with the circumstances of fate or the results of the dynamics of social life development. It is a kind of pre-solitude, emerging from the very core of always individual, unique and indivisible human existence (Levinas, 1999: 24, 26, 1987: 42, 43, 1991a: 36; Ortega y Gasset, 1980: 58, 1982: 363, 372, 373–88, 431). That is why Levinas calls it ‘the solitude of existing’ (Levinas, 1999: 24, 1987: 42), and Ortega y Gasset describes it as ‘moné life’ (Ortega y Gasset, 1982: 376) or, using a Levinasian phrase, ‘the solitude we are’ (Ortega y Gasset, 1982: 377). The optics adopted by the aforementioned philosophers allows us to locate the sources (which should not be confused with the causes) of solitude much deeper than we normally do, at the very basis of human existence. As Levinas says: ‘Solitude lies in the very fact that there are existents’ 30

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(Levinas, 1999: 26, 1987: 43). It constitutes a deep structure of human existence. As such, it exists and accompanies people continuously throughout their life, from its very beginning to its inexorable end. The vast majority of people are completely unaware of its existence and its influence on all their life activities, attitudes, positions and choices, because until it is realized by someone, it is not an object of anyone’s feeling or thoughts. Harnessing Heidegger’s motif of the ontological difference between being and beings (Heidegger, 1991: 87, 89, 93–5; Rogacz, 2012) and, accordingly, between ‘essence and existence, existence and presence, existentials and categories, ontology and ontics, species and individuals, possibility and reality, existential analytics and thinking of being’ (Sobota, 2011: 270), the existential (existenzial) [ontological] and existentiell (existenziell) [ontical] (Heidegger, 1994, § 4, 18–20; 1962, § 4, 32–4), the issue of solitude discussed in this form should be referred to the order of being, not beings. These issues are a theme of the philosophy of solitude within the framework of individualistic metanarrative, which I call onto-existential. Of all themes of the philosophy of solitude, this one is the most philosophized – and thus the most abstract. Two subsequent themes co-creating, together with the onto-existential, the individualistic metanarrative, are contemplative and libertal – terms referring back to the times and concepts of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. The former points to its essential links with contemplation5 (philosophical, religious, mystical) as a condition for moral or spiritual-religious development, contributing to the growth of self-knowledge in the individual, which then translates into the individual’s identity consolidation, being more fully and consciously oneself and progressing improvement in humanity. By virtue of the servant relationship between solitude and contemplation I call it, in this variant, contemplative solitude. It no longer belongs to the ontological-existential order, but occurs in the ontical-existentiell order. This means, among other things – and this is its distinguishing feature – that, unlike ontological solitude, it can be the object of a conscious, intentional and unforced choice by an individual guided by higher moral or religious aspirations, while at the same time constituting a condition and a bridge to their realization. In view of the useful and devout nature of contemplative solitude, not only for the individual but also for the community in which it functions and for which it works every day, morally changed thanks to this solitude, its philosophical eulogists value it positively, but not uncritically, because of the challenge it poses especially to people accustomed to living in a community and not self-reflective. The philosophical prototype of a life subordinate to contemplative solitude is Plato–Aristotle’s βίος θεορητικός (bíos theoretikós – the theoretical life), which the philosophers of fifteenth-century Italy described as vita contemplativa. The third and last trend I have identified belonging to the individualistic metanarrative I call ‘libertal’ (not to be confused with ‘liberal’). The term comes from the Latin word ‘libertas, -ātĭs’, meaning ‘freedom’, ‘independence’, ‘free thoughtfulness’, ‘free life’. I consider Epicurus of Samos to be the first representative of this current. The quintessence of the libertally oriented philosophy of loneliness is the conviction that true freedom is only found in solitude. From this perspective, solitude is presented as difficult but extremely important for human life and the harmonious development of the individual good.6 The communal metanarrative symmetrically reverses the narrative, and presents unambiguously and uncritically glorified communal forms of life, and their incomparable advantage over solitude. The communally oriented philosophy of solitude, in each of its three currents, is critical 31

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Philosophy of Solitude

Individualistic Metanarrative

Onto-existential Current

Contemplative Current

Communal Metanarrat ive

Libertal Current

Collectivist Current

Practical Current

Dialogic Current

Figure 1.1  The heuristic structure of the philosophy of solitude.

of solitude. This, according to the theorists of this great narrative, collides with the three founding principles of human life. The first concerns the inherent social and not solitary nature of people, the second relates to the equally natural orientation of a person towards βίος πρακτικός (bíos praktikós – the practical life), and thus towards vita activa as opposed to vita contemplativa, and the third places freedom in the area of interpersonal dialogue in which the parties witness and guarantee freedom to each other. Each of these issues is developed within the framework of the relatively independent current of the communal metanarrative. Successively, these are the collectivist, the practical and the dialogic currents. The heuristic structure of the philosophy of solitude can be presented thus: (Figure 1.1) Conclusion: From the Philosophy of Solitude to Monoseology As you can see from the analysis, solitude is a polymorphic phenomenon. For this reason, a clear assessment of it as just positive or only negative is impossible. Much here depends on the assumptions, determinations and research perspective adopted as a starting point, as well as the researcher’s personal attitude towards the issues. Undoubtedly, solitude is an extremely complex and intriguing, serious and difficult theoretical issue, albeit often distinctively affecting the challenges that people face throughout their lives. Taking into account the multifacetedness of solitude, implying ambiguity both in its description and in its evaluation, in order to organize and unify the research field of the philosophy of solitude, I propose to adopt the following terminological and conceptual solution: The term ‘solitude’ should be considered as a generic term, being the name for a generalized concept of solitude, covering all specific terms, being the names for specific concepts of solitude such as seclusion, loneliness, alienation and depersonalization.7 They are all specific cases of solitude; they are sui generis solitude. Each of them reveals an important aspect of it. None of them should be treated as separate, and even more so opposite to solitude.8 This is sometimes done with the concepts of solitude and loneliness, and it can create conceptual confusion which distracts from an adequate understanding of the phenomenon of solitude. Solitude is best seen as a continuum or spectrum of possible states, positions and experiences, a kind of separateness or disconnection of an individual from another individual (McGraw, 2000: 15, 16, 2010: 17) of significance 32

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for the individual and for society. The feeding ground for solitude is made up of interpersonal relationships and bonds, their quality, intensity and frequency. The complexity of the issues that solitude poses to researchers makes its philosophical exploration challenging. We need research on solitude that integrates the research efforts of all humanities and social sciences. I call it ‘monoseology’,9 which more narrowly might mean the philosophy of solitude (Domeracki, 2016 and especially 2018). The term is gradually beginning to spread both in the research community and more widely. Among Polish educators, the name ‘pedagogical monoseology’ has been adopted to describe the subfield of their research, sometimes called the pedagogy of solitude (Dubas-Kowalska, 2007; Wasilewska-Ostrowska, 2019). It remains to be hoped that this Handbook will, in its own way, contribute to the growth of interest and dynamic development of monoseology on a global scale.

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2

Solitude and Schooling Helen E. Lees

Introduction Solitude is a luxury? Education is a basic? In the past people were rich, lucky or plucky to deliberately get or seek solitude (as a positive, chosen state): ‘Until the modern period, opportunities for solitude have been greatly limited for the vast majority of people’ (Averill & Sundararajan, 2014: 106). Until the modern period (up to 1870) education or schooling was limited for the vast majority of people (Wolfe, 2013) and then became the norm. Positive solitude and education for all as potential and possible have this ‘newness’ in common. Yet, despite describing both as new, the positive, chosen, pleasant and beneficial form of solitude discussed here has always been with us since the dawn of time (Storr, 1988), as has education (Gray, 2016). As Kierkegaard said, ‘In antiquity as well as in the Middle Ages there was an awareness of this longing for solitude and a respect for what it means’ (Kierkegaard, 1980: 64). We, the people, just had little opportunity for either, before modern times. On the side of a human right to compulsory education (not compulsory schooling, this being something different, see Lees, 2013a) the law, around the world, largely intervened. General consensus is that this is a just change in social, political attitudes serving children and their future for purposes of equality. We, however, await legal support for a right to solitude. There is no such right. There is no such concept. Now, since the invention of the telephone (Bruce, 2020) and the vast array of impacts which came with subsequent developments of communication lines to enhance existing relationships or seek new ones (Nowland et al., 2018) one can suggest the potential development of such a concept – a right to solitude – is weakened further. This situation pertains despite educators, of which some are cited herein, persistently outlining the righteous value of solitude. The experience of being in solitude is also, like education, a necessary element in a flourishing human life (Averill & Sundararajan, 2014; Batchelor, 2020; Buchholz, 1997; Coplan & Bowker, 2014a; Galanaki, 2013, 2014; Stern, 2014; Storr, 1988; Vincent, 2020). Similar, perhaps, to the potential positive and protective right for children to dignity (Ezer, 2004) or the right to privacy (Sim, 2002) as these involve conditions for flourishing. While one could say

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we already have plenty of time in solitude because, as Batchelor states, ‘There is something banal and everyday about solitude . . . .Even in company we spend much of our time alone, absorbed in our innermost thoughts and feelings, quietly talking to ourselves’ (2020: chap 17), and ‘The experience of solitude is a ubiquitous phenomenon’ (Coplan & Bowker, 2014b: 3), nevertheless children in schooling often can experience a particularly social time. School is ‘a community’ (Stern, 2009, 2013a) or a ‘household’ (Stern, 2012) for thousands of hours of childhood life (Rutter et al., 1979). In such an environment, taking so much of a child’s life experience, are children able to access the time-energy human requirement for forms of chosen solitude in order to regulate socially induced well-being? (Hall & Merolla, 2020; Yoneyama & Naito, 2003). Especially given the lack of volition involved in schools in choosing with whom to interact, which is a parameter potentially affecting such well-being? (Hall & Merolla, 2020). Unfortunately, not. There is ‘relatively little research evidence . . . on solitude’ as it relates to schooling and education (Galanaki, 2013: 79; Stern, 2014) and in general ‘Solitude theory and research represents a quieter, less oft-told tale’ than its painful cousin loneliness (Detrixhe et al., 2014: 311). There is plenty of ‘prejudice against solitude’ (Averill & Sundararajan, 2014: 90), and it is often considered as a sign of pathology (Detrixhe et al., 2014). Also, despite a recent rise in literature attending to the topic of solitude (as distinct from loneliness) with new conceptual frames of ‘solitude theory’ (Detrixhe et al., 2014) or ‘alone theory’ (Buchholz & Helbraun, 1999; Thomas, 2017), there is only growing awareness of solitude as an educationally relevant idea. It is only recently, for instance, that research outlining the teachable skills for achieving beneficial solitude has been published (Thomas, 2017) or that solitude and attachment theory have been combined to make sense of solitude as a form of childhood-linked attachment (Detrixhe et al., 2014) or that modelling for schools in how to become an environment encouraging and supporting the enstatic conditions of solitude has been offered (Stern, 2014). In other words, given a lack of concept and only recent developments in new work, solitude in schooling can and is ignored. Schools do not often deliberately include solitude within schools, with schools that do acting in a ‘countercultural’ way (Stern, 2014: 1). It is not paid due in a school, as we see herein, for complex reasons of uninterest in the paradigm of benefit within which solitudinous and silent practices reside. This lack of attention by schooling professionals is despite fairly widespread appreciation (outside of schooling systems) of solitudinous benefits (Coplan & Bowker, 2014a, 2014b; Galanaki, 2005; Stern, 2014; Storr, 1988; Thomas, 2017). We see that ‘Research is now yielding data to support the theories of Fromm (1941), Maslow (1970), and Winnicott (1958), finding, in general, that those with the capacity to be alone enjoy better mental health than those without’ (Detrixhe et al., 2014: 314) and ‘For those able to utilize solitude . . . the experience seems to serve a protective or healing function, improving psychological wellbeing’ (Detrixhe et al., 2014: 315). The lack of attention to solitude as it relates to schooling is possibly especially strange in recent times when mindfulness and other meditative practices have been rising in prominence as educationally important (Burke, 2010; Burnett, 2009; Clark & Chorley, 2014; Gold et al., 2009; Huppert & Johnson, 2010; Hyland, 2011; Orr, 2012, 2002; Weare, 2010; Woods, 2014) and silence – often the companion in many ways of solitude – has risen as a concept of educational note (Caranfa, 2004; Cooper, 2012; Forrest, 2013; Jaworski, 1993; Jule, 2004; Lees, 2012, 2016b). 35

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Thus we can suggest that while silence is becoming fashionable and thereby gaining some traction, solitude is yet to break through its negative profile and join in. This chapter seeks to highlight the complex reasons why solitude is a challenge to the school as institution, as well as for individuals. The chapter then posits, in conclusion, a new ‘mind rights’ approach to solitude to be embedded in schooling, as a fundamental aspect of a just and pedagogically unoppressive experience of education as a human right. The Value of Solitude in Schooling Being solitudinous – being alone through choice – in schooling is thoroughly educational. The power it has in this respect is, as Stern (2013a) points out, manifold: it can offer at least three core, important curricular aspects, these being engaging with others in dialogue through solitude (communal sustainability involving heritage and history, tradition and culture: such as reading authors ‘long-gone’), engaging with scientific nature study as a form of solitudinous attention (which one can these days argue is a cornerstone of educational practice for protecting the future of this world due to the ravishes of climate change and a need to change attitudes radically towards care and curation), and through solitude with oneself – often via humanities subjects, suggests Stern (2013a) – to reflect on intentions, motivations, desires and attitudes to self, other and learning. These skills are part of what it means to be at peace with self and the world and in a good mental state to take on new knowledge by inducing calm from absence of confusing overstimulation (Burke, 2010; Huppert, 2010), as well as be thereby balanced and ready to question dogmas that underpin injustices (Lees, 2016b). Despite the theory for benefits, in practice being alone can be ‘hard’ (Thomas, 2017: 47). To do so successfully requires learning intrinsic to experience of solitude: ‘There are many potential reasons for solitude being difficult, but lack of practice is certainly one of them’ (Thomas, 2017: 47). Apart from strong curricular contributions there are further aspects for educational progress that solitude can offer according to various authors. Alerby highlights the power of enabling children to ‘withdraw’ from ‘the rush of people’ (ten-year-old child speaking in Alerby, 2018: 2) as antidote to the anti-educational stress created by the environment of the school (Alerby, 2018). Stern and Walejko (2019: 110) suggest solitude has power as experience for ‘moral and political purposes’ because it helps to bring about ‘self realisation [which] is an explicitly educational process, the “business” of making ourselves more real’. They state The sense of individuality as wholeness, often achieved in solitude and in silence, is of considerable educational significance. A ‘hurrying world’ of performative school cultures in which everyone, students and staff alike, are chasing externally-determined targets, is subverted or at least mitigated by providing opportunities for quiet, non-oppressive, solitude. (Stern & Walejko, 2019: 118) Personal creativity in solitude is enhanced (Storr, 1988). A creative attitude in education is part of an original and voice-based contribution to learning (Neill, 1968), rather than blind participation in a banking model (Friere, 1972). Thus solitude is not only educational but can potentially affect pedagogy and even ‘modes of study’ (Meyerhoff, 2016) to open up educational experience to diversity and alternatives. 36

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What Do Children Think of Solitude? Too few authors have engaged directly with children – as individuals or as part of a community – to understand better what they thought of solitude. Solitude is definable as volitional time spent by oneself that is generally used constructively; in other words, alone time that is sought after and utilized for the purpose of engaging in intrinsically motivated activities (Koch, 1994; Larson, 1990). In addition, solitude is marked by an absence of communication and interaction with other people, typically – but not necessarily – involving physical separation from others (Thomas, 2017: 2). We can conclude that to take oneself away to be alone is solitude as here discussed. Galanaki says, with reference to positive forms of being alone: The majority of 7 year olds are able to define privacy, to which the meanings of controlling access to information and being alone are most frequently attributed; the understanding of ‘being alone when you want to’ appears at age 9, and of ‘being alone and unbothered’ at age 11 (Wolfe & Laufer, 1974). In this study, the ages between 7 and 13 seemed to be crucial for the understanding of the meaning and the significance of aloneness. (Galanaki, 2013: 81) Stern surveyed children in schools about their thoughts on solitude: There is a wonderful variety in the ways of enjoying solitude. Jilly (aged 12–13) enjoys solitude ‘[i]n my room on the weekend in the spring,’ Keely (aged 12–13) enjoys it ‘in the summer at home,’ whilst Alison (aged 12–13) says ‘I prefer solitude in the winter’ . . . Mornings are good ‘early in the morning on a Sunday’ (Emma, aged 12–13), . . . ‘[i]n morning tutor, Monday when everyone reads’ (Jon, aged 12–13). Lunchtime can be good, for Jason (aged 12–13), when ‘I just sat on my own for some of it to just think,’ and for Danny (aged 7): ‘Sometimes at lunchtime I like to be on my own because I want to eat my lunch without anyone bothering me.’ (Stern, 2014: 27) We can see from such reports that solitude is not something of which to be afraid for the sake of either children or adults. It can be ‘conceptualised as a largely positive experience’ (Averill & Sundararajan, 2014: 102). Nevertheless it is not one thing, easy to pinpoint. For ‘typically [it] is not a momentary state, and qualitatively different experiences may come and go during an episode’ (Averill & Sundararajan, 2014: 102). Moments in time and space to achieve solitude are necessarily context contingent. In other words, when we approach solitude as topic for schooling and education we can expect what Batchelor (2020: i) describes as its ‘fluid’ character to determine our engagement. Paradoxically we can also expect the unexpected: some children feel most included in schools when by themselves and some most alienated when included (Stern, 2011: 9). The Status of Solitude in Schooling Because schools have for long been known for forms of punishment, with authoritarianism, still rife and corporal punishment alas still common around the world (Harber, 2004), solitude, which can be used to chastise or control if enforced and not chosen, has languished within this issue: that it is punitive. As Coplan and Bowker (2014b: 3) point out, 37

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solitude can be differentially characterized along the full range of a continuum from a form of punishment (e.g., time-outs for children, solitary confinement for prisoners) to a less than ideal context (e.g., no man is an island, one is the loneliest number, misery loves company), all the way to a desirable state (e.g., taking time for oneself, needing your space or alone time). School-linked solitude is multiple in kind: ‘aloneness in all its variety – from solitude to loneliness’ (Stern, 2014: 15). The place of solitude in schooling is, one could suggest, always as some kind of calming element. Nevertheless solitude is, interestingly, an agitator. This is because in schooling it occurs in the face of tacit and overt oppositions: in a society that has strong beliefs in the importance of cooperation, collaboration, and caregiving, it is likely that the majority of individuals who adhere to the cultural ethos would begin to think unpleasant thoughts about the noninteracting minority. They may think of solitary individuals as displaying unacceptable, discomfiting behavior; they may begin to feel negatively about them. (Coplan & Bowker, 2014a: xiv) To be in solitude in a school is to stand up, whatever the reaction, for difference. This is not blind obedience as so commonly demanded in schooling (Harber, 2008). It is, therefore, political resistance. Solitude as Educational Actor While it is the case that the calm aspects of taking time in solitude have meditative qualities, qualities which lend themselves to learning better (Erricker & Erricker, 2001), something we might imagine schools would be pleased to embrace, it is also true that taking time for solitude goes against the schooling grain. Apart from the ‘time-out’ of busy school agendas for achievement the key element here is that real solitude is a product of choice – something many authors point to as a requirement if it is to be positive, although Koch (1994) makes an exception for some stories linked to prisoners who grow into their solitude with positivity (nevertheless we could posit that at some point in their incarceration they were moved to choose their solitary circumstances, as did Robinson Crusoe). This is the same principle relevant to silence as a positive experience: that there should be consent to be in silence for it ‘to bring forth benefits’ (Lees, 2012). So too there should be consent in, with and for solitude. A person is seen, in solitude as ‘willing a disengagement . . . A person’s experience [of solitude] . . . involves intentionality’ (Stern & Walejko, 2019: 108, emphasis in original). Averill and Sundararajan are very clear: ‘What tips the balance between positive experiences of solitude and immoderate loneliness? This question can be answered in one word: choice. What we call authentic solitude is typically based on a decision to be alone’ (Averill & Sundararajan, 2014: 91, emphasis added). Such authenticity could also be applied to the serendipitous entrance into the pleasure of aloneness. Of course to choose is to choose in a context: ‘Choice is not something that suddenly occurs within the mind or brain of a person. Choices have histories, they involve a self who chooses, they are sensitive to circumstances, and they lead to consequences. In short, behind every choice is a story’ (Averill & Sundararajan, 2014: 92). In a school context the power to choose – the story to choose – is limited due to the often undemocratic nature of the environment 38

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and the possible modes of control employed to ensure children’s obedience to staff power (Gore, 2004; Harber, 2004, 2009b; Lewis, 2010). Creating a solitudinous mood involves ‘designing’ one’s own cognitive environment. This might not be the one provided by the school – thus a form of rejection of the school is needed to be in place: ‘authentic solitude unfolds in a mental space or designer environment that is distinct from the physical and social realities of everyday life’ (Averill & Sundararajan, 2014: 100). On the other hand the very behaviour of standing apart from others in some way could be deemed a rejection of the ‘community’ (Stern, 2009) of the school. Stern outlines that for solitude to be appreciated a particular school ethos is required and part of this comes from ‘magnanimous leadership’ that does not view standing apart as rejection (Stern, 2014). The fact is that schooling at present, according to a common design, does not have room or make room for solitude in the school day – and cannot do so. With positive solitude’s almost absolute requirement for choice to be embedded this would require wholesale school change and a new culture of interpersonal dynamics such as found outside of mainstream schooling, in democratic school environments (Fielding, 2013). In most schools there is still so little voice for children (Maddern, 2009; Sillin, 2005) that solitude cannot be chosen; it can only be allowed. To stand apart in solitude with its creative potential for original thought is to rebel against schooling manipulations of selfhood. Where schools knowingly or unknowingly (due to the hidden curriculum) inculcate values not in the best interests of students (or staff) (Bowles & Gintis, 1976; Rutter et al., 1979), solitude can be a ‘negative freedom’ (escape from social forces) and a personal-political act of removal and opposition to the assumption that schooling (education) is ‘good’ (Flint & Peim, 2012; Peim, 2012). As Stern and Walejko (2019) point out, solitude offers self-realization towards becoming ‘more real with “reality” necessarily implying community . . . and the wider world’. Instead of the ‘messages’ given by the school, through solitude a child can rise above these to find the truth of who they really are in the world and what the world truly, authentically is. This is a powerful aspect of solitude which in a too-often toxic schooling (Harber, 2009a) context ought to be accorded its due as a cleansing agent. Given the multiple manipulations of schools as agents of political agendas ‘to output – a generic economic methodology of government’ (Ball, 2013: 42) using ‘games of truth and practices of power’ (Ball, 2013: 44), this would mean solitude is also a protector. No One Is Alone in Education/No One Is Alone in Solitude Stern, developing work inspired by the philosopher of the personal John Macmurray, points out that in many senses schooling as a system acts as ‘busy sociable learning communities’ (Stern, 2014: 1, 2001). Proximity and sight of school-based others – their faces, their eyes, their smiles or frowns, words and exchanges – make meaning for children in terms of who matters and who is close to them personally. Dewey spoke forcefully of the ‘school as a form of community life . . . school as a form of social life’ (Dewey, 1964). All told, many thinkers have considered that schools are important for their contribution to human life in offering togetherness and for this to be thoroughly educational. Many schools do good work in this respect and offer many children an enjoyable, fruitful experience of education and crucially, company of a positive kind. Schooling is personal, not just political. 39

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Nevertheless it is an undeniable fact that schools, as a daily experience, are well known to involve forms of personal disaster: bullying and exclusions (Bloom, 2009; Clark, 2018; Oliver & Kandappa, 2003; Walton, 2005). In fact bullying is a particular inter-dynamic problem: ‘In terms of the sociological study of bullying, the most fundamental finding so far is that bullying is widely prevalent among school students’ (Yoneyama & Naito, 2003: 316). This situation is often not the fault of individuals but of the school as institution (Carlen et al., 1992; Harber, 2009a; Pilkington & Piersel, 1991; Yoneyama & Naito, 2003). In such conditions being able to stand apart is in fact a preventative measure for stress caused by relational dysfunction and being ‘push[ed] together all the time’ (Stern, 2014: 13) for when ‘individuals are compelled to relate to each other in a group without being able to keep comfortable distance from each other’ relationships between them can develop in negative and violent ways (Yoneyama & Naito, 2003: 328). Solitude as Otherness In such a thorough-going context of togetherness as the school, to be apart then, at all, acts as a state of occasional otherness. Otherness is a construct found particularly strongly fabricated in schooling settings ‘based on the traditional, non-democratic paradigm of education’ (Yoneyama & Naito, 2003: 317): education is one of the most important agents in constructing ‘otherness’ . . . School environments, social interactions of teachers and students in and out of school, teaching learning processes, student-teacher relationships, the nature and contents of subjects, text books (regarding contents, naming, exemplification, historical and cultural contents or their representations for certain groups), language usage, etc. are important factors in the process of constructing otherness. (Mengstie, 2011: 11) Thus, it can be posited that being apart from others during schooling is other. Whatever form being alone takes it is, perhaps, sometimes, in a school, an artificial, context dependent form. In schools, there is not the freedom involved in creation of a ‘fluid’ concept of solitude as Batchelor suggests ‘ranging from the depths of loneliness to the saint’s mystic rapture’ (Batchelor, 2020: i). Instead a concept of being apart from others is a priori in place as a seeming reaction to the norm of the community, or, for those few with the capacity, some might achieve positive solitude without reference to the norm; or indeed – as with some boarding school experience – as a result of the mere impossibility of constant supervision. Only with profound changes to schooling and its functionality can enstasy in schools (see Stern, 2014) be achieved as a cultural norm, without paying the price of solitude as ‘exiting’ (see Hirschman, 1970) community or the panopticon of supervision. It is nevertheless the case that this very otherness is a boon if allowed to be so. As Averill and Sundararajan note ‘solitude presents a challenge to be responsible to one’s self’ (2014: 93), which is a way of saying that one is valuing one’s uniqueness and individuality. This, itself, is something educational in essence (Biesta, 2006). Solitude and Technology The relationship between solitude and technology is paradoxical. On the one hand technology brings people together, yet it also creates false togetherness leading to loneliness. In respect 40

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of technology as a connector ‘social media environments may produce a form of solitude that results in both social and emotional reclusiveness, which in turn nurtures loneliness . . . virtually simulated companionship does not prevent people from feeling isolated, solitary, or lonely’ (Hippler, 2017: 268). Regarding enjoying solitude in and through technology I would posit a distinction between solitudinous busyness which is mostly what happens with technology, and solitude as an experience of enstasy. The first is one working alone in some way – for business or pleasure – with the internet or machines as companion. Alone at the computer this can be enjoyable ‘solitude’ but only solitude because the companion is a machine. Also, one is connected. The second is solitude as communion with the offline world of self, nature, the reality of being-enmeshed in other (despite not being with others). As far as quality of experience goes the first is easy, possibly morally and emotionally shallow and indeed no solitude at all. The second is difficult yet this type alone has inherent potential for profound experience. Where technology plays its part in ‘solitude’ it is also the version with the most danger: issues connected to coding and other technological manipulations affect thinking, behaviours and feelings (Williamson, 2015). Those offline, once again, are protecting themselves from the influence of others in choosing solitude. In recent times some level of awareness and dissatisfaction with constant connection has begun, with some urging people to switch off from social media and devices (Lanier, 2018) but a new peril of loneliness linked to technology and solitude occurs: ‘for those who still see the rainbow arching over the town while everyone else is buried in their phones, life in the real world can feel lonely’ (Monbiot, 2017). As Monbiot rightly states – and in this respect the relevance is for school children accessing online worlds outside of school time – without experience of the real world we have no compass for moral behaviours and ‘the political, social and environmental consequences are currently beyond reckoning’ (Monbiot, 2017), which means that offline solitude – the real world – is protective, needed and cannot be ignored. The world depends on it because ‘the emergence of these new media has drastically altered the landscape of human experience’ (Hippler, 2017: 259). We need to find ourselves (again? – does this depend on one’s age?) and offline solitude is the way to do so. But we ought not to underestimate the challenge: In the wake of the digital and technological revolution, with its side effects of permanent availability and connectedness, spending time alone has become increasingly difficult. Ever since the introduction of the internet, emailing, and cell phones, people feel the pressure to be available around the clock . . . privacy and aloneness have come to be rare goods in our contemporary society. (Hippler, 2017: 261) As Coplan and Bowker point out the future of solitude is indeed in question: ‘whether any of us will ever truly be alone in the future’, given the fact that ‘rapidly evolving technological advances intend to connect all of us – all of the time . . . It is certain that our relationship with solitude will necessarily evolve in the digital age’ (Coplan & Bowker, 2014b: 11). However, the choice to be alone remains. For now, at least. It is an important element of a human life that schools can promote, that they can teach about and for which skills can be taught (Thomas, 2017). This pedagogic call for information in schools about solitude in a world where ‘the distinction between “alone” and “together” has become hopelessly blurry’ (Neyfakh, 2011) and authentic and self-chosen solitude is becoming harder to reach and enjoy (Hippler, 2017: 266) occurs as education is increasingly online. Schools may begin to morph into a less distinct form with the rise 41

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of technology. The 2020 ‘Covid-19’ global pandemic crisis opened that portal of online possibility wider than ever before. Yet education progressively admits autodidactism via the internet (Mitra et al., 2016), which is a trend towards solitude, albeit with others via content at least, whereas being really alone (without online activity) is then trending away. This is happening at the same time that (in America as one example indicative of wider trends) ‘27% of all households’ live alone (Averill & Sundararajan, 2014: 106). Due to the rise of usage of the internet, societies are clearly not coping well with the idea of ‘alone’ as a positive experience. Few choose to be alone yet, in reality, many are. Technology is a seeming modern salve for this difficulty but it is also a peril. Our children need to be taught the double-edged sword of technology as it relates to selfhood, truth, concentration faculty and knowledge. They need to understand there is such a thing as ‘productive solitude’ as a product of digital minimalization (Newport, 2019: 126). Solitude and Alternative Education It is to be noted that exiting schools to enter alternative spaces is possible in many ways. At the initially negative end of the spectrum of exit there is school refusal. In Japan this is known as an extreme phenomena called ‘tokokyohi’, involving students sequestering themselves hermit-like in their rooms for extended periods. Very interestingly for discussion of solitude and its powers, research points to such periods of aloneness as enabling some of these students to return to schooling (which previously was a torture) refreshed and bold enough to be unbothered by the oft-times violent atmosphere of dysfunctional relations they previously could not cope with: While taking substantial time off school and staying mostly at home in a self-imposed state of isolation, students usually go through a long and hard process of self-doubt and self-questioning. During this stage, they re-evaluate who they are, what they make of school as well as their absence from school. After spending several months in this state, troubled by anxiety and somatic symptoms, many come to feel that what used to be seen as a matter of ill-health is actually a matter of choice. Thus, in the third stage of tokokyohi, students gradually come to terms with their absence from school as well as with themselves . . . In the student discourse, what comes in the final [forth] stage of tokokyohi is the discovery of selfhood, on the one hand, and the critical reappraisal of school, on the other. What ‘heals’ them is their sense of empowerment, which stems from the fact that they can position themselves in the social environment in a new light, as an individual who has a clearer sense of subjectivity. (Yoneyama, 2000: 89–90) This connects with Vincent’s discussion of Zimmerman on solitude who suggests: The key criterion for distinguishing between beneficial and malign withdrawal was the capacity to manage the transition between the two states. Solitude for self-recollection was acceptable if the individual possessed the strength of mind to take the gains from the period of reflection and rejoin the fray with an enhanced sense of purpose. (Vincent, 2020: 15) In schools the scene is complex for solitude as we see earlier. One could feasibly suggest that outside of schools solitude is easier: ‘Being alone embraces restorative and recuperative qualities’ (Hippler, 2017: 260) but the environment required – in an education context – is then not that of a mainstream school. It would be of an other type of education. In home education we see ‘restorative and recuperative qualities’ (Hippler, 2017: 260) occurring in the form of pedagogy transformed from school-based pressures to conform and 42

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perform, to home-provided freedoms to play and learn, combined in personalized ways. In deor un-schooled versions of home educating (freedom to self-design a curriculum according to individual pace and taste) children find that while family life involves closeness also ‘children and teens enjoy the freedom from family that unschooling may provide. He [Peter Gray] states that it is natural to see children, and particularly older children, want to spend time away from their families’ (Riley, 2020: 106). This leads to outcomes where children report confidence as alone, for example, ‘As an adult, I see how strongly my independence and self-reliance were built during those years, especially with the traveling I did alone’ (Riley, 2020: 115). Riley does, however, mention that some unschoolers ‘wished they had more access to unschooled peers growing up’ (Riley, 2020: 113). While in schools – and educational research linked to schools – solitude is treated as a subject to edge towards carefully, seemingly with what I would call a ‘polite approach’, what we find in the alternative education scene is a more robust outlet for emotions about the need for solitude wherever and whenever necessary. John Gatto embodies the spirit of the anger felt by many in alternative education towards the restrictions on personal needs and freedoms schooling imposes: As it is, we currently drown students in low-level busy work, shoving them together in forced associations which teach them to hate other people, not love them. We subject them to the filthiest, most pornographic regimens of constant surveillance and ranking so they never experience the solitude and reflection necessary to become a whole man or woman. (Gatto, 2005: 340) Llewellyn’s book on ‘teenage liberation’ through homeschooling also outlines the general value in alternative education for time alone. In the section entitled ‘Note to Parents’ she prefaces it with the following quote: ‘Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude. – Ralph Waldo Emerson’ (Llewellyn, 1998: 24). Solitude in a schooling context is in difficulty compared to the situation in spaces beyond the school. Despite work to attempt to raise its profile for and in schools and children by a few thinkers (e.g. Byrnes, 2001; Galanaki, 2005; Lees, 2012, 2013b, 2016a; Senechal, 2012; Stern, 2011, 2014, 2017; Stern & Walejko, 2019; Thomas, 2017) and to investigate childhood and educationally relevant forms of negative and positive experience of being alone (e.g. Galanaki, 2013, 2008; Oakley, 2020; Rotenberg & Hymel, 1999), the machinery of schooling – or as Peim terms it the ‘ontotheology’ (Peim, 2012) – does not care about solitude for children during their school experience. Home education and other alternative settings – defined here as ‘education spaces that deliberately differentiate themselves from “mainstream” schools’ (Kraftl, 2016: 117) – do care, as work across the spectrum of alternative education around the world shows (see Lees & Noddings, 2016). Spaces of the School for Solitude The school is for people (Stern, 2009, 2012, 2018). In this sense a school which does not offer a space for being in solitude is a school blind to people because solitude is ‘a fundamental human experience’ (Coplan & Bowker, 2014a; Galanaki, 2014: 71). Some enlightened schools pay architectural heed to the desire to take oneself away by providing deliberate ‘corners’ for positive solitude planned into the design of the building (Montgomery & Hope, 2016). Most such schools do so to offer quiet space for meditative techniques of silence, 43

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rather than specifically to be fruitfully alone. These schools have, often, a religious element to underpin the value attributed to silence-based solitude, such as with Quaker schools (Lees, 2012; Newton, 2016). To do this the school ethos attends to the child in a particular way, cognisant of the benefits of silence and its solitudes. Some teachers have also tried to carve out psychological space for solitude in classrooms and playgrounds (Alerby, 2018; von Wright, 2009). Conclusion There is a human right to solitude. How do we know when such a right is written nowhere? The answer is found earlier when we consider the damage done by missing out on the positivity the experience of being happily alone can offer. What is a human right is that which is inalienable and undeniable to us as humans, such as a right to a family or to liberty. The right to follow one’s everyday inclinations for solitude is surely commonplace and undeniable? Yet two perspectives on staring out the window in schools – as a real example but also as a metonymic sign – suggest schools do not provide anything close to everyday freedoms of this kind, let alone acknowledge a human right. Noddings states, ‘So often when a child looks out the window, we say she’s off task’, yet ‘she may be on the biggest task of her life’ (Noddings, 1999). This denotes a right to think right and personal thoughts. Melser suggests what is occurring is something humanly significant: ‘thinking may be a kind of action, something the person actively does’ (Melser, 2004: 3). Lees states, ‘Staring [out the window] at the tree might be an educational action, concomitant with the premise-promise of the school to educate a person from a state of relative ignorance to a state of relative enhanced knowledge’ (Lees, 2016a: 4). Hardly a domain in which schools should interfere? The second perspective is that the school has no authority to stop the child staring out the window. To do so is entirely outside its remit as educational. However there is as yet no such right for the mind to resist pretend authority in education: discussing rights in education is fraught with difficulties. Other rights considered in education, such as autonomy . . . access to special needs provision, medicalization of children or parental choice are all highly contentious areas of debate and policy-making (e.g., Coppock, 2002). Technically speaking, what kind of right (see Wenar, 2011) would a ‘mind right’ be for education if it were valuable? (Lees, 2016a: 15) The answer which concludes this chapter redefines solitude in schooling from an event of removing oneself to be alone to an inalienable necessity for human health and sane, beneficial education. We need a new kind of right to protect this necessity, such as that proposed by Ezer, linked to dignity, as a safety mechanism (Ezer, 2004). Gray highlights the abject lack of any real or functioning rights for children in schooling, undramatically labelling schools ‘prisons’ (as has Meighan, 2004), with a blurred line between law and justice when it comes to coercing children physically and socially in the name of education (Gray, 2019). Given the backlog or negligence for basic rights for children, is a ‘mind right’ far down the list of priorities and the to-do list? If our mind is the source of our dignity, sense-making and orientation in the world, as well as the source of our educational power and engagement in learning, we need to protect it with urgency. If we do not the world is mad, unhinged, precariously rational and full of destructive drama cycles (Karpman, 1968), without positive alternatives. The mind’s dignity demands protection from outside forces that fail to pay such dignity heed. A mind right would be the right that gave solitude in schools status, place and curricular function. It would protect children from 44

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invasion of their inner life by teachers, parents and others for, as Row (2019) laments in the context of technological surveillance of children’s inner lives, ‘But I want to ask: Who is speaking up, today, for a young person’s right to a private life, to secrets, unshared thoughts, unmonitored conversations and relationships?’ The type of right which touches on the right to think thoughts in peace and privacy and be with these thoughts alone – undisturbed – is educational: ‘“mind rights” are a space of escape from a sickening infilling of identified spaces’ (Lees, 2016: 16). A solitude of the mind as a right offers a chance to concentrate (Senechal, 2012) and the seeking and finding of healthy counterfactuals (Gopnik, 2009). Such a right leads to wisdom in the face of growing global insanity. Solitude in schooling is a human right of the mind.

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Solitude Practices in the Context of Catholic Education Michael T. Buchanan

Introduction Stemming from the primal existence of human beings, the survival of the species has depended on social interaction. Cities and social structures are shaped around human contact and collaboration, to the point where isolation from others has in many circumstances been viewed as negative. However, according to Long et al., (2003), too much sociality can be stressful and oppressive to the point where relief is sought through solitude. Schools are often referred to as learning communities where people are educated through socio-dialogical interaction with each other. A communal approach to learning aligns with the perception that humans are one of the most social species inhabiting this planet. The human brain has adapted for living in large groups to the extent that feeling socially connected increases a state of happiness, whereas feelings of disconnection increase a sense of depression. Solitude has been described as a state of being alone – either by oneself or, if in the presence of others, without any social interaction. Solitude in the school context has often been associated with disciplinary strategies such as detention or suspension, which foster negative connotations about being alone. Approaches to solitude in learning communities can contribute to students’ and teachers’ experiences of disconnection but it can also contribute to a sense of connection. A recent study on religious education leadership within the context of Catholic education, which is responsible for the education of one-fifth of Australia’s diverse student population, identified the need for ongoing planned opportunities for solitude for religious education leaders, teachers and students at all levels of schooling (Buchanan, 2019). This chapter draws on the insights generated by this study to illustrate the importance of solitude practices in Catholic education. It commences with an overview of broad insights gleaned from the existing body of literature concerning social understandings of solitude. It then proceeds to consider experiences of solitude encountered within the Catholic tradition and education. The research design underpinning the religious education leadership investigation is outlined, as it provided the impetus for this examination of solitude practices. The study revealed a need for positive practices of solitude to support individuals (leaders, teachers

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and students) in the organization of their thoughts, in their reflection on past actions, as well as in their preparation for future educational and social encounters. Broad Insights Pertaining to Social Understandings of Solitude Solitude is regarded as a state of being alone without social interaction (Burger, 1995). A person can be alone in the presence of others, such as when dining alone in a restaurant, or one can be physically alone by oneself. While surrounded by other people, individuals can maintain a sense of solitude by refraining from interacting with others (Senechal, 2012). In some circumstances the absence of social interaction can be by choice, while in other circumstances it can be the result of an expectation. For example, while a student is participating in a traditional written examination the student would be required to not interact with other examination candidates. Alternatively, a person may go to a café and engage in a solitude practice such as reading a book, thus choosing to refrain from socially interacting with other people around them. People can be alone without social interaction by being physically isolated from other people. For example, a person might choose to go on a long-distance run or go surfing by themselves in a remote seaside area. Traditionally there are social circumstances where the absence of social interaction is enforced upon an individual and time spent alone in these circumstances is often regarded as a negative experience. An example of enforced isolation is solitary confinement which is often included as a punishment within criminal justice systems (solitary confinement) as well as within families (children required to spend time alone in their bedroom as punishment). According to Burger (1995) the positive aspects of a lack of social interaction are commonly referred to as solitude while the negative experiences are commonly referred to as isolation. This distinction suggests that individuals seek solitude, whereas isolation is a state that is imposed on individuals. Because we are social beings, experiences of enforced solitude (generally viewed as isolation) cause people to view aloneness as a negative experience. People are socially conditioned since childhood to fear being alone, and teachers in many schooling systems around the world have played their part in cementing this attitude, through the application of discipline techniques such as time outs and detention (Galanaki, 2005). Schools are communities that often attempt to avoid loneliness by fostering relationships where learning is encountered through conversations or dialogue (Stern, 2016). Student engagement is encountered in settings that place significant emphasis on group work and collaboration (Stern, 2014). If students are disciplined by removing them from these opportunities, they develop negative connotations about being alone (Fonseca, 2014). Schools need to avoid practices that contribute to socially conditioning individuals to regard an absence of social interaction as a negative experience. Schools and teachers could begin by providing students with opportunities to distinguish between concepts such as solitude, isolation, aloneness and loneliness (Galanaki, 2004). There are many opportunities in schools to engage in solitude practices in ways that foster human growth and dismantle the negative connotations associated with the absence of social interaction (Piirto, 2010). Opportunities for prayer, retreats and pastoral care are some examples implemented in the context of Catholic education. Solitude is a fundamental requirement in enabling children to connect with their inner self (Galanaki, 2004). It requires one to keep company with oneself and it is this duality of oneself with oneself, in solitude, that makes thinking a true activity for personal growth, because the individual is both the one who asks and the one who answers (Arendt, 1978). Viewed in this 47

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light, opportunities for solitude can foster personal growth forms of self-improvement in ways that contribute to an individual’s well-being and can also contribute to their ability to develop – intellectually, spiritually, emotionally and creatively (Burger, 1995). School leaders and teachers could be encouraged to promote opportunities for students to engage in positive experiences of solitude practices, because pupils who spend a moderate amount of time by themselves appear to be better adjusted than those who spend relatively little time alone (Larson, 1990). For more than half a century solitude or privacy has been acknowledged as a key characteristic of self-actualized individuals and therefore it is vital that students engage in positive solitude practices for their own development and for the advancement of society (Maslow, 1970). The benefits arising from student engagement in positive experiences of solitude practices in schools are relatively unnoticed and rarely practised. Burger observes that this is reflected in research practice: ‘perhaps because of the widespread recognition of the benefits of social interaction, most of the research on solitude has examined the negative consequences that solitude has on one's psychological functioning and well-being’ (Burger, 1995: 87). However, in recent times a body of scholarly literature has developed that explores the benefits of solitude and its relevance to teaching and learning (Buchanan, 2019; Cain, 2012; Dembling, 2012; Stern, 2016, 2014, 2009). It has been argued that schools are characterized by personal relations which are expressed through dialogue and therefore in need of opportunities for solitude, if they are to be effective learning communities (Stern, 2016). By nurturing positive solitude practices within the classroom, it is possible to foster positive socialization of students in a way that enables them to engage with other members of the dialogical learning communities (Stern, 2014). An educational study involving primary school children (aged seven or eight) indicated that student experiences of inclusion in the classroom can be enhanced through solitude practices. This qualitative study asked children, ‘when do you feel most included in school?’ and some children responded by saying, ‘when I’m left alone, to work on my own’ (Stern, 2009: 49). Occasions for solitude in the classroom offer an opportunity for students to connect to their inner self and enables ideas to be explored in ways that could lead to academic and personal growth (Dembling, 2012). It also allows for ‘a periodic opportunity to organise one’s thoughts, reflect on past actions and future plans, and prepare for future social encounters’ (Burger, 1995: 88). Solitude within and beyond the classroom is a significant vehicle to foster creativity and independent thought (Cain, 2012). Solitude can help children and young people – and adults – to go beyond the immediate, intensely sociable, present company in school, to meet and be in dialogue with historical characters, fictional people, physical objects, the distant, ineffable, or as yet unborn. (Stern, 2016: 442) Teachers who are committed to the formation of young people as creative and independent thinkers need to explore the potential to enhance individual creativity by structuring opportunities for students to engage in positive experiences of solitude in school. The potential to engage in solitude practices within diverse learning communities also includes enabling opportunities within Catholic education, which is the focus of this chapter. While considering the benefits of positive solitude practices within the growing body of literature, Catholic schooling systems around the world could be encouraged to draw from the rich experiences of solitude practices encountered within the Catholic tradition. 48

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Experiences of Solitude Encountered within the Catholic Tradition Within various religious traditions, solitude has often been associated with beneficial experiences, particularly in relation to creativity, wisdom and spiritual growth, as evidenced by several religious leaders such as Moses, Jesus, Buddha and Muhammad, who have spent time in solitude (Long et al., 2003). Within the Christian tradition Jesus constantly sought solitude and withdrew from people, daily life activities and the demands of his ministry to nurture his ongoing intimate relationship with God which enabled him to grow in compassion, wisdom and power (Gaultiere, 2016). Consequently, within the Catholic tradition, solitude has been practised for centuries and regarded as a vehicle for intimate communication that enables one to become closer to God and self (Durà-Vilà & Leavey, 2017). Many monastic religious orders have practised solitude over the centuries, including the Order of Saint Augustine, the Carthusian Order and the Cistercian Order, to name a few. The practice of monasticism can be traced back to the third century where desert monastic communities modelled a life of solitude based on the Desert Mothers and Fathers such as Anthony the Great (c. 251–356) who lived primarily in the Scetes desert of Egypt (Petrakis, 2011). The solitude practices reflected in monasticism have been adopted and adapted over the centuries by many religious congregations and are still considered to be a significant condition for spiritual growth (Pope Paul VI, 1965). Many Catholic religious congregations in the twenty-first century do not live monastic lives and are in close contact with society with many members of these congregations holding positions in professional fields such as education, health services, law, administration and social services. While their lives are not lived in solitude, Melia’s (2002) qualitative research study of sisters from three religious congregations found that these sisters sought opportunities for solitude despite living lives working in the community. As these sisters moved closer to retirement age, their engagement in solitude practices increased. Prayer featured as a key positive solitude experience that they regarded as a social activity because it enabled them to feel connected with others (past and present) and to God. This study also revealed that by engaging in solitude practices such as prayer, these women became more fully aware of who they were as individuals and they felt connected ‘to the community in which they live, as well as to the wider world’ (Melia, 2002: 47). The tradition of engaging in solitude practices such as prayer and retreats was common among the female and male religious congregations that established Catholic schools and educational institutions in Australia throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By the latter part of the twentieth century the Catholic tradition of prayer, worship and retreats was a prominent and distinguishing feature of the religious education offerings in Catholic schools across Australia and evidenced by planned opportunities for school leaders, teachers and students to engage in these practices (Rossiter, 2016). However, these practices in Catholic schools are distinguishable in that they are practised in communal settings rather than in solitude as traditionally encountered by members of religious congregations (Pickering, 2006; Rossiter, 2016). While the Congregation for Catholic Education (CCE) has consistently maintained that religious education within the context of Catholic education is committed to the integral formation of the human person (CCE, 2009, 1977), the potential to foster personal growth by providing opportunities for solitude is not fully realized within some Catholic schools. This is also despite the findings of an earlier study exploring the spirituality of young Australians and the implications for education, which recommended that allowances for silence, solitude and contemplation become a scheduled

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feature of the school timetable (de Souza, 2003). An investigation pertaining to religious education leadership, which is the focus of this chapter, identified the need for ongoing planned opportunities for solitude for religious education leaders, teachers and students at all levels of schooling. Within the context of Catholic education, the participants involved in this study suggested that solitude practices should form part of a school’s religious education offerings. Prior to reporting on the participants’ perceptions of solitude practices a brief overview of the research design is outlined. Overview of the Research Design The research into religious education leadership, which revealed the need for planned opportunities for solitude practices within the context of Catholic education, was commissioned by the director of Catholic Education in the Diocese of Sale, Victoria, Australia. There are approximately fortyfour primary and secondary schools in the diocese, and the aim of the research was to identify ways to foster and promote the Catholic identity of the school through leading, teaching and learning in religious education. The expertise and perspectives of fifty key stakeholders, which included members of the Clergy responsible for schools in the diocese, members of the Catholic Education Office Executive, Religious Education Leaders, School Principals and Deputy Principals and those leading or aspiring to leadership in religious education, were sought through participation in in-depth unstructured interviews. The research was founded upon the epistemological foundation of constructivism which holds that reality is constructed through human interaction in which meanings are shared in dialogue and new knowledge is developed (Crotty, 1998). A theoretical perspective that complements constructivism is interpretivism and, because the study sought to capture the realities and meanings of individuals closely associated with learning and teaching in religious education, symbolic interactionism was an appropriate interpretivist paradigm to guide this investigation (Gouldner, 1970). Symbolic interactionism is based on the premise that the self consists of two key components: the ‘I’ and the ‘Me’. Bowers emphasized that ‘the Me component is the reflector’ (1989: 36–7). According to the theory of symbolic interactionism, everyone consists of multiple selves or multiple Me’s and therefore ‘who I am depends on which Me is experienced as the most salient at the time’ (Bowers, 1989: 37). In-depth unstructured interviews were undertaken to get access to the insights that cannot be read or observed by the researcher (Minichiello et al., 2008). The adoption of an unstructured interview method aimed to encourage the most salient Me in each of the participants to be their professional role within Catholic education. The use of unstructured interviews was the gateway for constructing knowledge of how the participants understood their world (Kvale, 1996). The interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed. The transcripts were drawn upon to verify that what the researcher heard was consistent with what the participant had stated, thus enabling a clear distinction between the perceptions of the researcher and the participants (Clandinin & Connelly, 1994). Drawing on approaches of classic grounded theory, a process of constant comparison was adopted (Strauss & Glaser, 1967). After each interview, transcripts were produced and analysed using the constant comparison process to identify emerging themes. The emerging themes were progressively shared with each new participant. This procedure enabled ongoing opportunities for participants to comment upon, critique and clarify data and thus contribute to the consolidation of emergent 50

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themes (Strauss & Glaser, 1967). The process of constant comparison provides an inbuilt mechanism for the categories of data to be cross-checked and verified (Dick, 2007). Several categories of data emerge from this study and many in relation to religious education leadership have been published elsewhere (see Buchanan, 2019). However, this chapter explores another key finding arising from the study, which is concerned with opportunities for planned solitude practices in the light of the goals of Catholic education. Solitude Practices and the Goals of Catholic Education A key finding of this study into leadership in religious education was the importance of providing opportunities for solitude for leaders, teachers and students involved in religious education. This is consistent with the goals of Catholic education. These goals are reflected in the post-conciliar documents from the CCE (2009, 1977). Miller’s (2006) examination of these documents identified five significant goals and the achievement of these goals within Catholic schools could be aided with the inclusion of positive solitude practices. The first goal commits Catholic education to the formation of the whole person, to enable them to become good citizens committed to living in right relationships with their neighbour and God. The second goal characterizes schools as places that promote human dignity and human rights. The third goal holds that schools are communities for human persons that foster values of teamwork, cooperation and interaction. The fourth goal emphasizes a Catholic world view directed towards the growth of the whole person and fosters love, wisdom and truth. The fifth goal aims to sustain schools as places of authentic Catholicity and requires the commitment from teachers who understand, accept and model the teachings of the Catholic Church. Social interaction among students and teachers is a feature of these learning communities; however, it has been argued that opportunities for solitude are necessary if schools are to be effective in achieving their goals (Stern, 2016; de Souza, 2003). This chapter reports on the findings emanating from this study into religious education leadership which identified three possibilities for solitude practices within the context of Catholic education. This research found that a key concern echoed by the participants involved in this study was the need for opportunities for solitude to be available to religious education leaders, teachers and students. The participants, who were leaders and aspiring leaders in Catholic education, were invited to make recommendations pertaining to the types of solitude practices that could be offered. Their recommendations for religious education leaders, teachers and students differed. The parameters of this chapter do not enable a discussion on all the examples of solitude practices recommended by the participants. Therefore, the most salient recommendation for each will be explored. Solitude, Spiritual Direction and the Religious Education Leader Leaders in Catholic schools are generally more skilled and confident in leading the educational dimensions rather than the religious or faith dimensions associated with their respective roles (Buchanan & Chapman, 2014; Chapman & Buchanan, 2012). While the participants involved in this study acknowledged the religious education leaders’ contribution to publicly leading the religious or faith dimensions expressed within the school, they noted the challenges associated with doing so in the Australia context; where public expressions of religion or faith are not the norm (Hudson, 2016; see also Buchanan, 2020). The following excerpts from various interview transcripts, which are representative of those who participated in this study, provide insights into these challenges. 51

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We expect religious education leaders to share their faith with the entire school and this does take its toll on them. We need to make sure that we do not spiritually bankrupt the religious education leader, especially during challenging times. Religious education leaders should have the opportunity to take time out and reflect and to see a spiritual director at least once a month or three times a term. It should be compulsory because they can’t keep giving spiritually without being nourished. (Participant 15) Participant 15 reflects the salient view emanating from the collection of the participants’ interview transcripts and suggests that while religious education leaders rely on personal social interaction to communicate matters of faith and religion with all members of the school community, they need opportunities for solitude to enrich their ability to lead in this way. When there is a grief in the school community or in the lives of individual families at the school it is quite often the religious education leader who is sought. This must take its toll on them. Religious education leaders give so much spiritual support to so many members of the school community; but who is supporting them? Who supports them when their own faith is challenged? They need time out to contemplate and to be supported. (Participant 32) Schools are dynamic communities where life happens amid the core business of formal education, and Participant 32 captures one of many similar examples shared by other participants. In such circumstances, in the context of Catholic schools, the participants indicated that the religious education leader was regarded as a key support figure for members of the community. The insights from this study reveal the centrality of the role of the religious education leader as one that leads and gives public expression to the religious and faith dimension of the school. The participants indicated that the role takes its toll on religious education leaders and that they need to be supported and reignited. The aim of this section of the chapter is to explore the potential support that religious education leaders might gain from engaging in solitude practices and spiritual direction. It has been argued in the existing body of scholarly literature that effective social interaction within the context of community participation can be enhanced by the opportunity to engage in periods of solitude (Long et al., 2003). The participants in this study indicated that religious education leaders in Catholic schools need to draw from their personal faith and religious experiences to lead the religious dimension of the school. To do so effectively requires ongoing self-reflection and spiritual enrichment (Earl, 2005). Opportunities for religious education leaders to have regular periods of solitude will help to alleviate the toll on their personal and spiritual reserves because ‘solitude bears the same relation to the mind that sleep does to the body. It affords it the necessary opportunities for repose and recovery’ (Simms, 1853: 28). Therefore, it is beneficial for religious education leaders to seek solitude on a regular basis to alleviate the chance of becoming spiritually bankrupt. Solitude as a spiritual discipline provides the space for religious education leaders to be alone and to facilitate their own integration of mind, heart and behaviour (Ault, 2013), thus enabling them to hear God better (Fleming, 2014). Encountering the divine by engaging in solitude may be considered as a spiritual discipline to be explored by a religious education leader with the aid of a spiritual director. Spiritual direction helps people to deepen their relationship with God as meanings are co-authored by directors and directees in ways that assist the religious education leader to become more attuned to their own spiritual awareness (Crawley, 2016). The enrichment of the directee’s spiritual life is the 52

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focus in spiritual direction through a process of discerning the movements of the spirit in the directee’s life, with the support of a director (Ault, 2013). For the religious education leader in a Catholic school the opportunity for solitude as a spiritual discipline, as well as spiritual direction, gives rise to a theological encounter that enables the religious education leader to engage in an intentional conversation between experience and the religious tradition (Killen & De Beer, 1994). Within the context of Catholic education, the practice of solitude as a spiritual discipline, as well as spiritual direction, serves as a theological reflection that enables the religious education leader to integrate their mind, heart, religion and spirituality in leading the religious dimension of the school, with wisdom and insight. Solitude, Imaginative Contemplation and the Religious Education Teacher Religious education teachers, as individuals and as a teaching community, have the primary responsibility for creating a Catholic school climate that is uniquely Christian. The CCE has indicated that the key factor that enables a Catholic school to achieve its educational goals is the teacher. In fact, the Congregation for Catholic Education claims that the extent to which the Catholic school can achieve its goals depends chiefly on the teacher (CCE, 1977). Consequently, the CCE pays special attention to the formation and professionalism of the religious education teacher stating: The religion teacher is the key role, the vital component, if the educational goals of the school are to be achieved. But the effectiveness of religious instruction is closely tied to the personal witness given by the teacher; this witness is what brings the content of the lessons to life. (CCE, 1990: 96) For the religious education teacher witness means that the teacher gives testimony to their faith in Jesus Christ and his gospel in all their thoughts, words and deeds. Witness, in this sense, is not about proselytising and conversion but about being attentive to the way in which faith permeates a person’s way of being. As Pope Francis stated, ‘Christian witness is done with three things: words, the heart and the hands’ (Pope Francis, 2017). Furthermore, in addition of being capable of giving witness within the context of the school community, the Congregation for Catholic Education indicates that the religious education teacher must undertake cultural, professional and pedagogical training (CCE, 1990). In many educational settings various approaches to religious education have downplayed and at times excluded the role of the religious education teacher as witness (Jackson, 2004). The participants involved in this study were concerned that many teachers in Catholic schools were not confident in their understanding of the Catholic faith tradition and that this impacted on their potential to model for their students what it means to be a Christian witness. The participants involved in this study noted that this was a considerable challenge for teachers of religious education. Teachers sometimes struggle with teaching religious education and they need a religious education leader who is knowledgeable, competent and supportive. They need someone that they can look to as a role model. They need someone who will enable them to reflect on their own potential to be an effective religious education teacher and role model. (Participant 8) The ability to find and employ fully formed religious education teachers was a concern shared by most of participants involved in this study. They perceived that if schools are to achieve their 53

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goals, then as a Christian community, they need to place more emphasis on the formation of their religious education teachers. The school community under the direction of the religious education leader needs to create space for teachers to reflect on their vocation in the light of the Catholic faith tradition. They must take responsibility for the ongoing formation of teachers so that they can live out their vocation as Christian educators with confidence. At the present and into the future we’re going to need really knowledgeable religious education teachers who are committed to the Catholic faith. If they are not committed the students will see right through them. (Participant 27) The view of the participants aligns with that of the Congregation for Catholic Education who also emphasized that the school and its leaders must take responsibility for the formation of their teachers (CCE, 1982). A practical formation strategy repeatedly recommended by the participants involved the application of a solitude practice that they felt needed to be regular and ongoing. We need to offer teachers systematic and ongoing formation that allows them to encounter our rich faith tradition in an intimate way. They need time alone to reflect on themselves as religious educators in the light of the gospels and the Catholic tradition. The religious education leader could make this possible by providing opportunities to engage in imaginative contemplation. (Participant 4) Imaginative contemplation as a solitude practice provides opportunities for religious education teachers to nurture their spiritual growth, creativity and wisdom (Long et al, 2003). Within the context of religious education, the practice of imaginative contemplation of Scripture has been undertaken to support the professional learning and formation of religious education teachers (Di Sipio, 2019). It enables teachers to consider their own life stories with those represented in Scripture in a way that fosters personal connection with biblical characters and events (Gallagher, 2001). Imaginative contemplation can be an effective solitude practice that enables a religious education teacher to move beyond the present in a way that invites them to explore their capacity for intuitive knowledge, expanded consciousness, unconditional compassion for self and others, appreciation for beauty and creative fulfilment (Coburn et al., 2012; Stern, 2016). The conscious awareness of an individual’s knowing and connection to the religious tradition may be heightened by encountering ways of knowing beyond or in addition to academia (Wessels, 2015). Imaginative contemplation encountered through solitude offers individual the opportunity to wrestle with their inner self and to examine the influence their own context and preconceptions have on their encounter with Scripture and thereby to act as a point of reference from which religiously motivated dialogue can be initiated (Di Sipio, 2019). Imaginative contemplation allows for a greater scope of problem solving and innovation, and it can assist with the engagement of dialogue where the religious education teacher is imbued with a deep awareness of their self before an encounter with the other can occur (Castelli, 2012). Experiences of imaginative contemplation among religious education teachers in a Catholic school, in Australia, was explored in a pilot study by Di Sipio (2019). The participants in Di Sipio’s study met on a weekly basis for the duration of a school term (ten weeks). Initially the religious education teachers participated in a professional learning session where they were taught basic skills pertaining to imaginative contemplation. Then, at the commencement of each week, they were given a passage from Scripture and were invited to find some time each day to contemplate 54

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the passage in solitude. At the end of the week the religious education teachers met as a small group and shared their contemplations or encounters with the Scripture passage. At the end of the ten-week period Di Sipio interviewed the participants who revealed several insights resulting from the opportunity to engage in this solitude practice. Di Sipio (2019) found that the participants in the study became more aware of the richness of solitude and silence in enabling them to engage in deep reflection of the Scripture passages in relation to their own lives and the Catholic tradition. The religious education teachers felt that the insights they had gained enhanced their own personal relationship with God and gave them the confidence to share their relationship with their colleagues. Furthermore, contemplating Scripture through a process of solitude, silence and sharing provided the impetus for the religious education teachers to create opportunities for their own students to encounter God through Scripture in the religious education classroom. They also felt more assured of their ability to lead Scripture-based classroom discussions and to dialogue with students about their own insights. The participants involved in the religious education leadership research believed that opportunities for religious education teachers to engage in the solitude practice of imaginative contemplation should be facilitated by the religious education leader. They felt that the expertise of the religious education leaders could be drawn upon to enable religious education teachers to contemplate passages from Scripture in meaningful ways. Solitude, the Examen and Religious Education Students A key aim of the religious education leader research was to identify key responsibilities associated with the role. The participants, who were senior leaders in the diocese with expertise in religious education, conveyed insights pertaining to the role of religious education leadership that promoted opportunities for the spiritual growth of the students. The participants perceived the role as one of senior leadership in Catholic schools, with a specific mandate to enable the religious dimension of the school to offer each student the opportunity to grow spiritually. This perceived mandate aligns with the goals of Catholic education in that it contributes to the formation of the whole person (CCE, 1982). The following insight from a participant captures a prominent view shared by the participants. The religious education leader has a role that is crucial because it demands leadership at every level. All leadership actions should contribute to enriching the spiritual lives of all students. It is important that students have opportunities for getting in touch with their inner self. This should not be left to chance. It should be built into the program. (Participant 9) While the role of the religious education leader is perceived as contributing to the formation of the whole person, the participants believed that this might be achieved by structuring quiet reflection times in solitude. Schools are busy places. Teachers and students are going from one activity to another and we seem to be ticking off the lists of daily activities, undertaken by the students, all the time. We need to slow the pace down and to enable the students to stop and to reflect on what they have been doing. Religious education leaders could play a key role in ensuring that reflection time is structured into the daily program. (Participant 32) For some years many Catholic schools, underpinned by Ignatian education philosophies around the world, have structured into the school day an opportunity for students to engage in a solitude 55

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practice which is aimed at contributing to the formation of the whole person (Tetlow, 2008). This is achieved through the daily practice of St Ignatius of Loyola’s Examen (Cline, 2018). Adaptations of the daily examen are constantly evolving. One adaptation, facilitated by the religious education teacher, allocated five minutes at the end of the school day where students refrain from social interaction with those around them and enter into a state of solitude to enable them to listen to their inner voice. In the classroom the students are invited to take these five minutes, to close their eyes and maintain silence as they undergo three steps. The first step invites them to review their day noting the highs and lows; the second step invites the students to face the low points of the day; the third step invites students to consider what they would do to alleviate the low points. At the end of step three students are invited, as a classroom community, to offer a form of gratitude for and insights or wisdom gained. This invitation has been divided into two additional steps in Manney’s (2011) account of the daily examen, and is appropriate when a significant amount of time can be devoted to the daily examen (Manney, 2011). Within the school context the participants in this study suggested that religious education leaders could introduce the daily examen as a daily practice at the end of the school day. To do so would involve the religious education leader facilitating a professional learning seminar for religious education teachers to enable them to take on the role of facilitating the daily examen in the classroom. The practice of the daily examen is a solitude practice that is accessible to all members of the Catholic school community and not just students who are practising Catholics. According to Cline (2018) all students in Catholic school, including those who identify as being other than Catholic, can benefit from the practices of a daily examen. The introduction of this solitude practice in the form of a daily examen is not limited to populations of students educated in Catholic schools in the Ignatian tradition. It has the potential to be accessible to all students in all Catholic schools. Studies have revealed that this simple solitude practice has contributed to the formation of the whole person by enabling students to reflect on the realities encountered in their daily lives (Boehner, 2012). Conclusion Human beings live in societies primarily geared towards social interaction. Learning communities, which are reflected in an array of schooling systems throughout the world, are geared towards working in groups and in collaboration with others (Stern, 2014). While social interaction is necessary for the survival of human beings and their communities, opportunities for solitude are also necessary (Long et al., 2003). The quality and depth of social interaction has the potential to be enriched by those who engage in solitude practices, because doing so enhances personal growth by enabling individuals to clarify their thoughts and connect with their inner self (Galanaki, 2004). Within the context of education there has been a growth in scholarship that acknowledges experiences of solitude and the benefits of the inclusion of solitude practices for students and the learning community (Cain, 2012; Dembling, 2012; Galanaki, 2005; Stern, 2016). The benefits of solitude practices are not exclusive to Catholic education and consideration of the inclusion of various solitude practices would be of interest in any learning community committed to the professional and personal growth of students, teachers and school leaders. The implementation of solitude practices in schools is not a one-size-fits-all process. While the solitude practice of a daily examen might be adapted for students across various schooling systems, the implementation 56

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of a solitude practice such as spiritual direction may not be relevant to school leadership in nonfaith-based schools. However, the practice of professional reflection and mentoring might be appropriate. In relation to Catholic education, the religious dimension of the school plays a significant part in aiding the school in achieving the goals of Catholic education, which are primarily concerned with the integral formation of the human person (Tetlow, 2008). This research study supports the view that religious education leaders have a significant role to play in helping Catholic schools to achieve these goals by taking responsibility for structuring opportunities for ongoing experiences of positive solitude practices for themselves as religious education leaders, for the teachers and for the entire student body. To fulfil the goal of sustaining schools as places of authentic Catholicity the religious education leaders need to create possibilities to encounter solitude as a spiritual discipline and as a lead into spiritual direction. The religious education teachers could engage in the solitude practice of imaginative contemplation to aid their own personal growth and to foster learning communities that promote human dignity and human rights through teamwork, cooperation and interaction in line with the attainment of two other goals of Catholic education (goals two and three). Religious education students could benefit from engaging in a daily examen as a means for self-reflection that fosters personal and spiritual growth, which are key to the attainment of the first goal of Catholic education: the formation of the whole person. These solitude practices have been introduced in many Catholic schools throughout Australia, but it would not be common to find all three offerings occurring in one school at any given time. It is recommended that schools within the diocese (and beyond), under the direction of their respective religious education leaders, undertake to develop and implement these three solitude practices. Doing so will orient Catholic schools towards fulfilling the fifth goal of Catholic education by promoting a Catholic world view that contributes to the growth of the whole person in a way that fosters love, wisdom and truth. It is also recommended that a large-scale qualitative study be undertaken to gather empirical evidence on the benefits of these solitude practices in relation to the achievement of the goals of Catholic education. Acknowledgements The research which informed this chapter was funded by the Catholic Education Office Sale. Special recognition is given to the executive director of the Catholic Education Office Sale, Maria Kirkwood, who supported and encouraged the research. Thank you also to the senior officers of the Catholic Education Office Sale, as well as the Clergy, and leaders in schools who participated in this study.

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4

Solitude in Nature Amanda Fulford

Introduction This chapter considers what it might mean to experience solitude in nature through the work of two writers: the nineteenth-century American philosopher, essayist and naturalist Henry David Thoreau, and Anna (Nan) Shepherd, the twentieth-century author and poet. The chapter considers the life that both these writers spent, often (though not always) alone in nature. But their works are not easily understood as self-help texts for ‘getting away from it all’ and spending time in the outdoors alone to de-stress. Nor are their works appeals to live some kind of hermit-like existence alone in nature. Rather, both books are richly poetic, deeply philosophical accounts. The perspective that both Thoreau and Shepherd offer is one that turns away from many of the ideas that advocate the benefits of being alone – without human others – in the outdoors. It is rather that it is through the practice of solitude that we are opened up to the possibilities of society with Nature herself. This radically shifts our understanding of what is meant by solitude (commonly, as the state or situation of being alone), and opens up a richer understanding developed through ideas of engagement, disengagement, solitariness and communion. Solitude in Nature In July 1845, just eight years after graduating from Harvard, a young Henry David Thoreau moved to live in a cabin he built himself on the shores of Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. There, he began work on the manuscript of one of his well-known works, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849/2004), and a year later, to begin to write his arguably most famous work, Walden (1854/1999). For the next seventeen years, until his death in May 1862, he lived and worked surrounded by some of America’s most celebrated writers and thinkers of the period: Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Ellery Channing, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Louisa May Alcott. Thoreau’s thinking and his writing were forged together with a group of prominent New England intellectuals, and in a movement that became known as Transcendentalism. But Thoreau’s oeuvre is difficult to categorize; it is part autobiography, and yet at the same time a body of work hugely rich in documenting and surveying the natural environment of rural New England. But Walden,

Solitude in Nature

together with Thoreau’s vast journal entries, his correspondence, and his lectures and essays are also deeply poetic and philosophical works. Indeed, Stanley Cavell – whose (1981) work The Senses of Walden is a profound and evocative reading of Thoreau’s most famous work – calls it a ‘scripture . . . a sacred text’ (Cavell, 1981: 14). Just over a century after Thoreau’s death, the most celebrated work of another author was published. Born in 1893, Anna (Nan) Shepherd was a Scottish writer, poet and teacher who published three novels and a poetry collection titled In the Cairngorms during a period of intensive writing and creativity in the period between 1928 and 1933. The manuscript of her seminal mountain memoir, The Living Mountain, however, was kept in a draw for over four decades until its eventual publication in 1977. Shepherd spent forty-one years working as a lecturer in English at a College of Education in Aberdeen in Scotland. She was a keen gardener, but her great love was walking on the Cairngorm Mountains in Scotland. This short volume, The Living Mountain, documents Shepherd’s life spent walking in the Cairngorm hills and exploring them in rich and evocative detail in the various seasons. As with Thoreau, Shepherd’s work is similarly difficult to describe. In his introduction to the volume, Robert Macfarlane writes: The Living Mountain is a formidably difficult book to describe. A celebratory prose-poem? A geo-poetic quest? A place-paean? A philosophical enquiry into the nature of knowledge? . . . None of these descriptions quite fits the whole, though it is all of these things in part (1977/2011: xiv). What is remarkable about Shepherd’s The Living Mountain and Thoreau’s Walden is that despite the obvious geographical, temporal, contextual and cultural differences, there are some remarkable lines of connection between these two works. This is perhaps most clearly seen in the way that they think not only about solitude and silence, but also the place of Nature1 in exploring both the idea and the practices of both. As might be expected given Cavell’s reading of Thoreau and Macfarlane of Shepherd, both concepts are richly connoted and replete with meaning in their respective works. Cavell reminds us of what it is to read Walden when he quotes from the chapter titled ‘Reading’: ‘We must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of what wisdom and valour and generosity we have’ (Cavell, 1981: 4). In what follows, this chapter will explore ideas of solitude and silence in nature – and what it might mean for us to be in solitude in nature – through a detailed reading of passages from Thoreau’s Walden and Shepherd’s The Living Mountain. Such readings will disrupt some of the more common interpretations of these writers’ works, and will open up ideas of how an engagement with Nature illuminates the concepts of solitude and sociability. It will also show how in Thoreau and Shepherd, solitude is less an absence than a form of presence and revealing that challenges the very basis of our commonly held views of solitude. Thoreau and Shepherd: Alone in Nature? Thoreau famously opens his work Walden with the words: ‘When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts’ (1854/1999: 5). That this is not just an isolated statement to which we should give little more than passing consideration is suggested by the fact that chapter 5 is titled ‘Solitude’. It is also a thread running through his whole body of work. In his 1862 essay, ‘Walking’, Thoreau writes: ‘In the desert, 59

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pure air and solitude compensate for want of moisture and fertility’ (1862/2017: 40). Such is his want of solitude that to be deprived of it gives him feeling of asphyxia. Yet contrasted with this is the sense of the re-creation of the self that is realized when he is in the woods, a place that he describes as his sanctum sanctorum (1862/2017: 40). These sentiments are expressed not only in his public writings but also in his private correspondence. In a letter to his mother, Cynthia, he pens the following words: ‘I want a whole continent to breathe in, and a good deal of solitude and silence, such as all Wall Street cannot buy’ (Harding & Bode, 1958: 100). Thoreau’s commentators have also been keen to point out the necessity of solitude to his life. Bradford Torrey, in his ‘Introduction’ to Thoreau’s journals, writes this: ‘“I am all without and in sight,” said Montaigne, “born for society and friendship.” So was not Thoreau. He was all within, born for contemplation and solitude’ (1906: §xxiii). But perhaps these quotations, powerfully illustrative as they are of a man who purposefully sought out solitude, are not easily understood as suggesting a preference for a hermit style of life, devoid of companionship and of society. As Cavell notes, ‘The drift of Walden is not that we should go off and be alone; the drift is that we are alone and that we are never alone’ (1981: 80). That Walden is rather concerned with themes of hospitality and with one’s neighbours and visitors is suggested by the titles of several of the chapters: ‘Visitors’, ‘Brute Neighbors’, ‘Housewarming’ and ‘Former Inhabitants and Winter Visitors’. These chapters are concerned not only with human and animal visitors to his hut on the shores of Walden Pond and the surrounding woods, but also with the hospitality of ideas. Thoreau iteratively draws his readers’ attention to the unfamiliar: to the wisdom of the Bhagavad-Gita, to Hindu and Persian poetry, and to Celtic and Scandinavian mythology. These ideas of the arrival, and welcoming of the unfamiliar and the foreign, are perhaps best illustrated in Thoreau’s account, in the chapter ‘Sounds’, of the coming of the railway to Concord. He writes that ‘The Fitchburg Railroad touches the pond about a hundred rods south of where I dwell’ (1854/1999: 105). And it is as a result of his daily experience of the rail cars passing so close to his cabin, bringing not only travellers but also freight from around the world, that he reflects: ‘I am reminded of foreign parts, of coral reefs, and of Indian oceans, and tropical climes, and the extent of the globe. I feel more like a citizen of the world’ (1854/1999: 109). So it is not quite right to equate Thoreau’s preference for solitude with an aversion to society and a rejection of hospitality. Indeed, his famous aphorism in Walden rejects just such a dichotomy: ‘I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society’ (1854/1999: 127). Moreover, his close friend Ellery Channing, spoke of Thoreau’s ‘fine social qualities’ (Torrey, 1906: §xxviii). While much might be made of Thoreau’s claim that he lived apart from his neighbours, a mile from Concord, he also writes that ‘My nearest neighbor is a mile distant, and no house is visible from any place but the hill-tops within half a mile of my own’ (1854/1999: 119). He recounts knowing when visitors had been to his hut as, when he returned, he found visitors’ cards, bunches of flowers, evidence of their presence in footprints, the disturbed undergrowth and traces of pipe smoke in the air (1854/1999: 118). It might seem as if there are some contradictions here, even that Thoreau does not know what he thinks, or is hypocritical. This is perhaps best seen when he writes: ‘I have a great deal of company in my house; especially in the morning, when nobody calls’ (1854/1999: 125). So does Thoreau crave solitude, or not? His sense of asphyxia in society stands in stark contrast to his assertion that ‘I have never felt lonesome, or in the least depressed by a sense of 60

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solitude, but once, and that was a few weeks after I came to the woods, for an hour, I doubted if the near neighbourhood of man was not essential to a serene and healthy life. To be alone was something unpleasant’ (1854/1999: 120). Thoreau certainly has his critics who claim that his plea to ‘Simplify, simplify’ (1854/1999: 84) fits uneasily with his lifestyle (Schulz, 2015), and further, that his political writings are riven with radical inconsistency (St Jean, 1998). His claim that ‘I had more visitors while I lived in the woods than at any other period in my life’ (1854/1999: 130) may be hyperbolic, but it suggests something important: that solitude for Thoreau is not understood simply as a lack of contact, as being alone. Just as Thoreau’s time at Walden Pond can, at least in some senses, be thought of as an account of his time spent alone in nature, we can argue similarly in respect of Shepherd’s The Living Mountain. But just as this is not quite right in Thoreau’s case, the same can be said of Shepherd. It is not as if she sought solitude relentlessly above all else; For Shepherd, it was not solitude in the mountains that she craved; rather, it was the friendship and company of the mountains. Her purpose in walking in the mountains was ‘merely to be with the mountain as one visits a friend, with no intention but to be with him’ (1977/2011: 15). As Macfarlane says in his ‘Introduction’ to Shepherd’s work, we might think of her book not as an account of acquaintance with (human) others but rather as ‘the true mark of a long acquaintance with a single place’ (1977/2011: xxiv). It is easily with a book such as The Living Mountain to become engrossed – as a reader – in the astonishing beauty and persistence of the description and imagery. It is visceral and seductive. What we might miss in a reading that (rightly) opens our imaginations such that we feel ourselves walking on the same mountains, is the way that Shepherd lightly and nimbly moves between pronouns such that the reader almost misses whether she is describing a solitary walk or one with a companion. It is as if this is of no import (to her account at least). She writes: ‘I first saw it on a cloudless day of early July. We had started at dawn, crossed Cairn Gorm about nine o’clock, and made our way down by the Saddle to the lower end of the loch’ (1977/2011: 12 italics mine). The attentive reader might pick up that Shepherd is not walking alone from this; but it is easy to miss. A few lines later, she continues: ‘I motioned to my companion who was a step behind, and she came . . . I waded slowly back into the shallow water. There was nothing that seemed worth saying. My spirit was as naked as my body. It was one of the most defenceless moments of my life’ (1977/2011: 13). What is striking is that her companion is never named; it is as if this detail – at this precise moment in time – is unimportant. It is rather that her relationship with the loch is what is brought into sharp perspective. It is not that Shepherd must walk alone, that her preference is for solitariness understood as the absence of human company. Her choice of walking companion is rather one who allows her to engage fully with the mountain: The presence of another person does not detract from, but enhances, the silence, if the other is the right sort of hill companion. The perfect hill companion is the one whose identity is for the time being merged into that of the mountains, as you feel your own to be (1977/2011: 14). Though a living ‘mile from Concord’ and away from his neighbours (1854/1999: 119), Walden shows us – perhaps paradoxically – that Thoreau did not always seek solitariness over society. The same can be said of Shepherd. She writes of sitting in Old Sandy Mackenzie’s cottage, with Mrs Mackenzie, a place where she claims to have ‘passed some of the happiest moments of my life’ (1977/2011: 38). She writes of her fellow hill-lovers, James Downie, and Maggie Gruer whom she describes as ‘bred of the bone of the mountain’ (p. 85). She recalls meeting two young railway 61

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workers who had come from Manchester during their one week of leave to try to photograph the golden eagle, and talking to them about when to try the ascent of Ben MacDhui (1977/2011: 63), and she herself seeks out an old shepherd in Galloway to seek advice on the ascent of Merrick. Some of these relationships are borne of the necessity of a kind of camaraderie that is needed simply to survive in the harsh environment of the Cairngorms in winter, and Shepherd writes poignantly of the death of two boys on Coire Cas (1977/2011: 39). But just as we see Thoreau pursuing opportunities to engage with those he meets (such as his friend, the Canadian woodcutter), while also seeking solitude in nature at his beloved Walden Pond, so Shepherd both seizes opportunities to be with others, yet also to be apart from them: I had driven to Derry Lodge one perfect morning in June with two gentlemen who, having arrived there, were bent on returning at one to Braemar, when a car came up with four others, obviously setting out for Ben MacDhui. In a flash I had accosted them to ask if I might share their car back to Braemar in the evening: my intention was to go up, the rag and bob-tail of their company, keeping them in sight but not joining myself to them (1977/–2011: 78). But it is clear that being alone in the mountains is synonymous with a kind of joy – even ecstasy. This is seen in her delight in venturing out at dawn one July to find ‘an empty hill’, but of later counting more than 100 people streaming down the mountain (1977/2011: 39). In the chapter titled ‘Life: Man’, she begins by writing of walking all day and seeing no-one – of hearing no living sound. If the reader was in any doubt as to whether this was an experience to be relished or avoided, she then describes a moment of what we might call transcendence, when she realized that she was perfectly ‘alone in the universe with a few blocks of red granite’ (1977/2011: 79). Solitude as Solitariness? What this close attention to some sections of Walden and The Living Mountain have shown is that we cannot easily read Thoreau and Shepherd as advocating a kind of solitary life lived in nature. Their accounts disrupt the idea of solitude as being in a location – here, nature – without the company of others (humans). While both writers chose solitariness in the natural environment during the course of their lives, their accounts do not show that nature is the axiomatic place for an experience of solitude, or even that one is dependent on the other, and that being in nature allowed them to be alone. The particular perspective that both Thoreau and Shepherd offer is rather that it is in the practice of solitude that we are opened up to the possibilities of society with Nature. This radically shifts our understanding of what is meant by solitude (commonly, as the state or situation of being alone). In Thoreau we find something like the anthropomorphizing of Nature. In describing Nature as Walden Pond’s ‘elderly Dame’, he describes her as dwelling in his neighbourhood; and of allowing him to walk among her herb gardens. For Thoreau, ‘She runs back farther than mythology, and she can tell me the original of every fable, and on what fact everyone is founded, for the incidents occurred when she was young’ (1854/1999: 125). He continues in Walden: I enjoy the friendship of the seasons . . . Every little pine needle expanded and swelled with sympathy and befriended me. I was so distinctly made aware of the presence of something kindred to me, even in scenes which we are accustomed to call wild and dreary, and also that 62

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the nearest blood to me and humanist was not a person nor a villager, that I thought no place could ever be strange to me again (1854/1999: 120). These are no isolated, bucolic comments; the idea of the society of Nature is rather a strong leitmotif throughout Thoreau’s oeuvre, as evidenced in the following lines: In the midst of a gentle rain while these thoughts prevailed, I was suddenly sensible of such sweet and beneficent society in Nature, in the very pattering of the drops, and in every sound and sight around my house, and infinite and unaccountable friendliness all at once like an atmosphere sustaining me, as made the fancied advantages of human neighbourhood insignificant, and I have never thought of them since (1854/1999: 120). But there is something further in Thoreau’s account which necessitates a profound shift in our understanding of solitude; this comes from how he perceives what it means to experience the solitude of Nature. Thoreau writes: I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers (1854/1999: 123). The implication of Thoreau’s claim that solitude is in and of itself a ‘companion’ profoundly disrupts any idea that we can ‘escape’ to Nature as a way of realizing a need to be alone and of achieving solitariness. Nature is also Shepherd’s constant companion; in this sense, though she walks alone (often without a fellow hiker), her lack of solitariness comes from her association with Nature (in that Nature becomes her associate). Coming to know the mountain is, for her, a lifelong task; as she writes in the closing lines of The Living Mountain, ‘Knowing another is endless’ (1977/2011: 108). It requires the devotion and fidelity required to sustain a friendship. But just as the problem of knowing another has been a long-standing point of discussion in philosophy of mind, so Shepherd writes of the difficulty of knowing the mountain: ‘One never quite knows the mountain, nor oneself in relation to it’ (1977/2011: 1). On the mountain, Shepherd finds that the conversation of human walking companions leaves her feeling ‘weary and dispirited, because the hill did not speak’ (1977/2011: 14). As she stands in the silence of a plateau, she becomes aware that the silence is not complete: ‘Water is speaking’, she writes (1977/2011: 22). Solitude in Nature can never be an experience only of solitariness for Shepherd, because of the society of Nature that the Cairngorms afford. The title of Shepherd’s volume (The Living Mountain) suggests that she finds in the society of Nature a friend. Just as we experience the moods of a living friend (when angry, anxious, joyous or bored), so Shepherd shows how she lives with the mountains in their moods: through the bitter cold and desolation of the ice in winter, to the exuberance and flamboyance of the mountains’ summer life. Solitude cannot only mean solitariness for Shepherd because of the society of Nature which affords here not only knowledge of the mountain’s life but also of her own. As she writes: ‘To know Being, this is the final grace accorded from the mountain’ (1977/2011: 108).

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Disengagement, Encounter and Revealing Our lives in the twenty-first century are increasingly marked by a global connectedness to others; we live in ever-larger cities which operate twenty-four hours a day, and we seem increasingly unable to disconnect from our digital devices. Perhaps we should not be surprised, then, that there has been a growth in courses, self-help books and – paradoxically in digital applications – that seek to help us to find respite, to take time for ourselves and to disconnect. Many of the ways in which we are encouraged to find space away from the incessant busyness of our work lives and the pressures of our daily routines with family involve spending some time alone in the outdoors. It is as if there is something particularly beneficial – almost therapeutic – about a solitary experience of the hills, the lakes or the forest. As Thoreau wrote in his journal: ‘There is nothing so sanative, so poetic, as a walk in the woods or fields . . . Nothing so inspires me and excites such serene and profitable thought’ (Torrey, 1906: 208). But there is a danger here that we can fall into an unhelpful romanticizing of such experiences of nature and to over-emphasize the physical, cognitive and psychological benefits of time spend in nature. The works of Thoreau and of Shepherd afford us a rather different way of thinking about what solitary experiences in nature might offer. Thoreau recounts the times that he spent resting in the shade after a morning of planting his crops, in what he describes as ‘a very secluded and shaded spot (1854/1999: 205). Here, he saw the wood-cock, the turtledove and the red squirrel, all in their natural habitats, but experienced them in the mode of encounter. Thoreau describes this experience of encounter as a kind of revealing, a kind of Heideggerian aletheia or ‘unconcealing’ (Heidegger, 1972: 70). It was as if, through these solitary experiences, nature disclosed itself to Thoreau; he writes: ‘You need only sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns’ (1854/1999: 205). These moments of solitude offered Thoreau a different way of seeing the inhabitants of the woods that he encountered on a daily basis. This same shift in perspective is also what Shepherd experienced, even after a lifetime of walking in the Cairngorms. She writes of seeing the water – the most common of substances in the Scottish hills – and of the colours in it that she had not perceived before: ‘It is green like the water of winter skies, but lucent, clear like aquamarines, without the vivid brilliance of glacier water . . . Sometimes the Quoich waterfalls have violet playing through the green, and the pouring water spouts and bubbles into a violet froth’ (1977/2011: 24–5). For both Shepherd and Thoreau, to encounter nature in solitude – to experience its unconcealing – requires a shift in perspective. This is not only a metaphorical shift; rather, it is a physical one. Shepherd writes of how, on one September day, walking alone in the hills, she saw from an entirely different perspective, Loch Corrie of the Loch (a body of water very familiar to her). She writes: ‘This changing of focus in the eye, moving the eye itself when looking at things that do not move, deepens one’s sense of outer reality . . . By so simple a matter too, as altering the position of one’s head, a different kind of world may be made to appear’ (1977/2011: 10–11). In Thoreau we find this same idea richly detailed. Thoreau – a man who worked as Concord’s town surveyor (Chrua, 2012) – writes throughout his journal of ‘perambulating the lines’ (see Journal Volume 3, 17 September 1851). This, like seeing the water on the Cairngorms, was Thoreau’s daily, usually routine, work. But in his essay ‘Walking’, he recalls of seeing a fellow surveyor deep in conversation with his client. Shifting his perspective away from the measurement of the bounds, Thoreau describes a transcendent experience of nature: ‘[The] worldly miser [was] with

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a surveyor looking after his bounds, while heaven had taken place around him, and he did not see the angels going to and fro, but was looking for an old post-hole in the midst of paradise’ (1862/2017: 53). Communion, Presence and Attention A cursory reading of either Thoreau or of Shepherd might suggest that they are proponents of the outdoor life, champions of a highly individualistic life lived close to nature, or even solitary figures, chronicling and advocating for the natural world. On one level, this reading is not entirely wrong. But a closer attention to their texts seems to disrupt any easy understanding of their works solely in these terms. Two problems arise here that unsettle the idea profoundly, captured succinctly in the title of this chapter, of ‘Solitude in Nature’. First, for both Thoreau and for Shepherd, solitude is a richly nuanced concept that – paradoxically – is not understood primarily as a state of solitariness, or of being along (without the company of human others). Second, being ‘in nature’ is not just a matter of physical location (of being at Walden Pond or in the Cairngorms, or anywhere else). How Thoreau and Shepherd understand being alone in nature leads us rather to a somewhat new understanding of solitude, one marked by a kind of communion and presence that comes from an attentiveness to one’s surroundings. While it is clear that neither Thoreau nor Shepherd was alone during their time spent in nature (accompanied as they were by fellow hill climbers, wood and ice cutters, and friends and acquaintances from local villages), they were in solitude in nature. This sounds absurd only if we see solitude primarily as an ‘absence of’ something or someone. However, for Thoreau and Shepherd, solitude is not an experience of solitariness, nor of loneliness; as Thoreau writes: ‘Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between man and his fellows’ (1854/1999: 123). Solitude is better understood in terms of communion; it is concerned with ways of being with (com) the oneness (unus) of nature and of sharing fellowship with it. Of course, there are sacramental overtones here that remind us of the Christian fellowship of the sharing of bread and wine. But the kind of communion with Nature (and here the capitalization is deliberate) is one characterized not by participation with human others in a shared rite, but by communion with Nature itself. As Bradford Torrey writes in his ‘Introduction’ to the 1906 edition of Thoreau’s journals, their pages are full of ‘entries describing hours of serene communion with nature.’ 2 Such communion does not just happen because one is in the natural environment; there is nothing ‘magical’ as such about nature that opens up the possibilities of communion. Communion rather requires of us a deliberate act of attention to what is around us. As Thoreau writes in his journal entry for 2 February 1841: ‘The instant of communion is when, for the least point of time, we cease to oscillate, and coincide in rest by as fine a point as a star pierces the firmament.’ To commune, then, requires the exercise of attention. We see this beautifully illustrated in the richness and detail of the quotidian observations made by both Shepherd and Thoreau. These passages amply illustrate the point; it is through attentiveness to one’s surroundings that we are brought into communion with them: The shadows on snow are of course blue. But where snow is blown into ripples, the shadowed undercut potion can look quite green. A snow sky is often pure green, not only at sunrise or sunset, but all day; and a snow-green sky looks greener in reflection, either in water or from

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windows, than it seems in reality. Against such a sky, a snow-covered hill may look purplish, as though washed in blaeberry. On the other hand, before a fresh snowfall, whole lengths of snowy hill may appear a golden green (Shepherd, 1977/2011: 34). All our Concord waters have two colors at least; one when viewed at a distance, and another, more proper, close at hand. The first depends more on the light, and follows the sky. In clear weather, in summer, they appear blue at a little distance, especially if agitated, and at a great distance all appear alike. In stormy weather they are sometimes of a dark slate color . . . Looking directly down into our waters from a boat, they are seen to be of very different colors. Walden is blue at one time and green at another, even from the same point of view. Lying between the earth and the heavens, it partakes of the color of both. Viewed from a hill-top it reflects the color of the sky; but near at hand it is of a yellowish tint next the shore where you can see the sand, then a light green, which gradually deepens to a uniform dark green in the body of the pond. In some lights, viewed even from a hill-top, it is of a vivid green next the shore. Some have referred this to the reflection of the verdure; but it is equally green there against the railroad sand-bank, and in the spring, before the leaves are expanded, and it may be simply the result of the prevailing blue mixed with the yellow of the sand. Such is the color of its iris (Thoreau, 1854/1999: 159–60). If the works of Thoreau and Shepherd show us that solitude in nature can be understood as a form of communion, they also open up the possibility of recognizing this as a form of bringing things to presence through our encounter with them. Shepherd writes of this in terms of the necessity of being with the hills over a lifetime, of resisting the race to the summit (a habit among walkers that she failed to understand) and instead of letting the mountains reveal things to her – of allowing them come into presence: ‘So I looked slowly across the Coire Loch, and began to understand that haste can do nothing with these hills. I know when I had looked for a long time that I had hardly begun to see’ (1977/2011: 11). On the Possibility of Solitude (in Nature) To read Thoreau and Shepherd as offering a perspective on solitude in nature that sees it in terms of forms of communion that bring things into presence is not to give a normative account. Both writers chose their particular ways of living: for Thoreau, it was a two-year period lived mainly alone, but not far from his neighbours, surveying the neighbourhoods of rural New England; for Shepherd, it was a simple life, much of it spent walking alone, or with friends in her beloved Cairngorms. Both were meticulous in observing and recording the natural world as they encountered it. But neither would advocate that we must do exactly the same. Their solitude in nature is not a model for ours; they are not projects that they would wish for us to replicate. Their individual accounts (narratives) are a form of accounting for themselves to the world, and they are also calls for their readers to give their own accounts. Indeed, Thoreau writes this on the opening page of Walden: ‘I, on my side, require every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men’s lives’ (1854/1999: 5–6). Cavell makes the same point in his reading of Walden. He writes: Of course, alone is where he [Thoreau] wants us. That was his point of origin, and it is to be our point of departure for this experiment, this book of travels, this adventure ‘to explore the

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private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one’s being alone’ (xviii, 2): he attracts us so that we put ourselves on this spot, and then turns us around and so loses us (Cavell, 1981: 50). How, then, are we to find out own solitude in nature; what are our own points of departure for own experiments? Perhaps the difficulty of answering this question is part of the point; we must find them ourselves. But where to find them; what do we mean by ‘nature’? This raises a further question: Thoreau and Shepherd had nature full blown on their doorsteps. But for many of us living in burgeoning cities of millions of inhabitants, where is even green space, let alone nature in the midst of concrete? But perhaps this is not an insurmountable problem as it might seem, yet it starts with another paradox: Can solitude in nature be experienced away from our beloved forests, lakes and areas of outstanding national beauty? Can we experience it in urban locations instead – in the so-called concrete jungles? If solitude is understood as communion with one’s surroundings that fosters a particular kind of engagement and attention that brings the ordinary into presence such that we see things in a new way, then why not? In 2013, Jan Masschelein and his colleague Win Cuyvers took a number of master’s students to Athens. In resisting the perhaps obvious educative potential of taking the students to see iconic locations such as the Parthenon or Acropolis (perhaps this was the equivalent of Shepherd’s dismissing the aim always to reach the summit of the mountain), they simply walked along arbitrary paths, regarding attentively (with its etymological connotations of devoting oneself to something) what they saw (factories, shopping malls, closed hospitals, etc.). Such practices were ‘not primarily about becoming conscious or aware but about becoming attentive’ (Masschelein, 2019: 191). They were ‘practices of attention, investigation and entanglement’ (Masschelein, 2019). Being outdoors afforded the students a different way of encountering and engaging with the world. For Masschelein, this kind of encounter ‘cut[s] through or get[s] rid of intentions (both of the city and of the one who walks) and thus allows attention to emerge’ (2019: 200). Such entanglement with the environment (be it Walden Pond, the Cairngorms, Athens, or anywhere else) opens up the possibilities for solitude. ‘Attention’ writes, Masschelein, ‘is lack of intention . . . [it] entails the suspension of judgement and implies a kind of waiting’ (2019: 48). We see this clearly in Thoreau’s sitting quietly in the woods while all its inhabitants exhibited themselves to him in turn, and in Shepherd’s changing the focus of her eye to catch a glimpse of a different world. It is Thoreau himself, reflecting in an essay on ‘Sound and Silence’, who perhaps best summarizes these possibilities for solitude (not) in nature, and that offers his readers hope for solitude and silence in the ordinariness of our lives: We go about to find Solitude and Silence, as though they dwelt only in distant glens and the depths of the forest, venturing out from these fastnesses at midnight. Silence was, say we, before ever the world was, as if creation had displaced her, and were not her visible framework and foil. It is only favorite dells that she deigns to frequent, and we dream not that she is then imported into them when we wend thither . . . [But] where man is, there is Silence . . . Silence is the communing of a conscious soul with itself. If the soul attend for a moment to its own infinity, then and there is silence. She is audible to all men, at all times, in all places, and if we will we may always hearken to her admonitions.3

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5

Working Solitude The Value of Wilderness Time for Leaders and Would-be Leaders David Weir

Introduction Solitude is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary (OED, 2005) as ‘the state of being or living alone; seclusion; solitariness’, but in this chapter we use a more limited definition as ‘solitude connotes a state of separation without the close company of others for a period away from the diurnal world of human society’, leaving aside any aspects of motive or length of the period. In this chapter we ask whether such a separation may have special value in the development of leaders. Much contemporary teaching in management and business focuses on performance and lays aside reflection as a subsidiary, even an unnecessary, activity. The argument in this chapter is that without solitude it is hard for leadership capabilities to emerge. This chapter reviews the various ways in which ‘leadership’ has been used in business and management education, especially in those specialized institutions that are called business schools. It has developed from studies of actual, historically situated, people who have been noted for their apparent skills in leading others. Attributes of actual people are, therefore, introduced into what is often a de-personalized generalized capability, the performance of which can be taught in business schools – where even the characteristic of ‘authenticity’ has to be reinvented as something that can be transmitted in a classroom. This skill set or set of performances can be helpfully reimagined as comprising both cognitive and spiritual dimensions and thus into metaphors of ‘brain’ and ‘soul’. This leadership may require to be applied in a range of differing contexts and thus situational and intermittent, so that what counts as good performance in one context may not be as beneficial in another. So those who wish to be recognized as leaders must be capable of mastering more than one style. The successful application of the appropriate style to map into varying situations needs

Working Solitude

to be demonstrated by the ‘agility’ needed to counter the requisite variety that swiftly evolving issues present. This variety of leadership generates points of articulation at which situations morph from one state to another, sometimes sharply, and behaviours need to change their intensity and colouring. These liminalities suggest the need for a buffering zone in which individuals review experienced situations and critically consider alternatives without the need for the presence of others. This is what we call solitude. The chapter then illustrates the value of the solitary state by reconsidering one celebrated transition, that of Jesus Christ, as his life course moved from a physical, communal and familial normality towards a necessary re-emergence as a being approaching through death a new order of being in the specific locus of the wilderness. Organizations can also use solitude to develop new skills and potentials in which quiet appreciation takes time to enforce the calm latency that may need to be called upon when the organization faces wicked problems. Just as actors and public speakers can benefit from the Alexander technique in which the body while appearing to the outsider to be immobile is in fact unlearning long-standing practices of distorting the relation of neck, torso and spine and becoming able to set about settling more comfortably into its own skin. The chapter then considers the value of creating opportunities for learning from the experience of a wilderness version of solitude in management and leadership development programmes. Research in neuroscience confirms the ability of mental processes to require a state of being left alone, unmonitored and unnoticed to build latent capability, not merely to recuperate but to try out, to practice, to tempt the whole person into new possibilities, emergent states of possibility in the solitude where time permits appreciation of the immediacy of the present where the whole person is quietly learning how to dance the orange. Leadership in Organizations For President Dwight Eisenhower, leadership is ‘the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it’. The verb ‘do’ is repeated three times, for action is the defining trope of leadership in Western writing (Bruch & Ghoshal, 2004). Current UK prime minister Johnson rallies his faithful with the injunction ‘Get it done!’ Nike exhorts us to ‘Just do it’. Action is here prioritized over reflection, privileging a concentration on short-term results. The massive contemporary literature (Northouse, 2003; Jackson & Parry, 2007) offers no easy answers for students of leadership (Heifetz, 1994). Both the cognitive capabilities of a good manager (mind) and the inspirational virtues of a good leader (soul) are portrayed as needed at the apex of complex organizations (Hickman, 1990), for the manager requires the competences of ability to use the power and logic of the rational mind, to cautiously evaluate the dangers, scrutinize performance and control outcomes. The leader uses the power of intuition and logic of the heart, senses opportunity, focuses on long-term results, creates visions, searches for potential, seeks the intangible, inspires and pursues dreams (Hickman, 1990). Many writers follow Zaleznik (1977, 2001, 2004) in seeing fundamental difference between the roles of ‘manager’ and ‘leader’. This chapter considers the significance of the practice of solitude for those who work in either role at a senior level. 69

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Arguably sheer intelligence as in natural raw brain power or the cognitive abilities measured in intelligence tests as IQ may not always be an essential prerequisite of excellent leadership in action. The most successful British military leader of the twentieth century, Bernard Montgomery, was never thought to be intelligent in that way as he was one of the first to admit (Montgomery, 1961; Weir, 2013). Moreover this example also hints that the terms ‘manager’ and ‘leader’ do not necessarily denote distinct and non-contiguous types of activity for among those who have turned out to be successful as leaders are many who have first excelled at the apparently more pedestrian tasks of management. Adair (2010) distinguishes three interrelated fields of the task, the team and the individual. Weber (1947) identified leaders as traditional, bureaucratic and charismatic corresponding to three types of legitimate authority in organizations: the traditional, the rational-legal and the charismatic. However, charisma accrues from more than possession of certain traits, character virtues or competences or even consistent delivery of results. Hard work may constitute a stronger virtue in leaders than ability (Hu et al., 2020). Etzioni (1964), in a sophisticated version of Weber’s typology, relates types of leaders to the organizational requirements of three types of authority appropriate to utilitarian, normative and coercive organizations. Lewin (1939) distinguished leadership styles in the authoritarian leader who rules autocratically, participative leadership with a democratic style and the delegative leadership of the laissez-faire leader. Likert (1967, 1976) specified four types of leaders: the exploitative-authoritative, the benevolent–autocratic, the consultative and the democratic. Hersey and Blanchard (1969) relate types of leadership to stages of organizational maturity finding that different leadership behaviours bring success when related to the matching stages of organizational growth. In early stages the leader can tell subordinates what to do because they lack the specific skills required for the job in hand, as skills develop, the leader tries to sell the required behaviours because individuals are more able to do the task; later, the leader can call on subordinates to participate in decision-making as they are experienced and able but lack the confidence or the willingness, and finally one can delegate to individuals who are experienced at the task and comfortable with their own ability to do it well. Hersey and Blanchard’s approach realistically notes that leadership must appreciate the variety of differing situations to be met and dealt with, and thus adapt to the variety and difficulty of the problems to be solved and performances/outcomes achieved. This variety in complex systems creates a necessity for a matching complementarity of response mechanisms (Ashby, 1956, 1958). Vroom (1973) identifies leadership as tailoring the appropriate response to the nature of the problem facing the organization and its leader. Hackman (1996) emphasizes the importance of communication; Covey (1992) describes principle-centred leadership, Greenleaf (2002) introduces servant-leadership (van de Bunt-Kokhuis, 2011) and Block, (1991) of political capability. Other leadership models have referenced cultural dimensions including Eastern philosophies (Dreher, 1996), English cricket (Brearley (2001)), Chinese general Sun Tzu (MacNeilly & MacNeilly, 2012), Genghis Khan (Man, 2010) and Star Trek (Wess & Ross, 1995). In MENA (Middle East and North Africa) cultures, the diwan is the locus of an autocratic– consultative type of leadership that seems absent from Western leadership styles (Weir, 2010). Followers are important and leaders who fail to achieve group or organizational goals risk losing the support or endorsement of their followers (Giessner & Knippenberg, 2008): in sport this is noted as ‘losing the dressing-room’. 70

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A widely used distinction in leadership development is that between the transactional leader who can successfully run and operate a complex system and the transformational leader with qualities that enable the organization to change direction (Bass, 1990). An even simpler model is that of ‘runners’ and ‘starters’ identified by Nevil Shute Norway, the bestselling novelist, entrepreneur and aeronautical engineer (Shute, 1954). Leaders need creativity in dealing with ill-defined problems (Mumford & Connelly, 1991; Giessner & Knippenberg, 2008). Leadership may be moderated by concern for sustainability and respect for the interaction of the organization with its environment in the ecosystem (Bennis, 1994). The action-learning approach focuses on how leadership skills may be learned in practice in real-life situations (Pedler et al., 2010). Deresiewicz dissociates his notion of leadership from the conventional discourse of ‘kissing up to the people above you, kicking down to the people below you, pleasing your teachers, pleasing your superiors, picking a powerful mentor and riding his coattails until it’s time to stab him in the back, jumping through hoops’. He generalizes this failure to a wider societal failure of leadership saying ‘for too long we have been training leaders who . . . think about how to get things done, but not whether they’re worth doing in the first place’ (Deresiewicz, 2010). Agility is often recognized as a sign of the good leader, and General George Patton advised leaders never to tell people how to do things: ‘Tell them what to do, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity’ (Rigby et al., 2016: 1). Wicked problems (Churchman, 1967; Rittel & Webber, 1973) are those that have no obvious solution available in the current repertory of the organization. In ‘wicked’ problems the problem is not understood until after the formulation of a solution. Wicked solutions have no stopping rule, and these solutions tend not to be clearly right or wrong, and every wicked problem is essentially unique in some aspect (Conklin, 2006). Emotional intelligence (EI) (Salovey & Meyer, 1990), popularized by Goleman (1996), comprises five elements: self-awareness, self-control, motivation, empathy and social skills of managing relationships and building networks (Goleman et al., 2003). It is claimed that leaders who possess EI are happier (Carmeli, 2003), more satisfied in their job (Hasankhoyi, 2006) and more successful (Busso, 2003). EI centres on the abilities not only to know oneself but also to learn to understand others, listening and looking out for their signals. It does not mean just feeling happy or confident in one’s own abilities (Ovens, 2015), but exemplifies awareness (Gottman, 2011) and understanding the role of emotions in framing and securing decisions (Gottman et al., 1997). The trope of authenticity has entered leadership debates (Gardner et al., 2011). It is claimed that authentic leaders are committed to self-improvement, self-awareness, self-discipline, driven by mission, and being inspirational (Gavin, 2019) and offer leadership that is physical, emotional, digital and spiritual (Jones, 2017), though in the eyes of some not always moral (Sendjaya et al., 2016). The central paradigms in contemporary organization development and executive training are still those of managing in a team setting and of continual attention to the explicit outcomes of ‘productive time’, characterized in terms of measurables that evaluate performances as outcomes of controllable organizational processes. This is what business schools usually teach and contemporary organizations are expected to practise (Jones, 1997). In this model, every activity should be planned to be explicit, communicable, to a great extent standardized, time-bound and controlled according to definite parameters. Each activity should be formalized and, wherever possible, quantified, so 71

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that it may be compared with others and made conformable, then benchmarked according to ‘best practice’ which guarantees consistent outcomes and predictable reward systems. However, the implicit paradox for leaders is that as these efficient systems become ossified, the special role of leaders must focus on how to bring about change; transformation is more highly rated than transaction, ignoring the likelihood that the opportunity to offer transformation may only occur through mastery of transaction. Covey’s Seven Habits (Covey, 1989) are ‘Be Proactive. . . . Begin with the End in Mind. Put First Things First. Think Win/Win. Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood. Synergize’. These are similar rules to those of the quality improvement and Kaizen approaches (Haimes & Schneiter, 1986; Deming, 1982; Imai, 1986). The ‘learning organization’ (Senge, 1990) involves a team-based systems-driven methodology to critique the previous ‘solutions’ from which the perceived ‘problems’ of today have emerged. Senge identifies several aspects of mindsets that disturb and cloud our and weaken our judgement in normal organizational life. Among these are the following beliefs – ‘I am my position,’ ‘the enemy is out there’ – and Senge identifies the consequential damaging misunderstandings as ‘the illusion of taking charge’, ‘the fixation on events’, ‘the parable of the boiling from’, ‘the delusion of learning from experience’ and ‘the myth of the management team’. The dimensions of cognition and emotion are both essential to effective organizational leadership and knowledge of and capacity to use various styles appropriately to the situation, information available and understanding of the competences of followers and clients can be consolidated in performances that display good judgement (Spender, 1989). The massive literature of leadership available for students of organizational and business institutions as taught in business schools worldwide seems to agree only on one understanding; that is that wherever leadership is manifest, it always implicates the work of others. So it is a fair comment to enquire where solitude can fit into this framing if leaders are always and everywhere bound into structures and locked into interaction with their teams and judged by the outcomes of their collective endeavours. Solitude as a Weakness or a Negative Performance Here then, we must escape the organizational framework and find the individual. First it becomes evident that solitude is not on the whole a highly regarded experience in contemporary organizational life, and our tropes of solitude tend to be negative while those who exempt themselves from the busyness of postmodern life are seen negatively as ‘loners’. Maybe it covers a hidden secret (Sarstedt, 1969) perhaps bopping to a different drum (Nesmith, 1965; Ronstadt, 1967) or an inner loneliness (Sedaka, 1972), but it seems that Solitude is a state that offends against social normality. The experience of the solitary during the Covid-19 lockdown is characterized as an inevitable problem leading probably to mental health concerns, rather than as an opportunity for reflection and re-basing proposed action. This trope is that if you are on your own, you are without, you have lost something, you are diminished, something essential to your social being has been lost and it may not be recoverable. If you’re alone, you’re ‘going down’, and maybe it’s your fault, so don’t be alone: be with others; being alone is social failure. Thus Covid-19 restrictions are claimed to produce mental health concerns as a predictable side effect of the solitary state. 72

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One of the most infamous TV advertisements of the early days of TV advertising in the UK was ‘You’re never alone with a Strand’: still quoted in marketing texts as the way not to do it because nobody wants to identify with a lonely man on a damp late night street corner with only a cigarette for solace (Campaign, 2011). This solitary may imply that one has something to hide, a tainted story that should not be revealed, perhaps a source of shame. Why is that person alone? What have they done wrong? Why do they deserve the punishment of isolation? The Value of Solitude If those who choose or seek the benefits of the solitary state are to be more positively represented, we can seek exemplars. Scott Walker was an iconic representative of a strain in 1960s pop music, a lone dark figure with a deep sonorous bass voice complaining that ‘the sun ain’t gonna shine any more’ and Scott Engel (his real name) admitted that ‘Solitude is like a drug for me: I crave it’ (Engel). Emily Dickinson wrote more gnomically of ‘a soul admitted to itself’ (Dickinson, 1976), implying a critique of the self that exists in society but has never yet admitted its true nature, suggesting that each individual really is all alone and that the understanding of the implications and the inwardness of this understanding that a ‘finite infinity’ may only be attained in a state of solitude. In Walden, Thoreau understood this reflexivity as ‘a certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another . . . conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me’ (Thoreau, 1854: 93). This reflexivity implies a more positive aspect of solitude and Kerouac writes, ‘No man should go through life without once experiencing healthy, even bored solitude in the wilderness, finding himself depending solely on himself and thereby learning his true and hidden strength’ (Kerouac, 1960). Churchill saw value in this emergent strength claiming that ‘solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong: and a boy deprived of a father’s care often develops, if he escape the perils of youth, an independence and a vigour of thought which may restore in after life the heavy loss of early days’ (Churchill, 1899). Solitude may be seen as a chance to confront who you (really) are (Crane, 2017) and perhaps as the foundational state of being human (Merton, 1975). Weil claimed that ‘to wish to escape from solitude would be cowardice’ (Weil, 2002: 121). Storr’s Solitude quotes from Gibbon’s claim that ‘conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius’ (Storr, 1988: ix). The value of solitude is increasingly recognized in leadership and management training, and there are opportunities in current programmes for taking time out, escaping from the organizational setting to explore self and others in horse riding, trail finding, experiencing the wilderness as an opportunity to re-establish contact with a lost ‘real self’ and subsequently benefit from this new knowledge in later encounters in the ‘real world’. But these are still action-based encounters, taking place in a strange wilderness environment, though ‘wilderness’ itself is by no means a transparent concept, even for wilderness park management (Hollenhorst & Jones, 2001). There is now a whole industry, much of it excellent and useful of one-on-one leadership coaching. One development programme aimed at aspirant leaders offers these benefits of being on one’s own: to see the World as an Introvert. Know the 13 Rules for Being Alone And Being Happy About It. Understand you’re good enough all by yourself. Value others’ opinions, but value your 73

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own more. Learn to be an observer. Close your eyes in a dark room and appreciate the silence. Learn how to talk to yourself. Cherish every interaction. (Riskology, 2020) These proposed benefits are not limited to executive training: it is claimed in a study of schoolchildren that ‘the benefits of solitude . . . include enhanced creativity, meta-cognition, mindfulness, and student success . . . solitude is an important facet of a child’s development and success in school’ (Chan, 2006). Where may the benefits of this solitude be found in our complex, strongly interconnected contemporary societies? If not available inside the rat race then it might require somehow leaving the habitus of community bonds and going somewhere else. What kind of place might that be? For a classic example let us return to a classic example, that of the biblical Jesus and his time in the ‘wilderness’. In the Wilderness The trope of ‘solitary’ is often presented in the context of ‘the wilderness’. In popular reportage, it sometimes refers to a sportsperson who has been in the side, then falls out of favour and is then recalled after they have ‘served their time’. Sometimes it is used of politicians who fall out of favour, for instance of Churchill in the 1930s, out of power, office or influence. Nonetheless in what his biographers call his ‘wilderness years’, Churchill relaxed, learned to paint rather well and enjoyed the Côte d’Azur, not obviously a depressing place. ‘Wilderness’ is a trope occurring 300 times in the Bible, which relates that after Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, he then fasted for forty days and nights in the Judaean desert, the region described in the sacred texts as ‘the wilderness’. This term then connotes an important place in the JudaeoChristian Weltanschauung. It appears Jesus went there by choice, and his ancestor David had also spent time in the wilderness, so Jesus was fulfilling a prophecy and following an understood practice. During this time, it is written that Satan appeared to Jesus and tried to tempt him. Jesus having refused each temptation, Satan then departed and Jesus returned to Galilee to begin his ministry. Jesus went into the wilderness for forty days and was tempted there. It is no part of this chapter’s argument to enter areas of controversy on subjects about which one is ignorant but I have been to Qumran and seen what is claimed to have been a holy place of the Essenes. It is a wild old place on a cliff above the Dead Sea, a few miles from the River Jordan: the surrounding apparent wasteland is hot and dry most of the time. There is solid testimony about the Essenes in Josephus (Mason, 2008) and Pliny the Elder (Vermes, 1979). They were a part of the Jewish community who held strong beliefs centring around ritual purification, and withdrawal away from organized society into the desert; they advocated taking vows of virtual poverty and living lives of piety and celibacy (Mason, 2008). Essene lives were characterized by the absence of personal property and money, a belief in communality, cleanliness and strict observance of the holy day of Sabbath. The wilderness experience in Essene philosophy centres around a need to simplify one’s life, to remove the tedious and harmful, wasteful accretions of society behind when one re-emerges, purged and cleansed, ready to focus on the future job in hand. The etymology of ‘temptation’, the Greek word peirazo, does not originally imply the allurement of all the cities in the world but comes from similar roots as verbs meaning to try out 74

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or to practice for future us. The noun πειρασμός is an almost exclusively biblical word, meaning trial or test, but also temptation (to evil). In classical Greek (as certified by Liddell and Scott) the verb πειράζω is used, first in the sense of ‘to attempt’, ‘ to practice’ and then in the meaning of ‘to try, to test’, sometimes ‘to change’. This wilderness is a place where one can learn new ways and groove better methods. Jesus in the wilderness prepared for the ‘ultimate test’. In listening to the wilderness and becoming available for its small sounds, he trained, interrogated himself, his motives and his capabilities. He thus became stronger through constant self-criticism derived from self-interrogation leading to a clarification of purpose and an intensive attention to becoming more able to cope. He needed to be by himself to be able to do this. The result was a re-creation and intensification of his physical, mental and spiritual strength. This aspect of the values of solitude speaks to the formation of the capacities of leadership. In the following section we essay some of the benefits of the wilderness experience that may become available after the return to society. Solitude as an Opportunity to Create Latent Capability Long identifies three types of solitude, inner directed, characterised by self discovery and inner peace, outer-directed characterised by intimacy and spirituality and the negativity of loneliness Weil (1997). London: Routledge. In complex behavioural systems the power of ‘latency’ can be created and maintained in the uniqueness of solitude. This experience of leaving the regular external disciplines of ordinary society behind frees the self from learned obligation so as to become available for another kind of learning that depends on internal drivers and relies on renewed and relearned personal strengths of character and reflexive understanding. This becomes a dormant strength, built up in body and mind to be ready, latent for the test that comes after the wilderness. This learning requires solitude where one may reflect on belief and behaviour and learn new ways and try to groove better methods. Thoreau’s friend and landlord, Emerson, wanted to protect would-be leaders from too much exposure to the contamination of the ideas of others, writing, ‘he who should inspire and lead his race must be defended from travelling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions’ (Emerson, 1872: 397). So Deresiewicz explains that vision by itself is not enough: the leader has to be a thinker because it is only by thinking that solutions are arrived at. This brings us back to Thoreau and the nature of his ‘deliberation’, based on focussing, concentrating, playing with alternatives, reading and re-reading. Solitude is an opportunity for close reading, introspection, the concentration of focused work. Much current interest in the literature seems to centre on recuperative solitude where what has been lost may be regained, rather than on investment solitude where the object is the creation of added value not easily obtainable in other ways. In investment decisions improvement emerges from rigorous consideration and evaluation of alternatives. School teachers who use solitude in classroom experience note ‘greater connection to their inner self, which heightens their ability to become more self-aware, and also lead students to become more contemplative, reflective, and critical in their thinking’ (Chan, 2016: 61). This requires ‘the open mind, open heart and open will’ (Scharmer & Kaufer, 2013), where deep listening enables access to an inner world of sensations, feeling and impression (Scharmer, 75

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2007), of potentials (Bohm, 1980, 1996), in a way not accessed from ‘the rational mind’ required by Scharmer and Kaufer as they invite would-be leaders to learn from the future (Rant, 2018), a world of in-formation (László, 2004). This kind of practice is best done on one’s own in a safe environment. Supporting evidence for the need for solitude to improve evaluation of alternatives comes from research in neuroscience, where ‘you make meaning of what’s going on and connect it to self and identity and integrate knowledge together into coherent narratives  – these kinds of processes only happen when you’re not focused on some in-the-moment activity, depriving the brain of free time stifles its ability to complete this unconscious work’ (Heid, 2018). In these deeper reflective states the brain becomes freed from the constant stimulation of relentless activity. The brain is plastic and changes through learning. In latent periods both positive additions to brain structure and displacement or release of unused synapses can occur through a process of pruning where some neural connections are reinforced and some decay (NRC, 2000). These additions and prunings occur most comfortably in the solitude of latent periods where less overt brain performance is occurring. These structural changes alter the functional organization of the brain, as learning organizes and reorganizes the living connections. Neural development is a biologically driven evolving and unfolding process. Quiet time and space for solitude is a necessary foundation of restructuring without which the brain does not become fully experienced. Latent learning has been a recognized term of art in psychological theory (Skinner, 1950; Tolman, 1948) as ‘a form of learning that occurs without any obvious reinforcement of the behavior or associations that are learned’ (Cole, 1953). Techniques of mindfulness do not reflect purely cognitive work but involve the whole body, not just the rational cognition routines. A relevant illustration comes from the Alexander technique (2021) which stresses the need to unlearn bad postural habits that ultimately cripple the whole person into abnormal functionality. Actors need to be free to create the personal space to inhabit new roles. The learning becomes patterned into revised ways of normal experience. This kind of whole-body learning does not have to be recognized or performed immediately but can remain latent until there is a need or opportunity to demonstrate it (Lieberman, 1990). Concluding Thoughts Current thinking about management and leadership prioritizes action, but before doing anything it is always wise to think about the action contemplated and after action it is important to reflect, review and think about the reality of what has happened. ‘Satan’ encountered by Jesus in the wilderness and reported in the Bible emerged from his inner introspection and critique. Thoreau communed continuously with himself, noting, ‘I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude’ (Thoreau, 1854: 93), participating in ‘the indescribable innocence and beneficence of Nature’ (Thoreau, 1854: 95) where ‘a man thinking or working is always alone let him be where he will’ (Thoreau, 1854: 93). Nature is the ‘other’ in his solitude from whom would come the opportunity for his learning. Solitude is processual and emergent, as Bachelard notes: ‘It is better to live in a state of impermanence than in one of finality’ (Bachelard, 1994: 61). Solitude is in many respects a cultural state and being in another culture entails respect for that culture and also for oneself. In the ‘symmetric’ epistemology of Latour (Latour, 1993), ‘knowing 76

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is no longer a way of representing the unknown but of interacting with it, i.e. a way of creating rather than contemplating, reflecting, or communicating’ (Chandler & Reid, 2020: 9). The ability to profit from solitude depends, therefore, on listening skills, but not with the rational, cognitive ear alone. In my case, I sometimes find refuge in a more or less conscious dissociation from the brain-numbing torture of the unnecessary meeting by slipping out of the tepid water of forced assembly into the clearer streams of creative separation. My release is in poetry, but everyone has their own thing. In this state I do not write poems but poems come to me taking advantage of my state of latent availability. A wilderness experience creates the opportunity to recapitulate, reframe and re-comprehend the action from a different perspective, the product of reflexive thought occurring in willed solitude. In these experiences rational economistic cognition melds with other modes of thought, reflective, aesthetic, non verbal and sometimes passionate or engaged. Cogito ergo sum is a misapprehension of the lived experience of critical and engaged reflection. Sum. Warts and all. Get used to it. You are much better than the alternative. Thinking about it is optional. One does not have to be in a physical wilderness to actually be in a spiritual one. Inhabiting that wilderness creates an opportunity to reach into something that would otherwise be neglected and to become latently available for other experiences and alternative mindsets. In positively turning off the learned involvement in unnecessary social clutter, one’s unconscious self relaxes and permits other types of learning to occur and potential, latency, to re-form. Reflection is indeed the starting point for many consultancy programmes and one such proposes that ‘managers may too easily allow “doing” to drive out “thinking” and “thinking” might miss out on the clues provided by feelings and intuition. By bringing conscious awareness into the moment, the result will be more informed, effective action for the future’ (Coaching Ourselves, 2020). This recuperative solitude is where what has been lost may be regained, rather than on the creation of added value where productive solitude provides the opportunity to create new resource. Latency is the outcome of investment solitude. Leaders need to develop the strength that can only be derived from the experience of being alone and of what can be learned from that. This is a strength of the Mind in the Body that can be built and be ready, latent, competent for the Test that will inevitably succeed the Wilderness. The ineffable Drucker noted that ‘to manage others one has to manage oneself’ (Drucker, 1999), and in solitude aspirant leaders learn to ‘Lead Yourself First’ (Kethledge & Erwin, 2017) by considering one’s own fallibility: on your own for it is provocative and threatening to self and others when done publicly. Senior executives sometimes need to be alone, in their own space, to be cool in their own skin, consider alternatives and be silent to allow them to listen to the voice of the tempter and engage internally with that voice. In apparently doing nothing their system is building resilience. Solitude is the place to think carefully about those for whom the leader is responsible, what their call to us is, reflecting on and reworking how we have responded to them and what we have made of their evidences to us. This new way of working is installed into whole-body experience. Indeed it is sometimes inappropriately described as ‘instinctive’ whereas it more legitimately indicates that what seems to be instinctual is in fact a learned set of responses. It takes time to sink in because surmising even partially how one must look to others is discomfiting, so learning to hear one’s own new voice in solitude protects both oneself and others. We need solitude so that we can do the phenomenological work that Taylor advises: ‘Phenomenology is not a program of description in 77

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the sense that going on will reveal more; it’s a form of argument in which you replace bad views with better views’ (Beaulieu, 2009). This work is reflexive in reviewing the experience of self and in provisionally engaging in seeking understanding of others, and of the Other more generally. But this reflexivity can also be considered and if necessary challenged here (Lynch, 2000). Resilience itself and its complex origins can be sought and critiqued (Chandler & Reid, 2020). This evaluative process requires time and Levinas cautions that the processes of introspection may never be completed because the unravelling of the lineaments of the other are always incomplete (Wyschogrod, 1995), but nonetheless contribute to a deeper understanding, transcending the small, localized intense presence of self (Macmurray, 1961, 1991). Solitude may occur as a sudden opportunity for taking a step not necessarily forward but aside, with no objective nor preferred outcome, no win, no lose, guided only by what Holocaust survivors have identified as the ‘will to experience life itself ’ (Patti, 2015), to ‘dance the orange’ in Rilke’s magical terms (Rilke, 1922). Solitude thus comprises an enabling space for realizing other narratives of events, reconstituted through meditation, for, as Murdoch noted, a ‘narrative of events may, once under way, offer few opportunities for meditation’ (Murdoch, 1961: 1). A typical solitude sequence involves, first, resting, withdrawing from the world of action, dissociating, permitting a decoupling from the present state, introspection, reviewing previous efforts, replaying the close reading of a situation and one’s role in it, interrogating, reiterating the peirazo (temptation) of self, motive and alternatives, and, over time, the recognition of opportunity for a restructuration. When in an earlier time I was for a period an arbitrator in industrial price negotiations, I have been faced with a difficult, contentious situation that seems to have no good outcome, I have asked the protagonists to do this, to ‘go away, think about this, consider what you think is going to happen anyway, take your time, think about it a lot, then come and tell me what if anything you want me to do’, quite often the agreed solution has appeared apparently almost out of nowhere, by doing nothing, taking no action, making no decision. An older colleague who had spent much of his career as a colonial civil servant in other places among other cultures used to praise the virtues of what he called ‘the natural effluxion of time’. At that time I thought that perhaps he was simply trying to evade the necessity of decision. But now I am as old as he was then I reflect that his stance maybe had more in common with that aspect of the Hippocratic Oath which enjoins that whatever the medical necessity any intervention should not at any rate make the patient more sick. In solitude, with only the presence of the natural world, anxiety usually diminishes and calmness becomes the default state; this avoids the tensions caused by worrying about the inaccessible world of action and its apparently irresoluble dilemmas that will bring ‘the priest and the doctor in their long coats running over the fields’ (Larkin, 1964). Solitude takes time but it can be a very good use of leadership time. Rushing in to inject urgent action into a mis-analysed situation before thinking about what one is doing can turn vulnerability into catastrophe. Leaders are not born agile but they may be made so by experience and training and as much by developing EI as by superior cognitive abilities (Goleman, 2003), for the role of a leader comes into prominence when wicked problems have to be faced. Those who must work as leaders with others in a busy world require complete absence from diurnal stimuli in order to consider what it 78

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is they can authentically offer the situation and those for whom they are responsible. They need to walk in the skin of other life forms to appreciate the opportunities available to them as leaders and as members of the human and natural communities. They can also learn from that glorious failure Don Quixote who ‘reminds us that if we trust only when trust is warranted, love only when love is returned, learn only when learning is valuable, we abandon an essential feature of our humanness’ (March & Augier, 2004). In conclusion, we argue that organizations should add into their repertory of leadership development, opportunities for solitude, whether in the form of sabbaticals, wilderness time or simply in free space to enable the reviewing, rehearsing and consolidating the capabilities that are best formed in solitary experience. These need not be expensive or far-reaching in terms of external voyaging and new sensations, for, as Perry reminds us, ‘restriction is a gift to the creative’ (Perry, 2020). But if there comes a call in an emergency or when the organization is facing wicked problems encountered under unexpected circumstances demanding new calls on inner strength, it is necessary for there to be inner resources to be called upon. As leaders we need to make decisions with confidence because if both our cognitive and affective sense agree that if it feels right, it may well be right. Leaders learn to trust their feelings, their whole-body intuition that is not innate but has been learned and consolidated in solitary experience. If Damasio is right, emotions fire before cognitions and maybe this new learning reinstates Skinner’s behaviourism somewhat because it seems not simply reactive because stimuli initially drive the affective response sequence. When we say after we have heard, considered and tried in the sense of the temptation of peirazo of a something, maybe a sidestep, a step over, a neat mental move or even not saying anything at all this time, that this has ‘become second nature’ we are reporting correctly on solitary learning. In confronting the gate of the Abbey of Theleme that enjoins Fay ce que vouldras (‘do what you want’), Rabelais claims that it is right for the good leader to do what he or she thinks best ‘because the good person will do the right thing’. This lesson is best learned in solitude. For reflection is needed to understand that leadership is not an action thing: it is a being thing. After long training, experience and critical reflection, good leadership becomes a habit of honest people. This sense of rightness and wrongness needs solitude to create, learn and own. Emerson wrote, ‘what lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.’ This needs to be sought in solitude.

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The Politics of Solitude Henrieta Șerban and Aleksander Cywiński

Introduction To what extent is solitude important in political theory? Machiavelli’s Prince (Machiavelli, 1975) is a representative of solitude at the top, a political model of solitude from and suspicion towards ‘the people’, and of separation between the leader and the people. However, this contrasts with ‘historical being’ proposed by the Romanian philosopher Blaga, which, like Arendt’s concept of vita activa (with liberal, republican and democratic meanings), does not leave much room for solitude in the public sphere and political action. The centrality of respect for democracy (Honneth) and that of communication, rationality and pragmatism for democracy (Habermas) are similarly related to togetherness in democracy, minimalizing, in our view, the place and role of solitude in political reality. Yet solitude has at least two important contributions to make to political theory. One concerns the relationship of the individual to the larger political unity, such as the isolated leader opposing the people as described by Machiavelli, or the isolated individuals brought together in the state as described by Hobbes. The second contributes to descriptions at the macro-political level of solitude and togetherness of large-scale political units themselves, such as the ‘active’ current policy of North Korea, which aims at isolating the state. A ‘passive’ macro-political solitude model involves a state being isolated by other states, such as the UN policy towards South Africa during the apartheid era. This chapter brings together the political solitude of individuals and that of states, that is the micro-, meso- and macro-political issues of solitude. The Politics of Solitude and Fear The investigation of solitude in a political key starts from the sociopolitical meanings of selfdecided solitude, on the one hand, and loneliness and marginalizing estrangement, on the other hand. These are the two defining extremes for the scope, the structures, the functions and the current values of the quality of togetherness, in various political contexts and perspectives (Șerban, 2020). Solitude can be a state of choice, while loneliness is negative, originating in misunderstanding, discontent, failure, rejection and/or sufferance (Șerban, 2020). Solitude can

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strengthen the sense of self, worth and belonging, through personal introspection, meditation and imagination restoration, and through the constitution of hope and projects. Thus, solitude can generate stamina and contentment for sociopolitical individuals and their contributions to the creativity, projects and actions of common political relevance. Hobbes interprets the solitude of a person in the state of nature as the greatest of all evils, as ‘solitary, poor, nasty brutish and short’ (Hobbes, 1965: 97). Solitary comes first, as if it is the first worst thing Hobbes can think of when he explains to the others why the state of nature is not something to maintain. Even though ‘solitary’ is merely one term among others, referring to the worst things people have to face in nature without the benefits brought about by society and government (by commonwealth) it is still an obstacle to any kind of well-being. It is not accidental that he chooses to call the sociopolitical organization a ‘commonwealth’, even though it is also a ‘Leviathan’. The commonwealth is a rather fortunate state of ordered, predictable and regulated communion: something to seek for in all human assemblies. Commonwealth, as a common state of fairly well-being for the people sharing a common territory, is something that we absolutely cannot find in a state of nature where terror and worries are the only things one could expect. Indeed, a Hobbesian commonwealth is also a Leviathan, but not as much because it is a monstrous contraption with many faces and one body, as because it is powerful, both efficient and long-lasting, despite its artificiality, with full capacity to bring order and civilizing law where there was wilderness. Therefore, solitude should be feared as an openended situation that can only bring harm to the weak and terrified human being; and solitude should be resolved by a human communion under law, contract and authority. In De cive we find That it is true indeed, that to Man, by nature, or as Man, that is, as soone as he is born, Solitude is an enemy [our emphasis]; for Infants have need of others to help them to live, and those of riper years to help them to live well, wherefore I deny not that men (even nature compelling) desire to come together. (Hobbes, 1949: 21) The solitude in the state of nature is, in fact, for Hobbes, estrangement. The state of nature itself is for Hobbes a state of war, impossible communion and estrangement which brings about ‘slaughter, solitude and the want of all things’. Leviathan brings to the people peace, common law and civilization, allowing people to be people. For Hobbes, the founder of modern political philosophy, solitude is estrangement, especially since people are bad from nature (although the nuance here is that, logically, in the state of nature, people are just wild things in a wilderness: what else could they be?). For the founder of modern political science, Machiavelli, a certain political distancing is power; people are undetermined by nature, but capable of adapting to political situations. Political situations may be as challenging as nature is many times. Machiavelli, on the contrary, suggests that from nature man is neither definitively good, nor entirely bad, and, in fact, these characterizations are rather inadequate in relation to nature; they could be evoked only in relation to man as social being, id est with political man. They concern the public aspect and not the private one of the human being. There is not a natural inclination toward good or toward the evil; greed, fear, cowardice etc. are but answers to social (political) situations. All the political art of the prince is summed up in the understanding 81

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of this fact and in the manoeuvring of the political situations in agreement with this truth. (Goian, 2017: 28) Machiavelli, like Hobbes, identifies the presence and importance of fear in society, and for Machiavelli, only power and the self-protective insulation of the powerful person can be the answer. There is no privileged position in society, the leader is a particularly lonesome character, a genuine target of envy and evil from all sides. Machiavelli’s Prince is a representative of solitude at the top, a political model of solitude and suspicion towards ‘the people’. The Prince is also a model of a daring separation between the leader and the people: a tragic example of ‘fear management’, placing the fearful security of the position of the ruler at the core of politics. In this interpretation of Machiavelli, solitude and its permanent anxious aura of loneliness are characteristic for the Prince (and any leader). The exercise of power is, for the main part, the preservation of power, which means projecting intensely the very fear of the crowds that the leader needs to govern and maintain in awe. Political Solitude and Marginalization Solitude signals power, or is an index of power: a luxury. The powerful and the affluent of this world set up physical and symbolic distances against the other, which sometimes secure the desired solitude and other times establish loneliness at the top. As the Machiavellian prince, the rich and powerful may just choose to be feared and avoided, not loved, for safety reasons. On the other hand, loneliness is the hallmark of alienation and marginalization, signalling the situation in the outskirts of community (Șerban, 2020; Manolache & Șerban, 2010). People experience solitude and loneliness. Both solitude and loneliness are influenced by the echoes of relationships sustaining the subjective experiences that form one’s life. In Mapping marginality (Manolache & Șerban, 2010) we approach the fluid and changing multiple aspects of the marginal reality. There is also a fluid metaphorical capital of marginality with ethical implications for the quality of sociality, for the scope and the relation of majorities to the secondary – the others, such as the ‘second sex’, the radically different of all genders, the humiliated, the stigmatized, the disempowered, the misfits, the hoarders, the agoraphobic, the various wanderers, the flâneurs, the ‘ghosts’ of our worlds. The many faces of marginality generate the faces of loneliness. There is a complex unforeseeable interplay between success and marginality, especially in open and democratic capitalist societies. Marginality is an exile within society but also – potentially – a fountain of creative and changing civilizational resources (Șerban, 2020). However, one may notice immediately, there are no guarantees: this is for the most part the Romantic vision of marginality and, for the other part, the democratic dream of inclusiveness, ‘the American dream’. But it is rare: there is nothing truly Romantic about poverty, famine, inequality and the disempowerment and helplessness that come along with these subjective experiences. The marginality and estrangement generated by illness, old age, famine, poverty, disrespect and disempowerment are the Hobbesian shortcomings of the contemporary European (Western and worldwide) Leviathan. Marginality is, at its best, a potential for affirmation, a refreshing factor in civil society, in culture, in ethics, and a means of achieving a wider, surprising, more inclusive and resourceful vision of community. Technological advances may contribute to greater knowledge, or to a greater insulation of people at the top. Contemporary ‘Princes’ might have decided already that they enjoy and need to protect their 82

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endearing ‘loneliness’ at the top, but may be challenged by marginal hackers of either terrorist or ‘Robin Hood’ type (Șerban, 2020). As lonely and fearful one may get at the top, there is more fear and loneliness at the other extreme of an orderly society. The solitary position of the fearful and feared prince contrasts with Blaga’s philosophy of the individual facing existence as creator of history (Blaga, 1983). It is a vision of the human being taking a creative, active and knowledge-oriented stand in front of the all-encompassing mystery of existence. Human historicism pulls people out of their solitudes and into action. This way, every human being is ‘at the top’ of the world by their awareness, understanding, vision and actions. Every individual contributes with a historical vision, plan and/or responsibility that they may or may not fully acknowledge. For Blaga, the human being is destined to acquire knowledge and confront the tremendous all-encompassing force of mystery, through thought and philosophy, inspiration and creativity (Blaga, 1983; Botez et al., 2017). We can best understand human solitude if we recognize that true meaning is personal. Personal experience enriches solitude, the solitude in which each human being recognizes that they bear a specific responsibility. Each person is alone in the face of the mysteries of life and death, and the mysteries of eternity and transcendence and the paradoxical understanding of human destiny as ‘an irreversibility of our daily death’ (Cioran, 1933: 243). ‘[T]he great intuitions take place in solitude and darkness’ (Cioran, 1933: 163), in introspection, and Cioran continues to note that loneliness is the opposite of sociability, which brings us in meditation closer to the bitter truth of loneliness, as a sentence to misery (Cioran, 1933). Being alone is as if one is situated on a mountain top (Cioran, 1933: 243), while being lonely is as if one is situated on the edge Meditation on solitude cannot fall far from the meditation on the human condition. Hannah Arendt’s concept of vita activa interprets the human condition within liberal, republican or democratic meanings, and does not leave much room for solitude in the public sphere and political action. In Arendt’s view, ‘No human life, not even the life of the hermit [our emphasis] in nature’s wilderness, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings’ (Arendt, 1958: 22). Work, science, art and even entertainment (albeit produced alone) have something that is owed to the others and implications for the others. Thinking itself is both a solitary and a conversational process, in the dialogue between ‘me and myself’ (erne emauto) in which Plato apparently saw the essence of thought. To be in solitude means to be with one’s self, and thinking, therefore, though it may be the most solitary of all activities, is never altogether without a partner and without company. (Arendt, 1958: 76) In a sense, a person is never alone and solitude is relationship-laden. Yet contemporary societies, even the democratic ones, provide many examples of loneliness by marginalization, generated mainly by disrespect, leading to alienation. Honneth interprets democracy as the best chance against alienating individualism, against deficient cooperation and disrespect, following the pragmatist philosopher Dewey, in his conception of democracy as a form of reflexive cooperation, which cultivates a form of ethical individualism which sustains the life of community. Democracy is therefore the only alternative to a lonely political system. According to Honneth, this is an individualism of ‘freedom, responsibility and initiative, oriented toward an ethical ideal, not one of crime’ (Honneth, 2007: 224). Such democratic individualism allows social cooperation as an ethical reply of one individual for the other, thus avoiding the over-ethicized republicanism and 83

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the barren, solely procedural regime. The diversity of individualism is like a correspondence of the work division at the level of justice, at the level of organization, at the level of culture at the level of ethics and so on, bringing a lively breath into the ethical and sociopolitical democratic exchanges (Honneth, 2007: 235). As a consequence of this ethical division, in Honneth’s view, we have in democracy a different but ‘symmetrical’ respect for the other individuals based on recognized value in other individuals and on a ‘pattern of recognition represented by respect and mutual validation’ (Honneth, 2007: 238). Cooperation is based on mutual respect, which is always the most efficient measure against alienation, marginalization and loneliness. On this path a post-traditional society is established by the opening of a ‘horizon where the individual competition for social respect is freed from the traditional shadow of grief and it is undisrupted by the experiences of disrespect’ (Honneth, 2007: 261). Cooperation is a golden road towards solidarity and the opposite of loneliness, marginalization and estrangement. The universal pragmatics designed by Habermas and often criticized for being ideal represents an indication of the possibility that a softer understanding of universality as something meaningful for the many and something worth endeavouring to approximate may pull towards togetherness most of the people, out of their loneliness and estrangement. Concentrating on discourse and interaction, ignoring both the right to intimacy and the dire realities of marginalization it is decisively the contribution of Habermas to emphasize that democracy without a vivid and interactive public sphere loses all meaning. The (capitalist) state should better relate to new forms of contestation and new social movements. It is the merit of Habermas that now we are thinking about democracy as ‘substantive democracy’, a direct result from the ‘participation of citizens in the formation of the political will’. Discourse and reflexive discursive interaction influence the manner we relate to the public sphere and democratic institutions, too (Habermas, 1975: 32). Nowadays, we cultivate discursive rationality ensuring the continuation of cooperation, sociality and solidarity despite the crises facing people during the current times. Eventually, reflexive discursive interaction leads citizens to the clarification and acceptance of law (Habermas, 1996: 110) and, in our understanding, it is law which keeps people further together within a horizon of universality. Solitude maintains a substantive personal sphere, but it is merely a relative opposite of sociality rather than a source of (or form of) marginalization. Solitude may be empowering, while loneliness, marginalization and estrangement are alienating and disempowering. The social distancing imposed by the Covid-19 pandemics does not make things easier or better; however, it may lead to new rituals of togetherness and to some renewed appreciation of the others. Within the offline actual sociopolitical realm, solitude is the sociopolitical luxury and not just a meditative prerequisite. Sociopolitical solitude is enjoyed and vindicated by the free and active individual claiming a right to privacy and intimacy. The sophistication required by social distancing, especially while working and living with the family within the same enclosed spaces, might just be too much to bear all of the sudden. The former distinctions – private and public, work and spare time – collapse. Mostly, our daily lives are relocated online, and gain a chaotic quality. Online avenues are closing in on the individual almost aggressively, and it remains to be decided if these may bring genuine relief in a difficult situation. Phone calls gain frequency and meaning, and video calls claim a larger part of people’s lives. Would all this chaos imported into the social distancing solitude prove to be chaordic,1 generating a new order of things? Interpretation and discursiveness infuse the re-signified sociality and the re-signified solitudes. For the time being, during the confusion and strain of the 84

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times of pandemic, marginality and estrangement are accentuated. The pandemic is truly a world changing game. Many relations might be tested beyond repair. Anxiety, alienation and suicide may well increase. The Macro-politics of Solitude A macro-political approach explores solitude and togetherness of large-scale political units. This approach, that is combining solitude with the idea of a nation-state, is an alternative approach to contrasting the structural (represented by the state) and agency (represented by the individual person). It ‘is possible to argue that not only individuals but also collective entities can be said to “act” and therefore to exercise creative agency in shaping social life’ (Giddens & Sutton, 2014: 54). The state as the subject of activities is present in several acts of international law, such as the United Nations Article 3: ‘The original Members of the United Nations shall be the states.’ State parties are members of the international society according to the concept of Bull (2002). Each state is one of the ‘independent political communities each of which possesses a government and asserts sovereignty in relation to a particular portion of the earth’s surface and a particular segment of the human population’ (Bull, 2002: 8). Lamb and Robertson-Snape describe the state as ‘the main unit of political and social organization in the contemporary world’ (2017: 282), and states are described as the optimal form of organizing the redistribution of goods in the current capitalist economic model (Wallerstein, 2000). In this approach the politics of solitude occurs in two model types: an active and a passive model. An active model is based on the state isolating itself. Examples of such process are the construction of the Great Wall of China, US international policy in the nineteenth century, Brexit, the policy of Albania during the communist era, the current policy of North Korea, Bhutan’s policy of restricting entry to the country and the various policies of closing borders because of an epidemiological threat. Nowadays, although isolation cannot be complete, nevertheless, there can still be significant consequences. The geographical position of a state (as in the case of Bhutan) may influence the isolation process. It can also be said that islands have a predisposition to isolation (Pitcairn, New Zealand, has financial restrictions for those who want to settle, Great Britain in the context of Brexit). Neutral countries (e.g. Switzerland) also pursue an active politics of solitude – skilfully balancing on the international arena so as not to get involved, in particular militarily or politically. The passive model of political solitude involves the state being isolated by others. Examples include the past, the blockade of Great Britain imposed by Napoleon, the UN policy towards apartheid South Africa, the political isolation of Taiwan, inconsistent international community policy towards Iran and the current policy towards North Korea. The macro-politics of solitude can be defined as activities performed by states, aimed at isolating themselves or other states from the international community (i.e. with respect to other states or international organizations), and thus creating a distance. Due to the fact that this solitude influences the functioning of individuals (psychological aspect) and communities (sociological aspect), it is not only an issue belonging to political science. Macro-political solitude can also affect education, as closure may affect opportunities to learn and the content of such learning. In deciding on the usefulness of ‘solitude’ in the context of politics, it is necessary to define relationships with other concepts such as isolationism and separatism, and thus demonstrate the 85

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legitimacy of using the term ‘solitude’. ‘Isolationism’ is a political science term that describes the state of separation that seeks to be strictly separated from the rest of the world, while maintaining power (Scruton, 2007: 350; Piano & Olton, 1988: 390–1). The background of isolationism lies in a lack of fear of invasion, a conviction of the uselessness of alliances aimed at defending borders, economic self-sufficiency, strong power (authoritarian or decisive majority) urging in this direction and, finally, favourable geographical conditions (Griffiths et al., 2007: 177). ‘Separatism’ means a kind of radicalism in the pursuit of secession of part of the territory from the state, not the state as a whole from the international community (Scruton, 2007: 628). Separatism is sometimes a result of ethnic tensions that occur in the state (Hale, 2015). I suggest using the term ‘solitude’ as the one whose proposed range of meaning in terms of politics is the widest. To better present the functioning of the politics of solitude and its presence in the international arena, some of the aforementioned examples of states can be revisited. Fear (states fearing states) and marginalization (states marginalizing states), discussed earlier in this chapter, will also be woven into this. These are useful categories to better describe macro-scale political solitude. When we find that the macro-politics of solitude can be defined as activities performed by states, aimed at isolating themselves or other states from the international community (with respect to other states or international organizations), and thus creating a distance, in the background, fear and/ or marginalization of varying severity must appear, making political solitude a phenomenon that has a real impact on the inhabitants of the countries that experience it. Including these elements in the concept of the macro-politics of solitude is a recognition of the human factor that makes it possible to distinguish the politics of solitude from other processes in the international arena. The macro-politics of solitude described earlier – active and passive – is a ‘laboratory’ model; it plays an explanatory role. At a macro-political level, states as well as individuals and communities can experience solitude – either positively chosen or negatively imposed by others. There can be positive or negative impacts of such solitude, in terms of human rights (Cywiński, 2020: 233), as determined by international law such as the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). Hence, we can talk about: ●●

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the positive-active politics of solitude, when the state chooses solitude to strengthen respect for human rights (not only at home but also in other states); the negative-active politics of solitude, when the state chooses solitude, but thus negatively influences respect for human rights (also in other states); the positive passive politics of solitude, when the solitude of the state results from the activity of another state or group of states and it is done for the benefit of respecting human rights; the negative-passive politics of solitude, when the solitude of the state results from the activity of another state or group of states, and as a result human rights are violated.

The aforementioned divisions, due to the complexity of the world around us, does not exhaust all potential variants. First of all, we can talk about a qualitative dimension, and here the differentiating factor is the level of fear or marginalization accompanying the phenomenon. The means used by actors on the international stage also have a qualitative nature, that is, economic, military, diplomatic, climate and environmental. We should also mention the situation of forgetfulness (in the case of passive solitude politics), something that can be described in the sentence often attributed to Winston Churchill: ‘History is written by the victors.’ This is due to 86

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the absence of international public discourse. The result of deliberate, planned politics, in which state institutions pursue what George Orwell called ‘Unpersoning’ of the individual (Orwell, 1949), the equivalent of which in macro-political terms would be ‘Unstating’ a state. Moreover, it is necessary to indicate the chains of connections between states. It is these chains of connections that reveal the complexity of the processes most fully and show that different types of situations can coexist – from the simplest, in which two countries break diplomatic relations, to the highly complex, in which several dozen countries take part and we observe both an active and a passive model, in all sorts of variations. The intensification of the aforementioned factors – fear, marginalization and forgetfulness – combined with the means (economic, military, diplomatic, climate and environmental) used by actors on the international arena and the complexity of the chains of positive or negative influence, cause people experience good or bad consequences of the politics of solitude. Extreme examples can occur during humanitarian crises, which are, unfortunately and surprising, all too frequent in today’s globalized world. An excellent example of the complexity of the contemporary politics of solitude is the case in which the Russian plays the leading role. By marginalizing and arousing fear, Russia applies the negative-passive politics of solitude towards Georgia or Ukraine, treating these countries as belonging to its sphere of influence, to justify such actions. At the same time, Russia itself is experiencing this type of policy from countries that have imposed an economic embargo on it from the European Union and the United States. Additionally, Russia supports Belarus economically, thanks to which Belarus can pursue a negative-active politics of solitude towards the EU. Russia is engaging in the conflict in the Middle East on the side of the Syrian authorities, prolonging the state in which the country is experiencing a passive solitude policy on the part of the EU and the United States. In the background of this conflict (also treating Yemen as the arena of operations), Saudi Arabia and Iran, regional powers wishing to isolate the other side, are playing their game. So far, Saudi Arabia seems to have been more successful and, being allied with Israel, influences the solitude of Iran. This advantage is a consequence of the importance of superpowers supporting individual countries. The United States, which is in alliance with Saudi Arabia, is currently conducting activities directed at the passive policy of solitude towards Iran, which Russia is unable to effectively protect it against. Nevertheless, Iran has had some success, as it has managed to combine economic cooperation with Qatar, for which Qatar pays in terms of the politics of solitude from its former allies (including the United Arab Emirates). Russia mainly uses its military potential coupled with diplomatic efforts to pursue its politic of solitude. China, which uses mainly economic and diplomatic pressure, is acting differently at present. This can be seen in Taiwan, a country towards which, despite its strong economic situation, China is pursuing an effective passive solitude policy. At the same time, China is unable to realistically pursue solitude politics towards Japan, which, despite the recession that has lasted for years, is still a global economic power – which prevents China from dominating this part of Asia. In the past, the Middle Kingdom, through military conquest, led Tibet to isolation (absorbing it at the same time). At present, China continues this policy towards the legal government of this country in exile. China’s solitude politics can also serve as an example of memory erasure. Both Tibet and Taiwan are the components of the so-called Three Ts, or China’s Biggest Taboos, topics that cannot be talked about (the last of these topics are the events of Tiananmen Square). The United States, world gendarme, currently the most powerful country in the world, is fighting to maintain this position. The main rival is China. Under President Donald Trump, the 87

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United States has declared its withdrawal from such intense international engagement. This means an active politics of solitude. At the same time, as mentioned earlier, the United States decides or co-decides on the solitude of many countries (the example of Iraq from the era of Saddam Hussein, and now Iran). The power of the United States manifests itself in the fact that it can pursue a politics of solitude in the military, economic and diplomatic spheres. The relationship with Cuba is an excellent example. The United States seems to be the heir to the former colonial empires: Great Britain and France, which, although they were the precursors of democracy, used far undemocratic solutions in their conquests in Africa and Asia. Hence, the negative-passive politic of solitude may be described as a new form of colonialism, for example in South America, if it results in exploitation or the further deepening of economic disparities. The concept of the macro-politics of solitude is not a search for conspiracy theories, in the sense of who actually rules the world, but only an attempt to provide an approximate description of what is happening there. Perhaps the simplest test of whether a state is a world empire is its agency to force the politics of solitude against another state without any consequences for itself in the international arena. The category of solitude is useful when trying to grasp the essence of processes taking place in relations between states. Indeed, this category complements the oftenused term ‘alliance’, the opposite of solitude. The macro-politics of solitude makes it possible to fully describe the relationship between states or coalitions of states. Conclusion Solitude is a human personal right and a relative political trump. Loneliness and estrangement are also political, raising questions that address our commitment to sociality, solidarity and togetherness, and emphasize the social contexts and sensitivities to marginality. The discourse carried out in solitude (and in estrangement) with oneself and with others is evident in all types of solitude. Social distancing might be the most important challenge to both the symbolic and the praxis of sociality, democracy and togetherness. Currently, togetherness is undertaking new shapes and modes, under our very eyes. How does solitude apply to large-scale political issues? A pragmatic approach distinguishes solitude from isolationism and separatism in international relations. The opportunity to consider ‘solitude’ as a significant concept in macro-political studies means that some of the issues raised in micro- and meso-political analysis can inform the state-level analysis. Fear and sociality, at an international level, are as significant as they are at the personal level. Democratic and personal approaches may – to an extent – be able to overcome some solitude problems.

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The Art, Music and Literature of Solitude Julian Stern

Introduction Why might we look to art, music and literature, as well as to research-based, ‘scientific’, work for insights into solitude and other forms of aloneness? One reason is that art itself can be thought of as solitudinous. While art, like science, can be an intensely social process, there is also a solitudinous, often lonely, character to so much art and to so much research, that they can both illuminate solitude. For Peters, a work of art has the attribute of ‘essential solitude’, which in turn leaves the artist as ‘lonely’ (Peters, 2013: 34). Research too, and all forms of learning, have their solitudes, with Piaget describing the child as (often) learning as a lone scientist, typically responding to new circumstances as a scientist does, by trial and error (Piaget, 1950: 104). A second reason for using art alongside conventional research to explore solitude is that art and research seem to involve similar processes. One of the most established definitions of research, provided by the UK’s main research funding body, says ‘research is defined as a process of investigation leading to new insights, effectively shared’ (DfENI, 2019: 90). The ‘investigation’ involved in creating a painting or novel or symphony may differ from, and may be less systematic than, the investigation carried out by researchers, but it is still a reasonable description of how artists come to be in a position to create. A number of artists have respectable careers as conventional researchers – with da Vinci (painter and scientist) and Sartre (novelist and philosopher) as two good examples of art and research feeding each other. But artists who are not investigators in those ‘scientific’ ways are still investigating before and while creating, surely? And artists are rightly praised for their ‘insights’, in visual arts, quite straightforwardly their ‘sight’, their ‘way of seeing’ (as described of Hockney1). The final element of the definition of research, that the insights should be ‘effectively shared’, is in general much better done by artists than it is by conventional researchers. So art and research have many qualities in common. There is a third, more personal, reason for using art and literature to explore solitude. When thinking about solitude, many people, myself included, find more insights in the arts than in the conventional research literature. There are numerous topics, especially those that are ‘odd’ or somewhat ineffable, that conventional researchers find difficult to describe. Solitude, along with

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silence and loneliness, has such a character. For my own research on solitude and loneliness in schools (Stern, 2014), I could find very little conventional research on the topic: one professionally oriented book from the 1970s (Robert, 1974), and barely another mention. Yet there were plenty of artistic and literary resources on which to draw, including materials written for young children. I am not the only person to go to the arts to explore the topic, having been ‘failed’ by conventional research. Perrin, in a philosophical account of classical and modern solitude, says that ‘if there exists a whole litteratura perennis on solitude, it has no philosophia’ (Perrin, 2020: 15). He finds some philosophy on the topic, but claims that Arendt makes the ‘only truly conceptual distinction in philosophy on the subject of solitude – between loneliness, isolation and solitude first during the [nineteen] fifties’ (Perrin, 2020: 17). Like Perrin, I found many artistic and literary insights into solitude and loneliness, in art directed at children as much as at adults, and much less in the conventional research literature. For these three reasons, especially, I have written this exploration of solitude in literature, music and art,2 seeing the artists as themselves researchers, investigating solitude (through their lives and their arts), developing original insights and communicating those insights. In their own right, and when compared with the research of conventional ‘scientific’ researchers, the artists distinctively reflect and influence the societies in which they work, and their continuing influence is significant. This chapter is divided into pre-Romantic, Romantic and post-Romantic arts (even if the boundaries are inevitably fuzzy), as it is in the Romantic period that solitude and other forms of aloneness seem to play the most central roles. In all three periods, I follow Murdoch, herself a good example of artist-researcher as a novelist and philosopher, who says that ‘[a]rt gives a clear sense to many ideas which seem more puzzling when we meet with them elsewhere, and it is a clue to what happens elsewhere’ (Murdoch, 2014: 84–5). Pre-Romantic Solitude: Exile and Ecstasy In the pre-Romantic period, there are ancient and medieval accounts of exile, solitude and wandering, and there is an increasing recognition of the need for solitude in an ever-more connected economic and social world. In consequence, two themes related to solitude are described as characteristic of a great deal of pre-Romanic art: exile and ecstasy. Forms of exile are typically unpleasant, of course, with rejection from a community as dangerous in ancient and medieval societies as the worst of modern-day refugee crises. Ecstasies and other ‘quieter’ forms of solitude3 are often chosen, and are often – but certainly not always – experienced positively. Starting with the Roman writer Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso, 43 BCE–c. 18 CE), a writer so brilliant and so well connected that his works on love and on mythology were not only enormously popular in his own day but also remain popular today. As Feeney describes him, ‘he was unquestionably the most famous poet in the empire’: Rome was his oyster, and his poetry took the metropolis as inspiration and subject. His love poetry brought a cool passion to bear on the sophisticated life of the city, with its classy courtesans and new imperial pomp; his Metamorphoses . . . made Rome the magnet that tugged all Greek mythology and art towards itself as the new centre of the world. (Feeney, 2006: 13) 90

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At the high point of his fame, the Emperor Augustus exiles him to Tomis on the Black Sea (now Constanța in Romania), on the edge of the empire, away from family, friends, and the culture of the empire’s capital. It is not entirely clear why Ovid was exiled, although he assumes it is some offence taken at something he wrote, but Ovid spent the remaining decade of his life in Tomis and, the writer that he was, he created a body of exile literature (the Tristia and the Black Sea Letters) that – 2,000 years later – remains in print, exactly as he would have wanted. ‘Look at me’, he says in Tristia (Ovid, 2005: 52–3), ‘I’ve lost my home, the two of you, my country, / they’ve stripped me of all they could take, / yet my talent remains my joy, my constant companion: / over this, [Augustus] Caesar could have no rights.’ He writes with confidence that ‘[w]hen I’m gone, my fame will endure.’ Making the most of his exile, he also writes eloquently, bitterly, about his experience in Tomis. As well as missing his family, he misses being in ‘society’, and the information he would be picking up from public events: ‘in this distant exile / I miss all such public rejoicing: only vague / rumours get this far’ (Ovid, 2005: 67, from Tristia). Ovid’s constant complaint is the exile itself, and Augustus as its cause – although he is understandably careful not to anger Augustus again. Green, in his introduction to the books, notes references ‘not only to sickness, senility and lassitude, but also to sloth, depression, accidie: the fact that writing has become a mere wearisome chore to kill time’ (Ovid, 2005: xxxiii). Ovid’s writings from exile, he says, offer an extraordinary paradigm of the fantasies and obsessions that bedevil every reluctant exile: loving evocations of the lost homeland, the personification of letters that are sent to walk the dear familiar streets denied to their writer, the constant parade – and exaggeration – of present horrors, spring here contrasted with spring there . . ., the wistful recall of lost pleasures once taken for granted, the slow growth of paranoia and hypochondria, the neurotic nagging at indifferent friends, the grinding exacerbation of slow and empty time, the fear of and longing for death. (Green, in Ovid, 2005: xxxvi–xxxvii) Green even notes how Ovid’s exilic situation is newly relevant since the twentieth century when [e]xile has once more become, as it was in Augustus’s day, if not a universal condition . . ., at least an all-too-familiar risk . . . [due to t]he ruthless demands of two world wars and, worse, a variety of totalitarian ideologies, [which] have made the exile, the stateless person, the refugee, the dépaysé, a common feature of our social awareness. (Green, in Ovid, 2005: xiv) The punishment of Ovid was relatively ‘comfortable’, a ‘relegation’ that allowed him to correspond with family, rather than full isolation – and more comfortable, of course, than a death sentence, even if it is ‘a living death’ (Ovid, 2005: 85, from Tristia). He admits to these being ‘snivelling poems’, and to the irony of being regarded as barbarian by barbarians: ‘Here, I’m the barbarian, understood by no one, / and these stupid peasants mock my Latin speech, / slander me to my face with impunity, on occasion / (I suspect) laugh at my exile’ (Ovid, 2005: 100, from Tristia). The final line hints at the paranoia mentioned by Green, and stressed by Szynkaruk (2020) in her account of Ovid’s experience as close to modern forms of loneliness. But exilic literature since Ovid has tended to focus on what Green describes as loss of the pleasures of home, combined with bitterness, accidie (or depression, or sloth), and the fear of and longing for death, and not loneliness as we now understand it. This is seen in the Anglo-Saxon poem Wanderer (from the ninth or tenth century), which describes how the wanderer ‘sat apart’ (Hamer, 1970: 181). The 91

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poet complains how ‘fate is relentless’ (Hamer, 1970: 175), and asks the Lord to ‘[c]omfort my loneliness, tempt me with pleasures’ (Hamer, 1970: 177). The word ‘loneliness’ in that line is a translation of the Anglo-Saxon ‘freondleasne’, elsewhere translated to the etymologically closer ‘friendless’ or ‘friendlessness’. Exile is once again a bitter and depressing separation from loved people and places. And yet ‘no man may be wise before / He’s lived his share of winters in the world’ (Hamer, 1970: 183). For Chaucer in the fourteenth century, solitude was best represented by the ‘exile’ to death. The dying Arcita in the Knight’s Tale asks, ‘What is this world? what asketh men to have? / Now with his love, now in his colde grave / Allone, withouten any compaignye’ (Chaucer, 1992: 74). Shakespeare, one of the first writers to use the word ‘lonely’, still uses it to refer to exile. Coriolanus comforts his mother before leaving for exile, saying, ‘I’ll do well yet’, even though ‘I go alone, / Like to a lonely dragon, that his fen / Makes fear’d and talk’d of more than seen’ (Coriolanus, IV​.i​ii). Yet in other plays, Shakespeare does indeed seem to create a modern sense of loneliness. Forms of solitude that are not simply painful places away from loved ones, but accompanied by complex emotions such as loneliness, seemed to develop considerably in the early seventeenth century. Dumm describes Cordelia, King Lear’s ‘principled’ daughter, as seeking ‘a new way out of her family’s drama of counterfeit love, a way into a sense of autonomy, which she tries to find through her attempt to establish a reasonable, rational, thoughtful division of love’. But as she is refused this by her father (and has no mother), she ‘becomes the first lonely self’ (Dumm, 2008: 13–14). ‘For Cordelia’, he says, ‘loneliness becomes a way of life’ and so ‘[s]he is . . . our first modern person’ (Dumm, 2008: 14). Shakespeare therefore looks back at the exilic literature of the ancients, in Coriolanus, and forward to the post-Romantic literature of self-judging loneliness in King Lear, where Cordelia experiences ‘lonesomeness and longing, marking a path toward . . . the isolated self of the modern era’ (Dumm, 2008: 15). Along with accounts of exile in pre-Romantic arts are accounts of solitude as opportunities for more or less successful experiences of ecstasy. This is the ecstasy commonly described in religious traditions, the ‘going beyond’ or ‘getting out of oneself’ that is the origin of the word ecstasy (‘out of place’, OED, 2005). Accounts of visions and prophesies from ‘beyond’ (typically from God or gods) are common in many religious traditions, especially Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions, and these are often described as happening in solitude – in periods spent alone in exile and in prison (as with Jeremiah), in the desert (as with Jesus), living alone in a cave (as with St Anthony), meditating in a cave (as with Muhammad) or as a hermit or anchoress (as with Julian of Norwich). Religious artists describe such scenes, and one of the finest artists of solitude is Dürer. Working in the early sixteenth century, he pictured Saint Jerome in His Study, the saint quietly alone in his room (accompanied by a dog, a lion and a skull) absorbed in his theological writings, with his saintly halo indicating his religious ecstasy. A kind of ‘failed ecstasy’ might be represented by his Melencolia I. In that picture, the melancholic figure is a winged woman (an angel?) looking miserably into the distance, suffering perhaps from something like the accidie also ascribed to Ovid. The central figure is surrounded by workshop tools of an artist of some kind, and is accompanied only by a similarly disengaged winged cherub. There are many interpretations of this scene, and no agreement on its symbolism, but the range of interpretations described by Merback (2017) includes insights into the therapeutic character of the work, the depression of bereavement, the delayed or frustrated creativity and ‘paralyzing gloom’ of an artist (Merback, 2017: 138), and a description of the ‘suffering of the artist’ (Merback, 2017: 186). 92

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Seeing it as a ‘failed’ ecstasy, as an example of the ‘[s]olitude, despair, sadness, and greed’ that were ‘the melancholic’s birthright’ (Merback, 2017: 138), Dürer’s engraving also looks forward. To look so miserable and unengaged among all the necessary technologies of creativity: this is a modern solitude, whether the boredom of wealthy flâneurs in nineteenth-century Paris (Benjamin, 1999: 451), experiencing the ‘boredom [that] waits for death’ (Benjamin, 1999: 101), or the twenty-first-century people whose technologies leave them ‘interconnected loners’ (O’Sullivan, 2019: 173). Literary solitude-ecstasies are well represented by Philips’s poem from the middle of the seventeenth century, O Solitude! My Sweetest Choice (Philips, 1710: 210–25, made famous by a song setting of Henry Purcell4). This poem, translated from the French poem La Solitude by SaintAmant, describes solitude ‘Remote from tumult and from noise’ in a mountainous landscape which ‘th’ unhappy would invite / To finish all their sorrows here’ (i.e. a place for the suicidal). And yet it is a place the narrator ‘adore[s]’, as there, she encounters not only the natural world (pre-empting much Romantic solitude poetry) but also people (from times gone by, as well as more recent – perhaps suicidal – visitors, and the narrator’s lost lover) and mythical beings (demigods, Naiads, nymphs, Echo, Tritons). Pope’s Ode on Solitude from 1700 is less dramatically ecstatic, and yet that too seeks an escape, through a quieter death than is envisaged by Philips: hoping in the end to ‘Steal from the world, and not a stone / Tell where I lie’. Remarkably, Pope wrote this at the age of twelve, just as his lifelong debilitating illnesses were manifesting themselves (Pope, 1994: 1). If Purcell’s musical setting of Philips’s poem made solitude almost fashionable, the solitude of religious ecstasy is perhaps better represented by later composers such as J. S. Bach. In his St Matthew Passion, Bach creates one of the great musical silences, an aural/oral solitude. So ist mein Jesus nun gefangen (‘behold, my Saviour now is taken’) gives an account of Jesus being taken from the Garden of Gethsemane on the night before his crucifixion. Two voices calmly express their grief (‘Moon and Stars, / Have for grief the night forsaken’), and the choir bursts in, furiously asking, ‘Have lightnings and thunders their fury forgotten? / Then open o fathomless pit, all thy terrors!’ Bach inserts a paused rest for the length of a bar, in between these last two lines. The silence seems to describe both the forgotten fury of thunder and lightning, and the opening of the fathomless pit. There are few better examples of the ecstatic power of silence in music, a remarkably ‘meaningful’ silence in the middle of a fury.5 Similarly, Rondeau refers to Bach’s Goldberg Variations, written as a cure for insomnia, as ‘an ode to silence’.6 (A century after Bach, Kierkegaard comments on how the lowing of cattle or the bark of a dog in the countryside ‘belongs to the silence, is in a mysterious and thus in turn silent harmony with the silence; this increases it’, Kierkegaard, 2000: 335.) Bach’s understanding of different forms of solitude is perhaps also evidenced in his ability to compose for solo instruments that were rarely – before or since – given entirely solitary opportunities. The unaccompanied cello suites, and the sonatas and partitas for solo violin, are distinguished by being written for a solitary performer. And they also exhibit Bach’s skills in achieving a ‘dense counterpoint and refined harmony’ (Grove Music Online7) – a multiple-voiced form of music, in contrast to a single melodic voice with or without accompaniment. A solitary musician with many voices, this is what the literary critic Bakhtin would later call heteroglossia (raznorečie) (Bakhtin, 1981: 263). That Bach can achieve the ‘links and interrelationships’, the ‘movement of the theme through different languages and speech types, its dispersion into the rivulets and droplets of social heteroglossia, its dialogization’ 93

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(Bakhtin, 1981: 263) in pieces for a solo stringed instrument, rather than a novel (as envisaged by Bakhtin), is an impressive achievement in solitude. The solo violin music was described by Reichardt in 1805 as ‘perhaps the greatest example in any art of the freedom and certainty with which a great master can move even when he is in chains’ (Grove Music Online8). Seeing Bach’s contrapuntal music as solitudinous voices speaking simultaneously, the twentieth-century Bach specialist Gould created his own solitude trilogy (Gould, 2003). But the eighteenth century was a highpoint of creative solitude – from Bach to the shipwrecked solitude described in 1719 by Defoe in Robinson Crusoe (Defoe, 2001), from the poetry of Pope to the artist Lemoyne’s 1728 picture of Narcissus (absorbed in his solitude by his own image). From Ovid to Bach, from exile to ecstasy, much of the art of solitude is relearned in the Romantic period with Romanticism clearly prefigured in the ecstatic art of Blake (such as his famous picture of Newton, from Europe) towards the end of the eighteenth century. Romantic Solitude: The Artist and Nature Romanticism brought an elevated sense of the artist as solitary figure, and of solitude as sought away from home rather than avoided or imposed by a sentence of exile. Solitude was most often portrayed as being sought in nature. There were new ways of understanding the artist, and understanding nature, which went beyond the earlier craft- and service-oriented models of art, and the nostalgic idealized pastoral scenes of nature – even the troubled pastoral scene described by Philips. Instead, there were more individualistic accounts of the artist-as-outsider (but not in literal exile), and more holistic accounts of ‘Nature’ as the whole universe. The natural holism was influenced in part by philosophies such as that of Spinoza, who wrote in the seventeenth century of ‘God or nature’, that is ‘the eternal and infinite Being, which we call God or Nature’ (Spinoza, 1955: 188). Eliot, the late-Romantic novelist, was explicitly influenced by Spinoza, and translated the Ethics (Spinoza, 2020, and see Newton, 1981). But the whole of Romanticism was touched by the theme of the solitary-artist-in-nature. Here, some examples from literature, visual arts and music are given of different combinations of the solitary-artist and the artist-in-nature. One of the most ‘typical’ artistic representations of solitary-artist-in-nature is given by Wordsworth. He wrote many accounts of solitude, with one of his late poems, The Recluse, explaining, ‘On Man, on Nature, and on Human Life / Musing in Solitude, I oft perceive / Fair trains of imagery before me rise’ (Wordsworth, 1994: 755). Most famous of all is his poem The Daffodils (Wordsworth, 1994: 187), best known as a poem for its use of the word ‘lonely’ (i.e. ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud / That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, / A host of golden daffodils’). Although the word ‘lonely’ was increasingly used in Romantic poetry and prose, it generally to refer to places in which to find solitude, good or bad, rather than to an emotion. The Daffodils was clearly a celebration of solitude, not an exploration of the emotion of loneliness. The poem’s ending, incorporating lines written by the poet’s sister Dorothy Wordsworth, recalls the daffodils with ‘that inward eye / Which is the bliss of solitude’. The poem moves from a disengaged aloneness (as the cloud is merely ‘alone’ and is disengaged not suffering from the emotion later called loneliness) to healthily engaged solitude – engaged, that is, with thoughts of the flower. It is the value of solitudinously engaging with nature (or Nature, as the Romantics tended to deem it) that excited the imagination of the poets who were themselves living through an intense period of urbanization and industrialization. Loneliness 94

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was used of (‘natural’) places, not people, with Wordsworth writing of lonely yew trees, streams and primroses (Wordsworth, 1994: 25, 241, and 455). Clare, similarly, writes of a lonely thicket, glen, lake, tempest, shore, desert and fields (Clare, 2004: 20, 208, 212, 265, 285, 327 and 390, respectively), and Keats hears the ‘surgy murmurs of the lonely sea’ (Keats, 2007: 41). It is solitude of which they all write with (Romantic) passion. More disturbing accounts of solitude come from Hölderlin. As his personal life was declining into more than three decades of isolation in a state of what would later be described as schizophrenia, Hölderlin wrote, ‘[t]ell me, is it a blessing or a curse, this loneliness which is part of my nature and which . . . I am . . . irresistibly driven back into?’ (Hölderlin, 2009: 197, from a letter dated March 1801). He was describing a more emotional loneliness, and one that accompanied his increasing solitude. His situation was sometimes described as an archetypal Romantic withdrawal into silence. This is from Steiner’s account: By the age of thirty, Hölderlin had accomplished nearly his whole work; a few years later he entered on a quiet madness which lasted thirty-six years . . . Hölderlin’s silence has been read not as a negation of his poetry but as, in some sense, its unfolding and its sovereign logic. The gathering strength of stillness within and between the lines of the poems have been felt as a primary element of their genius. As empty space is so expressly a part of modern painting and sculpture, as the silent intervals are so integral to a composition by Webern, so the void places in Hölderlin’s poems, particularly in the late fragments, seem indispensable to the completion of the poetic act. His posthumous life in a shell of quiet, similar to that of Nietzsche, stands for the word’s surpassing of itself, for its realization not in another medium but in that which is its echoing antithesis and defining negation, silence. (Steiner, 1967: 47–8) Yet his visitor and friend, the younger poet Waiblinger – one of Hölderlin’s few regular visitors other than the family that looked after him in his final isolation – described his situation as ‘perdition’ (Waiblinger, 2018: 32), and ‘terrifying’: I once discovered amongst his papers a terrifying phrase replete with mystery. After honouring the renown of a list of Greek heroes and the beauty of the realm of gods, he says: ‘Now for the first time I understand humankind, because I dwell far from it and in solitude’. (Waiblinger, 2018: 58) The later isolation of Hölderlin’s life is, as Steiner says, connected to his earlier life as a much more active poet, even if it is an odd interpretation of the situation to describe it as an eloquent poetic silence. One of his most quoted poems, written in 1799, is The Root of All Evil, which is just two lines long: ‘Being at one is god-like and good, but human, too human, the mania / Which insists there is only the One, one country, one truth and one way’ (Hölderlin, 1990: 139). The attraction of the One, a God-like singularity (like Spinoza’s ‘God or Nature’) and the danger of the One, this is the tension under which Hölderlin lived, with solitude both an escape from the One and an escape to the position from which he could see all as One. In his isolated years, Waiblinger describes Hölderlin’s visit to his home, where the older poet ‘held a particular fascination for the pantheistic One and All inscribed in giant Greek letters on the wall above my work desk . . . [and] conversed at length with himself while observing this mysterious inscription so ponderous with thought’ (Waiblinger, 2018: 50). 95

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For Taylor, Hölderlin, like his mentor Schiller, represented the belief ‘that the human destiny was to return to nature at a higher level, having made a synthesis of reason and desire’, as, in the poet’s words, ‘all things separated come together again’ (Taylor, 1989: 386). In his major poem Hyperion, Hölderlin describes the hero’s ‘evocation of a lost oneness [that] suggests . . . we have been torn away from a vital, dynamic order of life coursing through nature, an order that was known to earlier experience but is now concealed by the detached stance of rational knowing and reflective awareness’ (Guignon, 2004: 53). Hyperion, for another critic, describes the hero’s ‘manic-depressive oscillations between nearly hallucinatory states of oneness with the other – nature, a friend, a lover – and states of complete and utter emptiness and abject isolation’ (Santner, in Hölderlin, 1990: xxvii). In his later life of isolation, this tension becomes pathological, as ‘[n]ow he is I and not-I, world and man, first and second person, high or highest’ (Waiblinger, 2018: 64). The solitude of, with, or against Nature, and the solitude of the artist, is voiced best by Hölderlin himself. In the following, the narrator begins at one with Nature, and then alone, apart and finally alienated from Nature: To be one with all that lives! . . . On this height I often stand, my Bellarmin! But an instant of reflection hurls me down. I reflect, and find myself as I was before – alone, with all the griefs of mortality, and my heart’s refuge, the world in its eternal oneness, is gone; Nature closes her arms, and I stand like an alien before her and do not understand her. (Hölderlin, 1990: 4–5, from Hyperion) A visual representation of the solitary-artist-in-nature is repeatedly given by Caspar David Friedrich. The man or woman alone in a landscape, with his or her back to the viewer, is an ideal Romantic solitude. Titles such as Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (1818) or Woman before the Setting Sun (1818–20) allow the viewer to identify with the nameless, solitary, figure. According to Cardinal, ‘[b]y inserting figures into his settings Friedrich seems less intent upon enlivening them or marking their scale than upon directing the viewer’s gaze towards their metaphysical dimension’ (Cardinal, in Murray, 2004: 388). Thus, ‘a solitary walker is absorbed by the vast craggy wilderness around him, his back turned to the viewer and in that way, isolating us too’, and ‘[b]eing ‘lonely’ in nature, he surrenders to feelings of awe, wonder and terror at its sublime majesty – all the petty worries of ordinary life, and even a sense of an independent self, ebbing away’ (Smith, 2015: 2578–2614). Friedrich is more than ‘the painter of stillness’ (Wolf, 2003); he is the painter of Romantic solitude, the painter, in a sense, of the more optimistic aspect of Hölderlin’s poetic vision. Later in his life, Friedrich, like Hölderlin, became reclusive, and his paintings that had during his rather brief marriage become a little more colourful and sometimes contained more than one person, became more and more dour. The late painting Seashore by Moonlight (1835), like some of his youthful landscapes, contained no people, and was almost completely black. A musical score for this Romantic interpretation of solitude was provided by Friedrich’s and Hölderlin’s contemporary, Beethoven. Whether his popular image is accurate – a rather wild and moody unkempt character, an image popularized by portraits such as that of Steiler, isolated as a result of his temperament as much as his deafness – Beethoven’s music does have many of the features of Romantic solitude. His ‘nature’ music, such as his sixth (‘Pastoral’) symphony, portrays the storms of Friedrich, and he set hundreds of folk songs from many countries (Scotland, Wales, Ireland, England, especially, along with Germany, Sicily, Venice, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, 96

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Poland, Hungary and Russia), at the height of his powers between 1809 and 1820 – with folk music being seen in Romanticism as going back to nature. Rosen, describing the ‘Romantic imagination’, says: Folk music is always considered a good thing. There is a catch, however: it has to be ‘real’ folk music, anonymous, evoking not an individual but a communal personality, expressive of the soil . . . True folk music is produced only by farmers and shepherds; only this can guarantee its mythical status, its down-to-earth contrast with sophisticated urban music. Folk music, in fact, is not art but nature. The composer who turns to folk material is like the landscape artist who paints out of doors: they both reject the artificial for the natural; they start not with what is invented but with what is given by reality. (Rosen, 1995: 410) Along with pastoral scenes and the settings of folk music, Beethoven’s late piano sonatas and, even more, the late string quartets seem to end in the ‘one eternal glowing life’, the oneness of nature (or God) which are the last words uttered by Hölderlin’s Hyperion. Beethoven’s late music is a music of such solitude that it can be described as ‘alienated’ (Said, in Barenboim & Said, 2002: 135), yet it seems to be a solitude of leaving the ordinary life to achieve oneness with the world, rather than the alienation of exile or even of ecstasy. Beethoven was one of the earliest musicians to be portrayed as an independent, Romantic, artist, but many others followed. It was the first half of the nineteenth century that created the image of the musician as creative artist and loner. The Romantic musician Liszt recognized the dangers of this position, which he projected back to his earlier Romantic forebears, and in passing created the possibility of a career as a popular solo (i.e. solitary) performer. Liszt wrote an obituary of his older colleague on the concert circuit, the violinist-composer Paganini: As Paganini . . . appeared in public, the world wonderingly looked upon him as a super-being. The excitement he caused was so unusual, the magic he practiced upon the fantasy of hearer, so powerful, that they could not satisfy themselves with a natural explanation. (Quoted in Sennett, 1978: 200, original ellipses) Liszt himself became just such a charismatic virtuoso performer, remarking, ‘The concert is – myself’ (quoted in Sennett, 1978: 199). Concert halls were built for these virtuosi to perform in, with all in the audience concentrating on the performers. These halls contrasted with the smaller rooms previously used, in which musicians might perform to an audience otherwise occupied in conversation – rather like cabaret venues or comedy clubs today, where performers are only part of a bigger social experience. The concert stage became a solitary mountain-top, with the virtuoso placed there like a Friedrich figure, illuminated by the spotlight while the audience remains in darkness. A penalty of this solitary-artist role created by Paganini and Liszt was a potential to fall into solipsism. Liszt’s obituary for Paganini continued: this man, who created so much enthusiasm, could make no friends among his fellowmen. No one guessed what was going on in his heart; his own richly blessed life never made another happy . . . Paganini’s god . . . was never any other than his own gloomy, sad ‘I.’ (Quoted in Sennett, 1978: 202) Sad or happy, the musical soloist as charismatic creative performer was born with Paganini and Liszt, not their twentieth-century successors in classical music or the popular music charismatic 97

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performers such as Al Jolson, Bessie Smith, Frank Sinatra and onwards to Dusty Springfield and Freddie Mercury and beyond. The solitary-artist and the artist-in-nature, sometimes combined (as in Friedrich), sometimes one (Liszt) or the other (Wordsworth), characterizes much of Romanticism to the extent that it could be described as the very heart of Romanticism. That is not to say earlier exilic or ecstatic solitudes were altogether absent, or that later forms of alienation and lonely self-rejection were not already being rehearsed. Yet the solitude of the Romantics still has a centre of gravity in a distinctive solitude that was not altogether rejected, but built upon and complemented by other forms in the post-Romantic period that takes us up to the present day. Post-Romantic Solitude: Lonesomeness, Alienation and the Rejected Self As high Romanticism faded, new solitude traditions emerged, both positive and negative. While pre-Romantic solitude often looked nostalgically back to a pastoral idyll, and Romantic solitude often lived in a stormy and emotional ‘Nature’, post-Romantic solitude mourned the loss of nature and the alienation of life in industrial cities. The emotion of loneliness developed further, and in the United States a parallel ‘lonesome’ tradition also emerged for cowboys, outlaws, and others in solitude on the ‘frontier’, glimpsed in the poetry of Whitman and Dickinson. Exilic literature made a comeback, with diasporas missing homelands. Sex and sexuality became more central to the tradition – from suppressed/oppressed sexualities leading to a sense of isolation, to the solitary vice surreptitiously celebrated by Larkin (see also Engelberg, 2001: 14–15). As communication technologies developed – from newspapers and the telephone to cinema, television and the internet – there was an increase in the sense of the interiority of solitude, solitude not so much as a place ‘out there’, but a place ‘in here’, contemplative (or dangerous) spaces and liberating (or terrifying) silences. Early-nineteenth-century Romantic novels of solitude, such as Frankenstein (Shelley, 1999 [1818]), or a number of the novels of the Brontës (notably Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre or Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights), are powerful accounts of rejection and isolation turning to loneliness and anger in vividly described ‘natural’ as much as domestic settings. In Jane Eyre (Brontë, 2006 [1847]), some of the pain of lonely solitude is resolved; in Wuthering Heights (Brontë, 2003 [1847]), it is not at all resolved. But later in the century an apparently quieter, domestic, loneliness was more common. The heroine and her equally lonely husband in Eliot’s Middlemarch (1965 [1871]) are good examples of such inward solitude. But it is Dickinson who writes most eloquently of the peculiarly complex emotion, referred to as loneliness, that emerges in the second half of the nineteenth century. Dickinson’s solitudinous way of life is well known. Restricting herself to her own house and rarely seeing visitors from outside the family, her solitude is richly described. She notes that the solitude of space or even of death is not as profound as that of a ‘soul admitted to itself’ (Dickinson, 1970: 691). Silence is dreaded because silence is ‘Infinity’ (Dickinson, 1970: 548). And her distinctive account of solitude is dominated by loneliness and the lonesome. She describes various forms of loneliness, including ‘another Loneliness’ (Dickinson, 1970: 502), which is closer to a positive version of solitude than to the negative forms of loneliness. Lewis writes of her poem as one promoting ‘lonesomeness’, in his ‘plea for recognition of the fecund “lonesomeness” of the greater American experience’ (Lewis, 2009: xiii). Dickinson describes this loneliness as being the result of nature or thinking, rather than lack of friends or bad luck, and the people who experience 98

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it are ‘richer’ (Dickinson, 1970: 502). However, elsewhere, she writes of unambiguously negative forms of loneliness, full of pity. For example, ‘I tried to think a lonelier Thing’, she writes, such that the narrator could ‘pity Him’ and ‘Perhaps he – pitied me – ’ (Dickinson, 1970: 260). More terrifying than pitiable is the loneliness ‘One dare not sound’ (Dickinson, 1970: 379). Along with Dickinson’s touching on the lonesome, a number of other North American writers write of the lonesomeness of the American ‘frontier’ (a frontier, that is, only for the newly arrived populations). That lonesome tradition in literature and music was a more piquant, not entirely negative and sometimes creative, version of solitude. Whitman writes of ‘where sundown shadows lengthen over the limitless and lonesome prairie’ (quoted in Lewis, 2009: 27), and Twain of Huck Finn’s ‘solid lonesomeness’ (quoted in Lewis, 2009: 54). Lonesome cowboys ride through countless novels and songs, with lonesomeness only becoming wholly negative in the twentieth century with Hank Williams’s ‘I’m so lonesome I could cry’ of 1949 (quoted in Lewis, 2009: 133), which Elvis Presley described as ‘the saddest song I’ve ever heard in my life’.9 Negatively framed solitude is also described in the words and music of African American stories of the blues, such as the songs of Robert Johnson, which McGeachy (2006) compares to the Anglo-Saxon poetry of exile. African American culture is indeed exilic (McGeachy, 2006: 63), with blues music, drawing on West African traditions, being an outpouring of emotions associated with loss and loneliness specific to the African American situation. ‘[B]lues can be simulated, but blues feeling cannot, so its exponents contend’ (Grove Music Online10). Lost love dominates blues lyrics, but the bigger picture is of an old exile, a current oppression and an unhappy future: ‘Where Spirituals move the group heavenward (and northward), blues songs move the displaced individual hellward’ (McGeachy, 2006: 87). In the mid-twentieth century, a British reinterpretation of the blues was composed by Lennon (copyrighted to Lennon and McCartney), whose Yer Blues11 never mentions the blues in the lyrics, but, instead, complains of a suicidal loneliness. Sexuality is a second post-Romantic theme. In the late nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries, novels were published that focused on the relationship between solitude, loneliness and sexuality – as exemplified in The Well of Loneliness (Hall, 1982). Hall’s novel is described by Hennegan as being ‘[j]okingly, and not so jokingly, . . . known as “the Bible of lesbianism”’ (in Hall, 1982: viii). This account of loneliness is described in terms of an ‘unwanted being’ (Hall, 1982: 205), a form of self-rejection. There is a portrayal of an ‘unsatisfactory distinction between “real” lesbians and “real” women’, and the heroine Stephen ‘wrestles endlessly with the agonising contradictions it entails’ (Hennegan, in Hall, 1982: xvi). In the novel, Stephen is an only child, and ‘[i]t is doubtful if any only child is to be envied, for the only child is bound to become introspective; having no one of its own ilk in whom to confide, it is apt to confide in itself’ (Hall, 1982: 10). She meets a man called Martin and they talked: ‘His youth met hers and walked hand in hand with it, so that she knew how utterly lonely her own youth had been before the coming of Martin’ (Hall, 1982: 94). But this was not to be a sexual partnership. After her father’s death, Stephen’s mother discovers the ‘scandal’ of her daughter’s sexuality. Stephen went straight to her father’s study; and she sat in the old arm-chair that had survived him; then she buried her face in her hands. All the loneliness that had gone before was as nothing to this new loneliness of spirit. An immense desolation swept down upon her, an immense need to cry out and claim understanding 99

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for herself, an immense need to find an answer to the riddle of her unwanted being. (Hall, 1982: 205–6) This ‘unwanted being’, this self-rejection, is one that leads from a lonely childhood through to an adulthood of failed relationships and feeling a lack of a right even to exist, a kind of internalized exile. In the final words of the book, Stephen says, ‘[a]cknowledge us, oh God, before the whole world’, and ‘[g]ive us also the right to our existence!’ (Hall, 1982: 447). Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray (1966, first published in 1890) is an account of a tragic gay figure, a ‘libertine’ who kills others and eventually kills himself. It describes the hero’s sensualism as a failed attempt to escape loneliness, having had a ‘lonely childhood’ of ‘stainless purity’ (Wilde, 1966: 99). Wilde’s lover, Douglas, wrote in 1894 of a dream of two young men in a garden, one, Love, was ‘wont to be / Alone’, but was joined by the other – ‘the love that dare not speak his name’.12 In such ways, the solitude of exile is turned inwards. There were literary accounts of solitude, loneliness and LGBT lives well into the twentieth century, such as Oosthuizen’s Loneliness and Other Lovers (1981) or – with a more positive account – Nagata’s My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness (2017). Back in the 1890s, the artist Leighton painted Solitude, one of his most popular works. In some ways the picture looks back to a romantic contemplative solitude; in others it looks forward to a therapeutic view of healthy aloneness. As the artist explained to his sister, the woman in the picture – who appears to be lost in her thoughts – depicts the emotions he felt when visiting Linn of Dee near Braemar, in Scotland. Leighton expresses that the place had ‘no sound, no faintest gurgle even reaches your ear; the silent mystery of it all absolutely invades and possesses you.’ This painting has become the embodiment of absolute self-consciousness.13 Yet it is also perhaps a portrait of late-nineteenth-century sexual repression, with Leighton’s own sexuality much debated. For all his public stature as president of the Royal Academy, he was fiercely protective of his privacy and yet, going back to a Romantic trope, he ‘remained to the end a child of nature’ (Barrington, 1906: 8). Along with lonesomeness and sexuality, a third solitude theme of the post-Romantic period was that of alienation. In the early nineteenth century, alienation took a more central place in theology and philosophy. The philosopher Hegel, a student alongside Hölderlin in Tübingen, described alienation as one of the repeated ‘moments’ of the dialectic of separation and togetherness, including estrangement from God (Hegel, 1988: 447–9). Feuerbach, a student of Hegel, criticized his old teacher and instead turned alienation into an explanation of, and critique of, Christianity, and a critique of the state. People alienate themselves from their own species being, from their ‘essential nature’ (Feuerbach, 1855: 19), and from ‘Nature’ (Feuerbach, 1855: 183). But these largely Romantic formulations were rejected – or turned on their heads – by Marx. Marx moved beyond alienation as against ‘nature’. People and alienation are historically embedded in ‘the ensemble of the social relations’ (Marx, in Marx & Engels, 1970: 122). Modern capitalist industrial societies alienate labour (including taking the products of labour away from those labouring), and in doing that alienate people from each other and from themselves. Although far from a Marxist, Dickens also described the alienation of urban industrial life, with Hard Times (Dickens, 1955) concentrating on the alienation of children from their families through the new forms of mass schooling. Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street, published in 1853 (Melville, 2016), is a remarkable account 100

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of a loner within a bureaucratic city, an almost Kafkaesque alienation written long before Kafka was born. Thoreau, born within a few months of Marx, explained alienation in modern industrial society through his account of a retreat from it. He practiced and wrote about the solitude – and at times loneliness – of his time living in a hut by Walden Pond (Thoreau, 2006). This account of healthy solitude is powerful – and provides one of the most influential attacks on the alienation experienced in competitive crowds, a century before ‘the lonely crowd’ (Reisman, 2000) was coined: I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. (Thoreau, 2006: 146) Thoreau says others think he must be lonely, living in a hut away from the town, but he replies, ‘I am no more lonely than the loon in the pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden Pond itself’, for ‘[w]hat company has that lonely lake, I pray?’ (Thoreau, 2006: 148). In this, he is developing the earlier Romantic writing on solitude in nature, and arguing that loneliness is not to be described simply as ‘aloneness’ (as it seemed to be in Wordsworth), but as a more complex emotion that could be experienced in crowds as much as on one’s own. Thoreau was not antisocial, and writes of his time at Walden Pond as allowing for company (with nature, and also with people), as well as solitude: ‘I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society’ (Thoreau, 2006: 151). And yet he captured the value of healthy solitude, as well as the dangers of loneliness, better than the more sentimental Romantics managed. Alienation was turned inwards, with the existential philosophy of Kierkegaard (1985 [1843]) and then the literary versions of Rilke’s Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge of 1910 (Rilke, 2009), Kafka’s Metamorphosis of 1915 (Kafka, 2008) and Sartre’s Nausea of 1938 (Sartre, 2000). These all described negative inward-looking solitudes, as Engelberg describes ‘the story of solitude as we move into the twentieth century’, which ‘relates how the solitary state moves from the Self’s removal from Society to, say, Nature to the Self’s opposition with itself’ (Engelberg, 2001: 2). Later in the twentieth century, the poet Larkin lamented the lack of healthy solitude and the presence of loneliness. In Best Society (dated 1951, Larkin, 1988: 56–7, referencing Paradise Lost’s ‘solitude sometimes is best society’, Milton, 1980: 211) he describes how as a child he had thought solitude was easily available, but that in adulthood it became harder to find and more ‘undesirable’. Those who do not like the virtue of sociability are deemed ‘vicious’, and so, viciously, he locks himself at home with his solitude (a slightly disguised reference also to masturbation). Larkin’s solitude is a form of alienation, if a long way from the tragic existentialist literatures of Rilke, Kafka or Sartre. The twentieth century was a high point of literary solitude focusing on loners and the lonely, like Larkin. Beckett’s Trilogy (Beckett, 2009, 2010a, 2010b) is a set of three novels of solitude and self-rejection, to the point of death (as with Chaucer’s Arcita, quoted above): ‘But what matter whether I was born or not, have lived or not, am dead or merely dying, I shall go on doing as I have always done, not knowing what it is I do, nor who I am, nor where I am, nor if I am’ (Beckett, 2010a: 53). Yates wrote short stories describing Eleven Kinds of Loneliness (Yates, 2009), with accounts of a child new to school, patients in a TB ward, and a lonely taxi driver telling tales to his passengers. Another short story writer, O’Connor, suggests 101

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that a short story is by its nature a ‘lonely voice’, and short story writers are typically lonely and try – as hard as they can – to escape that loneliness. The saddest thing about the short story is the eagerness with which those who write it best try to escape from it. It is a lonely art, and they too are lonely. They seem forever to be looking for company, trying to get away from the submerged population that they have brought to life for us. Joyce simply stopped writing short stories. D. H. Lawrence rode off in one direction; A. E. Coppard, that other master of the English short story, in another, but they were all trying to escape. (O’Connor, 1968: 325) Musically, post-Romantic solitude was first characterized by the technologies that made music less social. The first great ‘antisocial’ musical technology was the piano, an instrument capable of replacing whole orchestras. Liszt produced piano transcriptions of symphonies, operas and even the songs of Schubert. Hardy describes a single player of a cabinet-organ as replacing the group of men who sang and played violins and other instruments, in his first Wessex novel, Under the Greenwood Tree or The Mellstock Quire: A Rural Painting of the Dutch School of 1872 (Hardy, 1989). That novel was the first of a series describing the loss of rural community in the face of urbanization and industrialization, and he leads with the musical solitude of the keyboard. The piano and similar keyboard instruments (such as the melodeon) were described in 1921 by the sociologist Weber as essentially bourgeois instruments (private, individualist) that were, therefore, more popular in North European homes than in South European public spaces (Weber, 1978: chapter 22). Mechanical and later electronic reproduction of music from the late nineteenth century meant that music could be a very solitary hobby, without any performer present. It was in the 1950s that the popular music charts changed from being based on sales of sheet music (i.e. notations on paper that had to be performed live whether in homes or public places) to being based on sales of records (which required no live performer). And the charismatic solo performance popularized by Paganini and Liszt was critiqued by Cage in his most famous composition, 4’33” (i.e. four minutes and thirty-three seconds). In that piece, the pianist sits for that time without making any music. It is regarded by more conservative critics as something that ‘amuses the audiences and embarrasses the serious music-lovers’ (Hutcheson, 1975: 392). Kagge, a promoter of ‘silence in the age of noise’ (Kagge, 2017), is more positive. Cage has been an inspiration. ‘Audiences adore this piece of silence even today’, he says, ‘[o]r rather: the silence minus the noises that the audience makes as they try to stay quiet’ (Kagge, 2017: 105).14 Cage himself has a somewhat Romantic view of solitude in nature, writing of performing his silent piece not only in the concert hall but in what could be called ‘Nature’: I have spent many pleasant hours in the woods conducting performances of my silent piece, transcriptions, that is, for an audience of myself, since they were much longer than the popular length which I have had published. At one performance, I passed the first movement by attempting the identification of a mushroom which remained successfully unidentified. The second movement was extremely dramatic, beginning with the sounds of a buck and a doe leaping up to within ten feet of my rocky podium. The expressivity of this movement was not only dramatic but unusually sad from my point of view, for the animals were frightened simply because I was a human being. However, they left hesitatingly and fittingly within the structure of the work. The third movement was a return to the theme of the first, but with all 102

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those profound, so-well-known alterations of world feeling associated by German tradition with the A-B-A. (Cage, 2009: 276) When Gould created his radio documentary on solitude (Gould 2003), he was regarded as one of the world’s great pianists, but one who had stopped giving any public concerts in favour of the (relative) solitude and greater perfectibility of the recording studio. This concert silence was in its own way as eloquent – and as frustrating – as that of Cage’s 4’33”, and it is no surprise that his instrument was the bourgeois piano. Conclusion We have moved into an age where children and adults alike are in need of ‘training’ for solitude, apps to create artificial silences and therapeutic interventions for the lonely. And yet the ancient accounts of exile, the Romantic accounts of solitude in nature and the post-Romantic accounts of alienation and of lonely sexuality all still speak to us. Research with children and adults, using literary, visual and musical descriptions of solitude, brings out some themes that stretch across the centuries (Stern, 2014). The tension between solitude and sociability, and the wish to create a oneness that is both individual and universal, these are still experienced. And they are understood especially through artistic depictions of aloneness. The exile of refugees in ancient writings is complemented by new forms of aloneness, artistically engaged with now as much for therapeutic as political purposes. Today, the art of solitude can be seen as a romantic gesture, or as a commentary on sanity. Yayoi Kusama paints what she describes as asylum art,15 living as she does, mostly, in a hospital for those who have mental health concerns. She puts on exhibitions with titles such as Creation Is a Solitary Pursuit, Love Is What Brings You Closer to Art.16 Children’s books continue to speak directly to children about their joys and fears in solitude. Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are (Sendak, 1963) and McKee’s Not Now, Bernard (McKee, 1980) both describe the anger of enforced solitude or ‘exile’, even if exile is only to the child’s bedroom, or the back garden of the house. Berry has a close-to-Romantic view of solitude among The Peace of Wild Things in his poetry (Berry, 2018). Music has become even more privatized, with headphones replacing the ‘loud’ playing of (electronically reproduced) performances, making ‘silent discos’ possible – where the participants may be listening to quite different music while dancing in a single room. Yet solitude has a renewed power as creative (Jones, 2019) and therapeutic (Lees, 2012), and as dangerous (Cacioppo & Patrick, 2008). There are many more solitary arts to be experienced.

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Solitude as a Spiritual Practice Perspectives from the Chinese Tradition Wong Ping Ho

Introduction As commonly understood, one of the pillars of Chinese culture, Confucianism, upholds that ‘One cannot be fully human in solitude’ (Ni, 2016: 54). Popular Taiwan writer Chiang Hsun went so far as to claim that ‘Confucian culture is most unwilling to talk about solitude’ (Chiang, 2009: 20). Chiang has certainly overstated the case, to say the least. Japanese scholar Shiba Rokuro had surveyed how the sense of solitude has permeated a lot of Chinese literary works since antiquity (Shiba, 2018). The solitude motif similarly features prominently in other areas of Chinese culture. This goes beyond addressing solitude as an objective aspect of the human condition to prescribing solitude as an essential means of personal cultivation. How are we to make sense of this apparent contradiction inherent in a relational/interdependent self that at the same time lays great store on solitude? Two points are worth noting. First, fulfilling satisfactorily one’s duties entailed by one’s multiple relations requires an appropriately cultivated self. In the words of the Confucian classic The Great Learning: The ancients who wished to manifest their clear character to the world would first bring order to their states. Those who wished to bring order to their states would first regulate their families. Those who wished to regulate their families would first cultivate their personal lives. Those who wished to cultivate their personal lives would first rectify their minds. Those who wished to rectify their minds would first make their wills sincere. Those who wished to make their wills sincere would first extend their knowledge. The extension of knowledge consists in the investigation of things . . . From the Son of Heaven down to the common people, all must regard cultivation of the personal life as the root or foundation. (Chan, 1973: 86–7) Such self-cultivation involves solitude, at least in part. In this regard, the following statement by the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who wrote from the Christian tradition, might as

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well also be used to capture this Confucian sentiment: ‘He [who cannot be alone] will only do harm to himself and to the community’ (Bonhoeffer, 1954: 77). Second, the multifarious relations that nourish the interdependent self have to be established and developed on a spiritual level. Paradoxically, solitude enables such spiritual encounters. All these points are elaborated herein. Ubiquity of the Solitude Motif in Chinese Culture The image of a solitary, contented sage already appeared in The Book of Poetry (Wang, 2008), one of the foundational classics of the Confucian canon. We are told in one of the poems that ‘In his cabin on the hill / Lives the sage so carefree. / Alone he sleeps and sings at will, / Always finding cause for glee’ (Wang, 2008: 99). And it is not only sages who would enjoy themselves in solitude, but many ordinary individuals, at least those in the literati class, would savour moments of solitude too. The term xianju, while commonly rendered as ‘dwelling at ease’ or ‘living at leisure’ in English, is actually defined first and foremost as ‘living alone away from people’ in the authoritative The Great Chinese Word Dictionary (The Great Chinese Word Dictionary Editorial Board, 1993: 81). Throughout Chinese history, the theme of xianju has often appeared in Chinese poetry. As a very rough indication, in Complete Tang Poems, the most complete collection of Tang dynasty (608–907) poetical works, there are 127 poems or groups of poems with xianju in the title. There are also fifty poems or groups of poems with titles containing the term youju (living in seclusion) (Peng, 1960).1 Numerous Chinese paintings and pieces of Chinese lute (guqin) music also bear titles containing the term xianju. Song dynasty literati-official Sima Guang (1019–86) famously named his garden ‘Garden of Solitary Pleasure’ (Stepanova, 2007). In the case of Chinese landscape paintings, the norm is to display ‘a love of wild solitudes, of plunging streams and soaring peaks, with perhaps a few contemplative figures enjoying the wide prospect from their secluded pavilions or mountain retreats’ (Binyon, 1946: 13). Song dynasty painter Han Zhuo advised that ‘Whenever painting figures, one should not use coarse, vulgar types, but value those that are pure and elegant and in lonely retirement’ (Bush & Shih, 2012: 155). In 1104, Emperor Huizong established an imperial painting academy. During examinations, students were required to create a painting that captured visually the spirit of a given poetic couplet. Topics included such verse lines as ‘No passenger crosses the river in wilderness. / A lonely skiff all day cross-wise’; ‘The disordered mountains hide an ancient temple’ (Ebrey, 2016: 36) and ‘In the sixth month, I walk with pigweed staff along the stone path, / Where the noontime shade is thick, I listen to the gurgling waters’ (Egan, 2016: 290), all of which exude a sense of solitude. In a volume of paintings entitled ‘Entertainments of Emperor Yongzheng’, Qing emperor Yongzheng (1678–1735) is portrayed as engaged in various leisure activities (Wu, 1995). It is interesting to note that in all paintings the emperor appears alone. A possible reason for this may be that it would have been improper to put other people in the same painting with the emperor because the emperor was unequalled. In actual fact, ‘Gu [the solitary one] was a personal pronoun that the emperor alone used to refer to himself’ (Furth, 2002: 28; square brackets added). However, it is also not uncommon that similar paintings depicting members of the literati class would also show the individuals alone by themselves. In fact a majority of the leisure activities shown in ‘Entertainments of Emperor Yongzheng’ are those that would typically be engaged in alone, such as playing the Chinese lute and meditating. It is unclear whether such solitary leisure

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activities were actually what the emperor would regularly enjoy, but the fact that they were shown in this painting collection at least shows where the emperor’s aspirations lay. Emperor Yongzheng’s son, Emperor Qianlong (1711–99), worked together with an expert painter to create a painting of himself in a scholar’s costume, sitting alone in a hut with volumes of books by his side, semi-hidden in a snowy landscape. This is typical of many Chinese paintings, evocative of the same sentiments of solitude. In fact the part contributed by Emperor Qianlong in this painting was the snowy landscape, which he copied from an earlier painting by an accomplished painter (Wu, 1995). Another painting shows Emperor Qianlong on an outdoor excursion, this time accompanied by an attendant. The emperor composed and inscribed a poem on the painting, the concluding section of which reads: ‘A waterfall cascades by my side. / Tame deer beneath cliffs seem to understand my words. / But instead of living like a hermit in deep woods, / I must ensure peace, remember the hardship of my forbears [sic.] and plan eternity for the kingdom’ (Wu, 1995: 38). The emperor lamented the impossibility for him to enjoy a hermitic existence. Whether or not this pronouncement reflected his genuine desire, it tells us that a hermitic form of life was at least not looked down upon by society, not to say occasional bouts of solitude. Many poems describe their authors sitting or standing alone by themselves. A famous example of the former is the poem Sitting Alone in Face of Peak Jingting by the great Tang dynasty poet Li Bai (701–62): ‘All birds have flown away, so high; / A lonely cloud drifts on, so free. / We are not tired, the Peak and I, / Nor I of him, nor he of me’ (Li, 2007: 176). Among poems written by Ming dynasty literati-official He Jingming (1483–1521), both the titles Sitting Alone and Standing Alone can be found. Bryant (2008) noted that Sitting Alone as a title was not uncommon among the works of He Jingming’s contemporaries, ‘many of whom used it for meditative poems’ (p. 228). While the mood of the aforementioned poem by Li Bai about the experience of sitting alone is one of serenity, at other times individuals are in different moods sitting or standing alone. In fact quite often when poets described themselves standing alone by themselves, they might be in a melancholic mood, as is the case in this poem entitled Sentiments on New Year’s Eve in the Year Kuei-ssu, by Qing dynasty scholar Huang Jingren (1749–83): Laughter pours from a thousand homes, as the water clock drips and drips – One learns griefs and anxieties in secret, from matters beyond oneself. Silent and alone, I stand on the market bridge unknown to anyone; A single star bright as the moon, I watch for a long, long time. (Liu & Lo, 1975: 492) The melancholy was not due to the author’s state of loneliness per se, but to the reason behind that loneliness: the awareness of inadequacies in the world that the crowd around him failed to appreciate, and his refusal to join the crowd by snuffing out that awareness. This reminds one of the following remark by Confucius: Worthy people go into reclusion because the age itself is disordered; those next in worth withdraw because their state is disordered; next still are those who withdraw because of a discourteous expression on their ruler’s face; and finally there are those who will withdraw at a single discourteous word. (Confucius, 2003: 169) This remark, to Hung (2018), implies that when the world ‘is full of mediocracy, vulgarity, and corruption . . ., the noblest people live like secluded hermits – nearly a Daoist life’ (p. 20). 106

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Hung further quoted A. Charles Muller to reinforce this point about the agreement between the Confucian and Daoist perspectives with regard to the need to keep aloof from a corrupt world: ‘Normally Confucianism is understood as a tradition where one must remain engaged in society. However, in this case, Confucius’ attitude is reminiscent of that of Zhuangzi, who always recommend [sic] that intelligent people not accept the norms of a decadent world and retire in solitude instead’ (p. 39). Han dynasty scholar Liu An (179–122 BC) stated clearly in Abstract of the Zhuangzi that ‘The gentlemen of rivers and seas, the men of mountains and valleys, they slight the myriad petty things of the world and move in solitude’ (cited in Kirkova, 2016: 221). However, in some sense, this refusal to yield to and join the decadent world does not necessarily mean the rejection of the world. Quite the contrary, as Catholic priest Thomas Merton argued: Withdrawal from other men can be a special form of love for them. It should never be a rejection of man or of his society. But it may well be a quiet and humble refusal to accept the myths and fictions with which social life cannot help but be full – especially today. To despair of the illusions and façades which man builds around himself is certainly not to despair of man. On the contrary, it may be a sign of love and of hope. For when we love someone, we refuse to tolerate what destroys and maims his personality . . . [The solitaries’] contribution is a mute witness, a secret and even invisible expression of love which takes the form of their own option for solitude in preference to the acceptance of social fictions. (Merton, 1985: 192–3) It might be countered that those who followed the full-fledged Daoist form of life by becoming recluses and living alone in the wilderness (Vervoorn, 1990) were undeniably rejecting society. However, as the traditional Chinese saying goes: ‘The small hermit lives on a mountain. The great hermit lives in a town’ (Porter, 1993: 220). Even Zhuangzi’s notion of du (solitude) as a way of life has been interpreted by some commentators to entail a critical reflection on one’s social roles, rather than necessarily a rejection of them (Wang, 2016). Such an interpretation would move the Confucian and Daoist perspectives even closer. First, it shows that Zhuangzi does not deny the necessity of social roles, which is in line with the Confucian position on the indispensability of community. Second, critical reflection on one’s social roles certainly requires also self-reflection, which echoes the Confucian insistence on the need for constant self-examination. Furth’s (2002) astute observation that ‘Du [solitude] as explicated in our classical aphorisms points toward introspection as essential to selfcultivation, whether for health or sagehood’ (p. 28) certainly applies equally well both to Daoism and Confucianism. Confucius’s disciple Zeng Shen declared that every day he examined himself on three counts: ‘in my dealings with others, have I in any way failed to be dutiful? In my interactions with friends and associates, have I in any way failed to be trustworthy? Finally, have I in any way failed to repeatedly put into practice what I teach?’ (Confucius, 2003: 2). Confucius himself said, ‘If you can look inside yourself and find no faults, what cause is there for anxiety or fear?’ (Confucius, 2003: 126). Such self-examination is all the more important when one is alone by oneself, as highlighted by the Confucian idea of ‘vigilance in solitude’ (shendu2). Vigilance in Solitude It was pointed out earlier that the image of the solitary sage can be found in the foundational Confucian classic The Book of Poetry. The theme of vigilance in solitude similarly appears in another poem in this classic, the title of which was rendered as Dignity by the translator: ‘When in your room you stay alone, / You should be honest to the bone. / Don’t say that here 107

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you stay alone, / And that nothing will be known. / Where and when the Spirit goes, / No one on earth ever knows; / That’s why our veneration grows’ (Wang, 2008: 601). Another foundational Confucian classic, The Book of Rites, records a number of descriptions Confucius gave when asked about the proper conduct of the scholar, one of which is: ‘The scholar . . . may be living unnoticed, but does not give way to licentiousness’ (Legge, 1885: 406). The Chinese term rendered as ‘living unnoticed’ in the quote is youju, which literally means living in solitude or seclusion. Although the teaching of vigilance in solitude features most prominently in Confucianism, the idea can be found in other schools of thought too. For example, in Wenzi, a work attributed to a disciple of Laozi, we find the statement that What grieves ideal people3 is not what is just being done, but what comes from within, for they observe what it will lead to. Sages are not ashamed of appearances, ideal people are careful even when alone. (Cleary, 1991: 30–1) Yan Ying, a politician who was a near contemporary of Confucius and whose position is considered to be neither specifically Confucian nor Daoist, said, ‘I have heard it said that a gentleman can stay alone without being frightened by his own shadow and can sleep alone without being afraid of his own spirit’ (Milburn, 2016: 406). The importance attached to vigilance in solitude is apparent in many ways. It was common for literati studios, halls and buildings to be named Vigilance in Solitude (see, e.g. Du, 2012; Wu, 2013). Emperor Kangxi, father of Emperor Yongzheng whom we came across earlier on, drew the attention of members of the royal family to the emphasis put by the Confucian classics The Great Learning and The Doctrine of the Mean on vigilance in solitude as of primary significance for those aspiring to become a worthy person, and offered his own elaboration on what it actually entails in practice (Kangxi, n.d.). When Qing dynasty literati-official Zeng Guofan (1811–72) took the civil service examination, he was required to compose an essay with the prescribed title ‘On the Gentleman’s Vigilance in Solitude’ (Ma, 2002). All these references to ‘the gentleman’s vigilance in solitude’ do not mean that ladies were forgotten either. Empress Renxiaowen (1361–1407) of the Ming dynasty wrote Teachings for the Inner Court, which was originally intended for the edification of imperial women but was subsequently popularized among the ordinary populace as a result of several emperors’ decrees, and included as one of Four Books for Women (named after the Four Books of the Confucian canon). The empress cautioned that ‘even as small as a single thought, or when one is alone, one must be prudent. If someone says, “Nobody sees it.” Can one hide it from Heaven? If someone says, “Nobody knows.” Is one not deceiving one’s own conscience?’ (Pang-White, 2018: 158). At one level, the significance of vigilance in solitude is not difficult to grasp. As The Great Learning observes, ‘When the inferior man [xiaoren] is alone and leisurely [xianju], there is no limit to which he does not go in his evil deeds’; in contrast, ‘the superior man [junzi] will always be watchful over himself when he is alone [shendu]’ (Chan, 1973: 89; square brackets added). Ming dynasty scholar Wang Xiang (c. sixteenth to seventeenth centuries) explained that ‘a gentleman, who remains prudent when alone, acts with a heart of prudence and watchfulness even in places where nobody sees or hears. Being so strict with watchfulness and self-alertness, consequently he has few faults’ (Pang-White, 2018: 160). However, it is not just an issue of 108

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checking and refraining from improper thoughts that might lead to evil deeds but, much more profoundly, also a matter of achieving one’s spiritual well-being, as hinted by the following extract from The Doctrine of the Mean: The Book of Odes4 says, ‘Although the fish dive and lie at the bottom, it is still quite clearly seen.’ Therefore the superior man examines his own heart and sees that there is nothing wrong there, and that he is not dissatisfied with himself. The superior man is unequaled in the fact that he [is cautious] in those things which people do not see. The Book of Odes says, ‘Though the ceiling looks down upon you, be free from shame even in the recesses of your own house.’ (Chan, 1973: 113; square brackets in the original) Vigilance in solitude helps one to be free of shame and dissatisfaction with oneself. Mencius held that the noble person (junzi) has three delights, one of which occurs when ‘he can look up and not be abashed before Heaven, look down and not to be ashamed before others’5 (Bloom, 2009: 148). Although not everyone might agree that freedom from shame and dissatisfaction with oneself necessarily entails spiritual well-being, the two are not unrelated. Furthermore, there may be much more that is involved and at stake spiritually in vigilance in solitude than abstaining from improper behaviour and achieving freedom from shame and dissatisfaction with oneself. In response to a friend’s remark that ‘“the meaning of joy not being interrupted” . . . refers to the sage, to his being “perfectly and continually sincere”’, Ming dynasty Neo-Confucian Wang Yangming (1472–1529) maintained that The only effort required is to learn constantly, and the essential of learning constantly is to watch over ourselves when we are alone, and this vigilance in solitude is precisely the extension of liang-chih [man’s inborn capacity for knowing and doing the good, that which, when developed to the utmost, unites him with heaven and earth and all things], while liangchih is nothing other than joy-in-itself. (Wang, 1972: 90; description in square brackets taken from p. xii) Elsewhere Wang Yangming advised his disciples that ‘The important point is to achieve the state of equilibrium and harmony, and achieving equilibrium and harmony depends primarily on being watchful over oneself when alone’ (Wang, 1963: 34). Kumazawa Banzan (1619–91), a Japanese Neo-Confucian influenced by Wang Yangming, pointed out the crucial difference between the superficial and profound approaches to vigilance in solitude: ‘When you interpret “caution in solitude” [literally] as being cautious over solitude, you have the detriment that even leisure is like being in the presence of others, wearing a hakama and sitting in order of seniority. When you interpret it as knowledge in solitude, there is no detriment’ (cited in Bowring, 2017: 86; square brackets in the original). It is clear that while the former is spiritually unwholesome, the latter contributes to spiritual flourishing, but the distinction between the former and the latter is subtle indeed. It hinges on whether one engages in the practice of vigilance in solitude in the spirit of sincerity or not. Vigilance in solitude was also discussed and practised by Korean Confucians, one of which was Yi Gan (李柬; 1677–1727). For Yi Gan, the ideal spiritual state, achieved by sages, is for the transcendent i (principle, pattern or coherence) to be fully manifested in an individual’s gi (mind-heart).6 Self-cultivation consists in striving towards the identity between i and gi so that gi no longer deviates from i. ‘Accordingly,’ Yi Gan wrote: 109

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one should be cautious and restrain oneself when one is alone. By this way of restricting oneself, one should make oneself sincere. One should abide by this way/rule so that one cannot neglect this practice at any moment and can always keep the practice. This is the very need for practical concern and effort toward the level that i and gi come to have the same substance and that the mind-heart and the nature are identical to each other. (cited in Choi, 2019: 246) Note the advice that ‘one should make oneself sincere’. In this regard, it is interesting that some researchers translated the Korean term for vigilance in solitude, 신독 sindok (愼獨), simply as ‘sincerity’ (see, for example, Shin, 2013: 96). And herein lies a paradox. Is sincerity the prerequisite for vigilance in solitude or its ultimate goal? It seems it is both. The paradox can only be resolved in actual meditative practice. In the words of Keenan (2011), Wang Yangming understood vigilance in solitude ‘as a way to experience the essence of mind’ (p. 104). Put in more concrete terms, the practice of vigilance in solitude is ‘an honest monitoring of one’s own unique development as one’s humaneness is recovered from within’ (p. 44). This is similar to Tu’s (1989) formulation that vigilance in solitude involves a person’s ‘conscious attempt to look and listen for subtle manifestations of his inner self so that he can fully actualize the human way inherent in his nature’ (p. 25). This is, in essence, a meditative practice. This approach to vigilance in solitude was further developed and refined by Ming dynasty scholar-official Liu Zongzhou (1578–1645), whose influence was extended to Japan, with many Japanese followers in the second half of the Edo period (Steben, 2012). Liu Zongzhou elevated the status of vigilance in solitude ‘as the core concept of Confucian practice, and understood it as a kind of meditative state of deep stillness, silence and tranquillity, which when experienced regularly will give one a great sense of inner calmness and rootedness in the midst of one’s daily work and social interactions’ (Steben, 2012: 51). This approach to vigilance in solitude as a meditative practice by no means replaced vigilance in solitude as self-monitoring for unwholesome thoughts and actions. The two are certainly not mutually exclusive. Whether or not one is engaged in meditative practice, it would be good to have means available that facilitate self-monitoring for the sake of moral and spiritual development. In fact, at the same time as vigilance in solitude as a meditative practice was elucidated and popularized during the Ming dynasty, the practices of keeping ‘ledgers of merit and demerit’ (gongguo ge) and moral diaries for self-cultivation also became widespread (Wang, 1998). People filling in ledgers of merit and demerit would take stock of their actions during the day, assign point values for good and bad deeds, and add up the total score to reflect their moral status, aiming at some sort of moral cleansing (Rahav, 2015).7 Others kept a daily diary of their thoughts and interactions along similar lines, but without the numerical assignments and calculations. This Neo-Confucian practice of keeping moral diaries also spread to Japan. Japanese Confucian Kaibara Ekken (1630–1714) described his practice in the following terms: ‘At night we reflect on our mistakes during the day, and if there are no failings we can sleep peacefully. If there are failings we should be repentant and ashamed and take this as the lesson for the following day’ (cited in Keenan, 2011: xxiii). Sometimes this kind of diary writing risked degenerating into ‘a form of puritanical moral discipline in daily life’ (Yang, 2016: 6), or, in Dryburgh’s (2013) words, ‘embodied regulation’ (p. 112). Note the severe terms in which Qing scholar-official Zeng Guofan (1811–72) instructed his son on how to keep the diary: ‘You must write it in the formal script. You should include all the sins you have committed during the day, that is to say sins of the body, the mind, and the tongue. 110

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You should continue to write it all your life without any gaps’ (cited in Harrison, 2005: 11). This reminds us of Kumazawa Banzan’s distinction made earlier between the negative ‘being cautious over solitude’ and the positive ‘knowledge in solitude’. To contribute to spiritual development, moral diaries need to be written in the spirit of vigilance of solitude ‘as a way to experience the essence of mind’, as taught by Wang Yangming. By the time of the Qing dynasty, it had become customary for some diary writers ‘to meet regularly in small coteries of around three or four friends to maintain their self-cultivation by exchanging their private diaries. Once exchanged, the close friends would make marginal comments about the decisions, worries, or temptations noted in another friend’s diary’ (Keenan, 2011: xxiii). This practice of writing moral diaries and sharing them among friends for mutual edification continued into the twentieth century (Rahav, 2015). Keenan (2011) pointed out that ‘This form of self-cultivation involved both solitary contemplation and respectful interaction’ (p. xxiii), as befits the communal orientation of Confucianism. Community in Solitude As pointed out right at the beginning of this chapter, the emphasis of Confucianism is generally considered to lie on the interpersonal dimension. What Qing dynasty scholar Ruan Yuan (1764– 1849) pronounced is representative: In all cases, jen8 仁 must first be exhibited in personal actions before it can be observed. In addition there must be two people involved before jen can be seen. If a person shuts his door and lives peacefully alone, closes his eyes and sits still with a peaceful attitude, although his mind contains virtue and principles, in the end this cannot be counted for what the sagely gate called jen. (cited in Elman, 1985: 178) However, this is only one side of the coin. As mentioned earlier, even Confucius noted with approval that ‘Worthy people go into reclusion because the age itself is disordered’ (Confucius, 2003: 169), and this does not mean that such worthy people do not have the well-being of humankind in mind when they go into reclusion. On the contrary, humankind’s well-being may be the thing that is first and foremost on their mind; reclusion can be a special form of love for humankind, to rephrase Merton. More importantly, as Steben (2012) reminded us of the other side of the coin: The Confucian path may not be based on a philosophy of individualism, but certainly running through the tradition there is a recognition of a dimension of the human self or human subjectivity that is in a real sense above all of the relationships in which a person’s life is involved, as important as those relationships are. (p. 50) This transcendent dimension was already apparent in our references earlier to li (principle), and to Wang Yangming’s understanding of vigilance in solitude ‘as a way to experience the essence of mind’ (Keenan, 2011: 104). According to a popular formulation of spirituality, it is important for one to be connected to oneself, to others, to the environment and to the transcendent (Hay & Nye, 2006; Fisher & Wong, 2013; Ng, 2008). The traditional Chinese in fact quite often withdrew from social connections precisely in order to enable engagement in other forms of connections for the sake of self-cultivation. From this perspective, the practice of vigilance in solitude enabled individuals to achieve connection with their own selves and to the transcendent within their own selves, at the expense of temporary disconnection from other individuals. In other cases, 111

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severance of human connection enabled (or was at least compensated for by) alternative forms of valuable connection. Take the example of some Religious Daoists who broke bonds with the human society. Lind (2015) pointed out that, even in such an arguably extreme case, ‘If the adept leaves the society to devote him- or herself to the practices in solitude, it doesn’t mean that the social relations and ethics cease to have an impact on the body, but rather that he or she attempts to control and direct these factors to transform the body’ (p. 12). The adepts’ practices actually served to help them construct (real or imagined) relations with the spirit world. One particularly salient kind of connection that the traditional Chinese were eager to establish while alone was that with the ancients. The following lines from two different poems of Chao I (1727– 1814), a Qing dynasty scholar, are representative of many similar literary expressions from the literati: ‘Closing my door I refuse people for a time; / Day after day I struggle with the ancients’; ‘In my solitude I suffer lack of friendship; / I can get close only to the Ancients’ (Priest, 1982: 233). The first poem was about solitude actively sought out by the writer for the sake of encounters with the ancients, whereas the second was about solitude passively endured but which was ameliorated by the company of the ancients. One more example may suffice for the present purposes. The following poem, entitled Reading on a Cold Night, is by Qing dynasty scholar Zheng Zhen (1806–64): After my lamp begins to dim, I press sleeves together, chanting, / Then open my door for my meeting with the rising moon. / I sigh that everyone abandons a poor man like me, / But luckily, the ancients still recognize my face! The translator commented that ‘in spite of his loneliness, he feels a real fellowship with all the great authors of the past’. (Schmidt, 2013: 457) Such sentiments and experiences are not restricted to the pre-modern Chinese either. Twentiethcentury scholar and author Shen Congwen (1902–88) passed his long and lonely nights away from home reading Sima Qian’s Historical Records. He wrote to his wife about the inspiring experience he had undergone: what a few solitary individuals had preserved in words became the only vehicles to link past and present and to connect self and other. They make historical continuity possible, so that feelings constrained by a specific time and space could still be re-enlivened, as though faceto-face, after a thousand years and a hundred changes. (cited in Li, 2015: 614; italics added) The translator was impressed enough to remark upon the ‘power of literature . . . to bridge self and other across time and space . . . [and] convey the vitality of their author and subject over to their readers, however belatedly’, and upon Shen Congwen’s ‘deep resonance of Sima Qian’s person, his life and his feelings’ (Li, 2015: 614). It is possible that such frequent expressions of meetings with the ancients are mere rhetoric with no actual substance, but as Wong (2019) tried to establish, numerous Chinese spiritual practices serve as conduits for communion with the ancients, effecting a kind of transtemporal spiritual encounter. Perhaps such literary expressions both arise from and reinforce a particular cultural perceptivity in the Chinese psyche, which allows them to grasp the personalities responsible for the creation of particular literary and other cultural works, in such a way that they sense the intimate presence of these personalities. 112

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Solitude in Nature and Art There are frequent encounters with nature in solitude too. Zheng Zhen’s aforementioned poem refers to his ‘meeting with the rising moon’. Earlier on we mentioned Li Bai’s poem Sitting Alone in Face of Peak Jingting, which describes Li and the Peak in terms that befit intimate friends: ‘We are not tired, the Peak and I, / Nor I of him, nor he of me’ (Li, 2007: 176). In order to spend time with nature in private, ‘Confucian officials’ leisure time included moments of solitude such as trips to places with beautiful scenery, monasteries, and mountains and rest in the garden’ (Stepanova, 2007: 76). He Jingming, whom we met earlier on in this chapter, wrote a poem entitled Befriending Bamboo, telling us that ‘I bought a garden and planted only bamboo, / Taking bamboo for my companion there . . . / I lodge in deep retirement and ponder for myself. / Whence does it come, this burst of joy in solitude?’ (Bryant, 2008: 23). In his essay On One’s Place of Dwelling, Ming dynasty scholar Chen Jiru (1558–1639) also mentioned bamboos in the design of the garden, prescribing that ‘At the end of the bamboos there is a house and the house must be secluded’ (Minford, 1998: 259). Tong Jun (1900–83), eminent scholar of history of Chinese architecture, explicated on the nature of the Chinese garden as a venue for solitude: The Chinese garden is not built as a playground for a multitude of people. Problems of circulation, which in Western gardens are admirably solved by axes and cross-roads, are no problems when men wander in the garden, and not walk through it. The long corridors, narrow doorways and curved paths in a Chinese garden are not meant for a crowd. The stairs, bridges and rockery are never designed to please children. It is not a place for recreation. It is essentially for contemplation and solitude. (Tung, 1936: 222) Stepanova (2007) echoed this with the observation that ‘A garden was an area of virtual solitude, an escape to the world of nature inside the city walls and creation of boundless journeys on a small piece of ground’ (p. 76). Nature can be enjoyed even vicariously in the literati studio or the chamber through artistic means such as paintings and poetry. In the tradition of ‘incumbent travel’ (woyou), a term coined by famous painter Zong Bing (375–443), people are said to wander in nature spiritually through viewing landscape paintings lying in bed. According to official history, towards the end of his life, Zong Bing ‘painted landscapes to be viewed in his room as a substitute for roaming in natural scenery’ (Bush & Shih, 2012: 337), declaring that ‘Now I can purify my heart by contemplating the Dao, and do my roaming from my bed’ (cited in Wang, 2014: 3). Zong Bing is most famous for the essay Introduction to Painting Landscape, which describes the spiritual elevation he experienced by viewing landscape paintings in solitude as follows: Thus, I live at leisure, regulating my vital breath, brandishing the wine-cup and sounding the lute. Unrolling paintings in solitude, I sit pondering the ends of the earth. Without resisting the multitude of natural promptings, alone I respond to uninhabited wildernesses where grottoed peaks tower on high and cloudy forests mass in depth. The sages and virtuous men who have shone forth throughout the ages had a myriad charms [of nature] fused into their spirits and thoughts. What then should I do? I rejoice in my spirit, and that is all. What could be placed above that which rejoices the spirit? (Bush & Shih, 2012: 38; square brackets in the original) 113

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As indicated in the aforementioned quote, the painter of good landscape paintings that can induce such spiritual elevation in the viewer must have first internalized the landscape and its spirit, or should we say, imbued him- or herself with the landscape’s spirit. Furthermore, they harboured lofty sentiments that they expressed through their paintings. For example, Ming dynasty literatiofficial Wen Zhengming (1470–1559) explained his motivation for painting wintry landscapes in an inscription he wrote on one of the paintings: ‘The lofty scholars and recluses of the past . . . often did snow scenes; they chose to make use of that subject in order to embody their feelings of noble loneliness, of freedom from vulgarity’ (cited in Cahill, 1978: 239; omission in the original). Contemporary Chinese philosopher Li Zehou captured the spiritual significance of landscape paintings for the Chinese populace with the assertion that ‘Chinese landscape paintings are comparable to images of the Cross in the West’ (cited in Deng, 2018: vii). Deng (2018) provided the following elaboration, which is worth quoting in full: Readers who have been to China will likely have discovered that in the environment in which Chinese people live, including their homes, offices, hotels, public spaces, and private establishments, landscape paintings are comparable in their ubiquity to images of the Cross in Christian cultures. Their ‘function’ is to help people move beyond the limits of the individualistic self, including spatio-temporal limits and consequential considerations. They return us to nature, placing us in unity with heaven and earth and realizing a type of transcendence that liberates us from merely worldly considerations. Although most of these paintings are chosen unreflectively as mere decorations, or chosen consciously with the aim of appearing cultured, it is still significant that in these instances landscape paintings, rather than other decorations, are so consistently chosen. In this we see precisely a manifestation of the cultural-psychological formation, though as a manifestation of the collective unconscious. Herein there is awe at the natural cosmos, which is why humans are represented as so inconsequential in these landscape paintings. (p. ix) Not only are these humans in the paintings inconsequential against the vastness of the landscape, but they are alone too. Chinese poetry often depicts the same sort of scene that is portrayed in landscape paintings, with similar intentions and effects. The vastness of the landscape is conveyed through an image of distance. Giuffré (2018) explained that in Classical Chinese literature, this image of distance is generally attached to the inner and spiritual condition of the poet. The essence of the far-away distance, both spatial and temporal, symbolises the deep moral personality and the high ideals embodied by the sensitive character of the poet. The concept of distance leads the poet to a transcendental realm, where the unceasing passage of time and the infinity of the cosmic space merge together. (p. 132) This is in line with the understanding of Qing dynasty philosopher Wang Fuzhi (1619–92) that poetry in the Chinese tradition is ‘a method of reestablishing the unity between humans and nature by cultivating an enlarged, open, and enlightened awareness in contrast to the small, private, and dark egoistic modality of our heart-mind that dominates the everyday’ (Kim, 2019: 147). As Wong (2019) pointed out, members of the traditional Chinese literati were quite often adept at a number of artistic pursuits. In the essay Introduction to Painting Landscape quoted earlier, Zong Bing also mentioned himself ‘sounding the lute’ in solitude. And the lute is often 114

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a subject of Chinese poetry and painting too. Yung (2017) observed that ‘in many ink-brush paintings of magnificent peaks and valleys, calm rivers and creeks, dreamy clouds and jagged pine trees, one often finds depictions of a lone person contemplating nature with a qin [Chinese lute] at his side’ (p. 530; square brackets added), as is the case of one of the paintings in the album ‘Entertainments of Emperor Yongzheng’ (Wu, 1995). In other paintings, Chinese lute players are depicted playing alone in their study. All this is because the Chinese lute was played for the sake of self-cultivation leading to personal virtue and enlightenment. Therefore it was ‘primarily played in private, directed not outwardly toward an audience but inwardly toward the player himself’ (Yung, 2017: 531), for his own edification. Chinese lute master and scholar Xu Shangying (1582–1662), who lived between the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, advised in his masterpiece The State of Guqin Art of the Xi Shan School that the Chinese lute player should seek ‘to produce music of solitude and tranquillity’ (Tien, 2015: 210). In more concrete terms, We must do away with careless and sluggish playing . . . By doing so, the sounds produced will then appear magnanimous and gentle. When one refuses to go after the undesirable quality of intricate delicacy, one naturally produces sounds which are reminiscent of what’s ancient and exquisite. When one plays with such qualities, the audience, though listening to it in the room, would feel as if they were walking in a deep mountain or valley, surrounded by aged trees, cold springs and the sounds of breeze, in complete solitude from the hustle and bustle of the world. (Tien, 2015: 276) As the Chinese lute was often played in the absence of any audience, it would perhaps have been more accurate to revise the above slightly and say that ‘When one plays with such qualities, one would feel as if one were walking in a deep mountain or valley, surrounded by aged trees, cold springs and the sounds of breeze, in complete solitude from the hustle and bustle of the world.’ It is clear that both Chinese lute playing and Chinese landscape painting, and a lot of Chinese poetry too, would ideally be practised in solitude, with the similar aim to induce in the practitioner and the audience/viewer/reader a wholesome sense of spiritual solitude. Conclusion All the points made in the discussions earlier about solitude as a spiritual practice are in a sense already covered by the instructive connotations of the terms xianju (implying a close association of solitude with leisure, and hence with the renouncement of worldly concerns, at least for the time being), and shendu (implying a close association between solitude and mindfulness of one’s inner self). The task of the chapter has simply been to provide a bit of elaboration, mostly by way of historical examples. In conclusion, while it is certainly true that ‘One cannot be fully human in solitude’ (Ni, 2016: 54), it is no less true that, in the theory and practice of Confucianism (no doubt long seasoned with elements of Daoism and Buddhism), one cannot be fully human without solitude. This can perhaps be best symbolized graphically by the taiji circle, with each of its two halves representing community and solitude, respectively.

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Solitude and Religion The Spaces Between Gillian Simpson

Introduction Solitude, as Nouwen (1981: 16) claims, ‘is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self.’ In religious practice solitude is often linked with personal encounter with the ‘divine’; it requires physical or psychological distance from other people. Unsought solitude can have a serious damaging effect, though for some, solitude is both pursued and necessary for spiritual health. Koch (1994: 15) defines the condition of solitude as a spectrum of mental and physical disengagement: an experiential world in which other people are absent: that is enough for solitude, that is constant through all solitudes. Other people may be present, provided that our minds are disengaged from them; and the full range of disengaged activities, from reflective withdrawal to complete immersion in the tumbling rush of sensations, find their places along the spectrum of solitudes. Solitude requires some degree of isolation to disengage from surrounding distractions, but it does not necessarily mean physical separation; distance can be ‘sometimes measured in inches’ (Barbour, 2004: 2). Solitude is, therefore, in part a subjective state; sitting a metre away from another person in a synagogue, mosque or church may be enough for psychological solitude; alternatively, physical isolation may leave our minds unable to escape from the dominating presence of others. Spirituality is often synonymous with solitude. While it eludes a concrete definition, the concept of spirituality first appears in St Paul’s letters in the New Testament to describe a specifically Christian attitude to life, as opposed to a division between the spiritual and physical realms. The separation between the intellect and non-rational nature came about as a result of Scholasticism

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in the twelfth century, but the term had largely disappeared by the 1600s, re-emerging in the twentieth century as a replacement term for mystical theology (Sheldrake, 2010: 6). Spiritual encounter can be found in the spaces between doctrine and dogma, rituals and symbols, and while it cannot be divested completely of everyday activities it is, as Sheldrake (2010: 9) observes, generally accepted today that ‘the human spirit is most truly itself and most effectively enhanced when in special locations such as church and monastery, or in the protected privacy of “home” or in an interiorized self – the soul, the heart or the mind’. Rowan Williams (1979: 2), however, seeks to break down the perceived elitism of spirituality, further democratizing it by affording it a space at the centre of the public arena. As he proposes, it is ‘far more than a science of interpreting exceptional private experiences; it must now touch every area of human experience, the public and the social, the painful, negative, even pathological byways of the mind, the moral and relational world’. For many, spirituality comes in the form of engagement with community, personal relationships, the dogma and ritual of religious belief and practice, the search for self-fulfilment, all of which offer a sense of connection to the divine. In the West particularly, spirituality is associated with ‘personal, experiential aspects of religion in contrast with an organized community’s doctrines, institutions and rituals’ (Barbour, 2014: 557), though spaces within doctrine and rituals allow for private engagement. The central prayer in Jewish liturgy the Amidah, for example, recited privately and inaudibly, reflects the personal prayer of the ancient Temple and the mixed language of exile, and creates opportunities to discover a greater depth of personal holiness (Bloom, n.d.). It is a moment of transition, from the collective to the personal, a step that Weil (1942: 78) recognizes must take place before moving to a deeper form of understanding that reflects the sacredness of human beings. Personal and community relationships can be profoundly spiritual events, but for some relational spirituality is held in tension. Barbour (2004: 5) explains this as requiring a solitude which enables ‘contact with what lies beyond social routines and conventions, beyond the repetitiveness and superficiality that often characterize interactions among people’ allowing ‘focus on certain experiences and dimensions of reality with fuller attention’. Solitude in the form of physical isolation leads to what Weil (1942: 76–8) describes as ‘impersonality’, that which is sacred in the human by stripping away personality, and it can only be reached in mental and physical aloneness. For Barbour (2014: 570) individual solitude affords opportunities for people to develop a connection to ‘the fundamental sources of meaning and value in their lives’. It can, for some be a complete aloneness, ‘a necessary condition of meditative awareness or full concentration on something beyond the self that connects them with the world and often with what they believe to be sacred, divine, holy, or most valuable’ (Barbour, 2014: 570). But for many it is the type of solitude commonly found in religious communities, the ordinary spaces-between found in everyday communal living. Cohen (2017: 155–6) differentiates between these two different approaches to solitude which he refers to as ‘ordinary’ and ‘deep’ solitude. This will be further explained later, but whatever form it takes solitude helps orientate the individual towards discovering new ways of connecting the divine to the mundane. Withdrawal into solitude almost invariably leads to a new consciousness which is profoundly socially oriented. It is from these ‘spaces-between’ that new insights arise, and while for Barbour (2004: 6) it stands in ‘a liminal (marginal or boundary) position in relation to social institutions’ solitude serves as the touchstone for rebirth, not just of the individual but the community as well. 117

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The Historical Context of Solitude in Judaism and Christianity While it is a prerequisite for religious founders and seminal thinkers, solitude is often regarded with unease in organized religious communities which have throughout history sought to control and regulate the lives of independent solitaries. This has resulted in tensions between ‘the solitary visionary and the pressures for ethical and social conformity’ (Barbour, 2014: 564). Without the voices of the solitaries, however, those individuals who strove for ‘experiences of solitude to escape pressures, dogma, conventional ways of thinking and being, vices, and the power of the group’ (Coplan & Bowker, 2014: 5–6), the ideals and insights that formed those very communities would not have come about. There is a precedent in the scriptures. Solitude was a precondition for divine revelation; the ancient prophets in the Torah and Jesus in the Gospels set the pattern for future Jewish and Christian approaches to solitude. Jewish and Christian approaches to solitude historically have differed, and those differences are still evident today. The Jewish community saw itself as a society-between, a liminal group whose purpose was to shed the light of God into the world from a position of separateness. Personal solitude was generally considered disadvantageous, as Judaism was (and still is) defined by its notion of Am Yisrael, peoplehood. At its core is the central biblical narrative of the exodus from Egypt which is seen primarily as a story of liberation of a people and the ‘cornerstone of a new social order’ constructed around collective freedom under God (Sacks, 2000: 105). Together with the biblical premise that ‘It is not good for man to be alone’,1 the community is recognized as the heart of the Jewish experience. Sacks (2000: 111–12) explains the centrality of nationhood as both a past and future entity: Individuals can be bound together as a group not just because of where they come from but where they are going to; not just because of what happened to them but because of what they are called on to achieve. They share ideals, a common vision. They participate in a collective life with a distinctive set of rules, values and virtues. They are not linked by history but by destiny . . . such a group is not a community of fate but a community of faith. The Mishnah likewise cites the advice of Hillel, who advises Jews not to ‘separate yourself from the community’ (Pirkei Avos 2:4). As Rabbi Gillman (2008: 5) notes, although ‘the ultimate locus of authority for what we believe and how we practice as Jews is in ourselves, I also believe that we can and must voluntarily surrender some of that authority, primarily to our communities, for without community we would be totally bereft.’ Biblical narratives do, though, set a precedent for solitude for some, presenting a different space-between apart from community. The enslaved Israelites were transformed into a free nation through the interactions between Moses and God on Mount Sinai. Kugel (2008: 10) observes that contact with God was desirable, though there are two conditions which characterized the interactions: intermittence and fear. God appears unexpectedly and occasionally to the early Jews, and it is always accompanied by a collective fear. Unlike Christianity and later Judaism, however, ancient Israelites ‘are never . . . ‘in search of God’. On the contrary, when God does suddenly appear, their reaction is inevitably like that of the Israelites at Mt. Sinai, who were collectively ‘afraid and trembled and stood at a distance’ (Exod. 20.18). Instead God uses chosen intermediaries who inhabit the space between God and the people, who have been honed and prepared in solitude and isolation. Sacks (2005: 149) identifies two movements, or awakenings,

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in the Bible which exemplify the distinction between solitude and community in Jewish practice: itaruta de-leylah, an awakening from above, an action initiated by God through one individual, and itaruta de-latata, an awakening from below, in which the people set in motion the action. This is a combined act, exemplified in the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai (Exod. 24. 15-18), which comprises the Jewish mission in the world. As Sacks (2005: 150) notes, ‘If an awakening from above is God’s gesture of reaching down to humankind, an awakening from below is a human gesture of reaching up toward heaven. When that happens, the horizons of human possibility are enlarged.’ While peoplehood remains central to this awakening, there is an undercurrent in the mystical tradition that acknowledges the importance of solitude and the contemplative life. In the twelfth century Rabbi Abraham Maimonides wrote The Guide to Serving God which devotes an entire chapter to personal retreat. He suggests that the examples seen in Torah provide an important message for Jewish practice, a mixture of solitude and community as the way of spiritual discipline and, while acknowledging the importance of deep solitude for personal devotion, underpins the advantages of a mixture of social interaction and personal isolation: Outward retreat (hisbodedus) might be total. Such as to separate from the city to isolate oneself in deserts, mountains, or other uninhabited places. It might be partial, such as to isolate oneself in houses. It might be frequent or occasional, for long periods, or for short periods. But it is impossible in this world for one to retreat for an entire lifetime. (HaRamban, 2008: 495) More recently a tradition of mystical, or ecstatic, Kabbalah, originating with R. Abulafia in the thirteenth century and culminating in the Hasidic tradition (Idel, 1988: vii–viii), emphasized the practice of hitbodedut (hisbodedus). In Halakhic thought solitude was seen as a religious value that was ‘preserved as a part of sacred history: the solitude of Moses on Mount Sinai, that of Elijah in the desert . . . became ideals that were part of the heritage of the past’ (Idel, 1988: 103); perfection could be achieved only in the company of others. The lives of early saints also, however, who ‘travel to rocky caves and deserts, secluded from the affairs of society . . . repeating the words of the Torah, and chanting the Psalms, which gladden the heart’ (Sha’arey Kedushah, cit. Kaplan, 1978: 95), demonstrate a small, but significant, move for some, away from Halakhic devotion as the path to God towards mystical union, the separation of body and soul in order to enter into the presence of the divine (Kaplan, 1978: 88–8). Christian and Jewish histories show a distinctly different approach to solitude. While both acknowledge its necessity for the founding fathers, Christian approaches to solitude have diverged from Hebraic norms rooted in Torah, adopting the type of deep solitude that comes with the metaphysical body–mind dichotomy of Greek philosophy. This has resulted in a polarization between states of isolation and communal participation, an either/or approach. Judaism, though, has largely maintained its stance that personal solitude is to be avoided, grounding its philosophy mainly in peoplehood and the ordinary solitude that comes with an emphasis on community, while giving head-room to the mystics and saints who practice deep solitude. There has, however, been a recent shift in emphasis with a significant move towards recognizing the value of personal solitude in some areas of Jewish practice, with the opening up of new forms of space-between which engage in personal approaches to spirituality. Christian approaches, on the other hand, have centred their attitudes to solitude both in and beyond the spiritual community. John the Baptist, who set ‘a precedent for ascetic practices and 119

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withdrawal from society’ (Barbour, 2014: 558), and Jesus, whose life in community was interspersed with periods of solitude, are the archetypes for subsequent developments. Spirituality in the earliest church was built on the premise that it was ‘expressed most strongly in the “way of life” of the community as a whole, not least its common prayer and liturgy’ (Sheldrake, 2007: 22), reflecting its increasing role as a public religion in the first two centuries. Early communities sought to place koinonia (Christian fellowship) at their heart; however, there was a growing need for some to retreat to the desert, away from the noise of the public arena to seek the true nature of the church. Williams (2003: 23) describes the inception of the monastic movement as the early monks and nuns: moved off into the communities of the desert because they weren’t convinced that the church in its ‘ordinary’ manifestations showed any clarity what the church was supposed to be about; they wanted to find out what the church really was – which is another way of saying that they wanted to find out what humanity really was when it was in touch with God through Jesus Christ. He notes that the actions of these early proponents grew out of concern that the church was ‘becoming corrupt and secularized’ (2003: 23). These early pioneers sought to balance the solitary ‘search for spiritual insights’ which grew out of ‘individual character and experience’ with the communal and institutional nature of the young Christian church (Barbour, 2014: 559). Anthony the Great (cit. Williams, 2003: 23), perhaps the best known of the early solitaries, acknowledged that ‘our life and death is with our neighbour’. Anthony, who spent twenty years in solitary confinement, ‘achieved a union with God such as is granted to only a few human beings on earth’ (Görg, 2008: 26). While his approach to solitude is uncompromisingly harsh, we can see in his actions and those of other early ascetics the seeds of the role of solitude in Christian practice. The physical wilderness of the early Church Fathers and Mothers became the blueprint for future patterns for communities of solitude which sought the deeper spaces between to ‘recapture the spiritual commitment of the age of martyrs’ and reflect the wandering of the Israelites in the story of Exodus (Barbour, 2014: 559). The distinction between monastic and lay communities remained largely unchanged until the eighteenth century when the Enlightenment challenged the role of solitude, valuing ‘social exchange as the engine of cultural and mental progress’ (Vincent, 2020: 3). This allowed ‘intellectual exploration and self-discovery’ (Vincent, 2020: 19) and was mirrored in the eighteenth-century church with the growth of the Evangelical movement and the upsurge of nonconformist institutions which emphasized collective approaches to social welfare, education and missionary work. By the end of the eighteenth century, however, the Enlightenment values of reason and science over superstition and faith were being challenged as exemplified in the work J. G. Zimmermann,2 who argued for a balance between ‘all the comforts and blessings of Society’ with ‘all the advantages of seclusion’ (Zimmermann, cit. Vincent, 2020: 2). The subsequent changing attitudes towards solitude in the Romantic Era saw a movement towards subjectivity, individualism, the imagination, spontaneity and acknowledgement of the transcendent as a counter-argument to Enlightenment values. In secular society this meant a rise in the pursuit of material gain and a relentless move towards individualism, which offered a new form of nonChristian liminal space, while the church saw an increased interest in personal devotion and the introduction of spiritual retreats for both clergy and laity, featuring prayer and silence (Stone, 1919: 744). 120

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Approaches to Solitude in Contemporary Judaism and Christianity: Finding the Spaces Between While, historically, Jews and Christians have had quite different approaches to solitude, recent movements have seen a narrowing of the gap between them. Contemporary approaches display increasing similarities, with both traditions moving towards a new space based on the active pursuit of a deeper form of solitude in liminal spaces. Cohen (2017: 155–6) differentiates between the two different approaches to solitude that we have identified throughout religious history, ‘ordinary’ solitude in which ‘we circulate in and out of solitude and sociability during the course of our schedules and routines’, and ‘deep’ solitude when ‘individuals voluntarily disengage from interpersonal activity for extended periods of time’. Deep solitude was a prerequisite for those figures who are regarded as the agents of a given world view, including the founding fathers who Max Weber (1991: 164) describes as ‘ideal types’ or ‘virtuosos’.3 When Moses received the initial call from God he was alone in the wilderness, Jesus retired to the wilderness after his baptism, Muhammad was meditating alone when he received the words of the Qu’ran and the Buddha attained enlightenment only after a life of ascetic deprivation and meditation. But they all returned to the world with renewed vision and understanding. Solitude was not a long-term condition but a temporary prerequisite for instigating a change which would ultimately result in the formation and growth of a religious movement that was to have world-transforming consequences. One of the striking features is that, although their need for solitude is often perceived as a counter-argument to communal religious life, in fact the opposite is true. A permanent state of solitude was, however, not regarded as desirable; indeed in the Judeo-Christian tradition the Hebrew Bible views long-term isolation ‘with pity and horror’ (Barbour, 2014: 558). God called the Israelites to form a community of believers. Ordinary approaches to solitude can enhance personal spiritual development through organized disciplines – in communal worship through doctrine, ritual, prayer and music, and in the spaces set aside for prayer and study in religious community life. Deep solitude is evident in consciously chosen, lengthy isolation – a space occupied by, among others, the ‘religious virtuosos’, seminal thinkers who, from within the boundaries of their own traditions, form bridges between religious affiliations and secular life – the ‘poets’ and ‘heretics’ who occupy the ‘spaces-between’. These ‘heretics on the edge’ (two of whom, Merton and Heschel will be discussed later), whose influence extends far beyond the contingencies of religious affiliation, sometimes offer creative ideas leading to a common encounter between faith traditions and open up points of connection. Recently there has been an increasing interest in the role of solitude in personal development. Storr (1988: ix) acknowledges the received wisdom that ‘man is a social being who needs the companionship and affection of other human beings from cradle to grave’ and yet he observes, ‘the lives of creative individuals often seem to run counter to this assumption’. Based on the work of Carl Jung, Storr notes that personal individuation centres around bringing together the conscious and unconscious minds in order to achieve ‘the sense of peace, of reconciliation with life, of being part of a greater whole’ (1988: 196). A parallel can be found in the accounts of religious mystics and in the accounts of ‘men and women of genius’ (1988: 198) whose qualities are demonstrated in the religious founding fathers. The role of solitude in the West has, in the last five decades, been of increasing interest and significance. There has been an explosion of both religious

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and secular material on the benefits of meditation and personal enlightenment, which borrows substantially from Eastern religious practice. Solitude is commonly synonymous with religious life; whether that is the ordinary solitude of social and liturgical life, or deep solitude found only in prolonged elective isolation, it remains at the core of the search for God. Approaches to solitude today in Christian and Jewish traditions follow generally established patterns which emulate the founding fathers and early communities, though they diverge significantly in emphasis. Attitudes to solitude in religious practice have also changed in response to Enlightenment and Romantic ideologies in the West. In contemporary Judaism three approaches to solitude have emerged from both the Enlightenment and the ever-present threat of anti-Semitism. First, while the spiritual emphasis in Judaism remained overwhelmingly focused on the collective community and Torah study, the Romantic movement was the partial catalyst for the emergence of Hasidic Judaism ‘a model of romantic religiosity with which to counter assimilationist rationalism and rabbinism’ (Biale et al., 2018: 5). The challenge to the infallibility of Torah, and the ascendency of the arts and the imagination, created possibilities for a renewed emphasis on mysticism with the prominence of individual experiences of ecstatic encounter. Its founder, Israel ben Eliezer, who had learned the value of solitude in early life, taught that ‘man is in a constant, solitary encounter with his Creator’ (Dubnow, 1991: 27), emulating the Romantic shift in emphasis from the collective to the personal. The Hasidism prioritized charismatic spirituality redirecting mystical energies ‘from the national plane to the individual’ (Biale et al., 2018: 5). Neo-Hasidic philosophers in the twentieth century took up this idea, emphasizing the inner life of the individual as a vehicle of God. Buber, a neo-Hasidic Jewish philosopher, wrote that the way of the Hasid is intended to bring about reconciliation of conflict: ‘The origin of all conflict between me and my fellow-men is that I do not say what I mean, and that I do not do what I say . . . we foster conflict-situations and give them power over us until they enslave us’ (1948: 22). But in order to do this ‘he must find his own self, not the trivial ego of the egotistic individual, but the deeper self of the person living in a relationship to the world’ (1948: 22), a process that he calls ‘straigten[ing] himself out’ (1948: 21). This call to the deeper self is reinforced in the contemporary practice of hitbodedut,4 which is increasing today in the Bratslav Hasidic community. There is also a new growing, cross-boundaried movement of contemplative Judaism that is calling on both Jewish and other related contemporary spiritual practices (silence, mindfulness, attentiveness, receptivity, contemplative prayer), all of which require conditions of solitude. It is particularly favoured by ‘returning’5 Jews seeking a more personal form of religiosity. There is a cultural trend towards emotional dimensions of religious practice ‘which has characterized Hasidism from the beginning’ (Margolin, cit. Persico, 2014: 99). This quest for spiritual experience, with meditation becoming more widespread, mirrors a trend in Western culture towards personal religiosity, seeking meaning and authority from experience rather than the traditional Jewish emphasis on Torah (Persico, 2014: 100). Despite the small, but growing, interest in contemplative practice among some Jews, the Hebraic understanding is that solitude equates to loneliness and separation. Erlich (1998) recognizes the origin of Jewish teaching in Gen. 2.18: ‘It is not good that the man should be alone,’ a state of isolation described as b’didut, a noun created in modern Hebrew, with entirely negative connotations. Apart from the mystical and contemplative approaches seen in resurgent Hasidism and contemplative Judaism, for most Jews, b’didut is regarded as undesirable, Jewish spiritual practice is communal. In early faith communities, Judaism centred around the notion of 122

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the collective people of God. The prayers and liturgy for festivals commemorating the joys and tragedies in their history, the giving of the Torah, the solemn remorse expressed on Yom Kippur are all written in the plural emphasizing this is a people set apart (Jacobs, 1992: 1). However, up until the fifth century BCE Jews had prayed as individuals; prayer became standardized only after the Great Assembly of 444 BCE when the key structures and principles of prayer were set down (Megillah 17b, cit. Feuer, 1990: 142). These principles reflected the defining characteristic of Judaism and its basis in Am Yisrael. The central experience of Jewish history, the exodus from Egypt, is the story of ‘a moment of religious awakening’, but it is also ‘an experience of national liberation’ (Jacobs, n.d.) This leads us to consider a second observation about solitude in Judaism – the collective solitude of the people. This may seem a strange response to contemporary Jewish communities; the fracture of religious Judaism in the nineteenth century into Orthodox and Reform ideologies exposed very different emphases on belief and practice. Jewish life today has reached an existential crisis of identity with antipathy between some Diaspora Jews and Israelis, religious and secular Judaism and the effects of assimilation and inculturation. Jewish identity is constantly in flux, yet they are still a people set apart, held together by the notion of peoplehood. Sacks observes that despite all its bewildering complexity Judaism ‘is both a religion and a nation, a faith and a fate’ (Sacks, 2009: 47). It is set apart from the rest of the world through its religious practices, history and politics. Jewish life is ‘quintessentially communal, a matter of believing and belonging’ (Sacks, 2009: 47). The paradox of solitude in Judaism therefore lies in the dual tension between a modern drive for individualism and the biblical covenant. Judaism today maintains the notion of a solitary people through its faith, history, culture and practices, observing the premise that ‘you are a people holy to the Lord your God. Out of all the peoples on the face of the earth, the Lord has chosen you to be his treasured possession’ (Deut. 14.2) and God’s command that they should be ‘a light to the Gentiles’ (Isa. 49.6). The idea of a solitary people is also underpinned by anti-Semitism which has resulted in a form of collective solitude for both religious and secular Jews, an isolation that has stretched from the birth of Christianity through to the destruction of European Jewry in the Holocaust and current mutated forms of anti-Zionism (Sacks, 2009: 97). Cohn-Sherbok maintains that enforced isolation due to persecution, as well as the perception of chosenness, has helped to sculpt a people of collective solitude: The more the outside world hated us, the more we relied on God to save us. In the face of violence, we sacrificed ourselves to sanctify his name. Through over three millennia, we have seen ourselves as God’s suffering servants. Our mission has been to serve God and advance his kingdom. We have been God’s chosen people, whose destiny is to witness to his eternal truth. (Cohn-Sherbok, 2006: xii) This has perhaps further reinforced idea that personal solitude is detrimental to the original covenant notion of a people who dwell alone. There is a third approach to solitude, not initially evident but nonetheless to be considered, based in the Jewish family. Community and family are closely interrelated but separate spheres of activity in Jewish life; both are necessary to uphold the essential nature and character of Judaism (de Lange, 2010: 81).While the Jewish community is public facing, the family and home provide ‘ordinary’ solitude away from the public arena. It reflects a ‘solid, reassuring place . . . in human 123

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society’ and while the demands of family ‘all too often seem to collide, on the one hand with the demands of the individual and on the other with the claims of . . . society as a whole’, the Jewish home offers a sense of identity and purpose (de Lange, 2010: 82). This is exemplified strikingly in Heschel’s (1955: 417) observation of the Sabbath. He notes that it is centred between public worship and private family time, describing it as ‘holiness in time . . . the presence of eternity, a moment of majesty, the radiance of joy’. Heschel believed that the search for God is mutual, that while humans are searching for God, God is likewise searching for them, and the Sabbath provides the holy time in which that search can be intensified: The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space: on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world. (Heschel, 1951 [2005]: 10) Heschel’s explanation of the requirements for entering into holy time, by stepping out of one way of being and into another, bears a remarkable resemblance to the requirements for solitary prayer and meditation seen in some Christian practices. He observes that ‘Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul . . . Six days a week we seek to dominate the world, on the seventh day we try to dominate the self’ (Heschel, 1951 [2005]: 13). While he writes in the plural form, this is an act of communal solitude, conducted within the family structure, moving away from the public world to enter privately deeper into the presence of God. Heschel gives us a glimpse of Sabbath solitude – sacred time to be with God, to wonder, to go beyond knowledge (1951 [1997]: 12), beyond the written words of Torah: On the Sabbath it is given us to share in the holiness that is in the heart of time. Even when the soul is seared, even when no prayer can come out of our tightened throats, the clean, silent rest of the Sabbath leads us to a realm of endless peace, or to the beginning of an awareness of what eternity means. (1951 [2005]: 101) While he advocates Torah as the primary means of developing an authentic spiritual life his embracing of Neo-Hasidism led him to search for ‘kinship with ultimate reality’ (Heschel, 1955: 422) by transcending both the Jewish community and the self (Cohn-Sherbok, 2007: 99). Nevertheless, Judaism on the whole still considers that solitude in the form of b’didut equates to loneliness and separation and is a state to be avoided. Erlich (1998) acknowledges that the biblical verse ‘It is not good that the man should be alone’ (Gen. 2.18) likens solitude to loneliness and separation, with wholly negative implications. Christianity, on the other hand, particularly in the West, adopted an Aristotelean mindset which espouses that ‘contemplation is . . . the highest form of activity’ (Aristotle, 1976: 328), a state of solitude being necessary for spiritual growth. Examples of embedded solitude are found in lay Christian traditions through liturgy and prayer. Collective worship, while communal, balances shared engagement with personal reflection in an act of solidarity. It is a form of mutual solitude, a sacred time set apart from secular life. The silences embedded between the liturgy, music, spoken prayers and readings are spaces for personal solitude. As Erickson (1989: 40) notes, it is ‘more than the absence of sound. Liturgical silence provides a context, a frame for the hearing 124

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of God’s word. It is “waiting patiently for the Lord”’ (Ps. 39[40].1), ‘being open to the still small voice of calm’. Christianity has, throughout its history, accepted private withdrawal from the public sphere into internal solitude (de Lange, 2010: 81). Medieval ‘virtuosos’ developed traditions of solitude creating profound mystical insights. The Carmelite order, following the example of Jesus’s withdrawal to the wilderness to pray, combined preaching and solitude, with a recognition that their public work was achievable only through the ‘contemplation and meditation accomplished on the mountain’ (Jotischky, 2002: 97). The works of two of its greatest progenies, John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila, have had a lasting impact on approaches to deep solitude into the present day. John, whose epic Ascent of Mount Carmel culminates in The Dark night of the Soul, attempts to show that in solitude ‘the soul must be emptied of self – purified of the last traces of earthly dross – before it can be filled with God’ (Santa Teresa, 2003: vi). It is this act of self-emptying, journeying into deep solitude, which leads to spiritual growth: On a dark night, kindled in love with yearnings – oh, happy chance! – I went forth without being observed, My house now being at rest. In darkness and secure, By the secret ladder, disguised – oh, happy chance! – In darkness and in concealment, My house now being at rest. In the happy night, In secret, when none saw me, Nor I beheld aught, Without light or guide, save that which burned in my heart. This light guided me More surely than the light of noonday To the place where he (well I knew who!) was awaiting me – A place where none appeared. (John of the Cross, cit. Santa Teresa, 2003: 1–2) Likewise Teresa’s Interior Castle promulgates a sense of ecstatic union with the divine, achievable only in solitude. However, like John, the purpose of the union is not ‘to rejoice in God in solitude, but to tell its joy to all, so that they may help it to praise Our Lord, to which end it directs its whole activity’ (Teresa of Avila, 1989: 168). This withdrawal into the interior life to receive new insights for the world beyond is well developed in spiritual practices today which promote deep solitude. This is often seen in the form of personal retreats, as Leech (1995: 179) observes, where people seek to ‘find space for solitude and the practice of silence’. It is essential for spiritual health – to escape from ‘the oppression of words’ and to recover meaning to life (1995: 178). The purpose of retreat is to sharpen perception, purify vision and train the spirit in order to serve the world ‘with renewed strength without being dominated or swallowed up by it’ (1995: 180). Leech is not unaware of the apparent ambiguity of the role of the solitary life in Christian community, as it ‘paradoxically must begin from the firm belief that human beings are a solidarity, that they are not isolated units but one body in Christ. There is no solitude without communion, man is not an individual but a person, and persons are made for communion’ (1995: 178). Examples of the solitudinous life are found in monastic communities which emerged from the eremitic experiences of the desert fathers. They are essentially unchanged today, embodying the value of deep solitude. Entry into monastic life follows long-established patterns, echoed in religious rituals of other religions and built around the dual notion of solitude and community. They derive from medieval monastic rituals in which a symbolic dying to a previous life was required to 125

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mark entry into the community. Marquette (cit. Chewning, 2000: 1174) notes that this is equally true outside of Christianity with Hindus and Buddhists pursuing lives of solitude to achieve true knowledge and liberation. Monastic communities balance private and communal life; the Benedictine order, for example, encompasses both monastic and lay membership, ranging from the strict vows of the Trappist monasteries which seek to let go of daily distractions to free the mind and heart for deep contemplation. Our activities and attire are simple and humble. Our grounds are profoundly silent save for purposeful speech, quiet chant and the sounds of nature. We are lovers of place and find blessings in union with and stewardship of creation. Life as a Trappist maintains decided degrees of separation from the outside world – so that we may continually renew ourselves and the world through prayer. (trappists​.o​rg) to ‘third order’ vocations in which lay members who follow the monastic life embrace the spirit of the order to which they belong: Benedictine oblates6 seek God in association with a monastic community: as individuals and as members of a body, they grow in love of God, neighbor, and self. With the Rule as their guide, oblates adopt values that are part of the very fabric of Christian spirituality, such as, spending time daily reflecting on the Sacred Scriptures; cultivating an awareness of the presence of God in silence; devoting time to the praise of God; performing acts of mortification. An acquaintance with these and other Christian values presented in the Rule of St. Benedict will enable oblates to attain that special peace and joy that Christ came to bring and promised to all who follow him. (Order of St Benedict) Lay associations usually involve ‘a commitment to live out the spirituality or charism of the particular congregation’ (Vandenakker, 1994: 129), thus affording the opportunity to form a ‘rule of life’, a space between monastic and lay life. Perhaps the most influential of recent Christian advocates of the power of solitude is Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk, who both engaged in and wrote extensively on the subject. Merton is often regarded as the great Christian solitary of our time; he was in many ways a recluse who sought solace in solitude, but he also understood the power of isolation in coming to terms with the real self and the world. Merton believed that truth could be found only by engaging in all human influence, both concrete and historical (Williams, 2011: 18). The reason we are so interested in Merton, Williams (Williams, 2011: 19) contends, is not because we want to know more about him, but that ‘Merton will not let me look at him for long: he will, finally, persuade me to look in the direction he is looking’. For Merton true solitude is a necessity to prevent us living the illusions of other people (1968: 96–7) and to find the path of compassion. It is ‘deeply aware of the world’s needs. It does not hold the world at arm’s length’ (1968: 10). True solitude is the gateway to self-knowledge: ‘My knowledge of myself in silence (not by reflection on myself, but by penetration to the mystery of my true self which is beyond words and concepts because it is utterly particular) opens out into the silence and “subjectivity” of God’s own self’ (1958: 68). But Merton also recognizes that solitude is not the goal and end of the monastic and solitary life. For him, Christian life is political, a place where people can converse freely, not a static ideology, but a ‘homeless’ entity in the world in which people can explore one another’s language without

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the oppressive need for any one authoritative voice (Williams, 2011: 64, 66). Solitude is a bridge between aloneness and community, the goal of which is the fulfilment of God in the world: Contemplatives are not isolated in themselves but liberated from their external and egotistic selves by humility and purity of heart – therefore there is no longer any serious obstacle to simple and humble love of others. The more we are alone with God the more we are with one another, in darkness, yet a multitude. And the more we go out to one another in work and activity and communication, according to the will and charity of God, the more we are multiplied in him and yet we are in solitude. (Merton, 1961: 52) Furlong observes that for Merton solitude was a state of mind that emanated from feelings of loneliness, that it could be found only ‘by staying within’ and ‘a deepening of the present’ in which God is found (Merton, cit. Furlong, 1980: 178). In order to achieve solitude he had to isolate himself from the rest of the monastic community. It is this self-marginalization that has perhaps contributed to his success. Merton saw himself as ‘a marginal person who withdraws deliberately to the margin of society with a view to deepening fundamental human experience’ (cit. Cunningham, 1978: 1181–2), and it is this notion of marginality that opens up the ‘spaces-between’, offering at the same time a detached solitude and a practical social conscience. Merton exemplifies the ‘creative individual’ whose life and works give voice to the power and benefit of solitude, a monk, deeply embedded in his own tradition and yet speaking across the boundaries. Merton’s correspondence, and later his meeting with Heschel, in fact illustrate the shared perspective of cross-boundaried interest in religious mysticism leading to social action. Their combined input into the Nostra Aetate, the last document emanating from the Second Vatican Council, along with their joint ‘conspicuous voices against the war in Vietnam’ (Cunningham, 1999: 98), is an apposite reminder of the thin spaces created by visionaries from whatever their religious tradition, which lead from solitude, to community and ultimately to calls for social justice and action. In the last few decades this combined perspective on solitude has become the catalyst for new forms of Christian meditative communities which seek to combine the ordinary solitude of congregational community life with the deep solitude of monasticism (e.g. Taizé, Third Orders, The World Community for Christian Meditation [WCCM]) in emulation of the early desert traditions. These new traditions seek to combine the two seemingly paradoxical strands of Christian life – the solitary contemplative and the active, communal life which calls for social justice and action. John Main, founder of the WCCM (cit. Freeman, 2006: 207), summarizes the process and goal of the meditative life today: Our journey is a way of solitude. True, it is the end to loneliness and isolation. Solitude becomes the crucible of integrity, personal wholeness, which the love of God transforms into communion, into belonging and inter-relatedness at every level of our lives. These new traditions have in many ways become renewed forms of community which occupy the spaces between monastic and lay life, modelled on both the founding figures and virtuosos of the Christian tradition and born from the need for both ordinary and deep approaches to solitude in the Christian life.

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Conclusion Contemporary approaches to solitude in Judaism and Christianity still follow the received norms of the founding figures, but with the ideological changes wrought by the Enlightenment and subsequent Romantic movement, and advances in psychology as an academic discipline, there is a new emphasis on personal spiritual development which has permeated the language of religion. This chapter has identified a growing interest in the growth of deep solitude in both traditions, with a small, but significant, shift in Jewish practice towards a spirituality which seeks God in deep solitude through personal silence and meditation, particularly in Jewish people who are seeking to return to and find personal meaning in their religious heritage. It has also acknowledged the growing trend in Christianity to seek out new types of community based on the practice of deep solitude as a counterfoil to the ordinary solitude of largely liturgical spiritual practice. Perhaps both are an attempt to seek deeper meaning in an increasingly secular world. Solitude in religious practice maintains its important role as a counter to the collective, and a means of progress. Throughout history it is the solitary ‘ideal types’ and ’virtuosos’ who have been the catalyst for change. This approach is now being adopted not only by the virtuosos but also by regular members of religious communities for whom ordinary solitude does not allow opportunity to explore the depths of religious experience and who are searching for their own ‘spaces between’. These spaces are increasingly sought across religious boundaries as the voices of the virtuosos speak to people from different religious traditions. And while deep approaches to solitude are still regarded with suspicion by some communal institutions, particularly in Judaism, but also in some Christian traditions, its increasing popularity over the last five decades, aided by the seminal voices of advocates like Merton and Heschel, is perhaps a catalyst for the next pivotal moment in religious history. Perhaps we can glimpse an opening up of spaces-between that are accessible to, and a meeting place for, Jews and Christians across the religious divide.

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Part II

Silence



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Part II

Introduction Wong Ping Ho

It seems silence, both as an issue of public concern and as a subject of academic investigation, is becoming less silent. The publication of this handbook is itself part of this trend. Philosopher David E. Cooper observed: Until about 10 years ago, Max Picard’s work The World of Silence (1952), neglected for decades, was almost the only serious examination of silence available. Times have changed, and silence is in fashion. Recent books on the topic include Sara Maitland’s best-selling A Book of Silence (2008), ones by Thích Nhất Hạnh and Erling Kagge, as well as studies aimed at a more academic readership. (Cooper, 2018, unpaginated) This development has, of course, not escaped the attention of contributors to this section. Teresa Olearczyk, in her Chapter 12, tells us that Many have rediscovered, following Kierkegaard, the value of silence, as a remedy for inner diseases. Many publications about silence are published, ‘Houses of Silence’ are opened, offering silence and calmness (including the one in Tyniec), and many books on silence appear in bookshops, which is an expression of longing for silence. Olearczyk refers to inner diseases that require silence as a remedy. The presumption is that such inner diseases have become more serious and prevalent nowadays. A further presumption can be made that inadequate experience of silence is itself a cause of inner diseases, and that is why doses of silence can be a remedy. Both presumptions are, of course, open to investigation and confirmation. What is quite clear is that, as Eva Alerby remarks in her Chapter 14, ‘In modern society, low volume levels – peace and quiet – are often in short supply’, and schools and universities are no exception. And it is probably this ‘silence deficit’ that has made people aware of their unmet need for appropriate forms and levels of silence, and consequently bringing people’s attention to silence as an issue of concern. The expression ‘appropriate forms and levels of silence’ in the aforementioned statement was intentionally deployed because silence is not always an unalloyed good, as various contributors unanimously emphasized (as did Julian Stern’s Introductory chapter to this volume). In her

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Chapter 11, Sandra Bosacki highlights this point by referring to the ‘double nature of silence’. To take the case of silence as the counterpart of speech, a judicious balance needs to be maintained between the two. In the Confucian classic Yijing (Classic of Changes), Confucius said: ‘In the Dao of the noble man / There’s a time for going forth / And a time for staying still, / A time to remain silent / And a time to speak out’ (Wang, 1994: 58). By reminding the noble man that there is a time to remain silent, and a time to speak out, Confucius affirmed the need for both silence and speech as befit the circumstances. The proverb ‘Speech is silver, silence is golden’ (Flavell & Flavell, 2011: 217) similarly affirms both speech and silence, but accords the latter a higher value by comparison. The German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer captured the dialectical relationship between silence and speech by stressing that ‘One does not exist without the other. Right speech comes out of silence, and right silence comes out of speech’ (Bonhoeffer, 1954: 78). Bonhoeffer (1954) further pointed out that ‘The mark of solitude is silence, as speech is the mark of community. Silence and speech have the same inner correspondence and difference as do solitude and community’ (p. 78), giving additional support for embracing solitude, silence and loneliness together in this same volume. Indeed, all contributions in Part II, with the exception of Helen Sauntson and Rodrigo Borba’s Chapter 13, also touch upon solitude. There is the additional recognition that stillness is also intimately related to solitude and silence, as evidenced by references to stillness in most of the chapters in Part II (Cleveland; Bosacki; Alerby; and Pirrie & Fang) and in Stern’s Introductory chapter to this volume. We may also wish to note that stillness is mentioned in parallel with silence in Confucius’s above remark in Yijing. Indeed, in East Asian cultures, probably more so than in the West, solitude, silence and stillness are inextricably linked. For example, A Modern English-Chinese Chinese-English Dictionary defines the Chinese character ji (寂) as ‘1. quiet; still; silent; 2. lonely; lonesome; solitary’ (Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2005: 412). Similarly, the Korean word hojŏt hada is variously defined in English as hushed, still, deserted, lonely, solitary, desolate and so on, none of which is in fact an entirely satisfactory rendering (O’Rourke, 2013). The following statement from the Daoist classic Zhuangzi mentions silence and several of its cognate terms in one breath: ‘This emptiness and stillness, this placidity and flavorlessness, this silence and quiescence, this non-doing is the even level of heaven and earth, the full realization of the Course [Dao] and its intrinsic powers . . . the root of all things’ (Zhuangzi, 2020: 109; square bracket added). It was pointed out earlier that the proverb ‘Speech is silver, silence is golden’ accords a higher value to silence. The statement in Zhuangzi outdoes this by relating silence to emptiness, which in Daoist ontology is considered to be the ground of being and origin of everything. The general idea of the fertility of silence and emptiness is, of course, not limited to the East but is universal. Among contributors in Part II, Olearczyk titles her Chapter 12 ‘Creativity, Concentration and Silence’, declaring that ‘[s]ilence is not unproductive, it is creative’, mentioning how ‘Silence and solitude create a specific bond that fosters creativity’. Similarly, Bosacki observes that ‘silence is often defined as a pre-requisite to reflection and an integral part of the creative process’. The reminder that silence is a multifaceted phenomenon, or rather that silence actually refers to a number of different phenomena, is brought up by various contributors. In the Introductory chapter to this volume, Stern serves up a number of helpful distinctions, such as perceptual silence (not listening or hearing: aural) versus actional silence (not speaking or making other intentional sounds: oral). To facilitate examination of the multifaceted phenomenon of silence, 132

Introduction

a number of dimensions are tentatively proposed below. They are not intended to be either exhaustive or hard-and-fast categories. Nor is it claimed that all the dimensions are necessarily mutually independent. They only serve as an aid to our analysis. (1) Physical Silence vs. Metaphoric Silence: Silence in the original, literal sense is the absence of physical sound. This basic, physical sense of silence is readily extended metaphorically to refer to such conditions as inner (psychological) silence, and the loss of discursive power (the state of being silenced in the sense of being stripped of ‘voice’). It is conceded that whether the sense of silence in the latter case can be considered as metaphoric might not be entirely clear-cut. The reader is invited to come up with his/her own judgement. Helen Sauntson and Rodrigo Borba’s Chapter 13 is a typical piece that addresses this issue of silence in the sense of loss of discursive power. Another interesting question pertains to those who rely on sign language for communication. While in the literal sense the scene is silent, a heated, ‘noisy’ conversation may be going on in sign language. Is the noisiness here metaphoric or literal? By further extension, an environment may be literally quiet, but a lot of activities may be going on that create a hectic, visually noisy, scene. It might be justifiable to describe this last scenario as a case lacking metaphoric silence. It is clear that there need not be any direct correlation between physical and metaphoric silence. Alerby highlights the ‘distinction between the silence a person may experience at the actual place (so-called outer silence) and the silence they experience within themself (so-called inner silence)’, observing that for some people ‘it is easier to eliminate and ignore external disturbing noises than it is for others’. Olearczyk asks people to actively ‘remain lonely among people, not distancing them at the same time, but bringing them closer to each other’. These points are well recognized in the Chinese tradition. Poet Tao Yuanming (365–427) famously remarked that ‘Any place is calm for a peaceful mind’ (Tao, 2003: 113). A traditional Chinese saying goes so far as to claim that ‘The small hermit lives on a mountain. The great hermit lives in a town’ (Porter, 1993: 220). (2) Personal Silence vs. Environmental Silence: This is similar to Stern’s distinction between perceptual silence (environmental silence) and actional silence (personal silence). However, as alluded to at the end of the second last paragraph herein, an environment of a low surrounding noise level might still somehow exude a sense of metaphoric disquiet, so environmental silence is not necessarily only aural and oral. Eva Alerby’s Chapter 14 recorded the complaints of students at a Swedish university about the lack of calm and quiet places at the university. One student said that ‘it is almost impossible to avoid the unpleasant feeling that some of the large rooms or halls often create, especially if the sound level is high’. Granted that a high sound level intensifies the unpleasant feeling, the sense of disquiet is there anyway. Another student said that ‘The places that scare me most in the whole university are the exam halls . . . The rooms are often sterile and stark. This produces a sterile feeling.’ Scariness is certainly a form of metaphoric disquiet.

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(3) Silence that is Actively Sought/Embraced vs. Silence that is Imposed/Passively Endured: This distinction can be compared to the one between solitude and loneliness. Often people actively seek opportunities for solitude, whereas loneliness is something people have to reluctantly put up with. The difference in the sense of agency between active embrace and passive endurance is highlighted in a number of chapters in Part II. Richard Cleveland, in his Chapter 10, stresses that ‘the degree of child autonomy or agency (i.e., the power to choose whether one speaks or remains silent) is paramount in determining healthy silence’. Olearczyk advises adoption of silence as a way and a life skill through an act of the will. Alerby goes so far as to say that it is only when a person chooses to remain silent for some reason that this person can properly be regarded as silent. However, there may be cases where it is not straightforward to determine whether the silence represents an autonomous act or not. For example, Bosacki notes that ‘silence can be used for self-protection in situations where adolescents feel unsafe and fearful’. This sounds like an autonomous choice to adopt silence as a self-protective ‘weapon’. But can one also rephrase the sentence to say that ‘adolescents can be forced to use silence for self-protection in situations where they feel unsafe and fearful’? It seems that a lot of details would be required to determine the degree of agency underlying any specific act of silence. (4) Positive Silence vs. Negative Silence: As pointed out earlier, various contributors have unanimously noted the ‘double nature of silence’ (Bosacki’s words). However, whether a certain form of silence is beneficial or detrimental is probably determined by its respective location along the aforementioned three dimensions, so strictly speaking a separate positive– negative dimension would not be necessary, although it is meaningful and essential to look into the nature of the impact a particular form of silence has on individuals and society. Let us try to view a couple of cases involving silence through the lens of the previously proposed dimensions. A salient example of physical silence is the absence of ambient noise. Actually, it is probably much easier to address the presence of something rather than its absence; therefore, the study of noise and its effects on human beings had started much earlier than the study of silence. One of the first psychology experiments this editor conducted in his university days was precisely to determine the effects, if any, of different levels of ambient noise on individuals’ reaction time. Such ambient noise (or absence of silence) is physical, environmental and passively experienced. It is well established that environmental noise is detrimental to children’s cognitive performance (Klatte et al., 2013). Interestingly, on the other hand, experiments with adults demonstrated that a moderate versus low level of ambient noise enhances performance on creative tasks (Mehta et al., 2012), complicating the easy correlation between silence and creativity. Again, both the form and level of silence, and the nature of the specific creative task concerned, need to be taken into consideration. As noted earlier, the silence involved in the loss of discursive power, according to my own hunch, is a type of metaphoric silence. It is silence that is imposed, depriving individuals of their voice; hence, it is a type of individual silence. However, this imposed silence on individuals is itself caused by the hegemonic silence deployed by the powers that be, a kind of environmental/ communal silence. Thus both individual and environmental silences are involved, at different sites and on different levels. The outcomes of this kind of silence are compromised individuals and a compromised society. 134

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It is this kind of silence involving loss of discursive power that Sauntson and Borba’s Chapter 13 addresses. As such, it stands out among the contributions in Part II in that while all the other chapters tend to focus much more on the positive aspects of silence even though all serve up reminders of the ‘double nature of silence’ (Bosacki’s words), their chapter deals with a particularly dark form of silence. Through historical reviews, they first described the seeming advances and substantive setbacks of the struggles towards LGBT+ equality in UK and Brazilian schools. Then through deploying a number of meticulous techniques of linguistic analysis on educational documents, they endeavour to reveal the covert and not-so-covert silencing strategies in the language these documents use. To counter such silencing, they recommend ‘the insertion of a greater diversity of meanings into the “exclusionary and silencing language” of school curricula’. In contrast to Sauntson and Borba’s treatment of disabling silence (i.e. silence that disables), Olearczyk’s Chapter 12 focuses on enabling silence that ‘gives voice’ to individuals. Currently such enabling silence is under great threat, drowned out by incessant dins and constant diversions. Paradoxically, with a sort of humankind’s natural resilience, this has led to the ‘rediscovery’ of silence alluded to at the beginning of this introduction. Olearczyk elucidates the significance of silence for reflection, creativity, self-control and human well-being, but in order to reap the benefits silence can bring, silence must be practised with self-discipline. Therefore she advises the promotion of silence in preschool and school education, observing that many schools have already established quiet zones or quiet rooms. However, the promotion of silence should not be at the expense of activity. Olearczyk cites Maria Montessori, Johann Friedrich Herbart and Rudolf Steiner on the necessary coexistence of movement and silence as essential elements in education. The role of silence in school-age children and youth is the focus of both Cleveland’s Chapter 10 and Bosacki’s Chapter 11, with the former addressing school-age children more, and the latter covering school-age youth more. Both also emphasize the crucial importance of respecting and protecting the agency of children and youth, making room for them to take control of their silence and speech. To make his point, Cleveland employs the terms ‘Autonomous Silence’, ‘Imposed Silence’ and ‘Chosen Silence’. In the terms of the dimensions proposed earlier in this introduction, Autonomous Silence is environmental silence that is nevertheless welcomed and embraced by an individual. Imposed Silence is individual silence endured under coercion. Chosen Silence is silence that is actively sought and created. Autonomous Silence and Chosen Silence are potentially beneficial, but Imposed Silence jeopardizes the individual’s agency and is therefore harmful. Along the same line, when the practice of silence is introduced into schools, care must be exercised to ensure willing intention on the part of both pupils and the teachers guiding the practice. The stress on intentional silence practice is similar to Olearczyk’s prescription of practice with discipline. This purposefulness is one of the three features of mindfulness that Cleveland identifies and adopts for the practice of silence, the other two features being a non-judgemental mindset and a focus on the present moment. Bosacki similarly covers mindfulness in the context of experiences of silence, highlighting the relationship between mindfulness and self-compassion and perceived self-worth, among other benefits to well-being. Through times of silence and contemplation, one’s authentic inner values can also be examined. But contemplation is just one of the various functions of silence addressed by Bosacki. Other forms of silence covered in the chapter include aggressive silence, controlling silence, resisting silence, political silence and safe silence, all of which ‘can enhance possibilities 135

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for creating change in the self and in relational patterns’, provided that such silence is exercised with agency. Alerby’s Chapter 14 looks into Swedish university students’ need for quiet and peaceful places and spaces. Such quiet and peaceful places and spaces at the same time convey a feeling of freedom, security and belonging, a sense of ‘being at home’. Regrettably, such places and spaces are in short supply in schools and universities nowadays, which is a reflection of a similar problem in society at large. Even so, university students are adept at searching out and fashioning their own ‘oasis’ in informal, unofficial settings. It is not necessary for sound to be completely absent in such oases, which is anyway impossible. The absence of noise that is obtrusive or salient is enough. Such oases allow for the much-needed relaxation and contemplation that set free students’ thoughts and souls. Anne Pirrie and Nini Fang’s Chapter 15 is a ‘mischievous’ piece that defies categorization – the word ‘mischief’ being used by the authors themselves to describe the ploys they employ to subvert the supposed format required of academic writing. In this regard, form matches content, which is to show how ‘quiet professionalism’, while bearing the stamp of loneliness, alienation and solitude imposed by the current climate of neoliberalism, nevertheless achieves to save the quiet professional from total suffocation. The key to such success against the odds is found in the term ‘quiet’, which the authors use in the sense related to the absence of impingement, that is ‘being free from disturbance; not interfered or meddled with; left in peace’. Whereas Wittgenstein (2001) advised that ‘What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence’ (p. 89), the authors might suggest that what we cannot resist overtly we should subvert in silence. I leave it to the reader to decipher and savour the piece. Meanwhile, it is time for me to return to silence.

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Children and Silence Richard E. Cleveland

Introduction The mantra ‘Children should be seen and not heard’ was already part of English culture in the fourteenth century when John Mirk referenced this social expectation in his sermons. Created to entertain as much as inform parishioners, Mirk’s sermons were not just popular but influential (McGillivray, 2013). Arguably, this sentiment remains pervasive in Western society, where children’s opinions are rarely valued more than their silence. Complicating this societal norm, however, are domains where children are expected to both demonstrate silence and assertively speak. One may consider the school environment where classroom teachers within the same day may reward silence and punish silence. For example, during times of whole class instruction, students may be expected to remain silent during teacher demonstration/instruction. At the conclusion of lecturing, students may not only be expected to speak, but silence may be interpreted as resistance or ignorance. One may easily conceive of similar situations where at one moment the silent child is the ‘good’ child (e.g. quietly paying attention to the speaker/media) and mere moments later the silent child is ‘naughty’ (e.g. failing to volunteer an answer on prompting). Such examples highlight how silence in and of itself may not always be that which is ‘healthy’ or developmentally appropriate, despite societal preferences. Answering this question of healthiness requires consideration of the factors influencing the decision to ‘be’ silent. Silence is an action much in the same manner we might consider talking, laughing or even shouting a chosen behaviour. The child’s world (as arguably paralleled with adults) is composed of multiple arenas where environment and societal expectations for each setting determine how chosen behaviour(s) will be received. The child choosing to shout on the playground may receive no more chastisement than the child choosing to sit quietly alone in the library. Conversely, both children may attract the concerned attention of teachers, should they continue their behaviours in the opposite environments (i.e. the ‘unruly’ vocal child shouting in the library and the ‘ostracized’ quiet child desiring to be alone on the playground). Thus, it seems reasonable that any exploration of children experiencing healthy silence must adequately acknowledge the role of cultural expectations for silence and how variable those expectations may be. Further, it

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is necessary to recognize these expectations vary not only by environment but potentially also by differentiated times within the same environment as well. Prior to a child choosing their behaviour and attempting to elicit a certain response or outcome, the child must be aware of these dynamic expectations. Only then can consideration of available behaviours and their potential for ‘success’ (i.e. success in terms of the child’s particular wants or needs) be acted on with any degree of certainty. Having attended to external factors upon children’s experience of silence (i.e. environments and their associated expectations), let us now focus our attention on more internal influences. Whether child or adult, the question of demonstrating or experiencing ‘healthy’ silence also involves exploring the aspect of motivation or decision behind such action. Specifically for our purposes, the degree of child autonomy or agency (i.e. the power to choose whether one speaks or remains silent) is paramount in determining healthy silence. Is the child given the freedom to decide whether or not they remain silent? Again returning to the school environment, we find a landscape where children’s agency is frequently considered not important despite being a primary vehicle through which they interpret and act upon their world (Hyde et al., 2010). With busy schedules, packed agendas, mandated curricula to teach and the spectre of standardized testing, recognizing (let alone fostering) child agency may seem quite low in terms of prioritization. While many such situations may be argued as necessary (after all, though not as enticing as recess maths must be learned), this further complicates the question of ascertaining what constitutes healthy silence for children. Additionally, should caring adults create spaces for children to exert agency in practicing or experiencing silence, are such opportunities recognized? When teachers (or other caring adults) take dedicated action towards providing children with appropriate avenues for expressing agency, are these instances viewed as actual possibilities by the children? Stated otherwise, are such instances dismissed by children due to the onslaught of implicit messages received from the very same adults? For example, the lecturer who, while speaking to the class, ends every sentence with phrases such as ‘right?’ or ‘understand?’ while immediately progressing to their next sentence rather than waiting for students to respond. Thus, whether unintentional conversational idioms or more meaningful reflections of a hidden curriculum (Jackson, 1970; Nowak et al., 2015; Orón Semper & Blasco, 2018), such verbal examples highlight some of the many challenges to children recognizing (and subsequently acting upon) their agency. The child’s day may be filled with many instances of quiet or silence. As many of the examples thus far have illustrated, the school day alone may not only provide such opportunities but further complicate successful navigation of those opportunities. Societal expectations can vary dynamically, and messaging (whether expressed or implicit) may cloud actual opportunities for students to demonstrate agency. These external and internal forces exert considerable sway over children’s ability to experience and practice healthy silence. But even when these factors are addressed, what distinguishes ‘healthy’ silence from the various periods of quiet throughout the child’s day? Prior to answering this question, let us explore different ways in which silence may be conceptualized. Differing forms of Silence The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines silence as both noun and verb, with approximately twenty-five descriptions comprising the two categories (Silence, n.d.). While some of the listings are obsolete or specific to particular places or works (e.g. proverbial phrases such as ‘Silence 138

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is golden’, geographical locations, allusion to Hamlet’s dying words, a rest in musical scoring), reading through the majority descriptions reveals a common distinctive quality – the source or initiating force creating the silence. This distinction might be conceptualized via three categories of ‘Autonomous Silence’, ‘Imposed Silence’ and ‘Chosen Silence’. Autonomous Silence refers to situations where silence exists as an entity to be experienced, not directly influenced or permeated by an individual’s will. ‘The state or condition when nothing is audible; absence of all sound or noise; complete quietness or stillness; noiselessness. Sometimes personified’ (Silence, n.d.). One may think of the stillness of the night, the quiet of the wilderness or the precipice of a coming storm. Similarly, one may think of the silence present during times of contemplation. While at first glance this may seem to be either chosen or imposed, there is significant difference between silence that emerges and available for embrace versus silence enforced. For example, the emergent silence in a cathedral during a time of prayer or meditation, versus the silence imposed upon a young parishioner by his mother’s emphatic ‘Shush!’ during that same time. Imposed Silence refers to silence that is exerted upon the individual by a force outside of themselves. The OED describes this silence as, ‘To put to silence, to silence by argument or prohibition [. . .] also, to reduce to silence’ (Silence, n.d.). Interestingly, nearly every form of silence as a verb fits the parameters of Imposed Silence. For example, To cause or compel (one) to cease speaking on a particular occasion; also, to overcome in argument [. . .] To cause (an animal or thing) to cease from giving out its natural sound; to still, quieten [. . .] To stop, suppress (a noise or sound) [. . .] To reduce (a person, etc.) to silence by restraint or prohibition, esp. in order to prevent the free expression of opinions. (Silence, n.d.) Clearly, children experience a great deal of Imposed Silence throughout their early developmental stages. As previously mentioned, some of these instances may even be considered warranted as a part of the typical developmental expectations for children (e.g. listening attentively during class instruction). However, children’s environments (e.g. home, school, community), which consider Imposed Silence as the only appropriate form of silence, directly hinder the development of children’s agency and opportunities for experiencing healthy silence. Chosen Silence refers to silence experienced through the intentional will of the individual. The OED here defines silence as ‘The fact of abstaining or forbearing from speech or utterance (sometimes with reference to a particular matter); the state or condition resulting from this’ (Silence, n.d.). Chosen Silence is an employed behaviour. In a sea of noise, the individual is choosing to create a space for silence. When encountering examples of Autonomous Silence, whether naturally occurring or man-made, the individual is choosing to embrace, or partake of the silence. In both cases, it is the individual’s desire to experience and ability to engage silence that distinguishes Chosen Silence. This framework for conceptualizing silence aligns with other works acknowledging the multifaceted nature of silence as experience. Exploring silence as phenomena bordering human action and interaction (i.e. both independent and interdependent of language and speech), Lehmann Oliveros (2016) reviews a ‘general typology’ of silence constructed from previous works. The three categories closely mirror Autonomous, Imposed and Chosen Silence. Lehmann Oliveros describes the first category ‘Silence’ as, ‘solitary, mystical, and unconscious [involuntary] experience’ (p. 3) referencing aesthetic, poetic or awe-inspiring experiences (Autonomous Silence). Defining 139

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‘Silencing’ presents the reader with a very clear parallel to Imposed Silence with the experience described as, ‘manifesting power by means of restricting someone else’s expression’ (p. 3). Examples provided extend beyond mere ‘talking over’-behaviours in conversation and include human rights crimes where victims are unable to report/accuse perpetrators. Similar to Chosen Silence, the final category of Lehmann Oliveros’ framework, ‘Silences’, highlights the integral role of agency. ‘Silences; are social, secular, and conscious. (e.g., Turn-taking in conversations or signs asking for silence in waiting rooms at hospitals)’ (p. 3). Thus while the categorical labels may be different, the primary determining factor remains the agency of the individual to choose to embrace or engage silence (i.e. Autonomous, Chosen) versus being forced into silence (i.e. Imposed). Providing a comprehensive metareview of silence, Valle (2019) notes approximately fifty-six different disciplines or areas of interest where silence has appeared as a research topic surmising that this alone serves as indication of the significance of experiencing silence phenomena. Valle’s review recognizes the dynamic nature of silence in that the experience of the phenomena may be healing or disruptive. Rather than bounded categories for elucidating silence, Valle proposes ten forms of silence distributed along a spectrum. Anchored at the ends by either ‘Environmental silence’ or ‘Transcendent silence’, each reference point along the spectrum indicates degrees of variation from these two poles. Environmental silence represents a predominantly external or physical influence, whereas Transcendent silence not only refers to the dominance of an internal or inward focus, but a silence that potentially goes beyond the conscious will. It may be rightly argued that Valle’s spectrum of silence in essence sidesteps the construct of Silencing or Imposed Silence, focusing only on phenomena of silence that serve as a vehicle for contemplation and reflectivity. However, with each movement along Valle’s spectrum from Environmental to Transcendent, we see silence transforming from mostly behavioural phenomena in response to an external world, to internally experienced awareness that requires the active will of the participant. This still doesn’t provide a clear ‘placement’ for Silencing or Imposed Silence within this framework, but the presence of individual agency (i.e. varying degrees of intention) suggests that perhaps Valle’s spectrum begins once Imposed Silence has ended. Our exploration of silence began with referencing common or frequently understood definitions of the word. From there we have seen how multiple conceptualizations of the construct of silence align with a threefold framework of Autonomous Silence, Imposed Silence and Chosen Silence. Furthermore, throughout all three variations of the phenomena the degree of an individual’s autonomy or agency plays a critical role. But from some of the very examples used to define and illustrate the role of agency, we see that at times children’s agency is not only limited but also knowingly restricted. What then is our response? How are caring adults (e.g. parents, caregivers, teachers, counsellors) to balance agency and the developmental appropriateness of silence with children? We now turn our attention to child development as first steps towards considering this question as it pertains to the schoolhouse. Silence within Child Development Multiple theorists provide paradigms for exploring child development. Stage theorists are commonly referenced when educators and/or practitioners may be analysing the relative health and degree of ‘typical’ development for a child. Such theories provide guidelines and marker events 140

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describing trajectories for a child’s developing identity, cognitive abilities and meaning-making. Pertinent for the exploration of silence, such theories can also frame what silence may look like at different times through a child’s life. However, an obstacle to this exploration is that review of most stage theorists reveals no explicit delineation of silence as a dedicated aspect of child development. Having already acknowledged the role of agency within any conceptualization of ‘healthy’ silence, a more productive approach may be to consider how such theories may provide a lens through which to consider the emergence and development of agency throughout childhood. Agency might be conceptualized as the degree to which a child possesses the ability and choice to not only decide what actions to take, but to see the results of those decisions (CORE Ten Trends, 2017; McLaughlin, 2018). This requires an awareness of self as distinct from others while in community (i.e. interrelated) with others. Multiple connections may be realized here with developmental, specifically constructivist and cognitivist, theorists outlining this emerging awareness throughout childhood. For example, Piaget in outlining the Concrete-Operational (seven to eleven years) stage describes a moving away from egocentric play and activity towards considering others’ perspectives (Erford, 2017). Vygotsky (1986), recognizing the influence of language and social interaction on development, described such awareness (individual cognition) as emerging, ‘not from the individual to the social, but from the social to the individual’ (p. 36). While it may be argued Vygotsky conceptualized the relationship between individual and external influences as highly interactive and interrelated, still distinction exists. For our purposes, two specific theories will serve as illustrative first steps leading us to discussing agency (and thus silence) in the schoolhouse: Erikson’s psychosocial theory and Bandura’s social cognitive learning theory. Erik Erikson’s psychosocial theory outlines eight distinct stages of human development with three spanning the approximate ages of three to eighteen years: Initiative versus Guilt, Industry versus Inferiority and Identity versus Role Confusion (Erford, 2017). Each of these three stages presents guidelines through which the child/adolescent develops a determined, productive and confident, sense of self. Successful navigation of each stage and its subsequent goals further establishes healthy identity and interpersonal relationships. Erikson’s theory describes broad developmental tasks associated with each stage which, upon initial examination, might seem framed dichotomously between agentic and non-agentic archetypes. Indeed, the expected ‘picture’ of an autonomous, agentic individual (specifically through a Western civilization lens) more readily aligns with the characteristics of taking initiative, being industrious and exhibiting a confident identity. As a result, there may exist temptation to view these optimal states of health with more extraverted expectations. However, continuing this line of ‘either/or’ reasoning and applying these ideal expectations for agency upon silence quickly becomes problematic. For example, if the child does not immediately speak up, are they lacking Initiative? Is the quiet child’s silence because of Inferiority? Is a quiet, brooding teen in need of help with Role Confusion? Clearly the path towards healthy development lies somewhere in between, a balance between the two poles of each stage. Acknowledging this, danger remains that caring adults in a child’s life (e.g. parents, caregivers, educators, clinicians) may limit or hinder exploration of silence as an essential component of development in their attempts to shape behaviours using a binary paradigm. Albert Bandura’s social cognitive theory emphasizes the role of social influence on/with the individual (i.e. observation, modelling, imitation, etc.) in developing complex behaviours. Bandura 141

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identified four components required for learning including attention, retention, reproduction and motivation. Specifically relevant for our present discussion of agency is Bandura’s focus on motivation and his associated concept of self-efficacy (Erford, 2017). Not only does selfefficacy influence the feelings, emotions and cognitions children may have, but this then directly influences motivations guiding behaviours/actions. This would seem to share much ground with agency, perhaps reframing our question as the motivation or self-efficacy children possess in regard to experiencing silence. However, one of Bandura’s most well-known experiments with children vividly illustrates how the very tenets of social cognitive theory (i.e. social influence) can actively hinder children’s agency. Bandura’s Bobo Doll experiments focused on social behaviours, specifically aggression, learned through observation. Additionally, Bandura investigated the role of consequences (both positive and negative) as vicarious reinforcers for aggressive behaviours. Both groups (i.e. positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement) acquired the aggressive behaviours as modelled; however, children within the negative reinforcement (or ‘punishment’) group had also learned they were expected not to demonstrate these behaviours. This serves as scholarly example of anecdotal occurrences which happen frequently within the schoolhouse; some of which have already been mentioned here. Students may know how to speak their opinions, and may possess the desire or motivation to speak their opinions, but may also recognize that adults expect them to refrain from speaking. Here agency exists but goes unrecognized and potentially extinguished. Without consistent, attentive awareness to the expectations (both explicit and implied) conveyed to students, caring adults may be inadvertently squelching any possibilities for agency (and silence) to flourish. Clearly much work remains exploring silence within childhood development. A more thorough examination of theories and their relationships (both potential and realized) with silence is beyond the scope of this chapter. But as review of our two exemplars has demonstrated, it may be fair to say that for the majority developmental theories (and, more specifically, stage theories) their very strength stands as a potential limitation in defining agency and silence. More accurately stated, strict adherence to dichotomous classifications within binary or compartmentalized paradigms of agency hinders conceptualizing and implementing silence with children. Similarly, without careful attention to the social dynamics actively influencing children in their daily milieus (e.g. home, classroom, playground, daycare) caring adults may stifle authentic expressions of agency – again, especially if the systemic influences of the environment are guided by dichotomous goals. There remains need for a balanced approach to the road ahead. Guardrails on a Mountain Road The Pacific Northwest region of the United States presents residents and visitors alike with a diverse geographic landscape. Most notable are the mountain ranges running throughout the majority of the region with their towering peaks, glacial crowns and thundering waterfalls. Numerous roads snake through the mountains offering access to hiking trails, vistas and mountain summits. The drive on most roads is winding with steep inclines and offers only one lane in each direction of travel. At many points climbing upwards into the mountains, drivers will notice a stark difference framing their journey. With the road literally carved into the side of the mountain at times, one side of the vehicle will present a sheer rock face stretching skyward while the 142

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other side of the vehicle opens to a seeming abyss. Metal railings ‘guard’ each side of the road providing one last precaution should a vehicle lose control. This imagery provides a helpful illustration in reconciling dominating stage theories of development with the balance required for exploring agency and silence with children. Educators and clinicians may consider the mountain road as the child’s journey through development. At each stage of the journey, the marker events particular to a specific theory (e.g. Identity versus Role Confusion) stand as the ‘guardrails’ of the winding road. It would be ridiculous to expect the driver to constantly have their vehicle touching the ‘healthy’ side of the spectrum and its accompanying guardrail (not to mention creating significant body damage to the vehicle). It does seem clear, however, that the driver will strive to remain in their lane (i.e. healthy development) keeping the guardrail in constant sight as a reference point. We may take this illustration one step further and incorporate the realities of obstacles encountered along mountain roads such as broken pavement, patches of ice, a fallen tree limb or a wandering deer. Various points throughout the journey may require minimal to moderate swerving in order to keep moving forwards (i.e. continued development). Indeed, there may even be more significant obstacles along the journey (e.g. trauma, abuse) where significant deviations are required not only to continue forward movement but to stay on the road altogether. This illustration provides a grounded example of how we might pursue balanced agency (ergo silence) within child/youth populations. With the established borders of developmental theory in place, we can now explore how agency might flourish even when the road is wrought with obstacles. The path determined, the guardrails set, we now turn our attention to a theoretical framework for guiding agency and silence based upon a foundation of mindfulness. Mindfulness, Agency and Silence Discussing agency within education, Iris Duhn recognizes its important role but challenges readers to consider the question: How do educators go about ‘doing’ agency with toddlers? In addition to expanded privatized daycare offerings, many Western nations have seen a broadening of the ages of students served as younger (e.g. toddler) children receive state-sponsored educational services. In the United States for example, kindergarten (approximately age five years) long served as the traditional ‘start’ for public education. As more and more state school districts have replaced kindergarten with an earlier pre-kindergarten start, this change has been reflected not only in state and federal funding but also in the very nomenclature used. What was once referred to as ‘K-12’ education (i.e. kindergarten through twelfth grade) is now superseded by either ‘PK-12’ or ‘P-12’ (i.e. pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade) on both formal and informal documentation. Duhn asks readers to consider toddlers’ capacity for, and expression of agency challenging dominant models which require autonomous, self-aware expression (i.e. verbal expression) as a main foundation (2015). Aligned with our present discussion, Duhn also cautions caring adults against too strictly adhering to rigid structures (referring to them as dead end ‘cul-de-sacs’) preventing adults from noticing authentic expressions of agency, or fostering environments where such expressions may emerge organically. If educators are to avoid Duhn’s ‘cul-de-sacs’ when working with children, then their approach must be one of open awareness that refrains from automatic reactionary codification to a set system of classifications. 143

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Mindfulness is most frequently understood as ‘paying attention in a particular way’ (KabatZinn, 2005). Mindfulness has long been recognized as a contemplative, reflective practice within Buddhism and other Eastern traditions but has only more recently (e.g. the last forty years) been taking root in Western civilization. Sadly, as mindfulness practices have blossomed and expanded within the West, many have strayed from the core tenets of mindfulness. Rather than authentically pursuing enlightenment and inner-exploration, these opportunistic offerings (dubbed ‘McMindfulness’ by Jon Kabat-Zinn [2015] due to their focus on mass production and profit) claim to be ancient panaceas for a stressed-out, overly medicated, plugged-in world. Yet despite these obstacles, mindfulness continues to grow in use finding implementation in clinical, medical and educational settings. If mindfulness is how we go about paying attention in a particular way, then these ‘particulars’ require explanation. First, mindfulness is paying attention on purpose. Instead of ignoring or ‘zoning out’ from one’s surroundings, mindfulness requires the intentional dedication of time, place and energies for practice. Second, mindfulness is awareness of the present moment. Here there is no ruminating over past situations or problem-solving future stressors. Dedicated faculties are directed to the present moment; and each successive moment thereafter making up every new ‘present’. Third, mindfulness is non-judgemental in nature. The term ‘nonjudgemental’ here refers to avoiding reactive, auto-pilot responses elicited in our minds when confronted with thoughts, sensations and/or emotions. A final element originates specifically from the Western embrace of mindfulness and references the innovative atmosphere frequently created from mindfulness practices. Referred to as ‘novelty production’ Ellen Langer describes how mindfulness facilitates creative or novel awareness saying, ‘Just as mindlessness is the rigid reliance on old categories, mindfulness means the continual creation of new ones’ (1989: 63). In summary then, we might move forward with the following working definition of mindfulness: Mindfulness is purposeful, non-judgmental, present-moment awareness incorporating novelty production. (Cleveland, 2018; Gehart & McCollum, 2007; Langer, 2009) But the question remains how mindfulness might relate to our present concern regarding children’s agency as a component of silence. For this we again return to Duhn’s challenging question of agency with toddlers and our imagery of the mountain road. Answering the question of agency in toddlers, Duhn (2015) asserts two important qualities: Awareness of Self & Others; and Co-constructor of Meaning. Here we see our first connections to mindfulness in that mindfulness facilitates awareness of the present moment. Just as many mindfulness practices begin with the centring breath and extend awareness outwards to the rest of the physical body, the surrounding environment and beyond, here too with agency we see the beginning awareness of self that extends to the other-than-self. From a developmental perspective, toddlers (or any other individual) may be limited in the degree or ‘depth’ of awareness of others; however, this should not limit their opportunity for demonstrating agency. Where the toddler may only recognize an ‘other’ child, a child of ten years may recognize the other child as well as verbal and nonverbal messages. Placed within our mountain road metaphor, although a child’s awareness of the path and guardrails may be only rudimentary (e.g. recognizing others but not the ‘final’ destination of development; understanding the barriers of the guardrails but not the consequences they bound), this does not negate their voice in choosing how they proceed along the path. 144

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Similarly, there exists parallel between Duhn’s call for co-constructing meaning and mindfulness’ tenet of espousing a non-judgemental stance. To co-construct meaning is to construct meaning with at least one other person. This brings into perspective a set of values, motivations or judgements distinctly other. One need only observe young children playing and negotiating the ‘rules’ of play to see such co-construction in action (e.g. ‘I am the tyrannosaurus because I’m oldest’ contested with ‘But I’m the tallest, and a tyrannosaurus is the biggest’ and a third voice ‘Aren’t brontosauruses bigger?’). Non-judgemental awareness allows recognition and attending while remaining stationary in present-moment awareness. Describing this stance, Vietnamese Buddhist Monk Thích Nhất Hạnh draws the imagery of ‘a palace guard who is aware of every face that passes through the front corridor’ (2008: 38). The guard does not move from their station, fixate on only one face, nor close their eyes ignoring the continual flow of people. Returning to our imagery, children benefit not only from awareness of the mountain road and its guardrails but also from attending to others on the path and their chosen pathways of travel. In concluding the discussion on agency within toddlers, Duhn (2015) challenges prevalent paradigms focusing solely on agency as autonomous identity of the knowing self and the expression of sovereignty. Instead of a young victor moving forwards with developmental ‘conquests’, Duhn proposes a more interactive, balanced perspective of agency where the primary action is a ‘seeking of encounters [. . .] that force continual invention to maintain the relationship between movement and rest’ (2015: 927). It should not be missed that here we find ourselves presented with a parallel to silence; silence as the ebb and flow between speech and rest. This parallel returns us to our primary concern of the phenomena of silence with children and the role of agency within healthy expressions/experiences of silence. Although few instances exist where silence is explicitly acknowledged within child development theory, most address the construct of agency in older (e.g. four years and older) child populations. The majority of these theoretical paradigms present caring adults (e.g. parents, clinicians, educators) with polarized descriptors qualifying optimal versus maladaptive outcomes. Consequently, clinicians and educators specifically may be tempted to fall into a ‘onesize-fits-all’ framework with their clinical and curricular interventions based on these binary distinctions. Utilizing a more balanced approach, such as incorporating mindfulness-based practices, not only fosters critical components of child agency but also affords opportunities for children to participate in healthy expressions/experience of silence within their daily landscape. A brief review of representative examples from literature exploring silence with children will be beneficial as we turn our attention to how such an approach might take shape within the educational environment. Researching Children and Silence Agency has great importance not only for silence but also in multiple other domains of child wellness. Clearly, the role of child (or learner) agency positions itself as central within any curricular or pedagogical interventions espousing constructivist or learner-centred foundations. Exploring child agency within the rapidly expanding world of learning technologies, and specifically story-making apps, Kucirkova highlights the difference between agentic (children as empowered, independent users/creators) versus non-agentic design (content and/or experience 145

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created for the child). Kucirkova paints a picture of this distinction between agentic design (or ‘personalization’) and non-agentic design, saying An example of agentic personalization is a child who visits a library and chooses a book based on the child’s own likes and interests. An example of a non-agentic, automatic, personalization is a child browsing an online library and receiving a recommendation for a book that matches the child’s likes and interests. (2019: 114) While some may argue the distinction nuanced (after all, in the end the child finds a book with their interests, yes?), Kucirkova uses this example to highlight how with many educational technologies purporting personalized or learner-centred curricular experiences, it is not the child themselves who are empowered to design/create, but rather an adult technician or (increasingly more frequent) an artificial intelligence component to the platform making decisions. This question of child/learner agency remains just as pertinent for silence as for educational technologies as arguably a forced choice constitutes no choice at all. Presuming this message is received encouraging clinicians and educators to provide meaningful opportunities for children to exert agency for expressions/experience of silence, what might healthy silence look like with children? Stated differently, what are salient points for caring adults to consider in their efforts to nurture children’s healthy silence? As already mentioned, literature specifically exploring silence is limited and even more sparse when investigating the practice with youth/child populations. Perhaps indicative of this dearth, in their research exploring solitude and silence, Van Meter et al., (2001) were able to utilize a developed instrument to assess solitude but had no scale for silence using instead observation. Van Meter et al. point out that silence like solitude (and as previously highlighted in our exploration: like mindfulness) requires dedicated time. It is through intentional practice that silence is developed, refined and expanded. Practiced silence can be of benefit regardless of amount: two minutes, two hours, two days. Perhaps a primary point of importance for clinicians and educators is recognition that silence may not always be an indicator of negative feelings, experiences or behaviours. In researching the influence of parental and friend relationships on adolescents’ preference for solitude, Barstead et al. (2018) noted that motivations prompting children to withdraw or be alone are not homogenous in nature. Barstead et al. recognize the role of child agency and assert that youth and children (i.e. kindergarten through high school) are capable of differentiating between healthy expressions of solitude (e.g. preference to be alone) and unhealthy experiences of solitude (e.g. shyness, ostracization, bullying). Considering the many parallels between solitude and silence as well as the common denominator of child agency, it seems plausible that children and youth may possess similar discernment when differentiating between healthy and unhealthy forms of silence. Whether observing children practicing solitude or silence, there remains potential danger for well-intentioned clinicians and educators to associate these practices only with maladaptive expressions and prescribe subsequent intervention where none is required. As influential as adult response to children’s expressions of silence (i.e. interpreting as positive or concerning) is, perhaps even more significant is the role adults may play in modelling healthy forms of silence for children. Exploring silence within teaching, Forrest (2013) recognizes various forms of silence (e.g. forms similar in construction with Autonomous, Imposed and Chosen Silence) and acknowledges the role of agency. Forrest then warns educators against viewing 146

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silence as ‘mere acoustic void that needs filling’ (2013: 616). Here again, silence is distinguished as a practice requiring dedicated time and energies. Furthermore, with the assertion that silence improves with continued practice, educators are called to not only facilitate healthy experiences/ expressions of silence, but to model them for students as well. Such modelling incorporates both explicit instruction as well as more ‘hidden’ aspects of pedagogy. Forrest gives the example of teachers who are able to sit in silence, responding in measured and appropriate ways to the ever-changing classroom environment, contrasted with teachers constantly filling quiet times, or demanding response. Forrest suggests that too often such actions represent a fearful need to ‘prove’ the teacher has accomplished learning; she or he has successfully taught a particular concept or fact. Summarizing previous works recommending silence practices in classroom settings to foster listening, learning and instruction, Forrest suggests teachers model an openness to awe, wonder and the dynamic intricacies of the learning environment through silence rather than continual space-filling when moments of stillness occur. This equipping of how one experiences healthy silence (through modelling and practice) fosters wonder and learning beyond academics alone. While delineating the importance of contemplative education for children and youth, Patricia Jennings references practicing silence as one example of how contemplative practices may be incorporated into education. Jennings (2008) characterizes practices such as silence as ‘alternative ways of knowing’, which may aid students’ self-regulation and cognitive functioning. Perhaps more important for students’ holistic personal development though, Jennings describes these practices as ‘support[ing] children’s quest for meaning’ (2008: 102). Whether supporting students’ academic success or aiding agentic meaning-making, clinicians and educators seem conveniently situated in a place to actively foster healthy experiences and expressions of silence for children. Let us now turn to how this might take shape within the schoolhouse. What Does this Mean for Schools? As we have discussed, students’ preference to play alone, experience solitude or display a desire for silence in and of itself may not indicate trauma or unhealthy social/emotional functioning. Paralleling solitude (Coplan et al., 2014) when the behaviour or action is a manifestation of child agency, silence may be not only developmentally appropriate but healthy. One may consider how even the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), in describing selective mutism in children, acknowledges the mitigating role silence plays for children as they transition or navigate new situations/stressors (Murris & Ollendick, 2015). The notion of silence within schools being simultaneously praised and disciplined is nothing new. In her historical account of vocal education (i.e. formal delivery of speeches and/or logical argumentation) throughout the nineteenth century, Josephine Hoegaerts (2017) confirms an overarching expectation for silent children populating the schoolhouse. However, Hoegaerts points out that even in the midst of this context (both place and time), silence was more complex than mere Imposed Silence. Educators differentiated between various forms of silence, assuming responsibility for training pupils in recognizing when and how to implement these forms. Viewing the classroom as a place for modelling and training students in silence remains just as pertinent for today, especially if we recognize silence as a part of regular, daily human experience or ‘human becoming’ (Bunkers, 2013: 7). 147

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While it may sound contradictory to state individual agency is learned through interaction with others, this paradox stands just as true for silence. This requires a classroom climate or culture where all are able to participate (McLaughlin, 2018) with balanced choice determining when, how or to what degree that participation occurs. Concluding our discussion, we return to our framework of mindfulness to outline how such balanced silence practices might be executed. A New Direction Presenting an overview of mindfulness, we identified these three components as key in describing mindful awareness: purposeful, non-judgemental and present-moment. We additionally recognized that engaging in mindfulness practices frequently creates an open, creative atmosphere facilitating novelty production. Our intention in utilizing mindfulness as a foundation for exploring silence practices stems from the recognition that mindfulness can aid in navigating a balanced course between traditionally dichotomous (yet simultaneous) views of silence in school as praised and reprimanded. Mindfulness holds value as a framework for creating silence practices within the school/classroom setting. Purposeful As presented in our current discussion, consensus exists that silence, like mindfulness, requires intentional practice (Bunkers, 2013). Just like mindfulness practices incorporate specific boundaries, silence also requires the individual dedicate time, space and energies for meaningful growth. This is not to say that silence practices cannot align or cohabitate with other activities in the classroom setting. Indeed, depending on the age and developmental level of participating students, initial forays into silence practices may experience less awkwardness and more success if partnered with interventions sharing similar theoretical tenets. Whether practiced by itself or in conjunction with another contemplative activity in the classroom, silence requires willing intention on the part of participating individuals and the educators guiding the practice. Non-judgemental Also similar to mindfulness, silence benefits from a non-judgemental stance. Reuter (2015) notes that silence functions as a healthy mechanism to interrupt ‘autopilot’ responses such as quick inferences or biased conclusions. In the same way mindfulness notices or attends to thoughts, emotions or sensations, silence provides space – quite literally pause – for non-judgemental awareness to occur without immediate reactionary classification and compartmentalization of stimuli. This non-judgemental component applies to children and adults practicing silence, but additionally to educators observing silent children. Through an abundance of care and shortage of non-judgemental awareness, well-intentioned educators may rush to ‘autopilot’ conclusions based on observations of children within the school domain (e.g. classroom, playground, common areas). Hyde et al. (2010) recognize various instances when children might choose silence for managing difficult times such as familial transition, difficult interactions with peers, contemplating developmental changes in identity, seeking comfort or solace, or as a part of faith/spirituality/religious beliefs. With this in mind, they caution caring adults that silence as an avenue of exerting expression (or agency) towards wellness is commonly overlooked. 148

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Present Moment Finally, silence calls for attention to its existence as phenomena within the present. Whether noticing unplanned, emergent silence (i.e. Autonomous Silence) or exerting intentional energies to practice silence (i.e. Chosen Silence), healthy silence remains bounded in the present moment. Within mindfulness practices, common obstacles may challenge a continued focus on the present. For example, drawing attention to a centring thought of calm may inadvertently arouse stressors in the form of past-tense regrets (e.g. altercations with individuals earlier in the day) or futureoriented anxieties (e.g. scheduled interactions with same individuals tomorrow). Additionally, feelings of awkwardness may arise, especially during initial or introductory experiences to the practice causing distraction from the present moment. Similar challenges exist when embracing silence within the present moment. Especially pertinent may be feelings of awkwardness experienced when practicing silence in school climates firmly established as noisy (and here ‘noisy’ may refer to volume or just sheer flooding of the open, silent space). Here educators can not only facilitate healthy silence practices but also model for students how to maintain a presentmoment focus, embracing silence while attending to feelings and emotions non-judgementally. Example With the increased attention given to mindfulness and mindfulness practices, many school-based curricula and interventions are available for the majority of school-aged children/youth (i.e. kindergarten through high school). The following example outlines the partnering of silence with mindfulness in the form of a classroom lesson. Such a lesson may be a standalone informative activity or a reoccurring session. The lesson could be delivered by either educator (i.e. teacher) or clinician (e.g. school counsellor, school psychologist), with emphasis placed more on authenticity of practice rather than specific certification or credentialing. Beginning the lesson, the adult asks students about silence finding out what perceptions, ideas and beliefs students may have about the phenomena. This initial assessment may be structured or more informal. A more structured format might be a ‘K-W-L’ chart, where students are asked what they Know about silence; what they Want to know about silence and then returning to the chart after the lesson has concluded to review what has been Learned about silence (Ogle, 1986). Just as valuable, informal exploration may take the form of open-ended questions prompting discussion (e.g. What does silence mean? What does silence sound like? How does silence feel?). Having ascertained some idea of students’ familiarity with silence, the adult introduces the concepts of ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’ silence connecting with students’ earlier observations when possible. Depending on age level and developmental appropriateness, examples of unhealthy silence may range from losing your voice due to illness (elementary-aged) to historical example of civil/human rights infringement (high school-aged). In both cases, silence is imposed from a person/force other than self. Critical before practicing silence, the adult should acknowledge that even healthy forms of silence may feel awkward or ‘weird’ at times, especially if not regularly practiced. Introducing this awareness not only opens the door for later dialogue, but more importantly addresses any potential adverse feelings students may experience during the phenomena itself. The adult introduces a mindfulness exercise using centred breathing to facilitate awareness of silence. Multiple mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) are available for use with children whether explicitly designed for the classroom setting or not. The majority of such MBIs are 149

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equipped with sample scripts that adults may read from or edit when using in the classroom. Students are invited to participate and assume a comfortable yet dignified position whether sitting at desks or on the floor. Next students are invited to close their eyes and notice their breathing. The adult brings attention to students’ breathing providing a leisurely count associated with the inhaling and exhaling of each breath. After allowing time for breathing to fall into a calm rhythm, the adult draws attention to noises in the room (e.g. adult’s voice, feet shuffling, voices outside the classroom, clock ticking). The adult draws attention that even when everyone in the classroom is silent, such noises may momentarily interrupt that silence. Attention is then drawn to the parallel between silence as ‘pause’ between noises, and the pause we experience between breaths. The adult returns students’ attention to their breathing, to prepare for returning to class discussion, and then invites them to open their eyes. Following the exercise, the adult leads students through a time of reflecting on and processing the experience. Once again, the adult may choose whether to follow a structured format (i.e. the K-W-L chart) or more informal discussion. Students are led through exploring the physical sensations of silence first, and then the emotional reactions as well. As mentioned earlier, having already acknowledged that ‘it’s okay’ to feel weird, the adult may prompt students into discussing what healthy silence feels like, and how healthy silence may be beneficial even when the practice initially feels awkward. Concluding the lesson, the adult would explore what future practice might look like if students were interested in trying healthy silence again. Questions might include: Where might be a good place to practice healthy silence? When would be an appropriate time to practice healthy silence? How might someone practice healthy silence on their own? In this way, students collectively brainstorm and discuss the logistics associated with practicing healthy silence. Conclusion In many ways, the experience of silence exists as a double-edged sword. In a time marked with technology, hyper-connectivity and a constant bombardment of cultural ‘noise’ (e.g. text messages, emails, social media postings, cell phone calls), silence may be often wished for as a respite (Bunkers, 2013). However, silence can also open spaces of discomfort both from without and within. As illustrated in the song Car Radio,1 the singer comes to terms with driving in a car with no music to drown out his thoughts and struggles with the resulting silence. Paraphrasing, the singer describes how, sometimes, quiet is violent, as there is no distraction to mask what is real – because someone stole his car radio. Without information regarding healthy forms of silence, and exposure to silence as a contemplative practice, children may not be aware of the therapeutic value of silence considering it no more than a void requiring immediate filling. Similarly, educators unaware of how healthy silence may benefit students’ academic and social–emotional well-being may forego opportunities for silence within the classroom and/or misinterpret students’ desire for healthy silence as an indicator of maladaptive functioning. Educators and clinicians within the schoolhouse have the access and opportunity to introduce, model and foster children’s experiences of healthy silence.

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Multifaceted Silences in Adolescence Implications for Social Cognition and Mental Health Sandra Bosacki

Introduction What does it mean when there is silence in a classroom? What are the experiences of adolescents when they are silent, or exposed to silence in a classroom? What is happening in the hearts and minds of adolescents when they are silent? Why have researchers continued to neglect the experience of silence and socioaffective aspects of adolescent development? What makes adolescents’ emotional development and experiences with silence distinct from children and adults? To answer such questions, this chapter will consider how adolescents make sense of themselves and their social world within the context of silence. As we journey into the twentyfirst century, researchers and educators who work with youth need to remain open to new conceptions of adolescence and silence. Thus, this chapter builds on past, current and ongoing psychoeducational research and holistic educational philosophies that explore how adolescents experience times of silence. Many researchers and educators agree that adolescence (ages of nine to eighteen) is one of the most pivotal times in an individual’s overall development (Blakemore, 2018). Regarding identity development and social interactions, according to the classical developmentalist G. Stanley Hall (1904), adolescence is the age when youths shift their energy from themselves to their social relationships and experience the ‘storm’ and ‘stress’ of life. The central task of adolescence includes the development of one’s identity within the social context that includes conversations, nonverbal communication and silences. Thus, the adolescent’s main task is to develop a sense of self and identity within their social relationships and experiences of solitude. Surprisingly, although adolescence is a pivotal time in identity and emotional development, the majority of studies focus on adolescents’ cognitive abilities and social interactions (Harter, 2012). Also, studies demonstrate clear age-trends with affinity for aloneness. For example, recent findings suggest that the affinity for aloneness increases through early adolescence

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(Maes et al., 2016). In contrast, studies also show that an aversion to aloneness decreases from early to late adolescence (Coplan et al., 2019). Given such findings, surprisingly few studies explore early, mid- and late adolescent’s perceptions of silence, either alone or with others. Most studies explore either affinity or aversion to solitude in adolescence, so then why have researchers continued to neglect adolescents’ experiences of multiple silences (Nguyen et al., 2019)? This chapter will examine how individual differences and classroom culture, including gender, ethnicity and language, may affect adolescents’ experiences of silence in school settings. With a vision towards the future, I recommend ways in which educators can redesign and rethink a holistic and inclusive education that honours, values and embraces these silences. To explore the landscape of classroom silences in adolescence, I outline multiple meanings of silence that adolescents may experience within the classroom. I explore why the field of psychology continues to evade comprehensive empirical study of silence and social cognition among adolescents, and propose paths forward for holistic programmes. That is, how do educators and practitioners create experiences of silence that increase adolescents’ ability to flourish or feel confident and function well? (Seligman, 2011). Overall, this chapter aims to unite two scholarly areas that in the past have studied adolescent development separately. I will suggest ways in which developmental psychology and education can collaborate and co-create inclusive, social–emotional programs that focus on the importance of silence for mental health, compassion and mindfulness. I am to encourage educators and researchers to engage the two disciplines in an ongoing critical discourse about the significant role silence plays in adolescents’ personal and social lives. With an eye towards a new era, I end with recommendations for next steps and underscore the importance of transdisciplinary and transcultural research. What Is Silence and Why Does It Matter for Adolescents? Although the word ‘silence’ is ubiquitous and often found throughout many educational and psychological literatures, silence is often defined as a prerequisite to reflection and an integral part of the creative process (reflection and practice). Throughout this chapter, I focus on silence as a form of communication, and as an integral part of the teenager’s sociolinguistic repertoire that is learned mainly at home and also within the school setting. The ‘art of conversation’ entails a sociolinguistic repertoire of practice which allows children to learn and practice sociolinguistic behaviours that are guided by social and cultural conventions which govern appropriate verbal interaction. The art of conversation thus entails both the act of speaking and the act of listening. Silence may communicate as a call-type or a distinct, species-typical vocal repertoire that involves no sound. Silence can signal, as well as sound calls (Anikin et al., 2018; Berryman, 2001). Given the ambiguity of the language used to refer to silence, across multiple languages, there is often a cluster of words which refer to communication without sound (Bosacki, 2005). In contrast to research on non-linguistic vocal communication such as screams or laughter (Schwartz et al., 2019), in English, silence or a non-linguistic non-vocalization is often defined as ‘stillness’, ‘silence’ and ‘quiet’. All three must be considered in the interpretation of silence because no single one contains all that is meant by the whole. 152

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This chapter aims to illustrate the multidimensionality of silence within the secondary school classroom. Given that silence may serve as a representation of ambiguity or uncertainty in the classroom (Bosacki, 2005), for some students such uncertainty in the class may have a positive influence in that it may lead to curiosity (Lamnina & Chase, 2019), which in turn drives learning and student engagement (Berlyne, 1950, 1966; Dashiell, 1925). Alternatively, for some youth, silence may lead to feelings of angst and worry given the uncertain atmosphere in the classroom and with others. Given this double nature of silence, teachers and peers need to remain cognizant of the psychosocial implications of labels such as a ‘quiet’ or ‘shy’. Regarding the term ‘silence’, according to Berryman (2001), silence is one of three calls used by human beings to signal aspects of emotionality. Two calls are the two basic emotions of sadness and happiness expressed by the acts of crying and laughing. To further explore the concept of ‘silence’, the term ‘stillness’ refers to both movement and sound. For example, when the river is still and not moving, it remains silent. Movement and sound are related in that movement can be viewed in the medium of light (waves or quanta) as it stimulates our eyes, and in the medium of air as sound waves stimulate our ears. The distinction between silence and quiet is on the basis of motivation. For example, the motivation to be quiet usually stems from inside of us, whereas silence may be imposed on us from the outside. For instance, classroom silence is usually guided by school regulations and mandated disciplinary procedures to ensure classroom management. In contrast, when a student is ‘quiet’ or refrains from speech, this behaviour in part is the personal choice made by the student. That is, due to negative affect such as feelings of fear, discomfort or anxiety due to a multitude of possible reasons such as social anxiety (feeling silenced by peers, silenced by a teacher/parent, among others), a student may self-socialize herself to remain silent (Maccoby, 1998). Scholars also explore how culture affects personal experiences of silence (Anikin et al., 2018; Zhu et al., 2007) and investigate under what conditions does a person decide to be silent? Is silence a choice or command, and what are the functions and meanings of silence in one’s learning experiences? In the following sections I will describe how silence for adolescents can be experienced as a private escape or time to connect with oneself and nature, or as a strategy to negotiate conversations within social relations within school settings. Self: Silence and Solitude – Silence and Self Duplicitous Nature of Silence: Friend or Foe of the Adolescent Social situations include experiences of silence, and such experiences may either ameliorate or exacerbate an adolescent’s sense of social competence, confidence and well-being. A psychocultural approach to personal experiences of silence stems from an interest in exploring the most useful tools and resources for an adolescent to function in a social world. Accordingly, we need to investigate what the adolescent needs to know and feel about participating effectively in various social contexts? How do adolescents’ social and self-knowledge emerge out of their experiences in pragmatic circumstances? This psychocultural approach assumes that knowledge of others’ mental states is built out of experiential, pragmatic knowledge acquired in an interpreted, social world. This relational, developmental view of psychological understanding supports further research of scholars who 153

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explore the connections among thought and emotion, language and behaviour within the personal, social and cultural world (Bruner, 1996; Taumoepeau et al., 2019; Vygotsky, 1978). For example, in the case of social withdrawal and shyness, silence may be connected with negative social experiences and emotions. That is, those who chose to be silent may have different motivations such as prosocial (avoid hurting the feelings of the social partner), self-protective (to protect oneself from judgement) or self-presentational (to appear humble and avoid appearing boastful). Such experiences of silence may be especially pronounced during social group situations, where verbal expression may be equated with confidence, popularity and social status, especially among youth perceived as socially savvy or ‘cool’ (Wilson & Jamison, 2019). During adolescence, social situations may involve a peer who holds psychological power over another in the social hierarchy. A high-status peer may choose to harass or psychologically damage a peer with lower social status through means of exclusion and neglect. That is, a popular student may choose to ignore another lower-status peer’s social initiatives or requests. This ‘silent treatment’ may be considered a form of psychological or emotional harassment if the peer who received the silence experiences negative emotions such as anxiety and distress (McDonald & Asher, 2018). The process of ‘silencing’ within dialogue is complex, and the decision to remain silent in a public forum may have mixed emotions attached. To illustrate, an adolescent’s silence may represent her decision to refrain from joining a conversation, and thus suggest a sense of personal agency or control. This decision may originate from her feelings of discomfort (e.g. two students may criticize their teacher), and thus the decision to remain silent may lead to feelings of relief and pride. In contrast, she may feel pressured to comply with the silence (e.g. her friends tell her to ignore the teacher in class), and thus may feel ‘silenced’. Such a decision may then be accompanied by feelings of fear and anxiety. For example, a student who is called upon in class and chooses to remain silent may frustrate the teacher, as well as provoke ridicule from the student’s peers. Thus, the reasoning underlying the decision to remain silent, as well as the reaction solicited from the audience, may create negative emotional reactions. In contrast, the decision to remain silent could also lead to positive emotions. For example, if a student is asked to sit in the class with others for five or ten minutes of ‘silence’ or ‘quiet time’, she may experience positive emotions as this task provides the opportunity to remain silent and to reflect and listen or ‘check-on’ with oneself. That is, a student can exercise her/his imaginative and creative abilities by becoming body aware and listen to one’s mental and physiological messages. In both cases (self-imposed by student vs. teacher imposed on student), silence is defined by the absence of verbal expression and provides an opportunity for a student to listen to her or his thoughts, emotions and physical sensations. Such an experience will subsequently have either positive or negative influences on a student’s sense of self-confidence and competence. Regarding social silences, youth who find it stressful to join social groups, or who feel painfully shy, may choose to remain silent in a group situation to avoid the negative feelings that may arise from the possible rejection (Coplan et al., 2011). That is, students may wish to say something to another peer, but the ability to emotionally forecast one’s future emotional reaction may lead the student to imagine the possible rejection or social evaluation, and/or ridicule. Such imagined predictions may prevent them from taking the risk to express or share their thoughts. If such students feel inhibited to contribute due to fear, they may decide to either remain silent, or to withdraw from the social situation. 154

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Other students may also choose to remain silent in that they are socially disinterested. In this regard they may lack the motivation to approach others, while at the same time not necessarily have the motivation to avoid others. Compared to shy or socially withdrawn people, when socially disinterested individuals are approached by others they will be less likely to retreat and may experience little or no wariness and anxiety (Coplan et al., 2019). In contrast to those who make the personal decision to remain silent, verbally and socially competent adolescents may experience feelings of control and powerfulness, as they may be aware of their ability to influence another child’s behaviour (Recchia et al., 2019). In summary, for some individuals, silence may be viewed as a source of inspiration and as a psychological and emotional venue for quiet reflection. However, for others, silence may be accompanied by loneliness and emotional pain. The latter vision of silence may thus bring wariness in social company, victimization, fear of rejection and feelings of self-consciousness (Bosacki et al., 2019; Galanaki, 2004), and social dissatisfaction (Coplan et al., 2019). In short, there are various reasons for the emotional experiences and behavioural expressions of silence. On the one hand, silence may be accompanied by negative feelings of isolation and abandonment, and feelings of loneliness or an emotional craving for intimate connections with others. On the other hand, silence may also lead to feelings of peace, contentment and relaxation – or joy, awe and wonder as one may experience aloneliness, or an emotional craving to be alone and have intimate connection with oneself or quality private time. Social: Silence and Relationships – Silence within Context The ability to communicate effectively with others depends partly upon knowledge and skills that have little or nothing to do with language per se. For example, children learn that they may have to greet others and to end a conversation with some form of a sign-off. The social conventions that govern appropriate verbal interaction are called sociolinguistic behaviours. Such behaviours fall within the broader domain of pragmatics or what we ‘do with language’. For example, how do we learn to understand and perform according to the rules of conversational etiquette – taking turns such as switching between speaker and listener, and saying goodbye when leaving or to end a conversation, and so on (Coplan & Weeks, 2009). Pragmatic skills also include strategies for understanding the subtleties of ambiguous and non-literal or figurative language such as humour and teasing (Bischetti et al., 2019; Fritz, 2019), metaphor, irony and sarcasm (Filippova, 2014; Pexman, 2008). The ability to initiate conversations, change subjects, share stories and argue persuasively is also a pragmatic skill necessary for social communication. Children continue to refine their pragmatic skills and sociolinguistic conventions throughout the preschool years into adolescence. Cross-cultural studies show that this development is affected by cultural differences, particularly regarding social etiquette and decorum, such as the ability to recognize when one commits a social faux pas (Banerjee et al., 2011; Schwartz et al., 2019). Emotions also play a critical role in social communication (Vracheva et al., 2019). Structural and strategic silences may have different emotional implications. Regarding the case of structural silence, an adolescent may feel ‘silenced’ by the classroom structure, or may feel silenced by the ‘other’ who does not allow the other to speak. Thus, how would such an adolescent feel as a result of this blunted attempt at communication? This structural type of silence may be linked to the need for more social situations and interpersonal interactions. 155

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In contrast to structural silence, in strategic silence, an adolescent may choose to refrain from expressing a particular emotion either nonverbally or verbally. Thus, given that the adolescent makes the decision to remain silent at her own discretion, what are the emotional and social implications of this self-inflicted silence? That is, compared to structural silence, the motivation to self-silence may be influenced by the interactions of others, and thus the decision to remain silent may remain at a more private level (Nguyen et al., 2019). Thus, how do the implications differ for self-imposed silence compared to silence imposed by the structure of authoritative and institutional codes of conduct? Regarding the subtleties of social interaction, researchers continue to remain challenged by the question of how well do adolescents understand the mental states and emotions of others, and how does this influence their sense of self-worth and preferences for socialization and silence. To answer this question, we need to understand how adolescents co-construct their emotional knowledge out of their social experiences. Studies suggest that the co-construction of emotion and knowledge occurs within sociopolitical structures such as schools (Habermas et al., 2009). Thus, to try to make sense of the role critical curiosity plays within the process of psychological pragmatics, this chapter builds on studies that suggest curiosity experienced during times of silence may help to drive learning, engagement, and well-being (Hulme et al., 2013; Kashdan & Steger, 2007). Psychological pragmatics refers to a dynamic knowledge system comprising self-views, emotions and cognitions that undergo constant creation and re-creation through social interaction (Bischetti et al., 2019; Bosacki, 2003). This dialogical system allows us to understand the mental states of ourselves and others within a framework of action influenced by social and cultural values, ideals, structures and practices. Thus, how one views and feels about one’s value or personal worth may play an instrumental role in the co-creation of our ability to be psychologically pragmatic. Put differently, our beliefs and feelings about our value or worth affect how we understand and interact with others. Building on these psychocultural theories of self-systems and social behaviour (Bandura, 2016; Harter, 2012), researchers continue to explore the complex links between psychological pragmatics such as understanding humour and irony (Airenti, 2016; Fritz, 2019), and self-worth within the school culture. However, further research is needed to explore the gendered and cultured links among social cognition and social communication within the secondary school system. Most higher-level language educational programs often focus on the verbal components, and promote socio-communicative skills such as speaking in front of others and conversation skills. In contrast, few language programmes aim to sharpen critical listening and observational skills (Bosacki, 2005, 2016; Bosacki et al., 2019). Educational programs for adolescents rarely focus on the pragmatic or sociolinguistic skills involved in the process of social and emotional learning (Yang et al., 2018). To date, there also remains a lack of balance between ‘intrapersonal skills’, which involve time for periods of purposeful, silent contemplation and reflection, and ‘interpersonal skills’, such as perspective-taking within collaboration and communication, listening and dialogue, and negotiation (Vracheva et al., 2019). During times of purposeful solitude and social interactions, adolescents need the opportunity to learn how they can value and embrace the importance of solitude and silence. Scheduled independent and solitary learning time during the daily academic schedule would provide students with the opportunity to take dedicated class time to be alone with themselves (without 156

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the companionship of any personal digital devices) (Twenge & Martin, 2020). Such scheduled opportunities may provide the permission needed for students to feel comfortable enough to let their mind wander and possibly engage in daydreaming, and imaginative and creative activities. In addition, such scheduled solitude in schools would also provide students with the opportunity to ‘listen to themselves’ including their thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations. Thus, as Hildebrandt et al. (2019) suggest, we need programmes that promote emotion regulation and management strategies through the cultivation of attention or presence, perspective and affect such as compassion. As noted earlier, structural or social silences may also be experienced by adolescents as ostracism, prejudice (Capodilupo et al., 2010), and ‘being silenced’ by others. This phenomenon of ‘feeling invisible’, or of being excluded from social interactions, is often studied within the context of psychological harassment or bullying. Recent research also explores social silence in terms of more nuanced hostile acts known as microaggressions. Such acts are subtle and commonplace remarks or actions that people interpret as prejudicial, demeaning and negating (Capodilupo et al., 2010). Examples within a secondary school classroom could involve on the surface seemingly innocuous comments on a student’s family heritage, gender or faith orientation by a peer or a teacher (e.g. complimenting a female for making the hockey team, or a male for receiving a high grade in a fashion and design course). However, given the sensitivity of such issues for particular students, such comments may be interpreted as damaging irrespective of the speaker’s intention. Given the curricular and classroom time constraints, some teachers may decide to refrain from addressing controversial issues in class, and thus may unknowingly silence current topics such as issue of gender fluidity and sexual diversity (Surette, 2019). Psychosocial Implications: Multiple Uses of Silence in Adolescence as Helpful (Prosocial) or Harmful (Aggressive) Given the ambiguous nature of the use of silence as a socio-communicative tool, silence can serve as either a helpful or a harmful tool. Recent research explores the constructive uses of solitude, and why some youth prefer to spend more time alone than with others. Building on Dewey (1910), and Piaget’s work of intellectual development and play, Susan Engel (2011, 2015) states how studies tend to overlook the importance of time alone, and free time in a child and adolescent’s life. Engel discusses society’s focus on the importance of friendship and social relationships, which in turn may help to shape adolescents’ motivations for ‘alone time’. For example, research suggests that our knowledge of the developmental consequences of social silences is constrained by cultural norms. Some studies suggest that in many Western societies, shyness, social withdrawal and silences may be less acceptable for boys than for girls (Coplan et al., 2004; Coplan & Weeks, 2009). Furthermore, compared to Western countries such as Canada, shyness and social silences are more prevalent and carry more societal value in Eastern countries such as China (Coplan et al., 2011). Clearly, future research is required to elucidate these findings. Constructive use of solitude includes silence as a means of power, reflection and self-expression during adolescence (Coplan et al., 2019; Larson, 1997; Vracheva et al., 2019). In addition to spending time in silence during periods of solitude, silence can also be used as a particular method in large group situations such as schools. As vocalization is often connected to issues of power within the 157

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classroom, some students may feel more competent and confident than others and, thus, more likely to use silence as a tool to convey this sense of power (Wilson & Jamison, 2019). Silence can also serve as an unhostile means of controlling others and expressing one’s desires (Weinstein et al., 2018). When silence serves as controlling device, it may serve as a self-protective tool, and may help to regulate emotions in relationships without direct engagement. Silence can also be a form of positive resistance in that it can be used to create a balance between compliance and rebellion. Alternatively silence can create a neutral ground within a hostile relationship. For young people raised in cultural and familial contexts that prohibit their verbal or physical aggression, silence as a form of resistance may serve as a strategy to preserve their agency and sense of self. Given the multicultural and multilinguistic contexts of North American adolescents’ worlds today, many adolescents may experience sociopolitical silences within the classroom and beyond. Such silences may occur beyond intimate relationships and extend to political silence where adolescents of colour or ethnic minorities may strategically suspend their voices in white communities. Regarding gender-role orientations, some transgendered or LGBTQ adolescents may use silence as political tool to express their message within a community where the majority of the population is heterosexual and cisgender (Capodilupo et al., 2010; Surette, 2019). Finally, silence can be used for self-protection in situations where adolescents feel unsafe and fearful. This safe silence may conceal as it communicates, and hide an adolescent’s anger behind a mask whose meaning he or she can quickly change if necessary (Bosacki, 2005, 2013). For example, recent findings from our interviews with Canadian eleven- to thirteen-year-old girls and boys showed that adolescents who remained silent and chose not to engage in conversation with others were often feeling upset or anxious and stressed. Silence, then, may send mixed messages to others. When controlled, silence can be used to protect the self from psychological harm by others, or to create a safe space within relationships in which to formulate new directions and offers possibilities for movement and change. Thus hostile silence, controlling silence, resisting silence, political silence and safe silence can enhance possibilities for creating change in the self and in relational patterns. However, as a tool to invoke harm on self and/or others, silence may also send another message of alienation, despair and hopelessness. That is, in contrast to prosocial silence, through the avoidance of confrontation and negative emotions in relationships, aggressive silence fails to bridge social connections to others that could lead to dialogue, reconciliation or new relational patterns. Given that silence may send mixed messages to others, it may communicate anger and hostility, but contradicts anger’s call for retaliation. That is, such silence may represent an angry reproachfulness towards another person, who may be unaware of the source of the anger. Aggressive silence also suggests an unforgiving, uncompassionate and critical harshness towards the self. Such silence is sometimes associated with stress, anxiety, self-criticism, a lack of self-compassion and self-coldness (Bosacki et al., 2019; Neff, 2016; Van der Gucht et al., 2018), chronic and sometimes major depression. Research on Canadian elementary school teachers’ perceptions of children’s verbal loudness and silent behaviour reflected stereotypic gender patterns (Coplan et al., 2011). That is, teachers were more likely to rate quietness and silence in girls as positive, and loudness or exuberance as problematic, whereas the opposite pattern was found for boys (e.g. loud boys/silent girls – good: silent boys/loud girls – bad). Regarding our past research on Canadian adolescents’ views of talking and listening with their friends and family members, more girls compared to boys felt that sometimes remaining silent was more effective in social relationships than talking as often many felt ignored or silenced when they did speak (Bosacki, 2013). 158

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Gender differences in social and emotion understanding and experiences of silence, then, may reflect differences in students’ stereotypic gender-role ascriptions such as femininity and masculinity (Bosacki et al., 2020). That is, guided by their own emotional scripts that have been co-constructed through social interactions with their parents and others (e.g. siblings, peers, teachers), adolescents’ experiences of silence may reflect gender-role stereotypes, resulting in observable gender differences (Bosacki et al., 2018). Parents and teachers, therefore, who endorse such stereotypic views towards gender and sexuality may have an indirect influence on the development of their child’s socialcommunicative abilities and mental health (Bosacki et al., 2015; Yarnell et al., 2019). Given the crucial role teachers and parents play in both the gender-role socialization and co-construction of adolescents’ social cognitive and linguistic abilities (Recchia et al., 2019), surprisingly few studies explore the links between teachers’ and peers’ perceptions of genderrole and adolescents’ emotion understanding and socio-communicative abilities. The majority of studies either (1) investigate parent–child conversations, or (2) parents’ beliefs and expectations of their child’s emotional development but not of gender-role behaviour in adolescence (Fivush & Wang, 2005). Although some research findings show that parents’ beliefs and expectations about emotional development are gender specific (Dolichan et al., 2018), findings on parent– adolescent and teacher–student emotion talk are mixed (Kwon et al., 2019). For example, some studies show that mothers and teachers (mainly female) tend to talk more about emotions with girls (Coplan et al., 2009; Fivush & Wang, 2005), and focus more on emotion and mental state words (Taumpoepeau et al., 2019). In contrast, some studies show that adult talk with boys (compared to girls) focuses more on the causes or explanations of emotions, and less, overall, about emotions themselves (Zaman & Fivush, 2013). For example, past studies show that girls are more likely than boys to discuss emotions with adults, especially sadness (Recchia et al., 2019). In contrast, a recent meta-analysis of gender differences in parent–child emotion talk found no gender difference across thirty-four studies of mother–child (one to twelve years of age) emotion talk across diverse cultures and socio-economic statuses (Aznar & Tenenbaum, 2019; Dolichan et al., 2018). Such findings have implications for the socialization of emotions, as well as for the use of silences in conversations, particularly within the classroom. Research on gender-related differences in experiences of silence and social and emotion understanding remains inconsistent and fairly scarce (especially with regard to adolescents’ understanding of complex, self-conscious emotions such as remorse and shame). More recently, researchers have moved the focus from the exploration of between-genders to within gender and gender similarities versus differences (Kwon et al., 2019; Nielson et al., 2019). Given the constantly changing definitions of gender and gender fluidity, such an approach to exploring silences and gender within adolescence may be useful. Implications for Practice and Future Directions Silence, Social Cognition and Mental Health To summarize, adolescents’ experiences of solitude and social interactions often involve emotional exchanges where they practice emotion and language in play and in competition. In this section I will provide some strategies to help teachers utilize events that entail play and competition to help further the development of emotional competence in terms of either silent or verbal contexts. The integration of social and emotional education in gender practice with adolescents underscores 159

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the dynamic complexity, fluidity and continuity of the formation of a social and private self. That is, I will consider the ways in which emotion practice and students’ mental health are affected by language, gender and ethnicity (and vice versa) during the school hours. Positive Psychology and Compassionate Mindfulness Movement Another area of research that may illuminate the connections between the experiences of silence and mental health in adolescents includes studies on the concept of mindfulness and self-compassion (Van Doesum et al., 2019), flow and positive thinking (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). This branch of humanistic psychology focuses on the ability to flourish by combining resilience with optimism (Seligman, 2011), and provides an area for collaboration regarding cognition and spiritual and/or religious experiences. Supporting evidence from neuroscience shows that flow or optimal experiences may have a neurological basis and suggests an altered state of consciousness (Feuerborn & Gueldner, 2019; Galla, 2016). Research on flow as well as mindfulness shows that adolescents who report experiences of flow and high levels of mindfulness are more likely to experience a greater sense of psychological well-being and successful academic achievement (Van der Gucht et al., 2018). Given the more contemporary, broader concepts of mental health, the notion of happiness and subjective well-being may also provide researchers with some answers to the inner, spiritual world of adolescents. For example, recent examples from our ongoing longitudinal research on social cognition and mental health in Canadian adolescents (eleven to seventeen years) show that high levels of students’ mindfulness link to high levels of self-compassion and perceived self-worth (Bosacki et al., 2018). In addition, Assor et al. (2019) found that eighteen- to nineteenyear-old adolescents’ well-being improved through reflective authentic inner-compass facilitation programs that promoted examination of one’s authentic inner values through times of silence and contemplation. Thus, positive psychology is an area for future research that illustrates the complex links between adolescents’ experiences of silence, mindful reflection and well-being (Christodoulou et al., 2019). School and Classroom Culture – Connections between Culture and Cognition As educators, we need to explore the emotional worlds of mixed heritage youth and how their experiences of silences differ from those raised in a uniethnic home. The increasing prevalence and asserted presence of mixed-race youth demand a critical examination of our ways of talking about and studying race and ethnicity in schools. Educational and research programmes need to allow for fluidity and multiplicity regarding racial-ethnic identification. A culture or climate of mutual respect, caring and sensitivity is one that helps to promote prosocial attitudes and behaviours including acceptance of and respect for differences. The tacit and explicit social norms and rules that govern sociolinguistic behaviours in the school setting help to define what is acceptable and unacceptable treatment of individuals. Given that school life reflects how our world is becoming increasingly global and diverse, adolescents are likely to meet and interact with others whose race, ethnicity and family backgrounds differ from their own (Surette, 2019). In addition to race and ethnicity, other differences such as gender, social class, physical characteristics and sexual orientations may serve as focal points for conflict and intolerance among adolescents. As our society grows in multi-ethnicity, the need is great for developmentally appropriate and inclusive curricula that promote tolerance and respect for differences. 160

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Irrespective of educational programmes, school must provide an inclusive and developmentally appropriate learning culture or climate that promotes a sense of mutual respect, connection and caring, compassion and inclusion (Jazaieri et al., 2018). It is an imperative that educators and researchers help students, especially in secondary schools, to develop a set of values and standards that promote acceptance of diversity, and eliminate insensitive and intolerant behaviour in the classroom (Surette, 2019). The emotional school climate needs to reflect the collective values and standards of interpersonal relationships and interactions that promote the communicative value of silence, as well as the spoken word. For example, recent findings show how a kind and motivational emotional tone of the teacher’s voice can have a positive impact on students’ academic competence (Weinstein et al., 2018). Such findings encourage educators to be aware of the nonverbal signs they emit to their students, including tone of voice and body language. Thus, a climate of mutual respect and compassion for all, regardless of group and individual differences, is crucial to help young people develop into competent and compassionate adults who exhibit moral responsibility. As we enter into the third decade of the twenty-first century, together with rapid technological advancements, educators and researchers need to take the time to promote the ideal connection between ethics and excellence and culture and cognition. To promote school engagement and well-being, as technology continues to speed up, the challenge for educators and students in the 2020s will be to slow down the process of learning and take the time necessary to develop meaningful and trustworthy relationships. Conclusions Drawing on the literature outlined in the previous sections, findings are mixed concerning the link between adolescents’ experiences of silence and mental health. For example, higher levels of understanding of others’ mental states may also be related to higher levels of emotional sensitivity that may lead one to feel psychologically isolated and vulnerable (Bosacki et al., 2019). Given the constructive value of solitude in that it may promote reflection and self-regulation (Larson, 1997; Nguyen et al., 2018), more research is needed to explore the motivations for adolescents to be silent and alone. Motivations to engage in constructive solitude may include the need to reflect and create which is more likely to lead to feelings of well-being, self-compassion and happiness (Bosacki et al., 2019; Nguyen et al., 2019). In contrast, the motivation for reactive solitude is usually due to fear, social avoidance and dissatisfaction, and often relates to increased feelings of loneliness and depression (Bosacki et al., 2019; Marcoen et al., 1987), Thus, more research is needed to explore the potential harms and benefits of remaining silent in the highschool classroom. Given the nuanced and knotty social and cultural rules of secondary school life, to preserve students’ mental health and well-being, educators and researchers need to help adolescents to navigate the silences. That is, youth need to learn how to decide when and where to speak up, and to whom. They also need to learn to decide what to speak on. Especially in this information- and noise-saturated society, adolescents should be taught to learn how to savour, instead of shun, the silence in their school life. Thus, to this day, Roman emperor Claudius’s 2,000-year-old statement ‘Say not always what you know, but always know what you say’ (Claudius, Roman emperor, 10 BCE–CE 54) remains wise advice.

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Creativity, Concentration and Silence Teresa Olearczyk

Introduction The twentieth century began, and the twenty-first century continues a new era in the history of humanity – the era of chaos and noise. A person fascinated by technology and new possibilities loses the balance between attractive modernity and nature and peace. Generally speaking, we live in an era not only of a peculiar confusion, chaos, accelerated changes of ‘everyone and everything’ – in many cases irrational and uncontrolled, with its consequences that are not completely predictable, or even unimaginable; we live in a civilization not only of unsettling wilderness and not sufficiently chosen development paths, a civilization of ‘spectacle, manipulation and violence’, unprecedented technological and IT progress, increased technocratization and mechanization of life, converting almost everything into profit, the universal requirement of profitability and economy but also – and above all – in times of universal crisis; crisis in almost all spheres of human life and activity (Ricoeur, 1990). Noise and chaos are the most symptomatic of our epoch, but still insufficiently perceived as dangerous and disturbing, and even deliberately concealed and neglected phenomena. With omnipresent noise, even on a ‘desert island’ we are no longer alone, and thanks to the newest communication technology we belong to a global village. We live next to each other, not with each other. We have more and more friends, but less and less relationships based on mutual understanding, trust and closeness. Thanks to the internet, we have a false impression of closeness and existence in a global community. We create a world that is increasingly difficult for us to live in. Many have rediscovered, following Kierkegaard (1990), the value of silence, as a remedy for inner diseases. Many publications about silence are published, ‘Houses of Silence’ are opened, offering silence and calmness (including the one in Tyniec), and many books on silence appear in bookshops, which is an expression of longing for silence. Many have discovered the healing effect of silence and practice of Eastern meditation techniques (Grun, 2019). Internal calmness promotes concentration and creativity, and reduces the level of emotional tension of children and adults. As an escape from noise that has recently become quite common, meditation appears in many versions, including Christian meditation (Christie, 2012), participation in the Ignatian retreat,

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the journey of young people to Taize. There are many meditation centres and many books on this subject (Kaplan, 2015; Main, 2016; Thích, 2008). John Paul II, in his speech to educators and parents, said, ‘it is essential that the child be guided to a real and profound inner silence, which is the first condition for listening’ (John Paul II, 1984). Understanding and appreciating silence comes with age, which does not mean that children and teenagers do not need silence. On the contrary, silence is necessary – because it allows people to control excessive emotions, has a positive effect on the nervous system, gives rest to confused thoughts and helps to choose the life path. Chaos clearly hinders the full and multilateral development of a person; reduces the quality of functioning and interpersonal relations; and inhibits the full development of personality, mental and spiritual potential. The lack of silence is felt more and more; it is time to raise a rebellion over the dictatorship of noise. Silence and Keeping Silent Reflection on what silence is, and on its social context, is extremely topical (Olearczyk 2010, 2014, 2016). Both silence and keeping silent refer to people as unique beings, individually experiencing life. Silence has a positive effect on the development of the individual; favours concentration, reflection and creativity; allows communing with oneself and is mentally and socially beneficial. When noise triumphs, silence escapes. A new perspective on silence as a positive phenomenon that opens up thoughts and hearts is needed. Silence is an essential element in the life of every human being; it enables concentration, protects against loss of identity and promotes creation and creativity. If you want to get to know yourself and understand yourself, your identity, you need to remain silent and go deeper. In important moments of life, silence becomes our necessity. A silent person has a much greater ability to listen. However, although silence and keeping silent can sometimes be difficult, they allow for selfrecognition, they show reality that is sometimes hidden. Reflecting in silence makes us begin to get to know and form ourselves, our space, consciously selecting elements that, mixed in our individual space, will shape our world. In order to be able to perceive the reality that we create more clearly, it is necessary to know the truth about ourselves, drawing on the source of the benefits brought by silence and keeping silent. The thought of self-recognition and selfacceptance penetrates deeply into the truth about humanity. Both self-recognition and selfacceptance, occurring during silence or keeping silent, move people towards balance, helping them achieve inner peace, a sense of balance and harmony. Silence, just like keeping silent, is not emptiness, it is subject to praxeological, psychological and ethical evaluation – it is not indifferent; it can be positive or negative, depending on the intention and context used. Christian education, which became the basis of the tradition of European education, introduced the formation and development of the spirit (Pius XI’s Encyclical on the Christian Education of Youth). Silence leads to reflective thinking, the ability of self-control and control of emotions, helps in asking questions about own existence or searching for the meaning of life. In getting to know and introducing silence, the key role should be played by family upbringing and school education, as a conscious process of the person’s development and changes in social relations (Czerepaniak-Walczak, 1999: 8). Silence is conducive to activities such as the ability to control oneself and proper interpersonal communication; it is helpful in making well-thought-out, own choices and decisions 163

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(Czerepaniak-Walczak, 2005:11). Meeting another person is impossible without controlling own silence (Sarah, 2017: 77). Pedagogy puts great emphasis on recognizing what constitutes the image of contemporary education and participation in social life. The point is to look at the value of silence, the problems and anxieties, and the hopes of modern people. Pedagogy is based on an integral and personalistic vision of a human being at the centre of social life. As conditions for genuine participation, it recognizes respect for personal dignity, recognition of the right to education, upbringing, taking up duties, a culture of behaviour and freedom. The diversity of contemporary knowledge about the need for silence and the harmfulness of noise encourages us to ask questions about the role of silence and meta-reflection over it. Silence cannot be read only as a normative requirement; it must be referred to the justification for introducing it, including it in the educational and creative process, as it is necessary in creativity, in the culture of words, images and sounds. Need for Silence as a Source of Creative Thinking Creativity (from Latin – creatus) as a mental process involving the emergence of new ideas, concepts, new associations, connections with already existing ideas and concepts is associated with silence. Creativity is one of the most interesting features of the human mind. Thanks to it, we can create philosophical works, physical theories or works of art. Although the number of creative works over the centuries is unimaginable, psychological research on the phenomenon of creativity began relatively recently, while the problem of creating one’s self in relation to perfection is rarely undertaken in pedagogy. Creativity is not limited to science and art. We can be creative on various levels: family, social and professional. It is important to look for non-obvious solutions to problems, break away from limitations and go beyond the pattern of action and thinking that is typical for us. So, creativity is the art of unusual and effective solving of life, social and artistic tasks and problems. Creative silence is solitude, free from fear. The creation itself is an absolute and unique value. The possibility of accomplishing a work can evoke very positive thoughts. Silence also contains an element of tension and surprise that can be felt in contrast to its inconspicuousness, supporting the process of creation. Many experts of creative thinking believe that creativity is a continuous trait. Everyone has it, but to a different degree. In other words: some people are more creative, others less, but everyone has some ability to think creatively. I am also a supporter of this egalitarian concept of creativity, an idea for improving ourselves and the surrounding reality. As children, we are all creative, it is enough to look at how a child behaves while doing a creative activity – the child is focused, involved in creative projects (e.g. moulding from plasticine, painting, arranging rhymes) and finding new uses for objects (e.g. a tent made of two chairs and the blanket), how the child reacts when we disturb in creativity – we disturb the silence of creation. The child learns quickly and has a great desire to explore the world. Most people become less creative as they age. It is worth asking yourself first, what limits our creativity (noise, chaos, excessive haste)? Are these mainly external or internal factors (e.g. the belief that I am not creative ‘by nature’)? Many have enormous potential, competences and creativity, but fatigue, distraction, an excessive amount of stimuli, contacts, disenable focus, reflection and creativity. Art is the fruit of reflection in silence: delight, admiration and silence work in conjunction with each other. 164

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Therefore, it will be absurd to talk about creativity in noise, while active life preceded by silence gives excellent results. In the physical dimension, a person can only find a respite in silence, so we go to the mountains, listen to the sound of the sea, look for quiet places, because the silence of big cities is unattainable even at night. Solitude, Thinking, Creativity Solitude is often noticed negatively, confused with loneliness. We cannot cope with loneliness when we have a vibrating interior, the noise outside causes us to forget about the strength and power that is in us, which can be released by the silence of loneliness. Solitude does not mean isolation, but being with ourselves, constantly getting to know ourselves, reaching the depths of our personality, for example in prayer meetings with one’s God. Solitude changes the optics of looking at oneself and the world; many things change their meaning, minimize themselves, become secondary or unnecessary, so the character of a person changes. Being in the silence of solitude should be learned every day; it is the best regeneration of physical, mental and spiritual strength. Robert Sarah writes: ‘Silence and solitude are places of spiritual warfare . . . they must be protected against all parasitic noise’ (Sarah, 2017: 124). In people’s actions and decisions, the person is always alone (sometimes after consulting, but always alone), takes action and is responsible for the words and actions taken or not taken. Solitude gives us the time that takes away the noise and external chaos of our everyday life. Silence is a human right, it is necessary for individual development and the experience of personal separateness. The perception of the external world is more and more dependent on images, on visual sensitivity over text and content. Therefore, it is worth considering whether the richness of forms and content is an opportunity for education and upbringing or creating needs. Silence and solitude create a specific bond that fosters creativity. The shared silence of solitude between loved ones is filled with understanding and exchange of thoughts; it is silence with understanding. The noisiness of the conversation prevents attention. Silence is not unproductive, it is creative – the Holy Spirit, as it were, acts silently, and does great things. The loneliness of maturing requires focus and intellectual effort; it gives rise to ways of solving various issues. There is a certain inconsistency in a person – duality, a crack and sometimes a tear, the need of solitude, to resonate in the silence of the ‘broken self’. It is usually a conscious choice of the individual. The Sphere of Silence and Keeping Silent There is a lack of listening skills in which people can’t hear their own interior, meet themselves, learn the power and strength within themselves. Undoubtedly, Socrates was right when he repeated the Delphic maxim ‘know yourself’, which is possible in the silence of the solitude we have within. The lack of silence is tiring and does not allow people to stop over the meaning of their destiny, their creativity. All kinds of habits and addictions are a serious threat to silence and our concentration. More and more people (and what’s wrong, children and adolescents) use the help of psychologists, psychiatrists, therapists, forgetting about the possibilities of the silence of their own interior. Silence brings relief to the overloaded, even crowded human mind. Many professions, especially creative ones, require working alone. The trick is to remain lonely among people, not distancing 165

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them at the same time, but bringing them closer to each other, appreciating creativeness and creative solitude as an act of choice. In Silence and Solitude Solitude, the same as silence, accompanies a person from the very beginning. The problem of solitude was noticed already in antiquity. The following wrote about it: Epictetus, Seneca, Cicero, Master Eckhart, Petrarch, de Montaigne, Pascal, Bacon, Hume, Rousseau, Voltaire, Mandeville, Burke, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Tillich, Levinas, Guardini, Bergson. One can also find the problem of loneliness in the existentialism of Kierkegaard, Jaspers, Marcel, Camus, Shestov, Buber and Cioran. We observe this phenomenon of human existence in the philosophy of the twentieth century; it is also considered from a psychological point of view, and then we do not ask about the essence of solitude, but about the accompanying experiences, reflections and emotional preferences. Solitude opens up memory, the deepest layers of experience, allows one to look closely and from a distance, and multiplies spiritual strength. There are times of solitude in our community life, and sometimes we even experience loneliness. Understanding Solitude and Experiencing Solitude – these two concepts are synonymous, but not monosemous, because solitude is closely related to both biological and psychological predispositions, as well as to the volitional and creative sphere. Creativity – one of the areas of mental activity – seems to be a good way, but it is difficult to close it within a rigid framework. The creative process is anchored in the imagination and experiences of the individual, in personal sensitivity. The student can use the freedom of creativity, imagination, freedom of action aimed at development. For many years, realism in the field of creation has been abandoned; there is no longer any doubt that imagination, reflection and individual activity are important in creating. The concept of creative potential is equated by researchers of creativity with creativeness understood as the ability of a person to generate (invent) new and valuable ideas (brainwaves, concepts, solutions) (Szmidt, 2010: 8). According to this approach, creativity refers to the activity of the subject, to its causative activity bringing new value (Szmidt, 2010: 8–10). Creative silence brings a new value – thought, work. It is enough to look at the works of Krzysztof Penderecki, Vincent Van Gogh and Jan Matejko, whose creative achievements in a specific style and time are the result of solitary work in silence and solitude, as pointed out by Edward Nęcka (Nęcka, 2001: 11). ‘For a pedagogue, psychologist, what matters is the creative process and the personality of the person (child), the subject of such activity, not whether its products are new to others, and whether this potential brings something new to science, art or culture’ (Nęcka, 2001: 19–23). The sheer creation, reflection and thought are important. It is not difficult to see that it is necessary to create circumstances, opportunities and conditions in which the student could develop and grow. Hence, in the literature, there are numerous reflections on the activities of educators and teachers, among others: ‘the task of educators is to properly shape the personality factors of the pupil, awakening his [sic] spirituality, so that it can dominate the whole, and on this basis, forming the full humanity in a comprehensively developed human personality’ (Kunowski, 2001: 26). In pedagogical activities, the importance of silence and activity in both preschool and school education should be emphasized, in the activities of the peer group, family and the wider social

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environment. Teachers’ self-reflection on the meaning of the right balance between human activity and silence, silencing, nonspeech and contemplation should be aroused. The challenge facing the educator is to stimulate self-reflection. Danuta Czelakowska notes: creative activity is creating something original, useful and socially valuable in the field of art, music, literature, etc. – it is an objective understanding of the concept. And in the subjective sense, creative activity is the production of something new and valuable for oneself, i.e. new knowledge, skills, beliefs, as well as new verbal, musical, artistic products, etc. (Czelakowska, 1996) The value of silence is most appreciated by artists who are aware of the importance of entering silence and the impact of creativity and focus. Silence and solitude enable the creator to perfect oneself and one’s work.1 The artists show a strong need for a space where, calm, they would turn to the inner world, talk with their ideas. The poet Rainer Maria Rilke, who considered silence to be an essential component of poetry, knew about the need for such a space. According to him, it is thanks to silence that words can ‘act in all the breadth and fullness of meaning’ in the work; only in this way, through silence and in silence, is it possible to ‘fully imagine the song of life’ (Farkašová, 2009: 121). If you listen to the experimental works of John Cage, it is easy to feel what value this composer of silence ascribed as a space that allows external sound signals to itself, but at the same time leaves space for the imagination of the audience and attracts (one might even say: seduces) it with its ‘emptiness’. The phenomenon of silence (keeping silent) and its various realizations can also be found in contemporary literature. But this is a separate topic that requires a broader study. Silence and Keeping Silent as a Way to the Development of the Human Being Silence consolidates everything into one whole – it brings people closer to their God, it combines what is ancient and humanistic, what is active and what is creative. ‘Silence’ as a category has not lost its importance, even though it was present already in ancient times. The idea of silence exists and functions in both public and intellectual discourse. Due to its interdisciplinary nature, the topic of silence is analysed from a philosophical, psychological, pedagogical, moral and legal perspective. For the ancients, being silent was not a problem. It was easy for the initiated to enter into broad expanse, areas of fauna, green space, psychological and physical space, without noisy tools. For centuries, education has been close to nature, in low-density areas, close to the family, surrounded by the silence and sounds of nature. Monasteries were places of organized silence zones, but the need for silence as a tool for human development was also respected by pedagogues. Korczak organized a ‘silent room’, Montessori conducted lessons of silence, contemporary Benedictines in the Tyniec monastery conducted Christian meditation in silence and many schools, also in Poland, introduce meditation for their students. We can see the need for silence in more and more aspects of our lives: ‘quiet zones’ are being implemented in trains and planes. ‘Pure’ silence is impossible to survive, that is why I would like to look at silence in the context of diverse cultural phenomena which, together with artistic elements, include the space of intellectual discourse. I would like to reflect upon what made silence a deficient article, despite being one of the most important human needs? How do silence and solitude affect human development? What is the relation between silence and solitude (chosen, creative, reflective)? For 167

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this purpose, I will explain the meaning of silence and the difference between silence in terms of quiet noise and in terms of keeping silent. The first kind of silence – silent hush – continues to fascinate and divide scientists. I will deliberately ignore the negative aspects of silence, as they do not serve the integral development of the person, and I will focus on the positive influence of silence on personal development. Reaching the depths, I would like to focus on the following aspects: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

Culture of chaos and noise; The concept of silence and keeping silent; The phenomenon of silence; Types of silence; Need for silence; Silence, the way to personal development.

Silence as a fathomless phenomenon continues to fascinate and divide scientists. The quality of the silence is that it is not heard. Silence can be identified with the state of peace and inner balance. That is why the saints encouraged contemplation and meditation. The concept of a social agreement, a communal social living, requires respect for silence understood as a calming distraction, a state of harmony and peace of mind. Being silent can also be associated with the Absolute. The limits of silence are defined by autonomy, that is, to be subject only to the laws that we have set for ourselves. Frankl, the father of logotherapy – healing through ‘meaning’ – wrote in his book Man’s Search for Meaning (2006) that happiness is always a by-product of an act of kindness. To undertake any activity, that means, to get involved in human activities, there is a need to think and focus, which are both associated with silence. In forming and educating people, it is essential to establish boundaries. First, it is necessary to set boundaries and then teach the children freedom, leave them with more and more space to act. It must be taught that there are consequences of excessive noise, excessive freedom and excessive tolerance; that everything in life has its place, its time and its context to be considered. Life in Times of Cultural Chaos and Noise Living in a specific historical time allows us to look at silence from a contemporary perspective. Formerly omnipresent, today destroyed, unwanted, misunderstood, but at the same time urgently sought after. The unprecedented dynamic development of science, technology and media, all are related to noise and contribute to many changes both in nature and human behaviour. The faster pace of life and the will to possess, the uncertainty of tomorrow intensify the anxiety of modern people. Under the influence of noise, anxiety arises in the human mind – a fact already noted by ancient philosophers who taught peace and balanced wisdom. They spoke not only with words but also with silence. External factors, such as the number and movement of vehicles and people, contribute to the feeling of disorientation, excessive nervousness, aggression and a feeling of loneliness. A person locked in a space full of rush, a mess of mechanical sounds, bombarded with an excess of information that is often mutually exclusive, forgets that human life is limited by time, and this fact obliges us to reflect on the meaning and quality of our life (Woolf, 2013). There are more devices and goods of all kinds around people, and consequently the tiredness of modern people living in the chaos of everyday life is noticeable. 168

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Silence and Keeping Silent in Literature The lack of an unambiguous definition of the concept of silence and keeping silent causes difficulties in discourse. Accurate translations of terms cause some difficulties, confusion and misuse of terms. However, we must recognize the fact that we can remain silent even when there is noise; nevertheless, it kills the silence and harms the human being. Silence has the power to emphasize spoken words and provides a space for concentration of meanings. By being silent, we consider what has already been said or is about to be said. In some cases, keeping quiet is more meaningful than the loudest words. Silence can ‘scream’ – we use the saying ‘silence is ringing in the ears’. Words can express untruth, a lie, while silence can’t. Silence can also be a special way of talking through body language as communication shifts from verbal to silent. In Dostoyevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov (2002), the silence of the main character says much more than any verbal statement. In the story of the Grand Inquisitor, Dostoyevsky puts Christ in the position of a silent listener. Jesus does not speak at all, and his silence can be understood as a gesture of deep focus on the words of the opponent, leading to empathetic insight into his thoughts. But it may also indicate the awareness that the refutation of the Inquisitor’s belief cannot be put into words properly. Woolf, the English writer and essayist, in her writings, has devoted much space to silence (silence, breaks, pauses) sealed by the symbolic order of words she has inserted into the narrative. That way, she does not take silence as a synonym for ‘absence’ or ‘desertion’, but uses silence as a special form of representing ‘Being’s existence’. Using silence or ‘keeping silent’ as means of communication, she describes her characters more clearly than by describing their external features. Thanks to silence (suspending dialogues, gestures or appearance replacing words, ingenious punctuation systems), characters communicate better than when they use words. The characters often emphasize that ‘it was impossible to say’ and, alternatively, ‘many things were left unspoken’. Silence is often presented as the final resort – the person is silent in the face of a mystery, pointing to something that cannot be explained in discursive language. There are many different types of silence. ‘Silence can take many forms. There is silence of those who have nothing to say, silence of despair, silence filled with love and miracle. There is also silence of those who do not have courage to speak, stay calm while others suffer and die’ (Lash, 2009: 72). There is also silence caused by extreme experience, strong feelings and emotions, silence caused by cowardice, silence in the face of evil. Of course, there may also just be the silence of emptiness. Sartre (1988), the French playwright and philosopher, did not locate silence in some supralinguistic realm or as opposed to language, but rather as a phenomenon of language. Silence does not have to mean a denial of the voice, a negation of ‘presence’. On the contrary, it is possible to find in silence a place of great creative potential, and the potential rises up without the noise of rocket engines (Farkašová, 2009). The Need for Silence in Many Forms Modern people have a great need for a physical and mental space in which it is possible to enter their own inner worlds. Both the need for silence and its continued existence depend on human maturity. Silence is different for a student, it is different for a teacher, it is somehow different for a politician and it has a different meaning for a creator or an elderly person. The space of silence 169

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can be filled with external sounds of nature, birds singing, the sound of a stream, sound signals and at the same time there is a place for imagination, reflection on listening to the words of others and our brain is intensely looking for a solution to the situation in which we find ourselves. Medieval monasteries are indeed model examples of the interdependence of time, silence and a place where the rhythmically measured time played an important role in the functions of the holy space. Today we are saturated with conversations, phone calls, radios and televisions, not to mention the latest technological gadgets that provide noisy entertainment: tablets, iPods, music, sharp sounds of various technical devices. Jacek Filek points out that relative silence has many forms. Due to the nature of the ‘before’, ‘after’ and ‘in between’ events, silence assumes different shapes. The silence is different ‘before the storm’ and different ‘after the storm’. Silence can also appear as a pause (Filek, 2014). Silence is not a monolith, there are various dimensions of silence: ●●

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External silence is a condition for hearing the other person’s voice, but also becomes a challenge for us. Inner silence is an object of inner listening, it is necessary for the spiritual development of the human being; the condition of listening to the voice of conscience, for some, the voice of God. It becomes a part of us, it is the opposite of the cry of desires, the struggle of emotions. It helps to regenerate strength, both psychological and physical. Silence of dialogue – understanding without words, such silence may exist between people close to each other, expressing attitudes and feelings through gestures. Pantomime is an act without words, a play. Threatening silence means ‘silent treatment’ – silence as a way of showing anger, it is a form of speech. Being silent, keeping the moment of silence can be very significant (Filek, 2014). Silence as a space of inner freedom (internal emigration). Absolute silence is the silence of death in which we have no participation.

We have an intuitive awareness of the value of silence for human development, but we recognize it only when we begin to long for silence. The value of silence is mostly appreciated by artists for whom it is a prerequisite for their work. This group is the most aware that entering into silence and isolation is associated with concentration and creative solitude. Solitude and Loneliness It frequently happens that solitude is mistakenly treated as loneliness, while the difference is fundamental. In social sciences, solitude is often understood as isolation, which entails the lack of emotional and social contacts with others, as a threat; however, it can be and is a chance for the proper mental development of a person. In fact, each stage of human life requires a certain rhythm of contact and solitude. The sciences dealing with solitude and loneliness have not yet developed a common, transparent, unambiguous and precise terminology. Many authors talk about solitude in terms such as ‘loneliness’, ‘isolation’, ‘separation’ and ‘aloneness’. Kmiecik-Baran (1988), on the basis of many research projects on the phenomenon of solitude, says that ‘loneliness can be situational or related to a person’s character’ and ‘situational 170

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loneliness occurs when the person has been cut off from the family, partner or close friends by fate’ (Kmiecik-Baran, 1988: 1080). It can be an occasional bodily response due to an inability to maintain the desired social interactions (due to the specific situation), and it can change over time as the situation changes. Situational loneliness is often called ‘existential loneliness’ in American literature and is considered an unavoidable part of human experience. Similarly, Weiss (1973) distinguishes between emotional and social loneliness. Emotional loneliness is caused by the inability to establish close interactions with the chosen person. This type of loneliness is connected with the loss of a loved one caused by death or relationship breakup. On the other hand, social loneliness is the result of not having a group of friends to share experiences and common interests. According to Sochaczewska, ‘loneliness is a sad feeling accompanied by anxiety, fear, and a sense of threat’ (Sochaczewska, 1987: 162–3). However, loneliness can be a choice free from fear because it is an act of human will, a personal decision about solitude, conscious exclusion from others for a specified period of time. The ancient Greeks had two terms to express this reality: ‘monose’, signifying solitude, and ‘monachia’, signifying isolation. On the other hand, Latin gave an even more precise distinction between the two terms: loneliness, solitude/solitaria and isolation (alienation). In Polish we have ‘solitude’ (a state created by introverted self-reflection) and ‘loneliness’ (a state/sense of abandonment and rejection), ‘isolation’ (a state of being apart, separated from others) and ‘alienation’ (a state of alienation, a sense of being ‘different’, not one of the group, doomed to isolation and rejection). Each of these terms has a different, unique meaning and connotation. Undoubtedly, each in some way relates to what we generally call ‘solitude’ (Domeracki, 2006: 17). Solitude, being alone by choice, means that we can always come out of it and come back to it, while loneliness is understood as isolation, associated with exclusion, marginalization, and being forgotten by others. It is true, however, that isolation can make us feel lonely, but not by choice. Solitude, noticed as a physical and spiritual separation, is a protection of intimacy. It is a condition for freedom, mutual assistance and creating unity (Ślęczek-Czakon, 2006: 511). Both solitude and isolation are related to silence. However, the silence of isolation is heavy, prevents development and can be painful. Positive Aspects of Silence: Creative Silence The diverse approach to silence and keeping silent makes us aware of the actual state of affairs, and thus draws our attention to various challenges, while sensitizing us to the creative value and effort that should be put into enforcing elements of silence in the education process. The insignificance of our life from the perspective of the outer space, and yet its uniqueness, incomprehensibility and fragility, provoke us to consider how to live the best in the most useful and reasonable way. To be able to do this, there is a necessity to introduce silence into the maturation process of the human being. Learning to be with ourselves and dialogue with our own ‘I’ allows the inner ‘I’ to meet the outer ‘I’. These are the conditions necessary for the analysis of life mistakes as well as opportunities inherent in human nature. This fact causes many challenges and changes. In this perspective, silence and keeping silent take the appropriate rank and become an important element of human life. Realizing both the need and importance of silence allows us to better understand what role 171

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it plays in creating our lives. Both silence and noise reach the brain through the ear, causing specific changes (beneficial, calming or destructive in the case of noise). The ear is awake, so it listens and hears sounds that the brain processes even when we are asleep. Skilful use of silence, the ability to combine with sound (not to be confused with noise), contributes to emotional and spiritual development and is also an expression of the culture of being. Therefore, silence should be introduced as a method of self-discipline, control over one’s own emotions, a space for silence in dialogue, which can be a certain horizon for reflection on actions in order to provide personal development. It seems that such a broad approach allows us to find a common denominator for various concepts, and at the same time clearly reveals the essential dimensions of silence and keeping silent, which should be reduced to the purposefulness of interaction, which implies not only prior reflection, but also having the necessary knowledge about a person and externalities of interaction, which in turn requires the existence of objective patterns and various types of stimuli. In both cases, it is about the development of a person not only in the physical, but also psycho-spiritual and creative spheres. Education is the most important in shaping a person’s development and therefore should be given special attention. Any theory of education must necessarily answer the basic question about the purpose of education – exerting an influence from outside, initiating the real development of a child or young person. Silence as a Relation between Physical and Spiritual Life Montessori (1985), Steiner (1924) and (in a negative, punitive form) Herbart (1850) all pointed to the coexistence of movement and silence as essential elements in education. Silence facilitates well-adjusted behaviour by balancing the processes of stimulation and inhibition. The first source of silence is nature, the experience of peace, opening to another dimension of existence and a new perspective of reality. The second source of silence is the experience of creativity. Finally, the third source from which silence comes is the possibility of an encounter with God. The silence of the meeting is something extremely important, it stimulates new ways of perceiving and expressing yourself. The need for silence arises when we want to be alone with ourselves, we need to work, create, rest, think. The lack of the necessary silence is often caused by the excess of words we say. It is worth containing the talkativeness, thinking before uttering and choosing the right words. Silence, like the air we breathe and the water we drink, is an essential element in the life of every human being. Our body needs it as much as it needs oxygen and water. We feel the need to cut ourselves off from the chaos of everyday life and excessive information. Many people begin to practice meditation by participating in the Ignatian retreat, where the participant only talks to the spiritual leader. They look for something that can help maintain the inner balance. People who have problems with self-control of their emotions, desires, sense of meaning and the truth are afraid of silence; thoughts are pushed to the edge of their consciousness, lest they be forced to learn the truth about themselves. They are afraid of remembering situations in which they chose the wrong path. They avoid the moment when they have to answer to themselves what they are doing, how they are doing and why. The excess of accumulated emotions without the possibility of relieving them in silence leads to aggressive behaviour.

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The Importance of Silence in Public Discourse The experience of noise is much more common than the experience of silence. Noise has become part of our lives, and also a lack of good manners. In the chaos, the mutual, parallel presentation of one’s arguments or rights, no one listens to anyone, the words ‘slip away’, they do not record the contents in the memory. Silence, as an expression of concentration and respect for the interlocutor, fosters the process of thinking and forming one’s own thoughts. Silence can be both refraining from speaking and being a mute, nonverbal statement (it is worth recalling the meeting of Jesus with Magdalene,2 he wrote in the sand, without saying a word, his silence caused the accusers to depart), containing content that has not been verbalized, but which has resounded and made it understandable to others. Educating for Reflection through Silence Silence has its own melody, it does not exclude sound, it is present in music. Silence is a way and a certain life skill, an act of the will. Silence is, in fact, fundamental in education and creativity; it teaches us to listen to what happens in a person and in the environment, and it leads to growth. Experiencing and practicing silence as the basis of personal development is a favourable state. Principles to be followed in teaching silence were presented by Montessori (Standing, 1957: 132; Montessori, 1985: 172; Miksza, 2004). The school regulates clearly defined norms, rules of time and behaviour (requirement of specific behaviour) related to the curriculum and structure of particular subjects and the private rules of the teacher (their particular teaching style, being and expectations). All of this requires a certain discipline and inner peace to make possible for both teacher and student to dialogue. Many schools have established quiet zones, and some have had a ‘quiet room’ (silence zones are in all schools in Poland in the Niepołomice district, and in Wawrzeńczyce). A difference between imagining silence and finding silence inside ourselves is in existence. Emotional calming can occur, among other things, through the habit of writing every day, listening to the ocean waves (even from a recording), walking in silence in the rooms during one of the breaks, jogging in silence, fishing, chess – all these promote the development of the personality and concentration.

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Silence and Sexuality in School Settings A Transnational Perspective Helen Sauntson and Rodrigo Borba

Introduction As stated in the Introductory chapter, this volume explores and brings together research relating to three specific forms of aloneness: solitude, silence and loneliness. Contributions in the volume are united in considering how these forms of aloneness develop over time across the lifespan. This chapter focuses on the silence dimension of aloneness in the early stages of the lifespan and in relation to the social dimension of sexuality – it specifically examines the silences experienced by young people in school in relation to sexuality. The discussion draws on our research experience at UK and Brazilian schools and, thus, provides a transnational perspective to the issue at hand. Moreover, the chapter explores silence from the disciplinary perspective of linguistics and discourse analysis. As Stern notes in the Introductory chapter to this volume, silence can refer to the omission of a particular topic and to ‘disengagement’, as well as to the literal absence of sound. It is the ‘unsayability’ of particular topics relating to sexual diversity and identity in schools, which is the focus of the current chapter. In her work on schools, Lees (2012) distinguishes between ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ silence with ‘weak’ silence involving denial, shame and fear. This kind of ‘weak silence’ is particularly relevant to the discourses of sexuality which frequently circulate in schools. In work on the role of silence in sexuality-based asylum hearings, Johnson (2011: 57) refers to the ‘ambiguous and textured quality of silence’, arguing that it can either be a productive site of resistance or can function to mute the voices of subjugated actors. These, as we will see, are key themes which emerge from linguisticsbased literature on language and sexuality in relation to school settings. The silences around sexual diversity in schools are experienced by young people (and some teachers) as overwhelmingly negative, oppressive, imposed and difficult to challenge. In previous literature on sexuality and schooling, Epstein et al. (2003) observe that sexuality is both everywhere and nowhere in schools. They identify schools as sites where heterosexuality

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is constructed as normal and sexualities which transgress this norm are silenced, often tacitly rather than actively. A range of routine silencing and regulatory discourses in a range of schools in international contexts have also been explored by Francis and Msibi (2011), Moita Lopes (2006) and Sauntson (2013), among others. Moreover, Liddicoat (2009) observes how the language classrooms examined are dominated by a ‘heteronormative framing of identities’ and that heterosexuality is always potentially present in the classes. Eckert (1996) has commented that secondary schools are particularly marked sites for the production of heterosexual identities. According to Eckert, the transition into a heterosexual social order in secondary school brings boys and girls into an engagement in gender differentiation and encourages boys and girls to view themselves as ‘commodities’ on a heterosexual market. All of this work suggests that the unmarked and constant presence of heterosexuality contributes to the routine silencing of other forms of sexual identity in schools. What we see in schools, then, is that on the one hand, sexuality in the form of heterosexuality is highly visible and permeates numerous aspects of the school environment. On the other hand, LGBT+ identities, and sexual diversity more broadly, are marginalized and often rendered invisible. Paradoxically, sexual diversity becomes visible in schools only when it takes the form of homophobic verbal abuse and other forms of sexuality-based bullying. Recent policy changes in the UK and in Brazil – despite their differences in scope – may bring changes in this disparity of visibility across different sexuality identities in schools. In the UK, for example, the 2010 Equality Act made discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation illegal in schools and other areas of public life, and the Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) guidance now includes a section on the positive teaching of LGBT+ identities and relationships. The legislative scenario in Brazil is slightly more convoluted than this since gender equality and sexual diversity have become of interest to policymakers, teachers and activists only due to the re-democratization process initiated in 1985. With the end of a twenty-one-year US-backed military dictatorship during which schools were used as battlegrounds to inculcate the conservative values espoused by the military junta in the citizenry, matters related to human rights, gender equity and sexual diversity timidly crawled their way into education laws. Sanctioned in 1996, the Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educação (Education Guidelines Law), for instance, ranks respect for freedom and tolerance as principles to be followed in schools without ever mentioning gender and sexuality – erasure is a much-used silencing strategy. This situation was to be slightly redressed only in 2014 with the Plano Nacional de Education (National Education Plan) which includes the necessity of eradicating all forms of discrimination, but again sexual diversity is not explicitly mentioned which is striking in an extremely LGBT+phobic country as Brazil (Borba & Milani, 2017). As a significant number of teachers were schooled and/or trained during military rule, recent research shows they are wary (or outright dismissive) of matters related to these issues (Castro & Ferrari, 2017; Mattos, 2019; for exceptions to this trend, see, however, Fabrício & Moita-Lopes, 2019). In both the UK and Brazil (as elsewhere), frictions between acknowledging sexual diversity in schools and its silencing in policymaking and public discourses constitute a fertile ground for critical scrutiny. In this context, this chapter provides an overview of research from the disciplines of linguistics and discourse analysis which has explored silence in relation to sexuality identities and considers how these disciplinary insights have helped to develop a broader understanding of how silence functions in relation to identity. In particular, the chapter pays close attention to 175

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how silence around non-normative sexuality identities is experienced and enforced in school contexts and in early life. We start by outlining the UK and Brazilian contexts as they relate to issues around sexuality, particularly in schools. We then consider some key work on silence and sexuality within linguistics and discourse analysis. We then go on to provide illustrative examples of what linguistic analysis can reveal about sexuality and silence from our own work in schools in the UK and Brazil respectively. The UK case study focuses on a linguistic analysis of silence and sexuality in the 2020 RSE guidance. The Brazilian case discusses how the Escola sem Partido (Non-Partisan School) movement has fuelled the public sphere with vocabulary whose aim is to eradicate sexual diversity from schools through curtailing teachers’ voices and autonomy. The linguistic analyses of these texts and the macro-political contexts from which they emerge demonstrate how silence may be loudly imposed as a strategy to counter recent advancements in gender equity and sexual diversity in contemporary societies. UK Context There have been many recent advances in terms of LGBT+ equality in the UK. Most notably, there have been legislative changes which enable same-sex couples to marry and have the same adoption rights as heterosexual couples. Also, more public figures are openly LGBT than ever before. But recent research by the UK LGBT rights charity Stonewall still shows that homophobia and heterosexism are still prevalent and pervasive in many UK secondary schools (Bradlow et al., 2017). Beyond schools, homophobia is also still prevalent. For example, widely reported incidents of homophobic violence on a London bus1 and in Liverpool2 in 2019 have highlighted the precarity of a hard-won equality for LGBT+ people in the UK. This is highlighted further by high-profile protests against the teaching of LGBT relationships outside Birmingham primary schools which took place in 2019. Those who participated were specifically protesting against the No Outsiders equality programme for schools which is designed to teach children about differences in religions, families and relationships in a positive and accepting way. Protesters primarily argued that the subject matter of the programme contradicted the Islamic faith (although there were also a small number of protesters from other faith groups) and also argued that primary school children were too young to be made aware of same-sex relationships. The programme was suspended following the protests. Although protests took place only in Birmingham, the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) reported that up to seventy schools in England had encountered varying degrees of resistance to the programme from parents. These events were (and continue to be) significant because the issue of parental control over what is and is not explicitly spoken about in schools has formed a key part of the protests. Essentially, the protests are based around the argument that sexual diversity (anything other than heterosexuality) should be silenced in primary schools and left within the remit of the family.3 The historical context is important for understanding these ongoing issues relating to silence and sexuality in UK schools. A significant piece of legislation relating to sexual diversity issues in schools in the UK was the 1988 local government act. Section 28 of this act made it illegal for homosexuality to be ‘promoted’ in schools. Non-heterosexual relationships were described as ‘pretended family relationships’. In many ways, this act set the ground for providing RSE which focused exclusively on heterosexual (family) relationships and for creating and maintaining a silence around any other forms of sexual identities, relationships and family structures. Section 28 176

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was finally repealed by Britain’s Labour government in 2003, but there still appears to be a ‘legacy’ from Section 28 which has resulted in a pervading silence and fear of openly discussing non-heterosexual identities and relationships in schools (Ellis & High, 2004; Malmedie, 2012). The persistence of this legacy has been one of the driving forces behind the inclusion of LGBT+ identities and relationships in the new RSE guidance which operates in schools in England from September 2020. Arguably, the rhetoric of the recent school protests against LGBT+ inclusion in RSE sits alongside language reminiscent of the 1980s and Section 28, stoking fears of ‘sexualization’ and ‘indoctrination’. Although Section 28 is ‘silent’ in that it is not explicitly invoked as part of the rhetoric of the protesting groups, it is ‘spectral’ in that it is implicit in the language used. This spectrality and the way it manifests in language will be explored in more detail later in this chapter. Brazilian Context After twenty-one years of silencing by the dictatorial regime, human rights, gender, race and sexuality shyly made their way into public discourses especially with regard to education. Since the re-democratization of the country in 1985, however, there has been resistance to these small (but powerful) changes. How this kind of opposition moved from quiet corridor murmurs to strident public criticisms against ‘indoctrination’, ‘teacher’s freedom’ and ‘sexualization’ is telling of the silencing strategies used to curb democratic practices nowadays. Between 1985 and 2016, the Brazilian citizenry witnessed the instantiation of timid, but nonetheless, relevant laws and policies for the enfranchisement of vulnerable populations who, under the military junta, had absolutely no voice. In 1996, Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educação (Education Guidelines Law), for instance, made the teaching of African-Brazilian history and religions mandatory. Although sexual diversity is not explicitly mentioned, respect for freedom and tolerance are listed as guiding principles of pedagogical practices. Such progressive discourses gained more prominence during the left-wing governments, which ranged from 2003 to 2016. During this period, policies for the protection and empowerment of women and LGBT+ constituencies were implemented. These include the creation of the Ministry of Women, Racial Equality, and Human Rights,4 the criminalization of domestic violence, the National Human Rights Plan, the legalization of same-sex marriages, and Brasil sem Homofobia – a nationwide programme to fight discrimination against non-heterosexual identities. As part of this programme, in 2011 the Ministry of Education prepared a booklet with anti-homophobic content to be distributed to public schools as a way to overcome the silence regarding this matter in a country where, according to the NGO Grupo Gay da Bahia, there is a homophobic-driven murder every twenty-three hours. The production of the anti-homophobia booklet was followed by two important developments in 2013: the legalization of same-sex marriage by the Supreme Court and the debate about the new National Education Plan. Not coincidentally, a week after same-sex marriages were legalized, a group of Neo Pentecostal and Catholic politicians made a stir about a supposed ‘gay kit’ which would allegedly teach elementary school children to change genders at their own volition, thwarting, thus, the content of the anti-homophobia material whose aim was to foster respect for LGBT+ individuals. Their coordinated action had an impact on public opinion which led the then-president Dilma Rousseff 177

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to veto the distribution of the booklet and later allowed the ‘gay kit’ spectre to influence the election of a far-right outspoken homophobe as president in 2018.5 The anti-homophobia booklet was never made public which allowed unscrupulous politicians and conservative social movements to keep manipulating its aims, scope and content so as to whirl a public commotion against progressive policies in education. As the moral panic about the ‘gay kit’ took hold of the public sphere, the National Education Plan had started to be discussed by government representatives and the civil society. Two points of controversy were at the centre of the debate: the character of religious education and sexual diversity. Conservative politicians strived to make religion (i.e. creationism as well as Catholic dogma) a mandatory school subject and took issue with terms such as ‘gender’ and ‘sexual diversity’, which they wanted to be dropped from the document. According to Miskolci (2018), this produced a fertile niche for the Escola sem Partido (NonPartisan School) movement to thrive. Created in 2003 as a parent control association against what they identified as ‘Marxist indoctrination’ at Brazilian schools (a clear reaction to the election of a left-wing president), the ESP movement gathered political and public momentum only after it embarked on the conservative bandwagon against a supposed sexualization of children in schools which was strategically linked to the political left, fuelling a general distrust towards progressive ideas. Undergirding these efforts was the offensive against what these groups identify as ‘gender ideology’.6 Serving as a rhetorical device used against the political left and the institutionalization of gender equality and sexual diversity in curricula, the discourse of ‘gender ideology’: aims, first, to refute claims concerning the hierarchical construction of the raced, gendered, and heterosexual order; second, to essentialize and delegitimize feminist and queer theories of gender; third, to frustrate global and local gender mainstreaming efforts; fourth, to thwart gender and LGBT+ equality policies; and finally to reaffirm heteropatriarchal conceptions of sex, gender, and sexuality. (Corredor, 2019: 616) Corrêa and Kalil (2020) note that the phrase ‘gender ideology’ gained impetus and political weight during the discussion of the National Education Plan in 2013. Anti-feminism, anti-LGBT+ and antiLeft lawmakers and protesters came together in a raucous effort to silence gender equity and sexual diversity matters and erase them from the plan. Part of their strategy to silence progressive changes in education were obstreperous and violent street protests. For example, in 2017 a group of anti-gender ideology demonstrators burned an effigy of Judith Butler while the philosopher visited the country.7 Their strategy was successful. The words ‘gender’ and ‘sexuality’ were removed from the document. Consequently, the 2017 Base Nacional Comum Curricular (the national basic curriculum) has no mention to gender equity or sexual diversity. This scenario paved the way for the ESP to inspire a slew of law projects whose aim is to prohibit ‘ideological indoctrination’ which allegedly gets materialized in critical pedagogical practices especially with regard to gender and sexual identities. These law projects employ words of order, rhetoric and discursive strategies that purport to curb critical pedagogical enterprises by mongering fear and, thus, silencing teachers’ voices. A detailed analysis of this language and, more broadly, the ESP’s silencing strategies are provided in the Brazil case study, below. Language and Sexuality in Schools Work in the field of linguistics recognizes that homophobia is not always overt and is actually more often construed as an effect of silence and invisibility, especially in organizations such as 178

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schools and universities. There is now a growing body of international academic research which explores the routine silencing and regulatory discourses around sexual diversity in schools as well as overtly discriminatory language. It is now more recognized that homophobic language and behaviour in schools are often ‘covert’ and sometimes difficult for teachers to even notice. In recent research on sexuality in schools (Mattos, 2019; Sauntson, 2013, 2018), young LGBT+ people have repeatedly reported in interviews that sexual diversity (and especially homosexuality) is ‘not talked about’ and ‘ignored’ and that this has a negative emotional effect on them which, in turn, decreases their motivation to attend school. Recent research in the UK and Brazil (Mattos, 2019; Sauntson, 2018) highlights how this raises two points of tension. One is that the routine silences around non-heterosexual sexualities in schools sit in tension with the fact that sexual diversity is actually very visible elsewhere (e.g. in the media). The other tension is that while positive and inclusive discussion about sexual diversity is often absent, homophobic language is present and pervasive in schools. In order for homophobic language to exist, there has to be an acknowledgement that homosexuality exists – otherwise, there is nothing to discriminate against. However, linguistic absence produces the effect of erasing sexual identities which are not normatively heterosexual. To use Butler’s (1990) term, particular identities are rendered ‘unintelligible’ through their repeated silencing and absence. Butler herself draws on linguistic theory to argue that linguistic acts bring identities (including gender and sexual identities) into being. The idea that silence itself can operate as a speech act has been further developed in queer theory by Sedgwick (1990). In sexuality-focused work in linguistics, scholars have argued that silence as a linguistic act can produce the effect of homophobia when that silence functions to exclude non-heterosexual identities when there is no logical reason for doing so. Morrish (2011: 328), for example, states that ‘homophobia may still be the result even when overt homophobic messages are not part of the text’s content’. Sauntson (2013) has examined this phenomenon of homophobia being enacted through linguistic silencing in interviews with teachers and LGBT students in UK secondary schools. Ferrari (2011) has done similar work in Brazil. In spite of the different sociopolitical contexts, both researchers identify instances where teachers and pupils would have expected LGBT identities to be explicitly discussed or made visible, but they are not. In the UK context, for instance, this occurs particularly in the delivery of the English and PSHE (Personal, Social and Health Education) curricula. In Brazil, Ferrari shows a similar silencing process in Brazilian schools in which LGBT+ topics were brought up in backstage interactions among students but ignored by teachers. Stonewall and other LGBT rights organizations and charities continue to do much valuable work in schools around how to tackle sexuality-based bullying. While this work undoubtedly has a positive effect, scholarship in linguistics suggests that tackling explicitly homophobic language can only take us so far. We need to try to use language in a way which does not normalize heterosexuality or present it as dominant or ‘better’ in any way. We need to consistently use language which includes, rather than excludes, LGBT+ identities (e.g. when the term ‘marriage’ is used, be mindful and explicit that this can apply to same-sex as well as opposite-sex couples). Arguably, in educational contexts, we need to create spaces for new language to emerge, rather than closing down possibilities for linguistic expression or subsuming such possibilities under normative heterosexual experience. Some research in linguistics has examined the efforts made so far by some schools to put this into practice. Sunderland and McGlashan (2012), for example, examine the use of picture-books 179

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in early years’ education which contain representations of same-sex relationships and LGBT identities. This research has shown how useful these sorts of picture-books can be; they normalize same-sex families and relationships through positive representations of LGBT+ people. This, in turn, helps to normalize LGBT+ identities in children’s minds as they get older. The authors argue that this could, ultimately, be significant in helping to challenge and reduce homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying in schools. The review of RSE provision takes these efforts even further by explicitly directing teachers to include LGBT+ identities and relationships in their teaching in a positive way, thus breaking the pervasive silences around sexual diversity. However, we argue that the way that LGBT+ inclusion is presented in the 2020 guidance continues to be problematic. The next section focuses on different dimensions of silence and sexuality in the 2020 RSE guidance for England, as a UK-based example of how language-focused empirical research can further understanding of how silence and sexuality operates in the school environment and during the early part of the lifespan. UK Case Study: Silence in the 2020 Relationships and Sex Education Guidance Documents for England As stated previously, some groups in England have recently mobilized against the inclusion of positive teaching about LGBT+ identities and relationships in the new RSE guidance. The protests held by groups outside schools in Birmingham and elsewhere suggest that, although there is overwhelming support for the new guidance, including its section on LGBT+ identities, there are still groups in society who are opposed to teaching about this dimension of equality. Their voices are being heard in ways that could potentially ‘re-silence’ the opening up of positive teaching about sexual diversity. Given these conflicting reactions to changes in RSE, it is particularly important that the language used in the guidance is as positive and inclusive as possible. The new guidance was published in 2019 after a two-year review period and will be implemented in schools from September 2020 (we refer to it in this chapter as the ‘2020 guidance’ to reflect its implementation date in schools). Scrutiny of the 2020 guidance reveals that, despite the inclusion of sex relationships and LGBT+ identities, this occurs only in a small section (two paragraphs) and the language used in these paragraphs is vague. While the reforms are welcome and undoubtedly a positive step forwards, there is still work to be done in terms of making LGBT+ identities and relationships even more visible in the guidance, and finding a way of ensuring that this aspect of the guidance is consistently being delivered in a positive and inclusive way by teachers. Moreover, the vague language of the new RSE guidance means that the implementation of it by teachers is likely to be highly variable. Sauntson (2018) has argued that linguistic presence in the form of inclusion in the curriculum legitimizes certain subject content and ideological positions, while linguistic absence may function to delegitimize certain positions. The concept of silence in relation to power relations and homosexuality has been well documented (e.g. Sedgwick, 1990). Drawing on Austin’s (1962) distinction between locutionary speech acts (what is said) and illocutionary acts (the action that is performed when something is said), Langton (1993) distinguishes between locutionary silence (what is not said) and illocutionary silencing (the action performed when something is not said). In previous work, Sauntson (2013) has argued that ‘illocutionary silences’ around 180

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sexual diversity routinely occur in various aspects of schooling, including in the curriculum and curriculum guidance documents for teachers. Significantly, ‘sexuality’ as a topic is one which is clearly and explicitly addressed in the RSE curriculum as a central part of its remit. In an analysis of the preceding version of the RSE guidance (2014), Sauntson (2018) conducted a linguistic analysis and found that there was little which actively encourages teachers to incorporate positive teaching around ‘sexual diversity’. The analysis revealed that the semantic profiles created around concepts such as ‘sexuality’ and ‘health’ were fairly restricted. Moreover, the findings showed that a predominant discourse of ‘risk’ and ‘disease’ is created around sexuality and sexual behaviour. Furthermore, heterosexual marriage is highlighted as ‘important’ and ascribed positive value. This sits in tension with the fact that the 2014 guidance explicitly prohibits the ‘promotion’ of sexual orientation. Without specifying which sexual orientation should not be promoted, the association of marriage and sexual activity with reproduction, and the overwhelmingly positive values ascribed to these, strongly imply that it is homosexuality which should not be ‘promoted’. The text therefore embodies heteronormative and even homophobic values. In the revised 2020 guidance document, there have been some welcome changes which address some of the previous omissions. For example, the 2020 guidance now covers sexual harassment, sexual violence, consent and internet safety. There is the inclusion of the two paragraphs on including positive teaching about LGBT+ identities and relationships. Paragraphs 36 and 37 of the guidance are as follows: 36. In teaching Relationships Education and RSE, schools should ensure that the needs of all pupils are appropriately met, and that all pupils understand the importance of equality and respect. Schools must ensure that they comply with the relevant provisions of the Equality Act 2010 (please see The Equality Act 2010 and schools: Departmental advice), under which sexual orientation and gender reassignment are amongst the protected characteristics. 37. Schools should ensure that all of their teaching is sensitive and age appropriate in approach and content. At the point at which schools consider it appropriate to teach their pupils about LGBT, they should ensure that this content is fully integrated into their programmes of study for this area of the curriculum rather than delivered as a standalone unit or lesson. Schools are free to determine how they do this, and we expect all pupils to have been taught LGBT content at a timely point as part of this area of the curriculum.8 While this is a positive move in terms of challenging previous silences around sexual diversity, what is worrying is that the revised guidance appears to have retained implicit references to the long-repealed Clause 28 legislation. In fact, a side-by-side comparison of the original Clause 28 text and the reformed RSE guidance currently in use shows how similar they are in how they deal with sexual orientation. In Figure 13.1, we have underlined the specific areas of similarity. Sauntson (2020) has argued that this comparison reveals that the ‘spectre’ of Section 28 is clearly evident in the language of the documents which are currently directly informing the teaching of RSE in schools. Closer examination reveals that it is specifically the use of the verb promote and its collocation with sexual orientation which creates the spectrality and its accompanying negative prosody around sexual diversity. In fact, when we look at a concordance9 of promot*10 as it is used in the 2020 RSE guidance, we see that co-occurrences of sexual* and promot* always appear in negative constructions, that is the texts advocate not promoting sexual orientation. In the concordances 181

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A local authority: ‘shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality or promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship’. [Clause 28 of the 1988 Local Government Act] Young people, whatever their developing sexuality, need to feel that sex and relationship education is relevant to them and sensitive to their needs. The Secretary of State for Education and Employment is clear that teachers should be able to deal honestly and sensitively with sexual orientation, answer appropriate questions and offer support. There should be no direct promotion of sexual orientation. Sexual orientation and what is taught in schools is an area of concern for some parents [RSE guidance, 2020]

Figure 13.1  Comparison of Clause 28 and 2020 RSE documents. Table 13.1  Sample Concordance of promot* As It Is Used in the 2020 RSE Guidance as with any professional, to sexual health. It is not about the support. There should be no direct would be required to actively that the proprietor must actively and that schools must actively that schools are not required to teacher, is under a duty to support, requirement for schools to actively arising from the concept of active requiring schools to actively and sexual health. It doesn’t support. There should be no direct PSHE should be taught in a way that and sexual health. It does not bullying which should support and a wider preventative approach to ways to work with boys and girls to and reflect the key principles in

promote promotion promotion promote promote promote promote promote promote promotion. promote promote promotion promotes promote promote promoting promote promoting

sexual orientation. They will be of sexual orientation of sexual orientation same-sex marriage. During the fundamental British values the specified principles same-sex marriage: Teaching or endorse marriage of same-sex principles which encourage The inevitable result British values have provoked early sexual activity of sexual orientation. equality as defined early sexual activity or any the inclusive and tolerant inclusive, tolerant school gender equality and both tolerance and inclusion

in Table 13.1, we can see that the verb promote mainly collocates negatively with sexual orientation and with same-sex marriage, and positively with equality and inclusion. In effect, this means that not only are schools expected to not promote sexual orientation, they are also expected to not promote same-sex marriage. This produces an ideologically contradictory position in which legal practices are silenced, and that silencing itself is a homophobic and, therefore arguably, illegal practice under the 2010 Equality Act which governs schools. If we look at the context of some of the promot* concordances in Table 13.1, more of the ‘spectrality’ of Section 28 is revealed, as shown in the examples herein (from Sauntson, 2020). These examples show how promot* collocates negatively with sexual orientation and samesex marriage in the document. We have underlined the specific parts of the text in which these wordings appear. It is inappropriate for youth workers, as with any professional, to promote sexual orientation. They will be expected to respect this guidance when dealing with school age children.

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It is about the understanding of the importance of marriage for family life, stable and loving relationships, respect, love and care. It is also about the teaching of sex, sexuality, and sexual health. It is not about the promotion of sexual orientation or sexual activity – this would be inappropriate teaching. . . . teachers should be able to deal honestly and sensitively with sexual orientation, answer appropriate questions and offer support. There should be no direct promotion of sexual orientation. Some campaign groups, including the Coalition for Marriage, interpreted the reforms as meaning that schools would be required to actively promote same-sex marriage. No school, or individual teacher, is under a duty to support, promote or endorse marriage of same sex couples. Teaching should be based on facts and should enable pupils to develop an understanding of how the law applies to different relationships. Sex and relationship education (SRE) is compulsory from age 11 onwards. It involves teaching children about reproduction, sexuality and sexual health. It doesn’t promote early sexual activity or any particular sexual orientation. This was updated in June 2014, and states that schools are not required to promote same-sex marriage: Teaching about marriage must be done in a sensitive, reasonable, respectful and balanced way. It is widely recognized that the underlying problem with using promote to refer to sexual orientation is that it implies that sexual orientation is a choice. Given the history of the Section 28 legislation, this phrase clearly means ‘do not “promote” homosexuality’ in the teaching of RSE. This conflicts with the fact that schools are now governed by the Equality Act which clearly prohibits discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation. The phrase also sits in tension with the fact that (particular kinds of) heterosexuality appears to be ‘promoted’ all the way through the guidance because of the prevalence of positive reference to heterosexual reproduction. It is perhaps not surprising that teachers are confused and apprehensive about how to address issues of non-heterosexual identities and relationships in SRE, given the retention of this phrase. We can therefore deduce from this that when the document prohibits teachers from promoting sexual orientation, heterosexuality is, in fact, exempt from this. Thus, the semantic profile of promot* functions to effect a discourse of heteronormativity which concurrently silences any other forms of sexuality. This silencing may, ironically, contribute to the perpetuation of sexuality-based bullying in schools through its prioritizing of heterosexuality and its retention of the Section 28 directive not to ‘promote’ sexual orientation. Brazil Case Study: Escola sem Partido and Its Silencing Strategies During the twenty-one-year US-backed military dictatorship in Brazil, LGBT+ individuals were ferociously chased, incarcerated and tortured (Green, 1999). Homophobia is still rampant. However, the country never had any legislation prohibiting the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality and same-sex marriages at schools like the UK’s Section 28 or 2020 RSE guidance which, as shown above, despite bringing some advances, still surreptitiously disguises its homophobia. Perhaps this kind of official policy in Brazil was not seen as necessary due to the extremely strong public character of heterosexuality as the only acceptable norm (Miskolci, 2012) which, in turn, silences other expressions of sexuality from being legitimately addressed in the public sphere. 183

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In fact, research shows that schools are the prime loci for the naturalization of heterosexuality since it is ‘seen but unnoticed’ – it is everywhere and nowhere – acting thus as a tacit norm orienting teachers and students (Epstein et al., 2003; Ferrari, 2011; Liddicoat, 2009; Mattos, 2019; Moita Lopes, 2002). Following this trend, Ferrari (2011) and Mattos (2019) note that Brazilian teachers tend to be quite wary of gender equity and sexual diversity as these topics tend to be strategically ignored or explicitly dismissed despite their ubiquity in students’ offclass conversations. This locutionary silence (Langton, 1993) about gender equality and sexual diversity in schools has not stopped the ESP movement from thriving, though. ESP supporters and activists take advantage of the homophobic character of Brazilian society to stir moral panic about the ‘sexualization’ of children. This can be directly linked to the enfranchisement of LGBT and feminist movements during the left-wing governments of Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff. Between 2003 and 2016, such movements had an important voice in setting public policies such as the Brasil sem Homofobia programme. This unprecedented phenomenon, in turn, was seen as challenging the public character of heterosexuality and provoked strong parliamentary and social reactions. In fact, the ESP movement, which was created in 2003, gathered significant public notoriety only during the debates about the new National Education Plan in 2013. Engaging with previous efforts to curb the silencing of non-heterosexual identities as materialized in the antihomophobia kit the Ministry of Education had previously prepared (but never got to distribute), proposals to include gender equality and sexual diversity as part of the national basic curriculum (an attempt to curtail the silence surrounding these topics at Brazilian schools) were met with accusations of promoting ‘gender ideology’, a phrase which became a trademark of the ESP movement. In order to understand the discursive and political impact of the ESP, it is important to scrutinize how its vocabulary has infiltrated the public domain. A quantitative analysis provided by Google Trends, which shows the frequency of online searches for given terms at specific time periods, is useful for this purpose since it measures the public interest in certain topics and gives evidence of the presence of such terms in people’s repertoire. The following graphs illustrate how the ESP and its anti-gender and anti-LGBT+ (i.e. ‘gender ideology’ and ‘ideological indoctrination’) agenda gained momentum in 2013 during the time the new national curriculum was being discussed with lawmakers and civil society (Figures 13.2–13.4). These graphics demonstrate how the phrases ‘Escola sem Partido’, ‘ideologia de gênero’ and ‘doutrinação ideológica’ moved from a relatively unknown status to become incorporated in the Escola sem Partido 100 75 50 25 Observação Observação 1 de jan. de...

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Figure 13.2  Google searches for ‘Escola sem Partido’.

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Ideologia de gênero 100 75 50 25 Observação 1 de jan. de...

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Figure 13.3  Google searches for ‘Ideologia de gênero’.

Doutrinação ideológica 100 75 50 25 Observação 1 de jan. de...

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Figure 13.4  Google searches for ‘doutrinação ideológica’.

public discursive repertoire, a rising trend that has put these terms in people’s understandings of teachers and their jobs. Taking advantage of this momentum, the ESP modernized its website,11 which showcases its eye-catching motto: ‘We need a law against abuses of teaching freedom.’ Following this opening, the website makes explicit the ESP strategies to silence teachers who may be seen as promoting ‘ideological indoctrination’. In its website, the ESP advances at least three main illocutionary silencing (Langton, 1993) strategies parents and pupils may use: (1) a detailed explanation of its law project, (2) channels to report teachers and schools (a WhatsApp number and an online form) and (3) a model extrajudicial notice parents may download, fill in and present at schools. Miguel (2016) has analysed the types of extrajudicial notices ESP supporters and parents have presented at schools. As Miguel (2016) notes, this type of document has no legal binding, but is commonly used to coerce individuals who may have broken the law. If a school is notified extrajudicially it only means the parent intends to take the case to further legal spheres and acts, thus, as a prime example of how the ESP works by stirring fear in teachers, which, in turn, may silence any potential attempt to bring sexual diversity (and critical pedagogical practices more broadly) into the classroom. The ESP law project has served as a blueprint for more than 200 similar law projects that have been presented in the different levels of the federation (municipalities, states and the federal government) since 2014 and have fed the public discursive repertoire with phrases and words which aim to curb teachers’ voices and critical teaching. At the time of writing, fifty-seven ESP185

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inspired laws against ‘gender ideology’ and ‘ideological indoctrination’ at schools have been sanctioned in several municipalities and fifty-three are waiting to be voted. The penalties vary greatly: teachers who are seen as promoting sexual diversity and ‘ideological indoctrination’ at schools may be fined, sacked or incarcerated. Several of these law projects have been vetoed or rejected at the municipal and/or state level. At the federal government level, the ESP project was first presented in 2014. In its first incarnation, the law project explicitly prohibited ‘gender ideology’ from schools. It also provided students and parents with more control over pedagogical practices by allowing classes to be recorded without the consent of teachers. Due to its attacks on freedom of speech and the lack of clarity of what is meant by ‘gender ideology’, the project has been archived by the Supreme Court. However, a new version of the ESP project was presented to the Lower House in February 2019. The most recent instantiation of the law project does not include ‘gender ideology’ in its text. Given the intimate imbrication of ‘Escola sem Partido’ and ‘ideologia de gênero’, as illustrated by the aforementioned graphs, the omission of this phrase hardly makes any difference since, in the public discursive repertoire, ESP equals a fight against ‘gender ideology’ in schools. Despite this change, the ESP project makes it clear that teachers’ voices and critical teaching may be surveilled in order to avoid ‘gender dogmatism and proselytism’. This is justified by the fact that teachers and textbooks writers have been using their classes and their books in attempts to obtain students’ participation in certain political and ideological waves as well as to make them adopt judgement patterns and moral conduct – especially sexual morals – incompatible with those their parents or caretakers teach.12 As mentioned earlier, research in Brazilian schools demonstrates teachers’ unwillingness (or fear) to discuss gender equality and sexual diversity (Ferrari, 2011; Mattos, 2019). The law project is thus at odds with the reality of most schools in the country and, what is worse, puts teachers in a vulnerable position, which, in turn, may have consequences for their pedagogical practices and job satisfaction. As an illocutionary speech act, fear mongering has a powerful silencing effect. The ESP project stokes fear and insecurity by attempting to establish an even more explicit panoptical surveillance at schools. In the law project, this is materialized in two ways: (1) the possibility of students to record classes without the teachers’ consent and (2) the establishment of a federal hotline for reporting teachers. Importantly, urging the population to report teachers who are seen as promoting ‘gender ideology’ and ‘ideological indoctrination’ depends on feeding the population with discursive tools that may serve that purpose. Stretching the public discursive domain with vocabulary that curtails the possibility of discussing sexual diversity at schools is an important silencing device the ESP movement and its supporters have explored successfully. As can be seen in the following graph, ESP-related vocabulary (i.e. ‘gender ideology’ and ‘ideological indoctrination’) has, since 2013, entered the public discursive repertoire and may be activated by anyone who fears teachers may be indoctrinating their children (Figure 13.5). With their raucous street protests and frequent media attention, since 2013 the ESP movement has been successful in changing the discursive repertoire of the country with semantically slippery terms such as ‘gender ideology’ and ‘ideological indoctrination’ which may mean basically anything that is at odds with parents’ beliefs. In fact, as Corrêa (2018) 186

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Escola sem partido

Doutrinação

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Média

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Figure 13.5  ESP-related vocabulary Jan/2020-Mar/2020.

explains, these terms are ‘empty signifiers’ that may be filled with whatever parents and pupils feel disagrees with the moral and ideological systems they nurture at home. Because of the semantic elasticity of these terms, teachers see themselves in a double bind: if they do anything to produce a more LGBT+ friendly teaching environment and to curb homophobic bullying, they may be reported and lose their jobs; if they turn a blind eye to the rampant homophobia in Brazilian schools, LGBT+ students’ school experiences may be traumatizing, to say the least. In fact, the counter-movement Escola sem Mordaça (Schools Without Gags, in English), which gathers teachers, parents and students against the ESP proposals, notes that since 2014 the number of teachers reported, sacked or physically assaulted for ideological reasons has risen exponentially. On 24 April 2020, the Supreme Court of Justice found the ESP law project unconstitutional for it breaches teachers’ freedom of speech. Minutes after the unconstitutionality of the project had been voted, the ESP posted the following message to its 114,000 Twitter followers (in translation): Declaring the unconstitutionality of law projects against gender ideology at primary schools, the Supreme Court may end up forcing parents to take the law into their own hands in order to defend their kids’ psychic and moral integrity and their sacred right of educating them. Teachers beware. Despite the fact that ESP law projects have been judged unconstitutional, by feeding the public discursive repertoire with terms whose pragmatic force is to silence teachers and curb advances in gender equality and sexual diversity, it has opened avenues for teachers’ voices to be curtailed and the pedagogical needs of LGBT+ students to be ignored. The Brazilian case study illustrates that attempts to silence progressive teaching practices with regard to sexual diversity may be quite noisy and violent. Concluding Remarks School forms a major part of the early life experiences of most young people in the UK and Brazil (and elsewhere in the world). In the UK, schools have a legal duty to teach inclusive curricula and provide equality of opportunity to all. The Public Sector Equality Duty requires public 187

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bodies (including schools) to eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment, victimization and any other conduct prohibited by the Equality Act 2010, which has included ‘sexual orientation’ as a protected characteristic since 2006. Understanding, accepting, respecting and celebrating cultural diversity is integral to Ofsted’s13 school inspection criteria with regard to Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural (SMSC) development. In Brazil, the lack of legislation contemplating antidiscrimination on the grounds of sexual identity seems to be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, including unspecific references to the promotion of tolerance and respect as pedagogical goals, the National Educational Plan opens avenues for teachers to bring gender equity and sexual diversity into the curricula. On the other, it allows leeway for unscrupulous social actors to devise strategies to silence critical pedagogical practices whose aim is to foster respect for sexually and gender non-conforming students. In other words, anti-discrimination legislation is a necessity in Brazil so as to prevent schools from becoming labs for bigotry. We argue that in order to implement these legal duties in the respective countries, it is necessary to not only tackle overt forms of homophobia but also to fill the silences around difference and diversity which currently pervade schools. The explicit and positive inclusion of sexual diversity and the equally positive presentation of different sexual orientations and relationship types within these will better prepare students for engaging in their own sexual and romantic relationships, as well as for understanding those of others which may be different from their own. In order to positively and effectively change what happens in schools, a contributing factor may be the insertion of a greater diversity of meanings into the ‘exclusionary and silencing language’ of school curricula.

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Silence and Educational Places and Spaces Eva Alerby

Introduction In modern society, low volume levels – peace and quiet – are often in short supply, and the societal noise levels are gradually increasing. This is something that concerns many people, whose daily lives are often full of loud and disturbing noises. People of today are, according to Mendes-Flohr (2012), surrounded by ‘the cacophony of urban life’ (p. 12). Some even argue that one of our greatest contemporary public health issues is noise pollution (Passchier-Vermeer & Passchier, 2000; WHO, 2011). According to Englund (2005), this may lead to quietness being re-evaluated, enhanced and refined. It is, nevertheless, hard to find quietness and stillness in today’s society. The same is true for today’s educational settings: silence is in short supply in schools and universities. In this chapter, the relationship between silence and educational settings – more precisely, in the form of university places and spaces – will be illuminated, elaborated on and discussed. The exploration has taken some university students’ voices, in the form of a narrative, as a point of departure. The narrative has been constructed as a paradigmatic case (cf. Pavlich, 2010), and it is based on real events and quotations that illustrate collective experiences emanating from previous studies on the significance of educational places and spaces (e.g. Alerby, 2016, 2019a, 2019b, 2020a, 2020b; Alerby & Bergmark, 2016). The setting for the narrative is a university course in one of the teacher education programmes at a Swedish university. The Narrative – Places and Spaces of Significance for Learning As a course task in the teacher education programme, the students were asked to reflect on their study environment, specifically on places and spaces of significance for their learning. A group of students were therefore discussing their experiences in these places and spaces using the course task as a point of departure. The following conversation took place: ●●

This place is one of many places in the university which are important to me.

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The place the student was referring to is located in a corridor in one of the university buildings. The design of the place is not very advanced; it consists of an open space, a few armchairs, a table and the opportunity to look out a window. The student continued: ●●

Here I have the chance to sit comfortably in peace and quiet, and to have interesting chats with my classmates. I sit comfortably and relaxed in the armchairs and I can look out over something other than work. I can drift away, for a moment at least, and gather my forces.

One of her peers continued to elaborate on the same place: ●●

Yes, I totally agree. This place feels somehow like freedom. Maybe it reminds me of being at home, and for me, being at home means security, and security is a necessary condition for being able to study effectively, I think.

Another student chimed in, claiming that some places and spaces at the university are scary or emit a sense of ‘insecurity’: ●●

The places that scare me most in the whole university are the exam halls. These halls are problematic for me. The actual room itself contributes to this problem. The rooms are often impersonal and stark. This produces a sterile feeling. The feeling I get when I think about exams is just as scary as the feeling I get when I see a hall where people sit exams. The feeling that builds up in my body when I have to be in such rooms makes my heart race, I feel pressure and feel a terrible anxiety.

A student furthered the discussion by following up on what her peer just said, stressing the lack of calm and quiet places at the university: ●●

But actually, we have not so many places to get away, to get peace and quiet . . . I mean, it is almost impossible to avoid the unpleasant feeling that some of the large rooms or halls often create, especially if the sound level is high. Just look at the cantina, the body of people there during lunch time feels like a mob of frantic creatures locked up in the same, too confined, pen.

The other students were quiet for a while, considering what had just been said, and then one of them took the floor and continued the discussion by arguing: ●●

Yes, that’s true . . . but on the other hand, I’m not sure I agree that there aren’t any calm and quiet places at the uni. I mean, you can always go to the library. The library is always quiet, which kind of symbolises what a library is, right?

The student continued, saying: ●●

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I think the low sound level creates a calming feeling that produces a peaceful working environment which feels stimulating and motivating. I remember when I was a child, I think it was in third grade, me and my friend used to go to the library just to find peace and quiet.

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Another student chimed in to say: ●●

I think the same. It’s easy to focus in the library because it is secluded and it is quiet and calm there, with few disturbances . . . and that enables my learning. The library exudes a positive atmosphere which works as a positive driving force, and that is really motivational.

One of the students continued the discussion by introducing another kind of quiet and calm place at the university, pointing at the nearby coffee shop: ●●

I personally think that these kinds of oases are quiet and calm zones of freedom where you can disconnect the brain from studying. The ability to relax is very important to create a pleasant learning environment, I think.

His peer added: ●●

Absolutely, quiet places for relaxation and contemplation are really important. I need it to be quiet in order to focus, to actually learn what I need to learn.

The students continued to discuss whether there are places and spaces of stillness and peace, contemplation and relaxation on the campus. One of the students concluded by emphasizing the importance of such places and spaces with the following words: ●●

I think it’s so important that I can relax and let my thoughts ‘fly freely’ at a tranquil and still place. I have found such a place at a corner in the main building. It’s like my own hidden place . . . it’s often free . . . not so many students know about it. There I can let go of the stress and don’t have to worry. I can think about things other than my studies and all the homework. Just sit back and let go of the soul for a while, let the soul ‘heal’, for example, after an exam period.

In connection to the aforementioned narrative, it is worth recalling that the task was to reflect on places and spaces of significance for learning, which, in these examples, are places and spaces outside the classrooms and lecture halls. The places the students described are all spaces-inbetween, places and spaces that are used beyond class time and lectures. Additionally, the places and spaces the students value and appreciate all embrace silence and stillness, tranquillity and quietness. The students in the narrative expressed desires for peace and quiet within the walls of the university – places and spaces for reflection and contemplation, where thoughts can ‘fly freely’ and the soul can ‘heal’. They also stressed the importance of places and spaces in the university transmitting a feeling of freedom and security, and even a feeling of ‘being at home’ – a feeling of belonging. Theoretical Considerations and What Is to Come Theoretically, the exploration in this chapter is based on different philosophical and theoretical directions used in a rather eclectic way – a completely conscious choice. However, two theorists and scholars who may stand out are the French philosophers Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Gaston Bachelard. Merleau-Ponty (2002) is probably best known for having developed the theory of the lived body. He emphasized that the lived body is both nature and culture, immanence and 191

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transcendence. In line with the phenomenological approach, he moved away from the dualistic dichotomy between body and soul. Body and soul, spirit and matter, are not either-or, but are seen instead as a whole, as both-and. He even went beyond both-and towards a conflation which is more than merely the sum of its parts (Merleau-Ponty & Lefort, 1968). For him, humans are intertwined with everything in the world: ‘the world is wholly inside me and I am wholly outside myself’ (Merleau-Ponty, 2002: 408). Merleau-Ponty (1995), however, talked and wrote not only about the lived body but also about silence. He emphasized that there is something that exists beyond what is said, which cannot be communicated verbally, and which he termed a silent and implicit language. Bachelard (1994), as one of his directions, related phenomenology as a philosophical method of the field of architecture, and he based his analysis on lived experiences in these kinds of places and spaces. In particular, he focused on personal and emotional responses to different buildings. For example, he declared that for a space to be inhabited, it must, at the same time, hold the spirit of the concept of home. The question is, however, whether educational places and spaces – for example, a university building – can be considered places or spaces where silence and stillness are noted and valued, and also whether a university can, and should, be compared to the concept of home. Within the framework of this chapter, the exploration of silence and educational places and spaces is connected to the previous narrative, and the students’ voices are entangled throughout the discussion. The following section starts with an exploration of people’s needs and desires for silence and stillness before narrowing the subject down to the role of silence in educational settings. Thereafter, silent places and spaces at universities are outlined and discussed, followed by an exploration of the feelings of belonging in relation to educational places and spaces. Finally, I conclude by arguing for the value of silence and stillness in various university places and spaces. People’s Needs and Desires for Silence and Stillness Throughout the ages, people have expressed desires and needs to be in silence and stillness when this silence is pleasant and longed for. On the other hand, the opposite is also true: in some situations, people express discomfort with silence, and sometimes even fear. In these situations, the silence may be perceived as unpleasant or as a mere nuisance: something to avoid. Whether silence is perceived as pleasant or unpleasant, it can be regarded as a multifaceted phenomenon. Silence can, for example, be experienced in different ways by different people at different times. A similar silent situation, or even the same silent situation, can be experienced in totally different ways by different people, or by the same people but at a different time. According to Foucault (1978), there is a multitude of silences, not just one. Silence therefore embraces various dimensions, but as von Wright (2012) expressed it: ‘[s]ilence “as such” is neither good nor bad’ (p. 94). The interpretation comes down to how people perceive the silence (if there is any). In the following sections, some of the multitudinous dimensions of silence will be explored and elaborated on, with a focus on people’s needs and desires for silence and stillness in modern society. As pointed out in the introduction, people today often find silence, peace and quiet to be in short supply. A reason for this is that societal noise levels are increasing over time. However, not all sounds are disturbing; when it comes to sounds and silence, Cooper (2012) claimed that silence is ‘the absence, not of sound per se, but of noise which is obtrusive or salient’ (p. 55). When people express a longing 192

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for silence and stillness, they often refer to places and events such as walking in the forest or along the sea shore in the early morning. Places such as these, however, are not totally free from sounds: there are always sounds of rustling leaves in the forest or rippling waves at the shore. Although places such as these are never totally quiet, there are, in most cases, no noises that are obtrusive or salient when people express a longing for silence and stillness during a walk in the forest or at the shore. A question to raise is, therefore, whether complete silence – the lack of sounds – ever exists. The answer is, most likely, no: there are always some audible sounds, not the least of which originate from the human for as long as they live. Complete silence can never exist, as the human body, through blood circulation, breathing and digestion, always produces sounds. There are, however, so many more dimensions of significance when exploring silence than solely focusing on the absence of sounds. People are, for example, searching for and choosing silence for a multiplicity of reasons. An example of chosen silence is finding a quiet and tranquil place that promotes meditation and consideration. Silence can also be used to protect another person from someone or something, or someone can choose silence as a means of protest. Silence can therefore be self-imposed, but it can also be enforced, which in turn reveals the dimensions of power that embrace the phenomenon of silence (Alerby, 2020a). Given this, there is a dualism immanent in the phenomenon of silence. Even though silence is often in short supply in today’s society, as well as in different educational settings, it can simultaneously be hard to avoid silence – silence is, more or less, always around us. A question to ask, however, is whether we notice, or hear, the silence. Sometimes, the silence is not at all noticeable, even if it is there, and at other times, the silence cannot be avoided; instead, it is deafening. To really hear the silence, we might need to sharpen our listening but also be open and responsive to its message. For that, silence is needed; or, as Cooper (2012) stated: ‘To be a good listener requires an ability to remain silent’ (p. 54). The issues of listening are of significance in various educational settings, in schools and universities, by teachers and students. Schultz (2010) stressed this importance with the following words: ‘[u]nderstanding the role of silence for the individual and the class as a whole is a complex process that may require new ways of conceptualising listening’ (p. 1). Expressed in other words: one has to listen to the silence and the message it conveys. A message is, however, most often conveyed by spoken or written language, but even a person who is silent conveys a message. Dickinson (2007) stressed that it is the silent message that often says the most, and Bateson (1987) claimed a similar thought by stressing that a non-message is also a message. Buber (1993) emphasized that a true dialogue between two people, by its nature, is both spoken and mute, and a mute dialogue is sometimes referred to as speaking silence. However, even if a person is expressing herself with spoken words, by speaking continuously, it is not certain that the person in question has something to say. On the other hand, a silent person, a person who is not expressing herself verbally, says a great deal (Heidegger, 1971). If it is so that even the silence conveys a message, it is of utmost importance to really listen to the silence and take its message under consideration, especially in different educational contexts and settings – places and spaces. The Role of Silence in Educational Places and Spaces The role of silence, and maybe even more specifically, silent messages, is something that needs to be observed and addressed in educational situations. Can, for example, a university student 193

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convey a message without expressing herself in words, instead remaining silent? If a student is quiet, and remains silent even though she or he knows the answer to the teacher’s question or has opinions on the ongoing discussion, it is crucial to listen to the silence and facilitate silent spaces so that those students may enter the conversation; in other words, to create spaces where silence can prevail, and even be appreciated. In the previous paragraph, the dualism immanent in the silence was emphasized. An additional example of the dualistic character of silence is that someone, such as a university lecturer or teacher, can both give and take silence from someone else, such as a student. The teacher has the power to give the words to the students by asking questions or asking for an exploration of the topic of the lecture. By the same means, the teacher also has the power to allocate the silence by deciding which students are asked to talk and which are thereby asked to remain silent. In addition to this reasoning, a further dimension of silence and its effects in educational settings is to consider what may happen if a student remains quiet after hearing the teacher’s question, request or orally assigned task. On the one hand, the teacher expects the students to reply to questions, show their knowledge on an orally assigned task and actively take part in discussions during class or lectures. On the other hand, however, the teacher wants the students to be quiet and alert during instructions and briefings. There is an immanent paradox in the intertwining of silence and education – to be quiet or not. For students, it is also a question of talking at the right time and at the right place (and also about the right things). Worth mentioning, however, is that all human communication depends on the interplay between given and taken silence – without silent pauses in a conversation, there is no true conversation (it is perhaps a monologue). It is in the silent pauses, or moments, in a conversation that reflection and consideration can emerge, and the quality of the conversation increases (Scollon & Scollon, 1987). It is also in silent pauses that the other person is given the space to be invited into and enter the conversation. To be regarded as silent is, however, not the same as not speaking, according to MerleauPonty (2002). To be silent is something different from not speaking or making one’s voice heard, and Merleau-Ponty claimed that a person – for example, a university student – needs to have the ability, or freedom, to express themself orally. If instead of doing that, the person chooses to remain silent for some reason, it is only then that the person can be regarded as silent. In connection to this argumentation, it is also of interest to address the so-called silent students. How are the other people in the space, such as teachers, lecturers or other students, reacting to a silent student? Previous studies on silent students have shown that these students might risk being regarded as a problem, and some studies have even referred to them in pathological terms. In opposition to this, von Wright (2012) instead described the silent students in rational terms. Educational places and spaces are filled with educational relationships, and in these relationships, there are always aspects of silence, most often embraced by uncertainty and expectations. Silence in education can also be used as a teaching strategy. For example, there is the probably well-known teacher’s trick of staying calm and quiet in front of an unruly group of students instead of trying to maintain order and quietness by raising their own voice (Alerby, 2020a). In connection to educational places and spaces, it is moreover of interest to be observant of the time that passes between the teacher’s question and the students’ answer. How long does the teacher remain silent after asking the question, and before answering it themself, or asking another question? Rowe (1974, 1986) called this time between the question and the self-response 194

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‘wait-time’. Teachers are often too quick to answer questions themselves, or to ask new questions, instead of remaining and resting in silence. When the teacher allows it to be quiet for a while, the answer from the students increases in both length and complexity (Rowe, 1974, 1986). It is, therefore, an advantage if the teacher permits silence in the classroom or lecture hall as one way to elicit tacit language and tacit knowledge, something that both Merleau-Ponty (2002) and Polanyi (1969) claimed exists in every human being. It is not uncommon for people in today’s society, and university students in particular, to choose silence as a search for stillness and peace; a silent space for contemplation and selfreflection, as one of the students in the narrative emphasized: ‘I can relax and let my thoughts “fly freely” at a tranquil and still place.’ A question is, however, whether these places exist in contemporary societies, or maybe more crucially, in the life of the university student. Places and Spaces of Silence and Stillness at the University Educational places and spaces, such as university buildings, are of significance for the people – be they teachers, lecturers, scholars or students – staying within them. Places and spaces influence people in the moment, but also in the future. The places and spaces within a university, therefore, embrace temporal dimensions, and these dimensions manifest as follows, according to Bachelard (1994): ‘Past, present and future give the house different dynamisms, which often interfere, at times opposing, at others, stimulating one another’ (p. 6). Merleau-Ponty (2002) also emphasized the importance of linking different temporal dimensions, such as the past, the present and the future, which he phrased ‘the intentional arc’. To connect this reasoning to the university, it can be stated that the building itself was designed and built in the past, prior to people entering and inhabiting it. It will affect these people in the present, when they stay at the university, but it will also have an impact on them for a significant amount of time into the future. Questions to raise are how – in what way – the time at the university influences the humans, and how, for example, the students experience their time there. Reports from the lives of university students in Sweden indicate that the pace is often very intense and stressful, including lectures, independent study work, examinations and assessments, but also social relationships and interactions with peers as well as with teachers, lecturers and scholars. The students’ workloads have increased in recent years, and the university environment is also often very noisy (Söderlund, 2017). The high sound level was pointed out by one of the students in the aforementioned narrative: I mean, it is almost impossible to avoid the unpleasant feeling that some of the large rooms or halls often create, especially if the sound level is high. Just look at the cantina: the body of people there during lunch time feels like a mob of frantic creatures locked up in the same, too confined, pen. Additionally, their schedules are often demanding and may also require moving between different places and spaces within the university. These circumstances commonly result in university students experiencing stress and having symptoms of depression and fatigue (Public Health Agency of Sweden, 2018). One way to mitigate these conditions, instead promoting students’ well-being during their study period, is to create supportive places and spaces that enable students’ stillness and contemplation. As one student in the narrative expressed: ‘Here 195

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I have the chance to sit comfortably in peace and quiet, and to have interesting chats with my classmates. I sit comfortably and relaxed in the armchairs and I can look out over something other than work.’ In previous studies, students described university places and spaces which evoke feelings of calm and stillness, something they value and appreciate (see, e.g. Alerby, 2016, 2019a, 2019b, 2020a, 2020b). The university library is such a place, which one student described in the narrative as follows: ‘The library is always quiet, which kind of symbolises what a library is, right?’ The quietness at the library also enables students’ learning: ‘it’s easy to focus in the library because it is secluded and it is quiet and calm there, with few disturbances . . . and that enables my learning’, as another of the students in the narrative expressed. Furthermore, another student emphasized that it is both stimulating and motivating to study in the library. The students did, however, find other places and spaces in the university that they appreciated because they were silent and calm. The university library is not the only place where the students can find stillness and peace for the sake of silence. Instead, the students find their ‘own’ places and spaces of peace and silence. ‘I think it’s so important that I can relax and let my thoughts “fly freely” at a tranquil and still place. I have found such a place at a corner in the main building. It’s like my own hidden place . . . it’s often free . . . not so many students know about it’, as a student in the narrative emphasized. There is, however, a distinction between the silence a person may experience at the actual place (so-called outer silence) and the silence they experience within themself (so-called inner silence). For some people, it is easier to eliminate and ignore external disturbing noises than it is for others. It is worth noting that some of today’s students may have problems finding silence and stillness even though it actually exists, as they experience too much inner noise. This inner noise may make it impossible to find silence even when the person in question is located in quiet surroundings (Alerby, 2020a). Whether a student has difficulties finding inner or outer silence, the silence itself is most often a necessity for contemplation and reflection, which is an important foundation for learning. Places and spaces of quietude are of significance for students and their learning, as one of them emphasized in the narrative: ‘I need it to be quiet in order to focus, to actually learn what I need to learn.’ Another of the students in the narrative stressed the importance of having the opportunity to stay in a place that enables contemplation: ‘I can drift away, for a moment at least, and gather my forces.’ To have the ability to ‘drift away’ and maybe daydream is something Bachelard (1994) argued for, because through contemplation and daydreams, the person is transported from the immediate world to an infinite world. Maybe it is only there that the student in question can ‘gather [her] forces’. For Bachelard (1994), there is a close connection between the building – the house – and memories. He considered the building to be a metaphor for the human. It is within the body of the house, with all its rooms and spaces, that several of a person’s memories are housed. According to Bachelard, memories actually originate from the rooms and spaces within the house (or the human body), and it is, among other things, through daydreams that the person can recall the memories. Foran and Olson (2008) also stressed the connection between memories and places and spaces at, for example, schools and universities. Students’ experiences of such places and spaces, not limited to classrooms and lecture halls, but also spaces-in-between, may awaken memories. Some of these places and spaces may be characterized by silence and stillness: ‘I 196

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remember when I was a child, I think it was in third grade, me and my friend used to go to the library just to find peace and quiet’, as a student in the narrative expressed. Past experiences, memories and the feelings that arise in connection to a building’s spatial design, its places and spaces can be so strong that they cause bodily symptoms. For example, these symptoms can come in the form of anxiety and palpitation, as another student emphasized: ‘The feeling that builds up in my body when I have to be in such rooms makes my heart race; I feel pressure and feel a terrible anxiety.’ According to Merleau-Ponty (2002), as humans, we are always in our body; in the world: ‘the body is our anchorage in a world’ (p. 167). The body is always with us; the body inhabits the world. Thus, the body is both a prerequisite for and a part of the experiences human beings have in the world, as well as what memories and feelings are evoked. The students, however, not only expressed feelings of anxiety and stress in connection to university places and spaces; they also expressed their experiences and feelings about the university buildings in terms of quietude, calmness and a sense of belonging. When expressing the need for quiet and peaceful places and spaces, the students stressed the importance of these places and spaces in the university transmitting a feeling of freedom and security, and even a feeling of ‘being at home’. Then, what characterizes a ‘home’, and what does it mean to ‘be at home’ and be embraced by a feeling of belonging? The University Place – a Feeling of Belonging A ‘home’ can, according to Hung (2010), be defined and described as an intentional construction, and whether it is a physical building or a mental place, existential meanings are always embedded within the place called home. Hung also claimed that ‘[h]ome is a place providing us with a fuller privacy, safety and intimacy than any other place’ (p. 234). Whether a home, in an everyday sense, can always be considered a safe place can, however, be debated. For a huge amount of people around the world, their homes are rather the opposite – unsecure places that are perhaps not suitable to be called ‘home’. However, within the framework of this chapter, this will not be further discussed. Instead, the concept of home will be explored in relation to the students’ expressions in the narrative. One of the students said that a place in the university that she appreciates is one that reminds her of being at home, which gives her a sense of safety: ‘for me, being at home means security.’ This student also stressed that security is an essential part of studying: ‘security is a necessary condition for being able to study effectively, I think.’ Every space that is truly inhabited holds, according to Bachelard (1994), the actual spirit, the essence of the concept of home – a place where we belong. As a university can be considered a public place, a question to raise is whether such a place can ever carry the meaning of the private place – a ‘home’ (Hung & Stables, 2011). One way to view these issues is, as Roberts (2008) claimed, that a school or a university becomes a ‘pedagogical home’ during the students’ time there. He also stressed that, in this pedagogical home, the students are guests and the teachers are hosts: ‘As the years go by, we [e.g. a university] “host” many students who become “guests” in our pedagogical “home” for different periods of our lives’ (Roberts, 2008: 540). Hopefully this pedagogical home embraces the feeling of belonging. Nevertheless, a place one feels a sense of belonging to, and feels at home in, may not be the dwelling place (Heidegger, 2001). We do not always find ourselves in places and spaces where we feel a sense of belonging, or, as Bollnow (1961) 197

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put it: ‘the space where a man finds himself at the moment may not be the space to which he belongs’ (p. 32). The question is whether the places and spaces in a university are ‘truly inhabited’ and thus are included in the contents of the concept of home – a space in which one belongs. Perhaps more important to consider is what an inhabited space is. Bachelard (1994) maintained that inhabited space transcends geometric space. Linked to an educational building, Bengtsson (2004) pointed out that a school – or in this case, a university – cannot be understood and explained only as an architectonic and material building. The phenomenon of a school or a university transcends the building itself. According to some of the students in the narrative, a ‘home-like’ feeling and a sense of belonging are important dimensions in their university lives, and experiences like these are both appreciated and valued. The students equated a feeling of home with a secure place, just as Hung (2010) did. To feel secure and at home, but also free, are important aspects of the learning process, as one of the students in the narrative stressed: ‘This place feels somehow like freedom. Maybe it reminds me of being at home.’ According to Løvlie (2007), all learning is linked to situations, to different places and spaces, and all education requires a frame. This frame can be in the form of a physical building; for example, a university, which contains a variety of places and spaces. However, it can also take the form of spaces limited to the ether, such as web-based education or online learning, where the teaching takes place in completely different places to where the physical classroom is located. No matter the conditions, learning takes place in different types of spaces, and in these spaces, experiences occur and memories form, which leave different forms of traces or tracks. Sometimes these tracks are both clear and deep, whereas sometimes they may be so weak that they can be difficult to detect (Alerby, 2016). Some Concluding Considerations This chapter is largely structured around the narrative and the students’ voices as presented in the introduction. It is worth recalling that the students in question were asked to reflect on their study environment, places and spaces of significance for their learning. It might seem natural and obvious that they would have mentioned classrooms or lecture halls in connection to learning places, but they instead focused mostly on spaces-in-between, such as an open space in a corridor, the library (even though a library can be viewed as a learning place, it is not an ordinary classroom or lecture hall), a coffee shop or their own ‘hidden’ places. It is likely that on a daily basis, both students and teachers use these places and spaces, which both receive and give meaning. As mentioned by Bengtsson (2004), these meanings concern us as people. The students, however, mentioned not only places and spaces they appreciated and valued but also the opposite – places and spaces they did not appreciate and value at all, and these places and spaces were all characterized by being crowded, noisy and sometimes even frightening. These conditions, in turn, can cause bodily effects and purely physical symptoms to arise, such as a racing heart and anxiety, as one of the students stressed. A crucial dimension to these negative experiences and feelings is the lack of silence and stillness. The need for quiet and peaceful places and spaces at the university was clearly emphasized by the students in the narrative: 198

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I think it’s so important that I can relax and let my thoughts ‘fly freely’ at a tranquil and still place. . . . There I can let go of the stress and don’t have to worry. I can think about things other than my studies and all the homework. Just sit back and let go of the soul for a while; let the soul ‘heal’, for example, after an exam period. A library, which most universities have, can be seen as an organized place for, among other things, silence and stillness, contemplation and recovery; part of the nature of the library is silence and stillness. However, nowadays, some universities (e.g. the University of Manchester, UK; the University of Padova, Italy) are also organizing for silent places and spaces outside the actual building in the form of silent gardens. These gardens, located in different university campuses, are to be considered restorative and contemplative silent spaces that can reduce stress and increase students’ (and staff’s) well-being (e.g. Su et al., 2021). Other examples of silent places and spaces within university campuses are various kinds of silent rooms, often connected to church rooms on the campuses. These are all official places and spaces organized by the universities in order to promote silence and stillness, quietude and tranquillity. The students themselves highly valued these kinds of places and spaces, stressing that they are of great importance for reflection and consideration, which are essential for the learning process. Additionally, these kinds of places and spaces are also of significance for the students’ sense of security due to the fact that they are reminiscent of being at home – a feeling of belonging – that is also of importance for learning. Whether there is a shortage of silence and stillness in society in general, and at universities specifically, it is of significance to note that if places and spaces of silence are not officially arranged, the people within the settings will search for them, finding or creating their own places and spaces of quietude and calmness. What was made obvious through listening to the students’ voices, is that unofficial places and spaces which are not organized by the universities are just as important as the organized ones, perhaps even more so. A desire for silence and stillness, however, is not something that is sought exclusively by these students, but something that many – perhaps most – people appreciate and value. This may be because the soundscape has increased in today’s society, and silence and stillness are in increasingly short supply. In that case, this is something to question. People’s needs and desires to be in places and spaces of peace and quiet are profound; therefore, people will find their own ways to locate and stay in these kinds of places and spaces – be they official or unofficial. As mentioned previously, it is of high importance to be observant as to how the silence is perceived – as good or bad, as pleasant and longed for or as unpleasant and a nuisance. However, it is also necessary to be attentive to that which cannot be spoken, which can be just as important as what is able to be said. Even a non-message is a message – the silence is speaking. Ultimately, if silence is present in society in general or in university places and spaces in particular, what may be most essential is to not consider silence as something to fear. Rather, it is an opportunity to listen with curiosity and use silence in a fruitful and beneficial way.

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The Quiet Professional On Being Alone/Together in Higher Education Anne Pirrie and Nini Fang

Introduction: ‘I want to be alone’ In an article published in Life magazine in 1955, Greta Garbo, that most eloquent star of silent cinema, set the record straight on the phrase that has since become so closely associated with her public and private personas. ‘I never said “I want to be alone,” . . . I only said “I want to be let alone!” There is all the difference’ (Bainbridge, 1955: 113; italics in the original).1 Garbo uttered the words ‘I want to be alone’ in the role of the dancer Elizaveta Grushinskaya in the film Grand Hotel (1932). In the many decades since, that phrase has done much to forge an indelible association between solitude and melancholy in the public imagination. Further light is cast on the Garboesque association between solitude and melancholy in another silent medium: namely the letters written by Garbo to her close friend and confidante, the Austrian actress and writer Salka Viertel. Only the letters from Garbo survive – a testament, perhaps, to the sense of isolation that so often accompanies fame. In 2019, sixty-five intimate letters written by Garbo to Viertel between 1932 and 1973 were put up for auction.2 In these letters, which were handwritten in pencil, Garbo revealed the extent of her isolation. ‘I go nowhere, see no-one’, she wrote to Viertel in 1937 during a trip to her native Sweden. She added that it had been the same when she was in Hollywood, and confided that ‘it is hard and sad to be alone, but sometimes it’s even more difficult to be with someone.’ These are words that will resonate with many in the era of Covid-19. Garbo’s remarks on the theme of being alone/together hint at the sense of impingement she was referring to in that famous statement. ‘Impingement’ is a term used in the psychoanalytical literature, and has its origins in the seminal work of the paediatrician and psychoanalyst Winnicott (1896–1971) (1953, 1958). Impingement can be defined as ‘the attack on subjectivity through the imposition of a relationship’ (Levine, 2017: 75). Perhaps what Garbo was objecting to was the threat to her original vitality, her true self, posed by stardom. She clearly regarded this as a form

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of encroachment, the infringement of a selfhood subordinated to a public persona. Or maybe she was making a psychoanalytic point, namely that there is ‘a self one is true to in solitude, and a self one is true to in company’ (Phillips, 1999: 87). Then again, perhaps what she was objecting to was projection, not in the literal sense related to the medium of film, but in the metaphorical sense used in psychoanalysis. In psychoanalytic terms, projection is regarded as ‘the most primitive form of object relation, or, more accurately, a transitional form that makes objects part of a subjective world’ (Levine, 2017: 74). ‘All the lonely people, where do they all come from?’ asked the Beatles. More to the point, where do they go? Perhaps they go to the cinema, where they afforded ample opportunities to sit alone/together in almost total darkness and to project their social isolation and existential loneliness onto the silver screen. There they gather round an absent presence, and experience intimacy at a safe distance, silently. The very notion of a ‘screen icon’ conjures up the idea of a façade, an empty shell, a representational object without substance, bereft of a subject, as it were. It is, of course, foolhardy to attempt to psychoanalyse a dead movie star. Nevertheless, it is tempting to suggest that what Garbo was experiencing was a sense of personal loss. Perhaps what she was objecting to was the fact that in the public imagination, her luminous screen presence eclipsed the sense of loneliness and existential confusion that pervaded the rest of her life. It is as if this star of the silent screen were screaming ‘see me!’ Garbo retired at the age of thirty-five, having appeared in twenty-eight films. Needless to say, calling it quits at thirty-five is not a viable option for most ‘quiet’ professionals (or even for noisy ones). Try asking anyone who works in a university, particularly those who are employed on no-fixed hours casual contracts, with no job security. Correspondence: Relationality in Solitude It is particularly telling that Garbo’s revelations of loneliness and isolation appear in the context of an intimate exchange of letters. Correspondence in this literal sense is by definition a silent medium. According to the psychoanalyst Phillips (1999: 88), ‘reading literature is a relationship conducted in silence.’ Letter writing is another way of entering into relationship with an absent presence. Garbo’s correspondence is rendered even more poignant because the letters from her confidante are no longer extant. Garbo comes into her own, as it were, in the company of a friend who is not there. Perhaps her star burned so brightly that it obscured the view of lesser stars. The notion of correspondence – which in its broadest sense carries echoes of response, responsibility and responsiveness – sheds new light on the state of being ‘alone together’. Correspondence, defined both as a form of communication through the exchange of letters and as the action or fact of corresponding, provides a useful vehicle through which to consider ‘quiet professionalism’ in the context of higher education. The latter definition of correspondence, that is attunement, or the creation and maintenance of a particular form of ethical relation, encapsulates our mode of working as co-authors with different academic backgrounds (the arts and humanities and counselling and psychotherapy, respectively). In broad terms, we were drawn (in)to thinking (together) about how loneliness, alienation and pleasurable solitude set their stamp on our particular variety of ‘quiet professionalism’. We shall explore here how these various forms of aloneness and togetherness are responses to external pressures to adapt to the demands placed upon us by the university system. We shall also consider the creative tensions between being on one’s own and thinking with another person. The capacity to embrace both solitude and ‘ethical loneliness’ (Stauffer, 2018) 201

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within the ambit of quiet professionalism is a necessary precondition for the ability to converse, in the sense of turning towards the other as well as talking and corresponding. As regards the former definition of correspondence, the exchange of letters, the subsequent musings of Greta Garbo shed some light on the peculiar variety of loneliness that can emerge in a relationship. In contrast, our emerging relationship as co-authors was an antidote to the sense of loneliness that we experienced in our professional lives (see Pirrie & Fang, 2020). The sense of ‘ethical loneliness’, alienation and isolation that we explore further below is encapsulated in the following observation by Judith Butler (2004:15): ‘I am other to myself precisely at the place where I expect to be myself.’ At the moral level, our personal and professional relationship demonstrates that ‘our relationship to ourselves [is] inextricable from our relationship with others’ (Phillips, 1999: 81). Alone/together is a Janus-faced notion. In Garbo’s case, it speaks of restless nights in grand hotels, glitzy restaurants and oyster shells. Our encounters are played out in more mundane circumstances, for instance in a coffee shop near the university where one of us works, in the city where both of us live. Meeting and corresponding with each other enable us to hold on to what we cherish about our work. It is only through working with and through each other that we are able to remain alert and open to arousals of pain, discomfort and anxiety that are part and parcel of quiet professional practice. In Garbo’s correspondence with Viertel there is an intimation of an alternative and more affirmative version of solitude, something that for her at least remained tantalizingly out of reach. This offers us a glimpse of a form of solitude that is associated with strength and endurance. The latter term might be defined as the ability to remain with a situation until one has found one’s way into its deepest recesses (Pirrie & Fang, 2020). Until relatively recently, this might have been considered a hallmark of ‘quiet’ academic practice. In Garbo’s correspondence, there is the merest suggestion of a readiness to embrace the capacity to be alone, a desire to protect the self from the demands of those intent on creating a fantasy world. Garbo’s correspondence with Viertel might be read as an indication that it was entering into relations with a confidante through the silent medium of letter writing that made it tolerable for her to be alone. It is entirely in keeping with the Janus-faced nature of solitude (and its close companions silence and loneliness) that the seminal work of Donald Winnicott suggests the obverse: namely that the capacity to be alone, to feel at ease in the company of one’s ‘true self ’, is a prerequisite for being able to enter into relationships with others. And as we shall attempt to demonstrate in this chapter, ‘corresponding’ with others (including in our case corresponding with each other as co-authors) is a prerequisite for being able to embody and enact the version of ‘quiet professionalism’ that we explore here. We should make it clear at the outset that we use the word ‘quiet’ in the sense related to the absence of impingement, that is ‘being free from disturbance; not interfered or meddled with; left in peace’ (OED, 2005). This secondary definition of quiet resonates with what Garbo referred to as being ‘let alone’. It is important to recognize that the sense of stillness associated with the term need not imply settlement or quiescence, nor indeed a reluctance to cause a stir or to question the status quo. Indeed, as we shall see, there is often a fair degree of disquiet in the background. In short, the quiet professional can be a persuasive force for resistance, even in the silent medium of text. Having put the record straight on what we mean by ‘quiet’ in the context of academic work, we shall now clarify what we mean by professionalism and its associated terms. 202

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A ‘quiet word’ on Professionalism Throughout this chapter, we use the word ‘professional’ in its broadest contemporary sense, that is to refer to ‘engaging in any occupation by which a person regularly earns a living’.3 The references to engagement in ‘one of the learned or skilled professions’, or the sense of vocation that was evident in earlier definitions (e.g. OED, 2005) seem to have faded from view, as have earlier references to ‘following an occupation as his (or her) profession, life-work, or means of livelihood’. The reference to life-work suggests that at some point there may have been scope for amateurism under the guise of professionalism. In recent years, professionalism has become dreary and debased, and more closely associated with notions of efficiency, effectiveness and ‘time-management’ rather than with passion or vocation. Nearly thirty years ago, Edward Said (1994) drew attention to the forces that jeopardized the sense of excitement, discovery and curiosity that animates us as academics, co-authors and friends. According to Said (1994: 74), professionalism means thinking of your work . . . as something you do for a living, . . . with one eye on the clock, and another cocked at what is considered to be proper, professional behaviour – not rocking the boat, not straying outside the accepted paradigms or limits, making yourself marketable and above all presentable. As academics, our immediate frame of reference is the contemporary university. This is an environment in which noisy, shouty cock-eyed professionalism is clearly in the ascendency. In the public imagination, universities have traditionally been associated with the practices of reading and writing, teaching and learning, and research. (The latter often amounts to no more than searching and searching again, with quiet and dogged determination.) These activities have been increasingly subjected to various forms of regulation as a means of ‘professionalizing’ the sector in a way that makes it inimical to a true amateur. Yet we hope that what we have to say here will be of interest to anyone who is concerned with doing good work well in a climate of constraint, whether they are employed in a small and medium-sized enterprise, in a large corporation or in a health and social care setting. We anticipate that some of what we have to say will resonate with those who are self-employed, particularly in some capacity related to the ‘knowledge economy’ (or even the plain old economy). The climate of constraint to which we refer can be attributed to the irresistible rise of what has become known as neoliberalism. This has been defined as ‘a complex, often incoherent, unstable and even contradictory set of practices that are organized around a certain imagination of the “market” as a basis for the universalisation of market-based social relations, with the corresponding penetration in almost every single aspect of our lives’ (Shamir, 2008: 3). As we indicated earlier, ‘quiet professionals’ working in universities (and indeed elsewhere) have increasingly been subject to ever-more rigid systems of ‘performance management’, surveillance and control. Academic subjectivities are now governed by man-made (and we use the term advisedly) systems of information management, professional development, annual staff reviews and distorted by the relentless promotion of ‘research excellence’ and other dimensions of a ‘policy technology . . . that links effort, value, purposes and self-understanding to measures and comparisons of output’ (Ball, 2012: 19). The aim of these mechanistic systemic fixes is to render ‘more and more of the scholarly disposition . . . explicit and auditable’ (as well as audible and 203

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tweetable). The corollary of this is to render academic work more amenable to the relentless logic of competition that pervades the university sector, militating against the possibility of relational encounters that sustain us. Responding to the incessant challenges of reporting and recording means that ‘social structures and social relations are replaced by informational structures’ (Ball, 2012: 19): we are increasingly subjected to audit and ‘enhancement’ rather than care and attention. As we suggested earlier, our joint exploration of quietness in a professional context turns on an apparent paradox: namely that the ability to enter into relationship is dependent upon the extent to which we are able to ‘protect ourselves from relating’ (Levine, 2017: 69). Quiet professionalism inflected by amateurism provides some immunity against the unintended consequences of the ruthless audit culture that has taken root in recent decades. It seems that in order to be ‘alone together’ in a manner that is both pleasurable and productive, we need to find ways of being with others that nourish and sustain us, and enable us to forge a new relationship with what we do and how we do it. As a prerequisite for this, we also need to be able to find a resting place in the private environment of our ‘inner world’ in order to be able to keep the incessant demands of the performance engine at bay. In short, we need to learn how to be alone, and to persuade others that we need to be let alone. We also need to appreciate that the secret of our endurance might reside in being quiet, and in being alone/together. Below we draw on contemporary interpretations of psychoanalytic theory in order to explore the hypothesis that the capacity to be alone is a necessary prerequisite for being together. This should not be read as an alternative formulation of the well-known maxim ‘know thyself’. Nor do we mean to suggest that it is necessary to know other people personally in order to be able to relate to them effectively in a professional context. To claim as much would be significantly to misrepresent the nature of the inner world, and indeed the nature of collaboration in the workplace. We suggest that fully to inhabit one’s inner world entails circling doubt rather than grasping at certainties or pursuing goals that are out of reach. The very notion of an inner landscape conjures up images of pushing and probing through the gathering darkness rather than standing firm on solid ground in broad daylight. It invites us to marvel at the disarray of seedlings cast to the winds as well as to stare in admiration at embedded flowers planted efficiently the previous season. As the use of the word ‘landscape’ in this metaphorical sense suggests, there is a mysterious, porous quality to this interrelationship between the inner and outer worlds. Both can be hostile or benign, and neither is complete in and of itself. As the Scots educationalist Nan Shepherd (2011: 3) (1977) observes in relation to her ‘traffic’ with the Cairngorm mountains in the north of Scotland, ‘the mind cannot carry away all that it has to give, nor does it always believe possible what it has carried away.’ Correspondence and the Quiet Art of Scholarship As we saw earlier, in the professional environment that we inhabit reading and writing, teaching and learning are key elements of academic practice. The manner in which they are interrelated is inscribed in some of the words used in this context. For instance, a lecture is commonly understood as a ‘discourse before an audience or class (e.g. in a university) upon a given subject’ (OED, 2005). As one of the contributors of this volume has pointed out, the lecture is a ‘special form of human encounter’, a particular mode of address that is ‘modulated specifically for the hearing of the student’ and is the ‘initiation of a dialogic relationship between teacher and student’.4 The word ‘lecture’ is derived from the Latin legere, to read. A lecture might thus also be regarded as a 204

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way of giving voice to the experience of a prior relationship conducted in silence. The purpose of a lecture is not (merely) to transmit knowledge. Rather, it marks a site of knowledge creation by opening up the possibility of dialogical and relational encounters. As such, it is a process imbued with the subversive power to reassess codified knowledge through the creative and inherently risky enterprise of thinking together. Reading is another example of a relationship conducted in silence. Quietly reading a book was a commonplace activity for an academic, before noisiness, shouting and tweeting took over. It is important to reinstate it as a practice associated with quiet professionalism, as a means of ‘experimenting with what is possible in the absence of the object, of finding out what [we] can do, what experiences [we] can have, without the palpable presence of another person’ (Phillips, 1999: 87). In short, reading offers scope for drift. Inherently resistant to audit, drift opens up paths to ‘improvisational spontaneity, untiring gathering’. Reading, as a form of entering into relation with a presence that is at once absent and silent, allows us to create a ‘hospitable habitat’. Perhaps most importantly of all, it imbues us with an ‘ecumenical readiness to admit all-comers’ (Macfarlane & Donwood, 2019:18). By the same token, writing (that other mainstay of quiet professionals in academic circles) is also a form of dialogue that is subject to a variety of fluctuations. As the novelist A. L. Kennedy (2012: 226) explains in her book On Writing, ‘the process of personal commitment, exploration, loss, surprise and puzzlement fluctuates and coheres. Initial ideas are shaped and re-shaped, sometimes consciously, sometimes – once again – in a rush of pressure which can seem external.’ Like reading (and indeed lecturing), writing can be regarded as an aesthetic process, a silent dialogue with an absent presence; an uncertain form of engagement with an unknown terrain. Reading and writing are often regarded as solitary activities, yet as we saw earlier, they both represent forms of engagement with an absent presence. They speak to the ethics of collaboration (or in our case co-elaboration) rather than the neoliberal imperative of competition. Freud (1937) once described education as one of the ‘impossible’ professions, that is to say one in which an unsatisfactory outcome is more or less guaranteed from the start. The other two ‘impossible professions’ were psychoanalysis and government. According to Freud, the impossibility of education and psychoanalysis resides in the fact that they are both oriented towards co-constructing insights through relational, collaborative encounters between, say, a lecturer and students, or an analyst and analysand. Furthermore, what makes both professions attractive is simultaneously their unrelenting curse – the unpredictable journey towards acquiring the knowledge of ‘the fears and anxieties, the fantasies and desires, the loves and hates, the less than rational and the strange logics of our passions and our unconscious’ (Bibby, 2011: 3). Education and psychoanalysis offer challenging insights into the fossilized and often implicit knowledge that we hold about the self, others and the world. In sum, the mission of professional educators, including those employed in universities, might be considered as akin to psychotherapeutic endeavours. Take the lecture, for instance. It too unfolds with a necessary interspace, an ‘intimate distance’, that enables the emergence of ‘critical, appropriate, intimate encounters’ (Pile, 2010: 493). Pile reminds us that none of us is immune from the need ‘to please and be liked’ (Pile, 2010: 493). The intimate distance established in the course of ethical educational or psychotherapeutic encounters safeguards the real work from the inevitable desire on the part of the lecturer or the analyst to make thinking easy. The ethical question for exponents of both professions is how to remain securely on one’s own in order to ‘think 205

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with’ who and what causes pain. In a climate dominated by institutional imperatives to ensure ‘student satisfaction’, it is all too easy to lose sight of the fact that thinking itself has the capacity to generate suffering. The American humourist Don Marquis encapsulates and expresses the plight of both educators and analysts in the following pithy epithet: ‘if you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll love you: but if you really make them think, they’ll hate you’ (Ratcliff, 2016: unpaginated). But this is a digression, and in the meantime something very important has occurred. Nini, you’ve arrived! I thought you were never going to come. If the practice of psychoanalysis ‘lives in the ruins’ as Kingsbury and Pile (2014: 8) suggest, then it seems reasonable to suggest that the psychoanalytic insights to which education gives rise might also emerge from the ashes.5 And so it was that Nini arrived for her meeting with Annie, covered with ashes and dust, and with the scent of decay in her nostrils. Quiet (Impossible) Professionals Alone/Together The final day of teaching for the term is now done and dusted. On her way to her meeting with Annie, Nini hastened past university buildings that ranged in style from gothic and neoclassical, before finally arriving at the functionalist, modernist building of the business school, where she and Annie had arranged to meet. ‘All the lonely people, where do they all belong?’ the Beatles’ familiar, enigmatic refrain streaming through her headphones had served its purpose by immersing Nini in the private, existential terrain of her overwrought mind. She immediately caught sight of Annie, perched slightly off-centre, on the far side of the café. Nini shed her headphones as she re-entered the world. These days (that is to say, pre-Covid-19) Nini and Annie were generally content with a no-frills greeting of ‘hi’, combined with an effortless smile and sometimes a hug. When they meet, neither of them feels a particular need to rush (the other) into any organized articulation of inward musings. The work takes its time, and they have become better at taking their time. They have learned to sit alone/together in silence, which seems to be particularly conducive to incubating the flowering of private thoughts. Gradually, in the mysterious course of things, elements of their inner worlds morph into something that is worth sharing. How might these thoughts be received, what kind of response might they invoke? Those moments of gentleness and attention soften their experience of time and serve to mend the broken links between potential utterances and mental events. Nini and Annie have developed a way of caring for themselves and for each other that serves as a bastion against the fast-paced, auditable (and audible) demands imposed upon them by their respective institutions. On this particular occasion, the intimate distance is as ‘relational’ as Nini can bear, having come from her final lecture deeply unsettled and full of doubts. She has been scorched by her passion in what she does – the kind of educational fervour that is ultimately what keeps one going in the impossible profession of education. As Nini has discovered to her peril, it is this very fervour that has the potential to arouse ‘epistemic anxiety’ in learners (Rustin, 2018). Epistemic anxiety is a state of being in which the desire to learn is subordinated to an overwhelming anxiety about the threat that new knowledge may pose to the subject’s sense of self. This is what happens when curiosity is stalled by ontological insecurity evoked by situations of deep learning. Nini knew that she had prompted such a response yet 206

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again. In response, one of the students had become overtly antagonistic and questioned whether Nini had ‘gone too far’ this time. This generated a wave of nervous exchange of glances among students. (See Pirrie and Fang (2020) for an account of how Nini has struggled with her capacity to disrupt, how she gets into hot water and how she never learns her lesson.) Her intention for the session, and any session, for that matter, had been to help students to understand that sensemaking is political; and how, through working with that awareness, it can be a transformative act that helps us to shape visions of alternate realities. How, in turn, might that emerging awareness afford scope for more meaningful, reflexive encounters with the fuller range of psychological and ontological states that had previously been guarded (Waddell, 2002: 61)? Yet again, her passion had seemed out of proportion, excessive even, to the learners’ desire to think with her in this final session of the term. ‘Enough is enough.’ Whose thought was it that entered her head at that precise moment? Enough is enough. She muttered the words into thin air, not fully grasping where they came from, where they were going and to whom they belonged. She was relieved to notice that the thought seemed to have transmitted itself to Annie, who has been there all along. She is glad when Annie raises her head as if to ask, ‘what is it?’ She is glad because she realizes that this moment, she could say anything to Annie about ‘enough is enough’. She does not have to be chained to the origin of the thought. This alone/togetherness is capacious, enabling her to free-associate, to dwell with what otherwise might have escaped her attention. She revels in the freedom of not being held to account for what she says, not having to consider the consequences or worry about whether or not she is displaying her academic credentials to good effect. Nini can be defiantly alone with thoughts that defy any form of regulation or marshalling, knowing that Annie will bear witness. It briefly crosses her mind how different this feels, this moment, from her occasional encounters with Professor Somebody. On these occasions she feels compelled to give a coherent account of the project she has been working on, even though Professor Somebody does not appear to be that interested. In that kind of encounter, what matters is to demonstrate that progress has been made, that impersonal theories and methodologies are in alignment. The inexorable logic of temporal progression is encapsulated in the very notion of ‘providing an update’. This being here with Annie is not one of those hierarchically coded interactions that commonly occur between those styled as Reader (with a capital R) and lecturer. Just now she appreciates how Annie is comfortable with a small ‘r’, that she is a reader at heart. A reader with a small ‘r’ is a quiet professional who does not impinge on her early career counterpart’s hopes and imaginations, as wild or modest as they are, with persistent invocations of seniority in relation to her juniority. (The latter term seems awkward, as if it doesn’t get out in public enough.) This was what she said to Annie in response to her curiosity about ‘enough is enough’. How senior (white) people tend to speak to her like everything that comes out of their mouth is a droplet of wisdom worthy of quotation and everything cohering in her racialized head worthy of correction. These routine exchanges in the Anglophone academy carry with them an implicit expectation that she should content herself with being a consumer of knowledge and not a co-producer. Nini tends to go quiet on occasions like these, not by choice, as she is well aware that her quietness only serves to reinforce a Western stereotype of demure Eastern femininity. She has seen how being quiet affords those around her the confidence to pin her down further, to keep her at a distance, to place her firmly on the receiving end. So much so that when she ventures to speak about her work, she has to endure not only being questioned about the conceptual or methodological detail, but also about the fundamental worth of her experiential understanding. 207

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‘How can you be so sure in those moments that your anger is politically evoked?’ ‘How do you know if your anger speaks to that of other women of colour?’ ‘Aren’t there also oppressive forces against women in the Taiwanese context and not just the UK?’ ‘Would you say you are an angry person generally?’ ‘I just don’t understand it.’ These were common responses to hearing about her inquiry into anger after she risked as far as to clarify that she’s interested in the kind of anger that is provoked by intersectional oppression at work, in life. She believes that this kind of anger has the potential to re-configure the social, interpersonal and institutional into emancipatory spaces in which she can be both passionately engaged and authentically quiet without feeling coerced into mute acceptance of a singularly framed ontology of the Other. Her wildest hope, on the rare occasions when she dares to name it, is that by exposing ‘the apparent gestures of mastery and certitude behind every production and assertion of the stereotype’ (Cheng, 2006: 101) she, and all the ‘Others’, can defy the status quo and break free from the colonial grip on the social imagination. This means tearing down the barriers placed by white people in charge that limit the representation of racialized forms of lived experience and banish her as a ghost-like other from relations of equitable exchange. But either as ‘the thingness of persons’ or ‘the personness of things’ (Cheng, 2017: unpaginated), she is never meant to speak like this, like she has a mind of her own, like her pain is real. Sitting there with Annie, Nini can no longer keep track of what has been thought or said. Yet it is in this apparently unproductive mano-a-mano, which is so exhilaratingly different from the routine elaboration of ‘pathways to impact’ and ‘knowledge exchange’, that here she is finally able to let her thoughts arise unrestrained and unsuppressed – and to be surprised by the creative vitality of the process of thinking itself. ‘Impingement?’ Ah yes, she was talking to Annie about impingement. Impingement and Ethical Loneliness To be alone, according to Winnicott (1953, 1958), is a capacity which should not be taken for granted. The capacity to enjoy being alone arrives as a developmental triumph only after the child has weathered the storms of pain, insecurity and anxiety associated with the inevitable psychological tasks in early life. In essence, these amount to the process of differentiating and separating oneself from others. In brief, the capacity to be alone is acquired as part of a developmental process in which the child gradually comes to experience herself as existing independently from the mother. She is gradually able to forego the all-embracing, comforting sense of oneness with the mother, as the one who adapts to the child’s needs. The mother’s caring adaptation and continual centring her child as what truly matters strengthens with time the child’s inner security, preparing them for an eventual break away from the maternal universe towards coming to ‘discover [their] own personal life’ (Winnicott, 1958: 418). Breaking away from being engulfed by the mother allows the child to begin to explore the surrounding world as full of uncertainty and exciting newness. It allows the child fully to experience herself as the creative nucleus that conjures up an internal world and develops a deeper understanding of the external world as a place of co-habiting with others. It is in this sense that Winnicott believes that our capacity to be alone gives rise to our capacity to engage in social relationships. Yet, maternal adaptation can never be a perfect act. A mother is also a real person confronted by multifaceted challenges of life which limit her ability to always get it right with her child. Winnicott knows this 208

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well and reassures that the ‘good-enough’ mother depends ‘on her devotion, not on cleverness or intellectual enlightenment’ (Winnicott, 1953: 94). It is her devotion that enables the child to conjure a representation of a soothing motherly presence that can be invoked for a sense of safety and reassurance when encountering the unknown. If a good-enough mother is a devoted mother who cares for her child because she believes she deserves it, impingement reveals the breach to such a devotion. Impingement emerges by way of the mother’s continuous disruption rather than strengthening of the child’s process of self-discovery. She makes the child realize that his or her developmental needs are subordinate to her own happiness, and their welfare secondary to her own. A child can be enabled by good-enough mothering to gain confidence in exploring the external world which appears to correspond to their ‘own capacity to create’ (Winnicott, 1953: 95). Yet a child can also be made aware through the process of impingement of the need to develop ‘a false life built on reactions to external stimuli’ (Winnicott, 1958: 413). In the latter case, a child is coerced to adapt to environmental demands in order to survive in a world which they come to perceive as indifferent to their needs, values and desires. Garbo’s dictum ‘I want to be alone’ articulates the seeking of an enjoyable, relaxing state of solitude as what nurtures creativity and self-discovery. In contrast, ‘I want to be let alone’ can be heard as a distraught cry that draws attention to the impinging Other and to an environment that is at best indifferent and at worst hostile, and in which the individual is held responsible for the fulfilment of their unending desire. (No) Last Words The university is not Hollywood. Fame and stardom do not typically generate sufficient means to support an early exit at thirty-five, as we jokingly remarked early on. However, like the denizens of Hollywood, academics chase recognition and endure the existential mayhem constituted by the impingement that arises from routine measurements of individual success in terms of their public appeal. Academics are increasingly expected to adapt and adjust, requirements that have gained fresh impetus in the era of Covid-19, and to identify themselves with a specialist comfort zone that is then made readily accessible to the highest bidder. They need to ensure that they never stray beyond it. This is a daunting prospect for those with a long way ahead of them. The road ahead seems faintly silhouetted by tacky fluorescent signs announcing, ‘you said, we did.’ How do we hold on to a vision of academic labour that is more expansive and eclectic, offering more scope for curiosity and playfulness? ‘It is hard and sad to be alone, but sometimes it’s even more difficult to be with someone.’ This certainly rang true for us as co-authors. Notions such as ‘strategizing’, ‘smart working’ and ‘student satisfaction’ leave a sour aftertaste and only serve to entrench our desire to be let alone, at a time when we face the manifold challenges of coming together to respond to the aftermath of the pandemic. It is tempting to regard solitude as the way out, as the only way to harness the emotional and conceptual resources necessary to resist entrapment in lifeless ‘productivity’. As we have discovered, all too often the latter proves to be sterile and unproductive. Yet we gradually became aware that being ‘let alone’ was not the whole story. But we struggled to find our voice, or more precisely our pitch. We found ourselves facing the same challenges that Edward Said pointed out in his 1993 Reith Lectures on representations of the intellectual: 209

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the intellectual ought neither to be so uncontroversial and safe a figure as to be just a friendly technician nor should the intellectual try to be a full-time Cassandra, who was not only righteously unpleasant but also unheard. (Said, 1994: 69) We have attempted to forge a link between the psychoanalytic idea of impingement and the cultural-political issues of contemporary university. This has led us to conclude that our capacity to enter into meaningful relationships with others, either in social spaces or in solitude, also depends on our capacity to protect ourselves from ‘damaging forms of relating as those develop in political processes and institutions’ (Levine, 2017: 69). The latter are certainly in evidence in an institutional climate in which mistrust has become the default setting. The capacity of academics to enthuse, inspire and challenge future generations is premised upon a culture of trust, in which we are let alone in order that we may generate explorative spaces where thinking becomes possible – alone and together. In this sense, thinking is aligned with the ‘quieter epistemic virtues’ outlined by Pirrie (2019). Thinking is a necessary antidote to blind ideological assimilation. It beckons us to ‘surrender ourselves to the uncertainty of the elements and to open ourselves to a perceived mystery’ (Pirrie, 2019: 65). This is what drew us to academia in the first place. This is our heart’s desire: to lecture, read and write, to withstand conformity and to ride the generative tension between value and knowledge that plunges us towards research praxis that is unafraid of what feels too ‘close to home’ (Pirrie & Fang, 2020). The things that matter most for quiet professionals, namely, an ‘unquenchable interest in the larger picture . . . making connections across lines and barriers . . . refusing to be tied down to a specialty . . . caring for ideas and values in spite of the restrictions of a profession’, cannot be moved by profit or reward (Said, 1994: 76). We have both felt lost and out of place in the maelstrom of latecapitalist ideals sugar-coated in the discourse of efficiency, productivity and sustainability, and, in the pandemic era, of mindfulness, ‘headspace’ and well-being. How we respond to the normalization of oppressive violation in the form of impingement is an existential and a wider ethical inquiry that is reserved for another chapter – or indeed for action that extends beyond text. For now, we have chosen to embody quietness as a form of non-engagement with the impinging agenda that requires us to produce and reproduce like battery hens. Quietness is our way of living with and attending to the disquiet that we experience as a result of refusing to live a ‘false life built on reactions to external stimuli’ (Winnicott, 1958: 413). We go on, doggedly, alone and together. As impossible professionals, we steadfastly refuse to learn our lesson. We fail to comply with the incessant demand to sell our services to the highest bidder. We are not immune to the state of ethical loneliness that has afflicted others who have been ‘refused the human relation necessary for self-formation and thus is unable to take on the present moment freely’ (Stauffer, 2018: 26; italics added). Self-formation amounts to far more than the impoverished forms of ‘self-aggrandisement’ (Pirrie, 2019: 70) brought about by the relentless logic of competition that pervades the contemporary academy. Self-formation, in our view, speaks more to the explorative praxis within human relations towards reaching out to what ‘made a call on our thinking attention’ and to ‘the manner in which it took us in and held us’ (Pirrie, 2019: 70). In a final act of mischief, for now, we slip out from under the yoke of the quiet professional and reinstate amateurism as the ancillary virtue of the unquiet intellectual. Only thus can we speak truth to power, rather than genuflect to the truth of power. For now, we embrace, we wave each other goodbye and resolve to continue our adventures in a new chapter. At this point in the volume, our readers have the opportunity to do the same.

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Part III

Loneliness



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Part III

Introduction Christopher A. Sink

As Stern adroitly proposed in his Introductory chapter, the concepts of solitude, silence and loneliness are deeply rooted in human experience and personhood. He speaks to their interconnectedness and divergences. Framing the chapters in Part III, Stern documents the ways loneliness, in particular, manifests itself across various disciplines, including the social sciences, fine arts, spirituality, as well as philosophy and literature. Drawing inspiration from Stern’s clarifying work and others, contributors to Part III of the book further explore the multilayered notion of human loneliness. From their chapters, we discover that loneliness is not a modern notion, but one that scholars and lay authors alike have long reflected upon. It is central to our psychological nature (psyches) and, in a philosophical sense, to our ways of being (McDaniel, 2009; Mijuskovic, 2012). In fact, this phenomenon and perhaps its polarity – a heightened sense of community and sociability, are fundamental to human personhood. Positive psychology reinforces this notion, suggesting that meaningful human contact and other social connections (e.g. human to animals) are essential to flourishing and healthy development (Lopez et al., 2018). Although Stern defined loneliness, and other writers in Part III provided their own perspectives, the phenomenon essentially relates to the manner in which individuals experience, process and respond to the perceived lack of meaningful human interaction and intimacy. More specifically, loneliness is a dysphoric condition that may result from the incongruity between a person’s ideal and real social relationships (Cacioppo & Cacioppo, 2012). As the contributors to Part III aptly point out, loneliness is not a circumscribed phenomenon, but one that is perhaps ubiquitous, in one form another, among humans (Cacioppo & Hawkley, 2009). It is experienced across the age spectrum, ethnicities, genders and cultures. Loneliness is also found in communal and individualistic societies, sometimes with alarming consequences on day-to-day functioning. Although debatable, in Western nations, most noticeably, severe loneliness appears to have reached crisis levels, with the percentages of the afflicted stretching roughly from 5 to 15 per cent, depending on the international study and the people groups surveyed. During the Covid-19 crisis and the isolation accompanying it, these loneliness statistics may be much higher. Clearly, the research points to the need for concrete action. However, to minimize ineffective strategies being attempted, scholars, health practitioners, policymakers and

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laypeople should first grasp the broad trends and gradations of the phenomenon from a variety of theoretical, philosophical, research and practical frames of references. These perspectives as authored in Part III provide a robust foundation to plan, implement, manage and assess loneliness prevention and intervention strategies. Importantly, most chapters include implications for effective treatment. Readers will note the chapters, as alluded to earlier, reflect various disciplines, and, thus, the underlying messages conveyed by contributors will overlap to some extent as well as diverge. For instance, most chapters include some musing about the philosophical undercurrents of loneliness (e.g. James and Krakowiak, Horowski). Several chapters are more subjective or qualitative in focus and analysis (e.g. Dubas), while others emphasize the synthesis of large-scale quantitativefocused studies (e.g. Sink, George-Levi et al.). These adopt more of a social-psychological lens to analyse pertinent loneliness research. Of course, these differing approaches for the most part complement each other and make for interesting reading. To summarize the contents of Part III, it commences with several chapters that provide a rich and nuanced philosophical backdrop to loneliness, assuming varying conceptual angles. Mijuskovic’s leadoff Chapter 16 entitled ‘Consciousness and loneliness’ addresses key philosophical concepts (e.g. metaphysics and dualism, subjective idealism in relationship to reflexive self-consciousness and transcendent intentionality). These are at least implicitly connected to real-world loneliness. Significantly, the author suggests that persons have to believe in the self for the notion of loneliness to have any real meaning. The role of the person shapes the interpretation of loneliness. Later, Mijuskovic borrows from Hume’s doctrine of a universal human nature indicating that loneliness is part of our very essence. The development and the nature of consciousness and its relationship to loneliness are considered alongside a discussion of existential loneliness. He draws upon Sartre’s philosophical orientation, suggesting that the state of loneliness is perhaps a by-product of our radical freedom to make personal choices and thus live as we choose. In closing, the philosophical-psychological roots of the phenomenon are addressed from the narrow lens of psychoanalytic or Freudian literature. He argues that the ‘fear of loneliness and the desire to secure intimacy are the two most powerful motivational drives in both human consciousness and associations’. Sink, in the following chapter (Chapter 17), broadens Mijuskovic’s discussion exploring the psychological implications of loneliness from an ecosystemic perspective. As such, the topic is examined through the various psychosocial structures that impact individuals’ functioning commencing outward from their intrapersonal dynamics to their interpersonal worlds, and then ultimately to the indirect established forces (e.g. governmental agencies and policies, education) influencing loneliness. A research-based psychological definition of loneliness is provided, adding to philosophical orientation of the previous chapter and others. Various large-scale, global research studies are reviewed on the prevalence rates and risk factors associated with the phenomenon, as well as the psychological and health ramifications of loneliness. Couched within a multisystemic or social–ecological framework, Part III addresses real-world prevention and intervention/treatment options that can be implemented at the local levels. Pertinent resources to assist sufferers, family members, clinicians, as well as policymakers are provided. Chapters 18 and 19 are well aligned, offering readers a thorough developmental perspective on the topic, citing largely Western sources. Specifically, the contribution of George-Levi et al. on the emergence and expression of loneliness in children and youth magnifies Sink’s 214

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discussion of the psychology of loneliness. The foundations of loneliness during childhood, including risk and protective factors, are included. Moreover, it provides an expansive look at various models (e.g. the social needs and the cognitive discrepancy models) and sources (e.g. temperament, attachment, entitlement, environmental characteristics) of loneliness beginning at an early age. For school-based support personnel, the authors review the elements and processes that contribute to the socially isolating nature of educational institutions. Continuing with the highly relevant discussion, loneliness and the role online communication (e.g. social media) are examined. Finally, the narrative elucidates useful resources needed for loneliness prevention and intervention. The following contribution by Dubas (Chapter 19) examines post-adolescent (adult) loneliness. Interestingly, she investigates the topic from a phenomenological-qualitative research lens, and in the process recounts for readers the narrative-thematic data analysis method. She was able to obtain various thought-provoking themes from ten adult participants (ages ranging from twentythree to sixty-seven years; eight women and two men) from Łódź, Poland. Specifically, the narrative begins with a historical and philosophical exploration of the experience of loneliness, reflecting on pertinent language and related notions (e.g. ‘aloneness’, ‘together’ and ‘solitude’) and the ‘process’ by which they evolved into the concept of loneliness. Next, the theoretical assumptions related to her investigation, or what I might designate as explanatory constructs (ideas) underlying her qualitative analysis, are outlined. These include: (a) ‘together and alone’ as the key context in interpreting aloneness; (b) ambivalence and oscillations of aloneness; (c) ontological source of aloneness and (d) shaping aloneness. Her overarching research question was: What does the loneliness of the studied adults look like particularly in the context of the two initial situations: Together or Alone? Dubas reported six major themes from the respondents’ narratives. The participants (1) had differing views on what is meant by aloneness and loneliness; (2) experienced loneliness from the perspective of time; (3) discussed various memories of experiences from childhood that shaped their views of aloneness and loneliness in adulthood; (4) expressed other significant events forming aloneness and loneliness in adulthood; (5) shared about their interpersonal relationships as the context of their loneliness and (6) spoke about the importance of learning about life during their loneliness experiences. Brief research and practical implications round out the chapter. Horowski in Chapter 20 takes up the topic of the ‘Morality of loneliness’ or the threat of loneliness and its relationship to individuals’ moral decision-making. This contribution includes both nuanced moral philosophy and ‘helpful’ practical discussions for those readers who desire everyday applications. For example, he alludes to the fact that loneliness provides commonplace moral dilemmas that necessitate resolution; in the process, human choice and conditioning play their parts in these circumstances. The basic assumptions underlying the philosophical analysis are also elucidated for the reader. For instance, Horowski argues that ‘the actions of particular persons are not always consistent with their beliefs about their moral obligations in given situations’. Further, he contends: ‘I do not attribute to aloneness as such a positive or negative moral value. I perceive aloneness on an ontic level as a morally neutral state.’ Essentially, the chapter is divided into three parts. The introductory segment explores the distinctions between morality and moral reasoning. Part 2 considers the associations between ‘moral decision-making in the context of the threat of loneliness’, and the closing portion delves into the ‘making moral decisions after experiencing loneliness’. Within the chapter, the topic of ‘forgiveness of loneliness 215

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as a condition for striving for good’ is also addressed. This is a salient area of reflection especially in light of current moral circumstances. With Chapters 21 and 22, the contributors present on various geriatric issues related to loneliness. Wray (Chapter 21) focuses largely on the constructs of ‘communication’ and ‘social reserve’ within the context of elderly loneliness and dementia. Subsequently, Iwański’s more applied chapter speaks directly to loneliness issues and the effective caring of the elderly (Chapter 22). In particular, Wray’s introduction to her chapter examines key challenges this population faces, including physical and social limitations and the need for adaptive skills to improve coping. Perhaps most difficult for seniors is the onset and progression of dementia, which often leads to the awareness of diminishing social relatedness and increasing social isolation and loneliness. After explicating this challenging condition and its symptomatology, Wray transitions into a complex and poignant discussion of ‘communication and the role of context’. Her major thesis in Part III appears to be: ‘communication is a mechanism for making improvements to our physical, cognitive and/or emotional state that would otherwise be beyond our control.’ This conceptual argument is later further bracketed to the ‘real world’ of dementia and the concomitant disruptions in human communication, which negatively impact sociability and connectedness. Prior to enumerating various remediation strategies, Wray also tackles the linkages between ‘loneliness and the absence of self-determination’ with dementia patients. In doing so, the various types of loneliness (e.g. emotional, social, existential) documented in previous chapters are related to this debilitating condition, including its communication-inhibiting processes and systems. Within this context, various forms of ‘reserve’ (e.g. emotional, cognitive, social) that act as protective factors are examined. She recommends that support professionals focus on alleviating loneliness and enhancing well-being through creation of what she labels ‘emotional and social reserve’. For practitioners especially, several examples of how this might be achieved are described. Iwański’s follow-up contribution expands the previous discussion, where the conversation shifts to the broader population of senior citizens and their need for support and assistance with everyday functioning, and with reducing their sense of loneliness. The chapter is divided into three segments. First, the author conceptually situates the key issues at stake, providing a helpful definitional, demographic, sociological, psychological and socio-economic backdrop for the ensuing narrative. For example, elderly solitude versus loneliness (and its dimensions: situational, developmental and internal), independence and dependence, as well as health, health care, and caregiver concerns are considered. Iwański’s then provides a research summary of the ‘various aspects, problems and issues related to loneliness in the advanced age’. In closing, like Sink and other contributors to this volume, the author offers several exemplary practical and systemic (macrosocial and household care) remediation and intervention recommendations to alleviate the negative dimensions of loneliness. At the macrosocial level, for example, he argues, not surprisingly, that public support systems (social security, education, geriatric health, social services, housing, etc.) must be reformed to better serve the needs of the elderly. Social policy in regard to this population must be re-examined and redrafted as well. Finally, the suggestions for improvement in elderly care progress to the interpersonal or individual level. Iwański offers ‘hands-on’ ideas, for instance, to assist caregivers to provide effective support for seniors who are institutionalized. In closing out Part III (Chapter 23), James and Krakowiak look at the intersections between mortality and loneliness and grief. This chapter considers key dimensions related to loneliness 216

Introduction

and how the condition affects disparate age groups. The authors contextualize the narrative from a Western and European mindset, addressing first the relevant parameters and theories involved in the concepts of attachment, loss and bereavement. Subsequently, various characteristics of loneliness and their connections to grief across the lifespan are considered. The chapter provides a fairly lengthy section addressing the implications for practice. At a macrosocial level, grief and loneliness associated with loss are framed within the establishment of ‘compassionate communities’, a holistic bereavement support model. The goals are to inspire members of the community to (1) provide mutual assistance to alleviate feelings of isolation; (2) generate meaningful social and emotional interactions; and (3) improve their overall health and wellbeing. This operational framework is then applied to various age groups, including the elderly and school-age children. This latter discussion is particularly useful for educators, for it provides tangible suggestions for grief interventions. To recap, this section focuses on the consequential topic of loneliness, a human condition appearing in most, if not all, people groups. The construct is explored from a variety of conceptual frameworks and disciplines, ranging from philosophical to social scientific perspectives. Readers are encouraged to grasp the notion in the broad tapestry of personhood and how it meshes and juxtaposes from the contours of solitude and silence. The chapters should be considered in light of previous scholarship related to loneliness, such as The Handbook of Solitude: Psychological Perspectives on Social Isolation, Social Withdrawal, and Being Alone (Coplan & Bowker, 2014) and Mijuskovic’s (2012) Loneliness in Philosophy, Psychology, and Literature. It should be noted that the rapid advances in biophysiological and neuropsychological dimensions of loneliness (e.g. Quadt et al., 2020) are not fully addressed in this volume. The editors suggest interested readers might include these areas to their knowledge base, for they provide another key thread of understanding to this very human experience.

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Consciousness and Loneliness Ben Lazare Mijuskovic

Introduction Ever since the Old Testament, the dialogues of Plato, the treatises of Aristotle and throughout the millennium of the Christian Age of Faith until Descartes’s cogito and his declaration, ‘I think ergo I am lonely’, Western humankind has struggled with human loneliness. Most researchers studying loneliness claim that it is caused by empirical conditions, including familial, environmental, cultural, personal and even chemical imbalances in the brain and, therefore, transient and avoidable. By contrast, I contend that it is constituted by the innate principles of Kant’s reflexive self-consciousness and Husserl’s paradigm of transcendent intentionality. After the biological drives to secure air, water, nourishment, sleep – and before sex – are met, the instinct to avoid loneliness and secure intimacy are the most primary motivations animating human consciousness and desire. In the 1950s, two philosophers, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, became especially relevant in expressing the human condition, the first in a religious context and the second in an atheistic one. This was followed by the essays and novels of Camus and Sartre, both writing during and the aftermath of the Second World War. In a famous essay published in 1949, in contrast to the traditional philosophies prevalent in Western culture, namely Materialism, Dualism, and Idealism, Sartre defined existentialism as a philosophy that stressed ‘concrete human existence before his presumed universal essence’. He characterized human existence in terms of ‘meaninglessness’, people as ‘condemned to freedom’ in creating values for ‘themselves alone’ and their intrinsic loneliness. Since 1977, I have been studying loneliness in relation to human consciousness (Mijuskovic, 1977, 2012, 2015). The present chapter attempts to account for the loneliness of humans in terms of consciousness. The Evolution of Loneliness in Human Consciousness Untold eternities ago, first animate cellular existence emanated from the lifeless dross of material existence. And subsequently, during other eternities, consciousness arose and prevailed over animate life. Dualism assumes, as a first principle, that there are two expressions of reality,

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two independent substances: there is extended and inert matter and there are immaterial and active consciousnesses. Although humans share self-consciousness and even loneliness with higher order animals, they alone create and formulate motivational and cognitive judgments of value concerning loneliness and intimacy. Loneliness in Ancient Greek Thought As early as Plato, he describes the solitary nature of human consciousness in a prescient passage in the Sophist as it foreshadows the forthcoming perennial Battle between the Gods and the Giants, between the Idealists and the Materialists, and the emphasis on the self in opposition to the forces of nature. Stranger: What we shall see is something like a Battle of the Gods and Giants going on between them over the quarrel over reality. Theaetetus: How so? Stranger. One party is trying to drag everything down to earth out of heaven and the unseen, literally grasping rocks and trees in their hands; for they lay hold upon every stock and stone and strenuously affirm that real existence belongs only to that which can be handled and offers resistance to the touch. They define reality as the same thing as body, and as soon as one of the opposite party asserts that anything without a body is real, they are utterly contemptuous and will not listen to another word. Theaetetus: The people you describe are certainly a formidable crew. I have met a number of them before now. Stranger: Yes, and accordingly their adversaries are very wary in defending their position somewhere in the heights of the unseen, maintaining with all their force that true reality consists in certain and intelligible and bodiless Forms. In the clash of argument, they shatter and pulverize those bodies which their opponents wield, and what others allege to be true reality they call, not real being, but a sort of moving process of becoming. On this issue an interminable conflict is going on between the two camps (245E–246E). (Plato, 1964, from Cornford, 1964: 228–32) Both historically and conceptually, Western philosophy evolved and bifurcated into two camps. First, according to the principles of materialism (all that exists is matter plus motion); mechanism (both the world and people operate mechanically); determinism (everything is the result of physical and/or psychological causes and their effects and therefore predictable and controllable); empiricism (all our ideas are the result of precedent sensations and experience); phenomenalism (both the self and the world are constructions of sense data or qualia and their psychological associations); behaviourism (all human conduct directly results from incoming stimuli and their responses) and the current neurosciences (‘the brain is a computer’ programmed from without). The opposing camp, by contrast, supports dualism (both extended inert matter and monadic immaterial and active psyches, souls, selves, minds, or egos exist); rationalism (some concepts and inferences are known independently of experience, a priori); idealism (all that exists is known reflexively, self-consciously and therefore it is mental, mind dependent, or spiritual); while concluding that the soul or mind possesses either ethical free 219

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will or epistemic spontaneity. Accordingly, both subjective idealism and existential loneliness follow. Metaphysically, the critical issue is ‘whether senseless matter alone can think?’ And more specifically, if the two substances, body and soul, or matter and mind share no property, predicate or accident in common, how can the mind (a) epistemically know the body and (b) how can the two substances interact? John Locke tried to reconcile rationalism, empiricism and theism and rather paradoxically proposed that conceivably God could have created ‘thinking matter’, thus committing himself not only to empiricism and rationalism but to dualism as well (Aaron, 1965: 142–7). Locke speculates that conceivably God has the power to create thinking matter; and his argument with Stillingfleet led to serious charges by others who accused him of atheism, deism and Socianism, the doctrine that the soul of a person is naturally mortal, that both the soul and the body expire at the time of death, and that it is God’s gift of grace alone that ‘elects’ certain souls to be immortal (Yolton, 1968: 8, 18, 132–7, 143–53, 163). Today the ‘problem of dualism’ continues. Russell in his ‘critical naturalism’ phase argues that when two ‘dry’ elements, hydrogen and oxygen, are combined, a ‘wet’ element can result. But the problem is that in this example, both are physical, thus avoiding their qualitative differences. Since Descartes, the ‘problem of dualism’, the mind–body paradox has bedevilled philosophers. Malebranche, a priest and disciple of Descartes, formulates a theory of ‘occasional’ interaction between thoughts and bodily motions, in which God intervenes by coordinating and synchronizing the two acts and motions. When I think of raising my arm, God physically raises it for me. The intervention is a continuous miracle. Leibniz posits a ‘pre-established harmony’ between selfenclosed spiritual substances he calls Monads. When it appears that I’m talking to someone, actually the entire ‘exchange’ is confined within our respective spheres of self-consciousness. Meanwhile, Berkeley, an ‘immaterialist’, called the ‘Irish Malebranche’, maintains that ‘we see all things and events in God’; it is God who orders ‘the laws of nature’ and the apparent exchange between souls. He denies dualism; there is only God and human souls, a view that Hume criticized as ‘admitting of no refutation but producing no conviction’. All three thinkers appeal to theistic ‘solutions’ in their failed attempts to solve the mind–body paradox. Hume, however, contends that because of the radical physical contingencies that abound in the universe, however inexplicably, it accounts for the immaterial, mental existence of impressions, ideas and perceptions. In short, he substitutes Nature for God. It is matter plus motion that accounts for and ‘produces’ – not causes – the rise of consciousness. He accomplishes this by challenging the determinacy of the causal principle. Human thought itself consists of mental impressions and ideas, collectively called perceptions. So there is both things and ideas. This maxim is that an object may exist, and yet be no where; and I assert, that this is not only possible, but that the greatest part of beings do and must exist after this manner. An object may be said to be no where, when its parts are not so situated with respect to each other, as to form any [Epicurean] figure or quantity; nor the whole with respect to other bodies as to answer to our notions of quantity or distance. Now this is the case with all our perceptions and objects, except those of sight and feeling [i.e. touch]. A moral reflection cannot be plac’d on the right or on the left hand of a passion, nor can a smell or sound be either of a circular or square figure. These [mental, ideal] objects and perceptions, so far from requiring any 220

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particular place, are absolutely incompatible with it, and even the imagination cannot attribute it to them. (Hume, 1955: 235–6) Hume asserts both the reality of physical objects and mental perceptions, and he draws a critical distinction between physical quantities versus moral qualities, ‘reflections’ (earlier). But then exactly what is the relation between our mental perceptions and their external physical counterparts; and if it is indeed an empirical fact that the material external realm produces our mental spheres of consciousnesses, how is it conceivable that both life and consciousness arise from dead matter? His answer follows: Any [material] thing may produce any thing. Creation, annihilation, motion, reason, volition; all these may arise from one another, or from any other object we can imagine . . . Where objects are not contrary [i.e. contradictory to a mutual existence], nothing hinders them from having constant conjunctions, on which the relation of cause and effect totally depends. (Hume, 1955: 173) Again: [T]o consider the matter a priori, any thing may produce any thing, and that we shall never discover a reason why any object may or may not be the cause of any other, however great, or how ever little the resemblance may be betwixt them . . . If you pretend therefore to prove a priori that such a position of bodies can never cause thought; because turn it which way you will, ‘tis nothing but a position of bodies; you must by the same reasoning conclude, that it can never produce motion’. (Hume, 1955: 247) And lastly: We must separate the question concerning the substance of the mind from that concerning the cause of its thought; and that in confining ourselves to the latter question we find that by the comparing of their ideas, that thought and motion are different from each other, and by experience, that they are constantly united; which being all the circumstances that enter into the idea of cause and effect, when apply’d to the operations of matter, we may certainly conclude , that motion may be and actually is, the cause of thought and perception. (Hume, 1955: 248) Think of it this way, as humans, we need air to breathe and live, but fish live under water. Two millennia ago, the Epicureans posited an element of chance as the atoms occasionally swerved in their motions resulting in unpredictable events, both material brains and quantitative thoughts. Hume was well versed in the philosophy of Epicurus. Can senseless matter think? The critical question is whether we can reconcile matter and consciousness? Chomsky, in his discussion of my treatment of Stillingfleet’s controversy with Locke, cites my discussion of the Locke–Stillingfleet debate by connecting it to Hume. In Hume’s judgment, Newton’s greatest achievement was that while he ‘seemed to draw the veil from some of the mysteries of nature, he shewed at the same time the imperfections of the mechanical [i.e. materialist] philosophy; and thereby restored Nature’s ultimate secrets to that obscurity, in which they will ever remain’. On different grounds, others reached the same conclusions. Locke, for example, had observed that motion has effects ‘which we can 221

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in no way conceive motion able to produce’ – as Newton had in fact demonstrated. Since we remain in ‘incurable ignorance of what we desire to know about matter and its effects’, Locke concluded ‘no science of bodies is within our reach’ and we can only appeal to ‘the arbitrary determination of that All-wise Agent who has made them to be, and to operate as they do in a way wholly above our understanding to conceive’. (Chomsky, 2009: 169; Mijuskovic, 1974) Locke is a dualist, as we indicated, but Hume is not, although he is committed to a qualified ‘dual substance’ theory. He is not a dualist in the traditional, Cartesian sense because he denies the reality of the self, of a personal, that is a moral identity. He affirms the immaterial nature of the mind – its mental impressions, ideas and perceptions – but he rejects any suggestion regarding its alleged simplicity, unity, identity and continuity. In The Achilles of Rationalist Arguments (Mijuskovic, 1974), I trace the Platonic history of the simplicity argument, its immaterial essence, from Plotinus to Kant and its implementations concluding that the soul is immortal; a unity of consciousness; endowed with a uniquely personal identity; and serves as the ultimate premise for subjective idealism. While adopting the principle that it is quite possible – indeed actual – for ‘senseless matter to think’, Hume rejects the implication that it has anything to do with the unity of consciousness or personal identity. I may venture of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in perpetual flux and movement. Our eyes cannot turn in their sockets without varying our perceptions. Our thought is still more variable than our sight; and all other senses and faculties contribute to this change; nor is there any single power of the soul, which remains unalterably the same perhaps for one moment. The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, repass, and glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations. There is properly no simplicity in it at one time, nor identity in different; whatever natural propensity we may have to imagine that simplicity and identity. (Hume, 1955: 252–3) The section Of personal identity directly follows Hume’s criticisms Of the immateriality of the soul doctrine universally advocated by the Platonic dualists, rationalists and idealists. But Hume is both an empiricist and a phenomenalist; the world and the ‘self’ are both merely fortuitous and contingent constructions of mental sense impressions, appearances. But Hume, of course, is not denying that we have a psychologically induced belief in our own identity, but it is not based on either an intuitive (Cartesian) or a rationally demonstrative inference (Leibniz and the Cambridge Platonists). But notice in the previous passage, Hume confesses that he is conscious of a succession of perceptions that ‘pass, repass, and glide away’. The problem is, as Kant will later catch him up on, he admits experiencing a succession of moments, but this can only transpire if – and only if – there is an ‘underlying’, substantial, identical, unified and continuous self to bind the successive impressions within the same consciousness. This acknowledgement of an immanent time-consciousness can occur only if there is a stable self to be aware that although the moments are indeed fleeting, nevertheless they are connected in the same consciousness. Hume’s second problem is, who is watching the theatre? He has focused on the contents of consciousness – that 222

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play before him--but not his acts. He is concentrating on what ‘he’ is observing but not on who is doing the ‘seeing’. Technically, Hume is classified as a qualified dualist and more specifically he is a Minimal Mental/Physical Dualist. Minimal Mental/Physical Dualism does not entail Strong Mental/Physical Dualism. It is possible for the same individual to have both mental and physical properties; it may be the case that whenever an individual subject has a mental property it also has a physical property. Consequently, Hume argues that only impressions of color and solidity and the extended objects they compose can stand in spatial [and material] relationships. Only they, among our objects of experience, are capable of local conjunction. No other impressions, be they impressions of sensation or impressions of reflection, are extended or spatial. These nonspatial impressions confirm the maxim ‘an object may exist and yet be nowhere’ (T. I, iv 5, 235). One could hardly have a more fundamental distinction. Since extension was held by many philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and since for Hume only extended things and their indivisible unextended components are capable of standing in spatial relationships and local conjunction, it is not far-fetched to claim that Hume is implicitly here developing a fundamental and irreducible [dualistic] distinction between mental and physical entities. (Cummins, 1995: 448–9) After having said all this, after the publication of the Treatise, in his Appendix, Hume honestly pleads and confesses his uncertainty about the self and its substantiality. Most philosophers seem inclin’d to think that personal identity arises from consciousness; and consciousness is nothing but a reflected thought or perception. The present philosophy, therefore, has so far a promising aspect. But all my hopes vanish, when I come to explain the principles that unite our successive perceptions in our thought or consciousness. I cannot discover any theory, which gives me satisfaction on this head. In short, there are two principles that I cannot render consistent; nor is it in my power to renounce either of them, viz. that all our distinct perceptions are distinct existences, and that the mind never perceives any real connexion among distinct existences. Did our perceptions either inhere in something simple and individual, or did the mind perceive some real connexion among them, there wou’d be no difficulty in the case. For my part, I must plead the privilege of a sceptic, and confess, that this difficulty is too hard for my understanding. (Hume, 1955: 635–6) The issue of the existence of a substantial self is of paramount importance to a theory of loneliness. Simply put, without a self, loneliness is meaningless. If there is no self and then to declare that there is loneliness without a self is a contradiction in terms. In conclusion, I believe Hume is right about the contingent possibility that both matter and motion can spontaneously create thought; that under certain conditions, inanimate matter can ‘produce’ animate living cells. Under further circumstances, immaterial consciousness can emanate from animate life. These are qualitative possibilities that can naturally but spontaneously arise from the dross of material existence. Now we are in a position to address how these mental feelings qua perceptions are related to Hume’s doctrine of a universal human nature and especially to loneliness. So, he declares his conviction regarding loneliness. 223

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In all creatures, that prey not upon others, and are not agitated with violent passions, there appears a remarkable desire of company, which associates them together, without any advantages, they can ever propose to reap from their union. This is still more conspicuous in man, as being the creature in the universe, who has the most ardent desire of society and is fitted for it by the most advantages. We can form no wish, which has not a reference to society. A perfect solitude is perhaps the greatest punishment we can suffer. Every pleasure languishes when enjoy’d a-part from company, and every pain becomes more cruel and intolerable. (Hume, 1955: 363) Thus, although Hume has argued against the rationalist conception of a ‘personal identity’, he nevertheless takes advantage of his belief in his ‘self’, as a fiction of the imagination, as sufficient enough to allow him to formulate a principle of human nature describing a natural and universal sentiment of affection for his fellow man. But once more, without a stable self, loneliness is inconceivable. Subjective Idealism: Reflexive Self-consciousness Currently the neurosciences are the ‘coin of the realm’ in philosophy. They have essentially reduced human consciousness to the brain, to billions of discrete neurons and electrical synapses. Their reigning metaphor analogizes the brain to a computer. Nowadays cognitive behavioural psychology rules in the social sciences. It is a deterministic system that endorses a stimulus-response paradigm of the brain. Two important losses follow: human freedom and human values. The first reply to neuroscience is Kant’s reflexive self-consciousness. Moore, in ‘The Refutation of Idealism’ (Moore, 1903), defines idealism as the conception that the entire universe is fundamentally mental, spiritual or mind dependent. I would also add it is actively spontaneous, reflexively self-conscious and transcendentally intentional, that is purposive. Although Leibniz, Kant and Hegel are all three idealists, Leibniz’s and Kant’s idealisms are subjective, while Hegel’s is objective, that is social and therefore intersubjective. In what follows, I will concentrate on the former pair of thinkers. Leibniz calls himself the ‘first idealist’ with good reason. In Sections 1–23 of his Monadology, he formulates a number of critical assertions all aimed against the materialist’s counter thesis that ‘senseless matter can think’. Rather he supports the active immateriality, the ideality of consciousness; its active dynamic nature; its unity; its identity; its temporal quality; its unconscious aspects and the fact that it is always thinking even in deep sleep (contra Locke and later Hume). According to Leibniz, the soul or Monad is defined by its quality of simplicity, that is its immateriality, unity, identity and continuity. He further describes it as ‘windowless’. ‘The Monads have no windows through which anything can come in or go out’ (Section 7). The Monads are not in space and they act solely within their own subjective spheres of consciousness; and through an ‘internal’ sense of time-consciousness. Basically, as spiritual atoms, they are presumably uniquely created by God. Ellenberger credits Leibniz as one of the founders of dynamic psychiatry (Leibniz, 1968; Ellenberger, 1970: 312). Latta (in Leibniz, 1968) endorses this connection by connecting Leibniz’s theory of spontaneity with intelligence through Aristotle’s concepts of dynamis and energeia. 224

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Aristotle, in Metaphysics 1075a, describes the Unmoved Mover as ‘absolutely’ immaterial, active, self-conscious, self-contained and self-sufficient. It only reflexively thinks about Itself; its thoughts are immanently spontaneous, that is they have no external causes. Correspondingly, so are the thoughts of a person during certain periods of time, when the subject of its thinking and the objects of its thoughts are the same, of himself or herself. In other words, if both God’s thought and of the ‘windowless’ Monad are ‘confined’ within its own acts of self-consciousness, it follows that the soul possesses an internal – and solitary – spontaneous origination. Metaphysically, it is absolutely lonely. This is true of God and it is true of man. Since, then thought and the object of thought are not different in the case of things that have not matter, the divine thought and its object will be the same, i.e. the thinking will be one with the object of its thought. A further question is left – whether the object of the divine thought is composite [i.e. material]; for if it were, thought would change from passing from part to whole. We must answer that everything that has not matter is indivisible [i.e. immaterial=simple=a unity] – as human thought, or rather the thought of composite [bodily] beings, is in a certain period of time . . . so throughout eternity is the thought that has itself for its object. This premise, that thinking is both immaterial and spontaneously active, that is reflexively selfconscious, is the ultimate assumption of all dualists, rationalists and idealists. And it clearly implies the absolute, solitary existence of both the divine Being as well as of the human soul. None of the ancient Greek philosophers, neither the Pre-Socratics, Plato, Aristotle, Stoics, nor Epicureans (‘nothing comes from nothing’), nor the Manicheans believed that creation ex nihilo was possible. It is St Augustine who most notably speculates that it is God who first created time and space before there was anything else. It is also St Augustine who endows people with free will, separating the will and the intellect, and anchoring the soul in a fideistic immortality. It is Descartes, who belongs to the Augustinian Oratory and is the first to assign an epistemic – as opposed to an ethical and religious – role to free will in affirming or denying cognitive judgements (Fourth Meditation, Descartes). As Kantian commentators Kemp Smith and Paton suggest, in many ways Kant remained strongly influenced by Leibniz’s subjective idealism. As Kemp Smith further comments in his Commentary on Kant, we can emphasize either his phenomenalist tendencies or his subjective idealism (Kemp Smith, 1962). In what follows, I intend to promote the latter interpretation. According to Kant, there are two quite different ‘existences’: (a) there is the mind’s sphere of subjective self-consciousness; and in opposition there stands (b) a separate reality, which is unknowable and inaccessible to the human mind; a realm of transcendent noumenal entities. (For Kant, this justifies us in postulating the existence of God; free will; and the immortality of the soul for ethical reasons.) Previously to Kant, however, truth followed Aristotle’s version of a ‘correspondence criterion’ of truth; truth occurred when the concept ‘in’ our mind ‘matched’ the independently existing object ‘outside’ our mind. Kant’s reversal, his Copernican Revolution, instead forces the external realm of reality to conform to the subjective structures of our mind; its ‘intuitions’ of space and time and the relational ‘categories’ of subject–object, cause–effect and so on; in short, the ‘noumenal reality’ must conform, adjust to how the mind organizes the incoming ‘data’; it must be organized by the innate, spontaneous and active structures contributed by the mind and thus ultimately establishing a certain ‘coherence’ – instead of a correspondence – 225

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within the mind. It’s like the mind putting on a pair of blue glasses; then everything would appear blue, although in reality it is unknowable. We recall Hume’s paradigm of the ‘self’ as a disunified ‘bundle of impressions’, as a disunified flux of successive impressions. Kant’s answer to Hume consists of two arguments based on two different premises. Both premises are grounded in transcendental acts of spontaneity. The first involves the immanent temporality of time-consciousness. Newtonian scientific time is caused by an objective, that is intersubjective measurement of the movement of physical objects through space. But internal human time is constituted – not caused – through a threefold, spontaneous, synthetic a priori, series of acts unifying (a) the intuitive apprehensions of space and time; (b) holding the apprehensions in the imagination and (c) retaining them in self-consciousness. Whatever the origin of our [subjective] representations, whether they are due to the influence of outer things, or are produced through inner causes, whether they arise a priori, or being appearances have an empirical origin, they must all, as modifications of the mind, belong to [our temporal] inner sense. All our knowledge is thus finally subject to time, the formal condition of inner sense [as opposed to our outer sense of space]. In it they must all be ordered, related, and brought into [a unified] relation. This is a general observation which, throughout what follows [i.e. the remainder of the entire Transcendental Analytic], must be borne in mind as being quite fundamental. (Kant, 1987; cf., Husserl, 1966) The second answer to Hume relies on the principle of the unity of consciousness, the transcendental theory of apperception. It must be possible for the ‘I think’ to accompany all my representations; for otherwise something would be represented to me which could not be thought at all, and that is equivalent to saying that the representation would be impossible. That representation that can be given prior to all thought is entitled intuition. All the manifold of intuition has therefore a necessary relation to the ‘I think’ in the same subject in which this manifold is found. But this representation is an act of spontaneity, that is, it cannot be regarded as belonging to sensibility. I call it pure apperception [i.e. reflexive self-consciousness as opposed to empirical reflective observation in the manner of Locke and Hume], to distinguish it from empirical apperception [i.e. reflection] . . . The unity of this representation I likewise entitle the transcendental unity of self-consciousness, in order to indicate the possibility of a priori knowledge from it. For the manifold representations, which are given in an intuition, would not be one and all my representations, if they did not all belong to one self-consciousness. As my representations (even if I am not conscious of them as such), they must conform to the condition under which alone they can stand together in one universal self-consciousness [i.e. mine], because otherwise they would not all without exception belong to me. (Kant, 1987: B 132–3, from Critique, second edition) Several comments are in order. First, it is obvious that I am able – short of psychosis – to know my representations are mine and not yours. Second, it is critical to realize that empirical reflection is a mere observation of something other than the self, whether it’s a perceived object or a thought; metaphorically a perception is directionally a straight line going forward; I observe or visualize some thing or an event separate from my self. By contrast, reflexion is circular as Aristotle states (Meta., 1075a earlier); the self knows its conceptual ‘object’ as essentially a 226

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unity within its self. Again, dualists, rationalists and idealists assume that all consciousness is cognitively ideal; it knows that it knows and what it knows. This is possible only because of the spontaneity of synthetic a priori acts binding, relating, unifying distinct concepts indelibly together within the self. Short of that, ‘we’ are nothing but loose, disconnected bundles of Humean impressions (cf. Critique, A 97 first edition; A 50=B 74, A 51=B 75, A 66=B 93; and second edition, B 131–2, Kant, 1987). How vital the act of spontaneity is to idealism, phenomenology and existentialism can be ascertained by consulting the texts of Fichte’s Science of Knowledge and Vocation of Man; Hegel’s Science of Logic; Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation (1969), where it is disguised as the noumenal Irrational Will; Husserl’s Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology (1962); Bergson’s Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness and Sartre’s Transcendence of the Ego. In two previous articles, I explore the historical and conceptual development of consciousness from its earliest roots in Plato until Kant’s speculation on the subconscious, which is situated well below Freud’s theory of the unconscious. Leibniz and Freud’s ‘dynamic’ theories of the unconscious, in contrast to Kant’s principle of the subconscious, are basically mnemonic; it essentially consists of repressed memories that are in principle retrievable through Freud’s interpretation of dreams and free association. If they were not, then Freud could not pretend that psychoanalysis is therapeutic. Kant’s subconscious is not; it spontaneously and subconsciously grounds thought itself; time-consciousness; and the unity of consciousness; and in turn the categories of the understanding. I know of no enquiries more important for exploring the faculty which we entitle the understanding, and for determining the rules and limits of its employment, than those which I have instituted in the second chapter of the Transcendental Analytic under the title Deduction of the Concepts of the Pure Understanding. They are those which have cost me the greatest labour – labour, as I hope not unrewarded. This enquiry, which is somewhat deeply grounded, has two sides [i.e. depths]. The one refers to objects of pure understanding and is intended to expound and render intelligible the objective [i.e. Newtonian, scientific] validity of its a priori concepts . . . The other seeks to investigate the pure understanding itself, its possibility and the cognitive faculties upon which it rests; and so deals with it in its subjective aspect. Although this latter exposition is of great importance for my chief purpose, it does not form an essential part of it. For the chief question is always simply this: what and how much can the understanding know apart from all experience? not – how is the faculty of thought itself possible? The latter is, as it were, the search for the cause of a given effect, and to that extent is somewhat hypothetical in character (though I shall show elsewhere it is not really so); and I would appear to be taking the liberty simply to express an opinion. (Kant, 1958: Critique, A xvi–xvii; italics mine) What occurs here is extremely important. The task of the Objective Deduction is to ‘deduce’, that is to formally ‘justify’, transcendentally ‘validate’ Newtonian science, the realm of phenomenal appearances. But the Subjective Deduction was originally intended to go beneath, below the formal transcendental categories; to establish Newtonian science; but not to validate ‘how is thought itself is possible’. This promise was never fulfilled. What Kant is suggesting is that there is something spontaneously deeper, inaccessible, subterranean below not only human consciousness 227

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but even deeper than his famous transcendental concepts – some secret spontaneous activity; dark, subterranean and fathomless initiating thought itself. Kemp Smith’s comments follow. Kant appears to be unwilling to regard the ‘understanding’ as ever unconscious of its activities. Why he was unwilling, it does not seem possible to explain. To the end he continued to speak of the understanding as the faculty whereby the a priori is brought to consciousness. In order to develop the distinction demanded by the new Critical attitude; he had therefore to introduce a new faculty capable of taking over the activities which have to be recognized as non-conscious. For this purpose, he selected the imagination giving to it the special title, the productive [i.e. creative and spontaneous] imagination. (Kemp Smith, 1962: 264) Kant is speculating about a ‘non-conscious’, that is subconscious force of inaccessible epistemic? emotional? origin; something well below the Freudian unconscious. But Schopenhauer, who admired and endorsed Kant’s noumena-phenomena distinction, transformed his predecessor’s spontaneity into a subterranean Irrational Will, a source of narcissistic and egoistic evil (Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and the madness wrought of loneliness, Kurtz’s ‘The Horror, the Horror’; Jung’s ‘shadow self’). Think of the ocean as a metaphor for Schopenhauer’s conception of human consciousness. Sometimes the surface waters are calm and placid; at other times choppy and wavy; and still at other times stormy and tempestuous. But as one descends more deeply into its dark and icy depths, unrecognizable species of life take on increasingly grotesque forms of existence both primitive and unpredictably adaptive. The surface symbolizes the phenomenal aspects of consciousness, while the most profound depths stand for the noumenal Irrational Will. For Schopenhauer, the Will ‘indirectly operates’; it ‘influences’ behaviour in this world but in-itself, noumenally it is directly inaccessible; only its phenomenal appearances are manifest; and they deceive us by appearing to be causally determined. In our shared phenomenal world, we are all locked together by deterministic physical and psychological causes. But the underlying, unfathomable Will in-itself remains completely unknowable and decipherable to human thought and penetration. The world is my representation: this is a truth valid with reference to every living and knowing being, although man alone can bring it into reflexive self-conscious abstraction . . . Everything that in any way belongs and can belong to the world is inevitably associated with this being conditioned [i.e. caused] by the subject and it exists only for the subject. The world is my representation [i.e. appearance]. (Schopenhauer, 1969) And then he adds: Thus, everyone in this twofold regard is the whole world itself, the microcosm; he finds its sides whole and complete within himself. And what he thus recognizes as his own inner being also exhausts the inner being of the whole world, the macrocosm. Thus the whole world, like man himself, is through and through representational [i.e. illusionary, fictitious], and beyond this there is nothing . . . Every Will is a Will directed to something; it has as an object, an aim of its willing; what then does it ultimately Will, or what is that Will which is shown to us as the being-in-itself of the world striving after? The principle of sufficient reason, of which the law of motivation is a [representational] form, extends only to the phenomenon, not to the thingin-itself . . . But if he were asked why he wills generally, or why he wills to exist in general . . . he would have no answer; indeed, the question would seem to him absurd . . . In fact, the 228

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absence of all aim, of all limits, belongs to the essential nature of the Will-in-itself, which is an endless [purposeless] striving. (Schopenhauer, 1969: 162–4) The Will constantly persists throughout our lives through our superficial, surface ‘motives’ erroneously deluding us into thinking we are in control while the Will expresses itself by manifesting itself as a blind impulse, an obscure, dull urge, remote from all direct knowableness. It is the simplest and feeblest mode of [representational] objectification. But it appears as such as a blind urge and as a striving devoid of any knowledge. (Schopenhauer, 1969: 149) To be sure, one of the interpretational problems with Schopenhauer is he wants it both ways; both that the Will is unknowable and noumenal and yet in the same moment that it is ‘immanently operative’ within our ordinary self-consciousness but unknown by it (Schopenhauer, 1969: 272–3). This dominance of the Will constitutes the most fundamental base of all our desires and sexual lusts; and it directly leads to a narcissistic form of egoism; it is the source, ‘the starting point of all human conflict and evil’ (Schopenhauer, 1969: 331; cf. 339, 369; II, 236, 538); and Schopenhauer includes both physical evil, that is pain and suffering, and moral evils in his pessimistic and extensive catalogue of all the ills that can befall humans in this realm of travail and tears. But he is especially critical of moral evil as it pertains to egoism, essentially his term for Freud’s narcissism. Hence, we are all innocent to begin with and this merely means that neither we nor others know the evil of our own nature. This appears only in the motives, and only in the course of time do the motives appear in knowledge. Ultimately, we become acquainted with ourselves as quite different from what we a priori considered ourselves to be; and then we are alarmed at ourselves (Schopenhauer, 1969: 296). He is especially pessimistic and critical of the philosophical optimism prevalent in Leibniz (and Rousseau), whom he regards as ‘the founder of systematic optimism’. In the long run, however, it is quite superfluous to dispute whether there is more good than evil in the world; for the mere existence of evil decides the matter, since the evil can never be wiped off and consequently can never be balanced, by the good that exists along with it or after it. (Schopenhauer, 1969: 576) We are reminded in this connection of Aquinas’s preamble to his Five Arguments for the existence of God, which scholastically begins with the position he intends to defeat, namely the atheistic premise that God does not exist precisely because there is evil in the world. And it reminds us of Dostoyevsky’s claim that even God cannot compensate for the evil done to an innocent child; for even God cannot change the past (Albert Camus, The Plague). But against the palpably sophistical proofs of Leibniz that this is the best of all possible worlds, we may even oppose seriously and honestly the proof that it is the worst of all possible worlds. For possible means not what we may picture in our imagination but what can actually exist and last. Now this world is arranged as it had to be, if it were capable of continuing with great difficulty to exist; if it were a little worse; it would no longer be capable of continuing to exist. Consequently, since a worse world could not continue to exist, it is absolutely impossible; and so this world itself is the worst of all possible worlds. (Schopenhauer, 1969: 583) 229

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Subjective Idealism Continued: Brentano’s and Husserl’s Phenomenological Transcendent Intentionality The original allusion is to Plato’s conflict between the Giants and the Gods, between the Materialists and the Idealists, and between Neuroscience and Phenomenology. Consciousness exhibits two spontaneous activities that are synthetically a priori related: reflexive self-consciousness and transcendent intentionality. The first is metaphorically circular and the second is unilinear. The latter is defined within the metaphysical dualism of Brentano, who accords to it a scholastic heritage. Its acts are essentially mental and ideal. Let us in conclusion summarize the results of the discussion about the difference between mental and physical phenomena . . . We spoke of extension, which psychologists have asserted to be the specific characteristic of all physical phenomena, while all mental phenomena are supposed to be unextended. This assertion, however, ran into contradictions which can only be clarified by later investigations. All that can be determined now is that all mental phenomena really appear to be unextended. Further we found that intentionalinexistence, the reference to something as an object, is a distinguishing characteristic of all mental phenomena. No physical thing exhibits anything similar. We went on to define mental phenomena as the exclusive object of inner perception: they alone, therefore, are perceived with immediate evidence. Indeed, in the strict sense of the word, they alone are perceived. On this basis we proceeded to define them as the only phenomena which possess actual existence in addition to intentional existence. Finally, we emphasized as a distinguishing characteristic the fact that mental phenomena which we perceive in spite of all their multiplicity, always appear to us as a unity, while [extended] physical phenomena, which we perceive at the same time, do not appear in the same way as parts of one single phenomenon. (Brentano, 1973: 97–8) Accordingly, it is the reflexive act of self-consciousness that secures the unity of consciousness. Husserl picks up on this definition. Intentionality actively targets eidetic meanings; consciousness is always aimed ‘at’ or ‘about’ or ‘of’ some meaning beyond or transcendent to its self; but it always operates in an essentially Cartesian or Kantian framework. 28. The ‘Cogito’. My Natural World-about-me. It is then to this world, the world in which I find myself and which is also my world-about-me that the complex forms of my manifold and shifting spontaneities of consciousness stand related: observing in the interests of research the bringing of meaning into conceptual form through description; comparing and distinguishing, collecting and counting, presupposing and inferring, the theorizing activity of consciousness. Related to it likewise are the diverse acts and states of sentiment and disapproval, joy and sorrow, desire and aversion, hope, fear, decision, and action. All these together with the sheer acts of the Ego, in which I become acquainted with the world as immediately given to me through spontaneous tendencies to turn toward it and to grasp it, are included under the one Cartesian expression: Cogito. (Husserl, 1962: 93) I view Husserl as an idealist before his Heideggerian influence through the eyes of Paul Ricoeur (Ricoeur, 1966, 1967; Spiegelberg, 1965). 230

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Husserl’s phenomenology is descriptive as opposed to explanatory and causal as in the prevailing psychologies of his day. It seeks to understand ‘things’, that is feelings, judgements and inferences from within; to gain insight into the intentional nature of human consciousness. 122. The Thema: A synthesis can be carried out step by step; it becomes, it arises through original production [i.e. Kant’s creative, productive, synthesizing imagination]. This primordiality of becoming [of emanating, of arising] in the stream of consciousness is a quite peculiar one. The thesis or synthesis becomes, in so far as the pure Ego actually advances step by step; itself lives in the step and [temporally] ‘steps on’ with it. Its free spontaneity and activity consists in positing; positing on the strength of this or that positing as an antecedent or consequent and so forth; it does not live within the theses as a passive indweller; the theses radiate from it [i.e. the Ego] as from a [spontaneous primary source of generation. (Husserl, 1962: 315) And he concludes in the Cartesian Meditations by citing The Delphic motto, ‘Know thyself!’ it has gained a new signification. Positive science is a science lost in the world. I must lose the world by epoche [by a suspension of cognitive judgments] in order to regain it by a universal self-examination. As Augustine exclaims, ‘truth dwells within.’ (Husserl, 1962) Existential Loneliness Although Sartre’s principle of intentionality is indebted to Husserl, existentialism is essentially a counterpoint to traditional philosophical systems. Systems promote organized bodies of knowledge. Existentialists, by contrast, are classically committed enemies of the ‘system’, ‘the human herd’. This is a direct consequence of each of their unique loneliness and freedom. In the conclusion to Being and Nothingness, Sartre synthetically and a priori ties together the dualistic modes of being. If the in-itself and the for-it-self are two modalities of being, is there not a hiatus [i.e. a dualism] at the very core of the idea of being. And is its comprehension not severed into two incommunicable distinct parts by the very fact that its extension is constituted by two radically heterogeneous classes? What is there that is common between the being which is what it is, and the being which is what it is not and which is not what it is . . . We have just shown in fact that the in-itself and the for it-self are not juxtaposed. Quite the contrary, the for-itself without the in-itself is a kind of abstraction; it could not exist any more than a color [with quality] could exist without form [and extension] or a sound without pitch and without timbre. A consciousness which would be a consciousness of nothing would be an absolute nothing. But if consciousness is bound to the in-itself by an internal [a priori] relation doesn’t this mean that it is articulated with the in-itself so as to constitute a totality and is it not this totality which would be given the name being or reality. Doubtless the for-itself is a nihilation but as a nihilation it is; and it is in a [synthetic] a priori unity with the in-itself. (Sartre, 1966: 760–1) ‘All colours are extended’ is used by both Plato in the Meno and Husserl as a prime example of a synthetic a priori relation and judgement. Consciousness and Being are dualistically bound. In Sartre’s Existentialism Is a Humanism, he proposes three existential categories (as opposed to Kant’s transcendental dozen) as defining characteristics of the human condition. First freedom: 231

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a person is radically free; neither God, nor human nature nor conventional society can dictate what he ought or ought not to do. People have no pre-existing essence; their existence precedes their essence; they are thrown into the world without rhyme or reason; and each individual is condemned to be free and therefore solely responsible for their choices and values. Second forlornness: each of us is absolutely free; condemned to freedom; no one can help us; indeed absolute loneliness is a necessary condition for freedom. Third despair. Both people and the universe are meaningless; meanings and values are created and not discovered by reason nor experience. Each of us is solely morally responsible for our choices. Psychological Roots of Loneliness Freud, in Civilization and its Discontents, introduces the speculative concept of the ‘oceanic feeling’ as descriptive of the newborn infant’s first stage of consciousness (Part 1; it corresponds to Hegel’s stage of Sense Certainty in the Phenomenology of Spirit, 1977). Initially it serves as a sense of power; of allness; of boundless totality; illusional self-sufficiency; and delusional omnipotence. It, the unconscious ego, is everything. As the infant develops, it separates its self from a realm of objects, and more specifically it focuses its desire first on the mother’s breast as an inanimate object, an intra-psychic relation. This is the beginning stage of self-consciousness, self-object relation; Hegel’s stage of Perception. As the child further develops, it realizes that the breast is attached; it is owned by a conscious being that has the power either to offer it or withhold it. This sets up a struggle for dominance, essentially what Hegel describes in the Phenomenology as the Lordship and Bondage dynamic, the Master–Slave relation; a completely narcissistic desire for recognition of its desires at the expense of other self, hence interpersonal conflicts (Hegel, 1977). Freud, in Totem and Taboo, connects these libidinal wishes and fantasies with narcissism, with a controlling desire within the self for unlimited gratification coupled with a drive for greater aggrandizements and recognition. In Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, this is a direct inheritance from ‘the original narcissism in which the childish ego enjoyed selfsufficiency’ (Freud, 1959: 42). The first article written on loneliness as a topic in its own right is by a psychoanalyst, Zilboorg (1938). According to Zilboorg, ‘narcissism denotes that state of mind, that spontaneous attitude of man, in which the individual chooses himself instead of others as the object to love; he is inwardly in love with himself and seeks everywhere for a mirror in which to admire and woo his own image’. Let us follow the beginning manifestations of the human infant. The child lies in the crib, quiet, self-contained, serene and satisfied despite its precarious weakness and despite its total dependence on others. All it has to do is to whimper, or squirm for a moment; it is omnipotent because it always gets what it wants. Here is the seed of that which is stored away in the invisible recesses of the adult human psyche as a paradoxical conviction of our greatness and all-importance, of our essential megalomania (page 52). Let us turn to the crib where the omnipotent baby peacefully rules the world with serene mastery. During its waking hours, it is always observed by mother or nurse; it is played with, amused, taken care of, talked too, cuddled and otherwise made to feel that the universe is ready to serve its pleasure. It learns the joy of being loved and admired before it learns anything about the outside world . . . Here we have the 232

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quintessence of what later becomes a narcissistic orientation; a conviction that life is nothing but being loved and admired – hence self-centeredness, self-admiration, which are difficult to keep in abeyance in later life when adulthood asserts its allegiance to civilization. But now he wants things; he is restless and unhappy; angry, and anxious and the tragedy resolves itself with the first angry suck of his mother’s milk. Here is the nucleus of hostility, hatred, impotent aggression of the lonely and abandoned. Here is the beginning of that intolerant anger which some day civilization will have to subdue, or mental illness will discharge. And if we continue from crib to nursery and kindergarten, we can observe, scene by scene, the enactment of the story entitled narcissism, loneliness, and aggression. (Zilboorg, 1938: 53–4) Zilboorg is establishing a synthetic a priori (i.e. universal and necessary) relation between narcissism>loneliness>and hostility. Generally, we tend to think that lonely people are sad, depressed. They are but at first, they are angry, and more than willing to punish others for their suffering. Indeed, he contends that when loneliness is especially intense or prolonged, it will frequently result in murder and/or suicide. He also believes that not only are individuals narcissistic but also groups as well as nations. We need to remember that he is writing in 1938; already the shadow of Nazism under Hitler is on the military horizon in 1933 with its predictable aftermath of concentration camps and the Holocaust (Arendt, 1994 [1951]: 474–5). In René Spitz’s writings on very young infants, he traces the physical and emotional disintegration of unnurtured children, who were hospitalized so that their absent mothers could work in factories in support of the war effort in England. Half of the children under the age of one died while others were unable to develop adequately both physically and intellectually (Spitz, 1945, 1952, 1965). The second article on loneliness is authored by Fromm-Reichmann, another psychoanalyst, and published posthumously (Fromm-Reichmann, 1959; Mijuskovic, 1977). While Zilboorg connects loneliness with hostility, Fromm-Reichmann relates it to the inability to communicate with others as she describes an incident with a catatonic patient, who she is unable to engage until she utters the phrase, ‘That lonely?’ But her second remarkable discovery is that loneliness and anxiety are identical. I have postulated a significant interrelatedness between loneliness and anxiety, and I have suggested the need for further conceptual and clinical examination of loneliness in its own right and in its relation to anxiety. I expect as a result of such scrutiny, it will be found that real loneliness plays an essential role in the genesis of mental disorders. Thus, I suggest that an understanding of loneliness is important for the understanding of [all] mental disorders. (Fromm-Reichmann, 1959) Fromm-Reichmann’s ex-husband, Fromm, in the Art of Loving, adds guilt and shame to the dynamic equation of loneliness (Fromm, 1956: 8). Elsewhere I have argued that loneliness exhibits a genus to species relation in which loneliness is the genus and the dynamics of hostility, anxiety, depression, incommunicability, rejection, abandonment, jealousy, alienation (Hegel, Marx), estrangement (Hegel, Kierkegaard) and so on are its species. Therapeutic Measures Empirical psychology aspires to be a science. All sciences are committed to a cause-andeffect determinism. This is true of psychoanalysis, behaviourism, cognitive behaviourism and 233

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neuroscience. For the last three therapies, often medication is subscribed since the brain is the locus of the treatment. But if the remedy is to address consciousness rather than the brain, then a more humanistic approach is required. Every significant concept must have a significant opposite. The opposite of loneliness is intimacy, not love. I can love someone, but they don’t love me. Intimacy implies a mutual sharing of emotions and thoughts. The force and efficacy of intimacy lie in empathy. The concept of empathy first originated as an aesthetic theory in Theodor Lipps. As the mind spontaneously projects itself into the object; it invests it with both desire and emotion as it derives its sense of pleasure. Attention is not aware of itself; it is directed outward to the object and absorbed therein. But what gives aesthetic import to the object, what constitutes the ground of its enjoyment is the very act of contemplation. The mind unconsciously enlivens the outward form by fusing into it the modes of its own activity – its striving and willing, its sense of freedom, power, and moods. This may be analyzed into two factors. First, there is the inner activity, the emotion, the feeling of freedom; second there is the external sensuous content as bare physical stimulus. The aesthetic object springs into existence as a result of these two factors. The ego unconsciously supposes itself at one with the object and there is no longer any duality. Empathy simply means the disappearance of the twofold consciousness of self and object. (Lipps, 1960) But the problem is that this account is one-sided. The subject enjoys the aesthetic pleasure of freedom and beauty while the painting remains both static and mute. Husserl, in the Cartesian Meditations, Fifth Meditation, attempts to exploit Lipps’s concept in order to overcome the solipsistic position he had placed himself into. But he can only do so by appealing to mediate ap-presentation and analogical inferences that violate his own principle of eidetic intuition (Husserl, 1960; Spiegelberg, 1965a). The correct interpretation of empathy is that it is constituted by two minds feeling, thinking and acting as one; anything less is either sympathy or pity. Intimacy is grounded in mutual trust, mutual respect in decision-making, and mutual affection. It consists in a reciprocal sharing of feelings, meanings and values. These synchro-syntheses result in two hearts and minds feeling and thinking ‘as one’. Imagine, for example, a young couple experiencing the death of their only child. Their identical grief is shared. Or an older closely knit couple learning that one of them has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Their despair is constituted as a unity. Conclusions Metaphysics One of the advantages of committing to a principle that begins with the immaterial, spontaneous activity of consciousness, with the mind, is that it allows for a wide range of metaphysical systems, including dualism, idealism, mysticism, spiritualism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. The other advantage of dualism is that it not only distinguishes the soul from the body but it also differentiates material quantities (science) from mental qualities and, therefore, science from ethics and aesthetics. By reducing everything to matter, motion, causality, mechanism and determinism, psychoanalysis, cognitive behaviourism and the neurosciences, they have collectively eliminated both ethics and aesthetics. Hume and Kant agree, for different reasons, that the Ought and the Is are distinct; that Values and Facts share nothing in common. It follows, as Max Weber argues, that science cannot tell us what is good and beautiful; indeed, everything that makes life worth living. Science can only tell us how to make a hydrogen bomb but not why or when to use it. 234

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Science is meaningless because it has no answer to the only questions that matter to us: ‘What shall we do? How shall we live?’ The fact that science cannot give us this answer is absolutely indisputable. The question is only in what sense does it give ‘no’ answer, and whether or not it might after all prove useful for somebody who is able to ask the right question (Weber, 2004). The enormity of this question is impossible to overestimate. For a full appraisal of Husserl’s real concern one must know of the great debate in Germany of the early twenties raised by Max Weber’s lecture on ‘Science as a Vocation’, in which he had stated bluntly that science was constitutionally unfit to settle questions of value and hence questions of meaning for personal existence. (Spiegelberg, 1965b; Weber, 2004) Values are qualitative; science is quantitative. Subjective Idealism I am convinced that the two motivational poles – namely avoiding loneliness and securing intimacy – are best understood by gaining insight into Kant’s principle of reflexive self-consciousness and Husserl’s paradigm of transcendent intentionality. Existential Loneliness Perhaps the earlier bonds that held humans ‘organically’ together were simpler but more solid and durable. Now with eight billion human atoms flying in all directions and the threat of increasingly destructive nuclear wars, we may have learned something much darker and dangerous since 1945. Loneliness is highly personal and so is intimacy. Consequently, I fear it is not possible to solve issues of loneliness by implementing psychiatric medication, general interventions, social outreach, housing, transportation and so on. In sum, I believe that the fear of loneliness and the desire to secure intimacy are the two most powerful motivational drives in both human consciousness and associations, and that neuroscience’s reductive model of the brain as a computer is grossly inadequate in causally explaining the richness, complexity, depth and the mystery of loneliness. Freud’s genius is grounded in his ability to formulate a coherent and comprehensive system accounting for our human desires, as they reach for sexual satisfaction, as based on a single principle: dynamic libidinal energy. But the problem with psychoanalysis rests on three grounding principles. First, Freud’s determinism as he posits psychic traumas as causing neurotic symptoms. Second, these days sexual repressions are very much on the wane, while the extensity and intensity of global loneliness has increased exponentially. Third, Freud’s goal is to free individuals from sexual inhibitions and seek more pleasure. He is not concerned with judgements of value, only happiness and unhappiness. But my induction in adding tertiary judgements and principles of valuations in the equation brings to the fore the freedom in each of us to guide our goals in life in consideration of the twin value poles between loneliness and intimacy. Today, there is a growing global pandemic of loneliness. Today there are eight billion highly mobile and transient nomadic individuals aimlessly circumnavigating the globe, uprooted and isolated. The ancient ties of extended families, tribes and communal organizations have disappeared and been replaced by employment competition (Marx), and the stability of the family has been compromised by divorce and single-parent households.

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The Psychological Implications of Loneliness Christopher A. Sink

Introduction Through the ages much has been written about loneliness or social isolation. One can find, for example, a myriad of literary, philosophical, religious/spiritual and psychological works addressing these related topics. Over one’s lifespan, it is not uncommon for individuals to report feelings of remoteness, loneliness, alienation or the lack of community. Research, in fact, suggests that youth, young adults, the aged and marginalized groups (e.g. people with disabilities, ethnic/cultural minorities, the LGBTQ population) in many countries are particularly vulnerable to feelings of significant loneliness and social isolation (DiJulio et al., 2013; HoltLunstad, 2018; Rokach, 2019). The topography of loneliness is multifaceted, suggesting multiple, interconnected causative factors as well as several theoretical or conceptual models that attempt to explain the phenomenon. Concomitantly, psychological and sociological research on the topic has documented its impacts on human functioning. Prolonged and profound feelings of isolation and loneliness generally have deleterious effects on one’s sense of psychological well-being and overall mental health. Most alarmingly, loneliness is not a circumscribed phenomenon affecting only a small percentage of individuals. Rather, by the mid-2010s, the situation had reached endemic proportions in various countries (John, 2018). Leading governmental figures in Britain and the United States speaking in their official capacities sounded the clarion call, alerting their respective societies for need for immediate action to stem the tide of loneliness. By January 2018, the then UK prime minister Theresa May appointed a Minister of Loneliness to create policies and programmes to deal with the crisis. During the same time period, the former US surgeon general Vivek Murthy, MD, (2020), repeatedly indicated that loneliness was also a serious health crisis in North America. Similarly, writing for the research-based American Psychological Association, Sliwa (2017) underscored Murthy’s assertion, further arguing that the prevalence of loneliness and social isolation continues to grow in the United States, and these conditions may represent a greater public health threat than obesity. Loneliness and social isolation are now global concerns in most societies.

The Psychological Implications of Loneliness

The primary aim of the chapter is to offer a primer on the psychological nature of loneliness and the ways to overcome the condition. Initially, a working definition of loneliness is provided followed by a summary of the key risk factors and prevalence rates. Next, the potential causative factors associated with this condition using a social–ecological (ecosystems) framework as a guide are elucidated. To conclude, restorative practices including positive coping strategies are addressed. Resources for further discussion and application are included as well. Definitional Considerations Given that other contributors to this volume have added their informative voice to the constructs under consideration (e.g. human solitude, silence and loneliness), we narrow our brief definitional comments to the major features of loneliness, particularly as a multisystemic human phenomenon. Characterizations of loneliness abound in literature with most relating the term to the feelings of disaffection, social remoteness and the loss of meaningful personal connections (see, e.g. Cacioppo, Grippo et al., 2015; Einav et al., 2015; Sha’ked & Rokach, 2015; DiJulio et al., 2018; Holt-Lunstad, 2018; Rokach, 2019, for literature reviews). What follows is a brief synthesis of these conceptualizations. First, according to Long et al. (2003), the concept is one of three facets of solitude: inter-directed, outer-directed and loneliness. Whereas inner-directed solitude is distinguished by the pursuit of self-discovery, self-reflection and inner peace, outerdirected solitude is operationalized by seeking intimacy and spirituality. Both manifestations are considered positive aspects of the human functioning. In the case of loneliness, the third strand of solitude, it is an undesirable or negative psychological state, one where people generally feel unhappy, embarrassment and desire to end the emotional pain associated with the condition (Long et al., 2003; Murthy, 2020). Researchers have identified three primary dimensions or types of loneliness found in various populations around the globe (e.g. Weiss, 1973; Cacioppo, Grippo et al., 2015; Murthy, 2020). Each form of social connection is needed to psychologically flourish. Most impactful, intimate or emotional loneliness arises when one loses a close confidante or cherished partner, namely, a person who that shares a strong mutual bond of fondness and trust. In other words, this dimension reflects a perceived absence of a significant other or inner group of intimates that the person relies on for emotional support during times of serious need. A person experiencing relational or social loneliness perceives the absence of quality friendships or family connections that one receives consistent social and instrumental support and encouragement from. Thus, socially lonely persons have the strong desire to establish quality friendships, social companionship and personal assistance. In the case of collective loneliness, the third dimension, lonely individuals express the periodic need for a valued and active network or community of people who share goals, aims and interests. The individual may perceive the loss of an important group identity (e.g. team affiliation) that provides limited care and friendships. More explicitly, loneliness is generally understood as a naturally occurring subjective and discomforting psychological/emotional state of being, one that most individuals experience during their lifetimes (Dykstra and Fokkema, 2007; Cacioppo & Hawkley, 2009; Holt-Lunstad, 2018). Other than the three dimensions of loneliness mentioned earlier, the condition has a number of distinguishing facets. First, ‘loneliness emphasizes the fact that social species require not simply the presence of others but also the presence of significant others whom they can trust,

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who give them a goal in life, with whom they can plan, interact, and work together to survive and prosper’ (Cacioppo, Grippo et al., 2015: 2). Second, loneliness is a dynamic experience that involves a person’s social–emotional and cognitive functioning. The social–perspectival dimension is described as a sensed incongruity between one’s current social relationships and the anticipated ones. In other words, lonely people commonly view themselves as less socially connected and supported than they would ideally prefer, often leading to emotional turmoil. Third, loneliness varies from person to person in intensity, frequency, duration and impact. Thus, the experience can be short-lived/situational or long-term/chronic in nature. The fourth characteristic of loneliness relates to the widespread nature of the condition, experienced by all societies and cultures, with relatively similar manifestations. Finally, even though there is tendency to conflate loneliness with social isolation (e.g. feeling shut off from others) and alienation (e.g. feeling shunned by others), these emotions and perceptions are not identical (Holt-Lunstad, 2017), and thus, a nuanced understanding of each construct should be attempted. Risk Factors and Prevalence Epidemiological researchers have documented the prevalence rates and risk factors contributing to the feelings of loneliness and social separation (see e.g. DiJulio, et al. 2018; Holt-Lunstad, 2017, 2018 for reviews). Representative demographic variables studied as potential risk factors are: various biophysical markers, age, partner status (married, long-term relationship, single, widowed, divorced), gender, race/ethnicity, household income, residence (renting or owning; living alone or with someone) and neighbourhood/community indicators (DiJulio et al., 2018; Office of National Statistics, 2018). Of these dimensions, age seems to be the most influential ‘risk’ factor, explaining the preponderance of variance in measures of loneliness (Shovestul et al., 2020). Interestingly, even though the elderly across the world are likely to experience loneliness, they do not necessarily experience the greatest sense of social isolation and loneliness. Research conducted with a large and comprehensive sample of US respondents, ages ten to ninety-seven years, reveals that loneliness peaks at age nineteen, namely during the developmental periods of late adolescence and early adulthood (Luhmann and Hawkley, 2016; Shovestul et al., 2020; Whitley, 2020). A national survey of English participants found similar trends; younger adults aged sixteen to twenty-four years reported feeling lonely more often than those in older age groups (Office of National Statistics, 2018). Other variables contribute to loneliness, including one’s physical and psychological health, and level of social connectedness. Physical health problems associated with increased feelings of loneliness include cardiovascular disease, malnutrition, poor sleep quality, amplified hypothalamic pituitary adrenocortical activity, obesity, shorter life expectancies and deterioration in cognitive functioning (Sliwa, 2017; Simon & Walker, 2018; Shovestul et al., 2020). Moreover, lonely adults report experiencing negative life events in the past two years (e.g. a negative change in financial status or a serious illness or injury). Other health-related behaviours, such as smoking tobacco, alcohol consumption and the use anxiolytics and antidepressants, were associated with increased loneliness. Psychosocial risk factors involve social exclusion, feelings of alienation and marginalization, and lack of social support. Loneliness, for instance, is more likely to emerge with women, single adults (those without intimate partners), divorcees, widowers, as well as those with severe 238

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financial difficulties, limited meaningful connections with others beyond the nuclear family, and inadequate technology that promotes social networking (DiJulio et al., 2018; Holt-Lunstad, 2018; Office of National Statistics, 2018). The English prevalence study mentioned earlier also reported that transitoriness in living arrangements (renting), sense of not belongingness to a neighbourhood and the lack of trust of others in their local area also contributed to respondents’ loneliness (Office of National Statistics, 2018). Stepping back from potential risk factors associated directly with individuals, as noted earlier, being part of a marginalized group increases the likelihood of experiencing loneliness. Additional community-level or systemic influences, such as level of population density and socio-economic status (SES), are robust correlates of adult loneliness (Shovestul et al., 2020). For example, people residing in low-income neighbourhoods with higher crime rates, isolated rural communities and high-density environments, especially those that lack meaningful ways to interrelate are more susceptible to loneliness. Many of these risk factors are reported in the prevalence studies summarized herein. Loneliness incidence rates are particularly well studied in Western societies (e.g. Cacioppo, Grippo et al., 2015; Beutel et al., 2017; Holt-Lunstad, 2017; DiJulio et al., 2018; Office for National Statistics, 2018) and to some extent outside these regions (e.g. China; Wang et al., 2019). Without providing too much detail, large-scale investigations repeatedly demonstrate that loneliness occurs worldwide, spanning all ages and people groups. For example, a study conducted in the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan with over 1,000 participants from each country found that a sizable percentage (US 22 per cent, UK 23 per cent and Japan 9 per cent) of respondents (eighteen years of age and older) reported: ‘they often or always feel lonely, feel that they lack companionship, feel left out, or feel isolated from others, and many of them say their loneliness has had a negative impact on various aspects of their life’ (DiJulio et al., 2018: 1). About 5 per cent of those surveyed in the three nations indicated that their loneliness was a ‘major’ problem for them. Underscoring the risk factors discussed earlier, those most likely to feel lonely or socially isolated were marginalized populations, particularly those that reported mental health issues, a debilitating chronic illness or disability, low SES and unpartnered (single, divorced, widowed or separated). A UK government-sponsored loneliness study reported similar results, suggesting that about one in five individuals suffered from loneliness (HM Government, 2018). Multiple prevalence studies have been conducted specifically with older citizens around the world. For example, a study comparing loneliness rates of seniors in Western and Eastern European countries suggested that the aged are vulnerable to the condition (Fokkema et al., 2012). Specific incidence rates of loneliness among the respondent samples aged 60 plus were: 6.3 per cent Denmark, 8.3 per cent the Netherlands, 8.5 per cent Germany, 13.4 per cent Belgium, 15.6 per cent Czech Republic, 17.8 per cent France and 20 per cent Poland. A later German survey study included approximately 15,000 respondents ranging in age from thirty-five to seventy-four years (Beutel et al., 2017). Of the sample, 10.5 per cent reported some degree of loneliness (4.9 per cent were slightly, 3.9 per cent moderately and 1.7 per cent severely distressed by feeling lonely). As noted earlier, loneliness was more common in women and those respondents who were low income, living alone or without partners (single). Finally, by way of comparison with European statistics, a 2010 survey from Statistics New Zealand indicated that 33 per cent of persons aged fifteen and above faced loneliness in the four weeks preceding the investigation (Cacioppo, Grippo et al., 2015). 239

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Other sample studies conducted with Chinese and US elderly populations found a substantial proportion of the samples were quite lonely. The Chinese researchers contacted 5,652 seniors living in rural Anhui, China, finding a pervasive (nearly 80 per cent) sense of loneliness among the respondents (Wang et al., 2019). Not unexpectedly, increased social support and healthy family functioning provided increased protection against moderate to severe levels of loneliness. The 2018 Loneliness Study sponsored by the US-based American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) showed that approximately one-third of adults aged forty-five and older reported feeling lonely (Anderson & Thayer, 2018). Clearly, loneliness is a pervasive international health issue warranting deliberate prevention and intervention efforts. Theoretical Framework In the case of loneliness, the most widely cited and comprehensive explanatory approach is grounded in systems thinking, and relatedly, social–ecological theory (Luhmann, 1982; Perlman and Peplau, 1982b, 1998; Bell, 1985; Ford and Lerner, 1992; Andersson, 1998; Schirmer & Michailakis, 2018; Holt-Lunstad, 2018). Despite the fact these ecosystemic orientations as espoused, for example, by Urie Bronfenbrenner (2005), Andersson (1998), and Niklas Luhmann (1982) differ in their disciplinary contexts, gradations and structures, they possess overlapping features. The ecosystemic framework proposed here is also aligned with (a) a family systems interpretation of loneliness (Large, 1989; Wickrama et al., 2020), (b) an ecological perspective on social exclusion (Mittler, 2013) and (c) the influence of social networks on social isolation, alienation and loneliness (Andersson, 1998). Ecosystemic Theory At their core, ecosystemic models of loneliness emphasize the importance of meaning-making or ways of observing/understanding aspects of the environment, especially by the person at the centre of intersecting social networks (Howie, 2014). Moreover, a systems framework is relevant to characterizing loneliness, for it considers the ways people ‘access’ coping mechanisms and protective factors within: (a) the self (intrapersonal system), and more broadly (b) the microsystem (e.g. immediate family and friends, co-workers, educators), (c) the mesosystem (social interactions within microsystem), (d) the exosystem (e.g. health, legal and social services, pertinent media, friends of the family, religious/spiritual and community supports) and (e) indirectly within the surrounding macrosystem (e.g. larger institutions, cultural values, customs, and laws) (Holt-Lunstad, 2018). Numerous studies have corroborated the social–ecological approach to understanding loneliness (see Andersson, 1998; Holt-Lunstad, 2018, for reviews). Chipuer (2001), for example, explored teenagers’ sense of connectedness to their school and neighbourhood communities (microsystem) and found that the variable was significantly related to their experiences of global, social, and neighbourhood/community loneliness. She suggested that adolescents’ sense of community or lack thereof (leading to loneliness) within their environmental contexts/systems (i.e. one’s locality, school) differentially impacted their psychological well-being. Other investigations with college-age (Bell, 1985) and elderly (Schirmer & Michailakis, 2018) respondents provided evidence that loneliness principally has its origins in social systems. Relatedly, lonely persons to largely report proximal (e.g. family, friends) rather than distal (e.g. community policies and 240

The Psychological Implications of Loneliness

governmental entities) factors that most influence their loneliness (Weiss, 1973; Andersson, 1998). Even though individuals may not see their loneliness as related to the ‘bigger picture’, mental health experts have documented the impact of all systems on human functioning. To further illustrate how loneliness is connected to a person’s social ecology, pertinent systems are briefly discussed next. Individual Level (the Person) At the heart of all social systems is the person (intrapersonal level), which includes, for example, one’s social skills, aspirations, motivations, coping skills, cognitive ability, emotional health and well-being, personality traits and physiology (Bronfenbrenner, 2005; Deniz et al., 2005; HoltLunstad, 2018). Numerous factors influence the ways the individual perceives and processes, experiences and copes with ‘aloneness’ or limited social connections. One crucial determinant of the long-term effects of mild to severe feelings of loneliness is a person’s level of resilience. This term describes individuals who are, despite life’s obstacles and adversities, functioning in a healthy manner (Morrish et al., 2018). Resilience is also the ability to marshal key resources to maintain one’s psychological well-being as well as draw from protective factors originating from the family and community. Should individuals have a resilient personality among other personal strengths (e.g. surgency, cheerfulness, responsiveness, spontaneity, social skills and sociability), they may manage the feelings of loneliness in a positive manner. On the other hand, if individuals suffer from a mental health condition such as chronic anxiety and depression, left untreated, their ability to handle social rejection, isolation and alienation may be compromised. With limited coping mechanisms (e.g. resiliency, competent problem-solving skills, ability to maintain social networks, help-seeking skills), feelings of loneliness may only exacerbate the person’s symptomology (Edery, 2016). Microsystem (Relationship Level) Next, the microsystem (Bronfenbrenner, 2005) or relationship level (Holt-Lunstad, 2018) includes one’s intimate partners, family/caregivers, schoolmates and personnel, friends and others. Interpersonal dynamics involved in these bonds influence one’s perceptions of loneliness and social support. From day to day, people largely report that their basic social needs are being met within their microsystem and, relatedly, they have adequate social supports (helpmates) in place (Andersson, 1998). However, loneliness often ensues when people lack the social scaffolds that provide nourishing relationships. If one’s social support is severely limited, the lonely person may experience other serious negative intra- and interpersonal consequences, and in some cases contributing to mental health disorders. Research documents the crucial role family dynamics and processes exert in promoting or mitigating loneliness (e.g. Large, 1989; Sharabi et al., 2012; Rokach & Sha’ked, 2013). If the family system is healthy, cohesive and adaptive/flexible, a child tends to cope with loneliness more effectively and the condition is less impactful on psychological functioning (Large, 1989; Sharabi et al., 2012). However, if the family is dysfunctional (e.g. overly rigid, incoherence structure), the child may experience serious and protracted feelings of loneliness. Issues that prolong loneliness are unresolved grief, pathological certainty, synchronicity, family growth and parental neglect or abdication (Large, 1989). Socially oriented organizations within a person’s microsystem are also vital to healthy development (e.g. schools, senior centres, clubs, sporting 241

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organizations). Research conducted globally indicates that for children and parents, healthy relationships and feelings of interpersonal support are forged in educational settings (e.g. El Nokali et al., 2010; Lätsch, 2018). Holt-Lunstad (2018) reviewed significant microsystem factors that influence one’s perceptions and feelings of loneliness. For example, inadequate early attachments (e.g. child– parent/caregiver connections) and other related childhood experiences within the family system, such as social isolation/neglect and parental separation/divorce, are negatively correlated with one’s perceptions of support and care. The level of social control people feel in their relationships is also associated with perceptions of social connectedness and loneliness (Deniz et al., 2005; Hawkley et al., 2009). Social control refers to the indirect (e.g. by motivating, supporting) and direct (e.g. by entreating, demanding) ‘power’ of individuals over others in relationships (parental, romantic, friends, wider family). Positive social control strategies (e.g. utilizing reasoning/ logic, positive reinforcement, modelling) to influence relationships are related with enhanced healthy behaviours and psychological well-being, and, conversely, negative strategies (e.g. using disapproval, pressure, restriction to control the relationship) are correlated with lower ratings of healthy behaviours and well-being (Craddock et al., 2015). Meso- and Exosystems (Community Level) Not only does a person’s social network include close microsystemic relationships, but it also extends to the community (meso- and exosystems [Bronfenbrenner, 2005; Holt-Lunstad, 2018]), and beyond. The mesosystem encompasses the connections and processes transpiring between two or more environments in which a person interacts (e.g. the relations between home and school, family, family members and a senior housed in an assisted living facility) (Arnold et al., 2012). For example, the mesosystem includes the parents’ and other caregivers’ work environments. Children do not directly interact with parental workplaces, but they do vicariously, for the caregiver brings home its stresses and issues. Should the caregiver be overly job focused, the child may experience the loss of caregiver intimacy and loneliness. The exosystem involves those societal structures that are relatively independent of a person’s daily life yet influence one’s social-psychological functioning (Bronfrenbrenner, 1992). These entities, as noted earlier, include, for example, educational and community-based institutions, governmental policies and support structures, and religious organizations. Other sample community factors that non-overtly contribute to feelings of social isolation and loneliness are: access to clinical health services, open spaces (e.g. parks), traffic, as well as racial and cultural integration (Golden et al., 2009; Holt-Lunstad, 2018). Macrosystem (Society-level Factors) Despite the fact this level is most remote to the individual, its components obliquely influence loneliness (e.g. Cacioppo et al., 2009; Narchal, 2012). As Holt-Lunstad, (2018) maintained, ‘Society-level factors help create a climate in which social connection may be encouraged or inhibited’ (p. 448). The macrosystem includes the values, traditions, norms and sociocultural characteristics of the larger society. If certain groups (e.g. the elderly, LGBTQ, undocumented immigrants) are marginalized by societal mores or institutional strictures, their members will experience the loss of social connectedness to the broader community.

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Psychological and Emotional Impacts Earlier the risk factors associated with loneliness were reviewed. These variables largely overlap with the psychological and emotional impacts of unsatisfying personal relationships arising from social–emotional isolation and loneliness. Global research accentuates this statement, suggesting that this condition, if prolonged or chronic, will lead to substantial challenges, including emotional distress syndrome and apprehension, impoverishment of personal relationships and perhaps serious mental health issues such as clinical depression and social anxiety (see, e.g. Andersson, 1998; Cacioppo, Grippo et al., 2015; DiJulio et al., 2018; Rokach & Sha’ked, 2013; Rokach, 2019; for reviews). Moreover, persons who feel lonely and estranged from people harbour detrimental irrational thoughts (maladaptive cognition), believing they are unlikeable, misunderstood, rejected and have limited opportunities for intimacy (Weiss, 1973). Multiple international and Western-based investigations support these contentions. For instance, DiJulio et al.’s (2018) transnational study of individuals eighteen years of age and older found that lonely respondents from Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States were more likely to feel ‘being down and out physically, mentally, and financially’ (e.g. DiJulio et al., 2018: 1). Thus, depression was the most common psychological feature associated with loneliness. Among the respondents who experienced significant loneliness feelings, most had disproportionately lower incomes and suffered from an incapacitating mental health condition (e.g. severe despondency and anxiety). Approximately 30 per cent of the participants indicated that their loneliness lead to thoughts of self-harm. Second, when unaccompanied adolescents immigrating from Russia and Ukraine to Israel were surveyed about the impacts of their experience, loneliness negatively affected their psychological well-being. These youth reported lower levels of general self-esteem, social competence and school competence, and increased emotional stress and negative body images (Tartakovsky, 2009). Third, an international cohort study conducted in Singapore with nearly 3,000 community-dwelling older adults (aged ≥ 55 years) examined the independent and interactive effects of living alone and loneliness on depressive symptoms and quality of life (Lim & Kua, 2011). Loneliness was a far more robust predictor of depression than living arrangements. Numerous Western-based studies on the psychological implications of loneliness further document a variety of serious harmful outcomes. In particular, a common finding, as with the international studies, was the prevalence of depression associated with chronic loneliness and social isolation. This symptom was reported, for example, with white Americans, ethnic minority groups (e.g. African Americans; Chang, 2018), the aged (Schirmer and Michailakis, 2018), partners in long-term (over forty years) marriages (Wickrama et al., 2020) and other subgroups. Most distressing for health professionals and family members is the reality that loneliness can contribute to premature deaths in the severely infirmed. In a five-year follow-up study of over 200 mentally intact nursing home residents with and without cancer, emotional loneliness was the most salient predictor of mortality (Drageset et al., 2013). In summary, global loneliness research documents that this condition is ubiquitous and can have mild to serious detrimental outcomes for sufferers. Psychosocial and psychophysiological development and daily functioning are impacted, affecting individuals from multiple demographic categories (e.g. privileged or marginalized citizens, the young and elderly, single or partnered, living alone or not, low and high SES). Investigations indicate that loneliness is associated with depression and lower psychological well-being and life satisfaction, but it can also have more

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‘serious’ mental health repercussions such as self-harm (e.g. social anxiety, cutting, attempted suicides, suicidal ideations, eating disorders), psychosis (e.g. schizophrenia), tendencies to experience subclinical and clinical hallucinations, and to nonclinical paranoid thinking (Zullig, 2016; Richardson et al., 2017; Danneel et al., 2019). In the next section, we address various restorative practices. Resources for Overcoming Loneliness During the past several decades, prevention and intervention resources have become available to caregivers, mental health professionals and lonely individuals. Using a modified developmental systems framework (e.g. Ford and Lerner, 1992) to organize loneliness prevention and interventions, we summarize many of the well-cited recommendations counselled by experts on the topic (e.g. Weiss, 1973; Perlman and Peplau, 1982b; Andersson, 1998; Sha’ked & Rokach, 2015; DiJulio et al., 2018; Anderson & Thayer, 2018; Rokach, 2019). To supplement these recommendations, we include various healthy coping (strengths-based) strategies offered by positive psychologists (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2014; Magyar-Moe et al., 2015). This scientific discipline emerged as a ‘constructive’ counterbalance to more traditional psychological approaches to human functioning and psychopathology, including loneliness and social isolation (e.g. Perlman & Peplau, 1982b). Rather than focusing on the ways people fail in their social lives, positive psychology research, theory and therapeutic practice supply insights on how strong relationships contribute to mental health and well-being (Wood & Johnson, 2016). Accordingly, for persons to thrive, they must focus on developing and enhancing their personal and social assets (Roehlkepartain & Blyth, 2019). Said differently, people who flourish possess a heightened sense of psychological well-being (intrapersonal dimension) alongside a strong network of meaningful social connections (interpersonal/microsystem) (Gable & Haidt, 2005; Eraslan-Capan, 2016). As a result, these positive characteristics can mitigate the impact of loneliness on daily functioning (Norman, 2018). Table 17.1 provides sample restorative practices organized using multitiered systems of support framework. Prevention and intervention activities spanning the personal to the macrosystem levels are included. As caveats to this section and the table, the suggestions proposed are not exhaustive and some are not evidence-based practices. Prevention Within the context of a person’s microsystem, individuals can participate in self-guided or -directed activities to prevent serious loneliness. If beneficial, they may also be acted on with a supportive friend or family member. The objectives are to (a) reinforce personal resilience/coping skills and (b) strengthen and enlarge existing social bonds and networks. People may find useful information on pertinent and reputable internet sites (see Table 17.1 for suggestions). Moreover, there are self-help books and media related to such topics as healthy coping with loneliness and social isolation, well-being, making friends and expanding social networks. Additional selfdirected options to reduce loneliness include (a) reminiscing about meaningful relationships using nostalgic materials like photos of family and friends and other evocative materials (Zhou et al., 2008); (b) reflective journaling on feelings, experiences, thoughts, times of gratitude, wellbeing events and stress triggers (Asbury et al., 2018; Bartlett & Arpin, 2019); (c) engaging in

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Table 17.1  Sample Prosocial Enhancement Strategies Using Multisystemic Framework of Support Targeted System(s)

Self

Micro

Meso

Exo/Macro

Locus of Activity

Personal (Individual/self with a significant other)

Small Group

Environmental–Communal

Environmental–Societal

Aims and Objectives 1.  Prevention ●● Strengthen personal resilience/coping skills ●● Reinforce and expand current social bonding and network

●● ●●

●●

●● ●● ●●

2.  Intervention ●● Develop and maintain social skills needed for meaningful relationships ●● Develop long-term personal resilience/coping skills ●● Maintain existing social supportive bonds and networks ●● Generate opportunities to develop and maintain new supportive relationships

●● ●●

●●

Internet resourcesa Reading materials provided in the home and local library Rekindle nostalgia or positive reminiscences (memories of pleasant social experiences) Reflective journaling Engage in hobbies Improve health habits Mentoring EBA (evidence-based approaches) individual counselling or psychotherapy P s y c h o phar macological treatments

●●

●●

●●

●● ●● ●●

●● ●●

Self-support/help groups for all ages Parent and caregiver training Participate in spiritualityrelated activities Volunteering Joining a club Taking a course that promotes social interaction Group counselling Family Counselling

●●

●●

●●

●●

●●

●●

●●

●●

Community and educational programmes to build awareness and involvement Improve education and training of support personnel Conduct assessments to identify at-risk individuals Remove systemic – environmental obstacles that limit social connections Increase community funding for activities related to prevention (and remediation of loneliness)

●●

●●

●●

Institutional policy and legislative reform to specifically target hurting and marginalized populations Formation of government and community entities programmes to support social networking and increase access Increase research on the topic with recommendation for practices

Social–recreational and leadership training Participation in activities and club with like-minded interests and values Restructuring of social situations (e.g. classroom, clubs)

Sample websites: https://www​.mind​.org​.uk/, www​.psychologytoday​.com, https​:/​/ww​​w​.cri​​siste​​xtlin​​e​.org​​/topi​​cs​/lo​​nelin​​ess/#​​signs​​-of​-​l​​oneli​​ness-​​1, https​:/​/ki ​​dshel​​pline​​.com.​​au​/te​​ens​/i​​ssues​​/copi​​ng​-wi​​th​​-lo​​nelin​​ess.

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Solitude, Silence and Loneliness

hobbies that promote social connections (e.g. taking an online art class with a friend) and (d) improving healthy behaviours (e.g. regular exercise; reduction of weight and harmful substance use) that advance physical and psychological well-being (Shvedko et al., 2018). To cope with emerging loneliness, the next step, and in conjunction with the self-directed activities, could involve supportive people within one’s microsystem (Murthy, 2020). For example, lonely persons might consider participating in small groups or classes conducted at a local community centre that are interactive (e.g. fine arts, parent/grandparent training, hobby, senior living, yoga, exercise). Joining a local club or group activity (e.g. bicycling, walking, team sports, spirituality) and volunteering (public service) are also supportive options for teens, single young adults and the elderly, all groups who tend to be at higher risk for social isolation and loneliness. Beyond the individual, at the mesosystem (environmental–communal level) there are broadbased activities suggested to prevent and ameliorate loneliness and social isolation. Specific community and educational programmes can be established to create awareness of and involvement in the issue. These can be delivered at local schools, libraries, senior and community centres, religious institutions and healthcare facilities. For instance, in the US medical and mental health professions, multiple prevention ideas are recommended for helpers and clinicians who assist seniors. They include improving training and education, assessing for signs of social isolation and loneliness, expanding public transportation services, and providing in-home visitations (e.g. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, 2020). Another crucial direction to take at this level is to alleviate systemic/environmental obstacles that limit social mobility and connectedness. For example, many individuals and communities have inadequate internet access shutting them out of potential meaningful online social interactivity. Moreover, libraries and similar meeting spaces are useful for community-building. Generally speaking, when the condition of loneliness becomes serious enough to negatively affect daily functioning, people need to supplement the prevention activities (e.g. joining a club, journaling, using the internet search options to locate local and resources) with professional support. It should be noted that severe loneliness is not a psychiatric disorder; however, as explained earlier, it can lead to major depression and anxiety (emotional distress syndrome), and perhaps other psychopathology (Cacioppo, Grippo et al., 2015). Such mental health concerns can be treated with these primary objectives in mind: (a) develop and maintain social skills requisite for meaningful relationships; (b) develop lasting personal resilience/coping skills; and (c) maintain existing supportive relationships and generate opportunities for new social supportive bonds and networks (Cacioppo, Grippo et al., 2015; Mann et al., 2017; Swartz, 2019; Bessaha et al., 2020). Various recommended interventions, such as one-on-one mentoring, individual and group psychotherapies, and judicious use of medications, can effectively address the behavioural, interpersonal, cognitive, and emotional correlates of loneliness (Cacioppo, Grippo et al., 2015; Mann et al., 2017; Swartz, 2019; Bessaha et al., 2020). Each of these options is briefly considered in this section. At the ‘lowest’ level of intervention intensity, mentoring can be attempted. This approach involves intentionally pairing a ‘life coach’ or ‘friend’ with a lonely person for purposes of support, companionship and advisement. These partnerships meet regularly for conversation and structured interactions. In most cases, however, this option is not enough to ameliorate the harmful effects of prolonged and severe cases of loneliness; 246

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consequently, professional clinicians should provide a more intensive level of treatment starting with individual and group counselling A number of individual psychotherapies targeting largely late adolescents to middle-aged adults are well suited to treat clinical depression, social anxiety and related psychopathology associated with challenging cases. Although is beyond the scope of this chapter to elucidate each approach, for further reference research-based citations accompany each method. Behavioural counselling methods are particularly useful when the lonely person lacks the requisite social skills (e.g. speaking on the phone, giving and receiving compliments, enhancing nonverbal communication skills) to develop and maintain quality relationships (Cacioppo, Grippo et al., 2015). The therapist uses psychoeducational social skills curriculum to address the deficiencies (Mann et al., 2017). Relatedly, behaviourally oriented counsellors often use exposure strategies to assist isolated individuals progressively increase their levels social interfacing and decrease the social anxiety related to loneliness (Abramowitz et al., 2019). To attend to a person’s maladaptive social cognition or irrational thoughts (often referred to as automatic negative thoughts, e.g. ‘I’m not capable of making good friendships’; ‘I’m not a person other people would like to be in a relationship with’; ‘I’ll always be a lonely person’), cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT; Cacioppo, Grippo et al., 2015) has been found to be efficacious. In particular, CBT challenges clients to identify and revise their mistaken or distorted beliefs, false attributions and self-defeating thoughts about their social contexts and interpersonal dynamics. Newer and more innovative counselling approaches not commonly suggested in early loneliness treatment literature should be mentioned as well. These include motivational interviewing (MI; Mann et al., 2017; Cohen-Mansfield & Eisner, 2020) and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT; Feeney and Hayes, 2016) for adolescents through senior citizens and art (or expressive) therapy (Cleveland, 2018), bibliotherapy (particularly for children and youth; Hynes, 2019), and well-being therapy (WBT; Fava, 2016) for older children through adults. In recent years, group counselling (Bessaha et al., 2020; e.g. structured group reminiscence therapy, Tarugu et al., 2019; or group therapy based on acceptance and commitment therapy, Najjari et al., 2017) and family counselling (Wampler & Patterson, 2020) have been suggested to treat the negative impacts of loneliness. Both of these latter interventions require the client to handle intensive social dynamics and, thus, they may not be entirely successful for isolative, noncommunicative, overly reserved/ shy, nonconfrontative or anxiety-ridden clients. Another more intensive option for clients with serious mental disorders is psychopharmacological treatment coupled with psychotherapy. Cacioppo, Grippo et al. (2015) listed several options that a physician (MD) might prescribe with caution and close monitoring: (1) antidepressants (e.g. selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) which have a range of effects (e.g. improve feelings of depression, anxiety- and fear-related responses); (2) neurosteroids (e.g. allopregnanolone [a naturally produced steroid that acts on the brain]) that activate the hypothalamic pituitary adrenocortical axis, thus facilitate the recovery of physiological homeostasis following stressful events; and, (3) oxytocin, a hypothalamic neuropeptide known to have a high sensitivity to social affiliation (p. 9). Moving to the mesosystem, multiple activities can be conducted to ameliorate loneliness. If the person can tolerate large group settings, social and recreational and leadership training can be useful. Clients then participate in events with people with similar interests and values such as 247

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clubs. They should be encouraged to go slow and at their comfort level. If at all possible, these new social situations (e.g. classrooms, clubs) should be restructured to readily accommodate individuals with mental health issues. Finally, at exo- and macrosystemic (environmental–societal) levels, individuals are indirectly impacted by broad-based systemic resources and loneliness prevention and interventionoriented schemes (e.g. restructuring institutions, community resources, policy reform, building coalitions among stakeholders) instituted by educational, research and governmental entities. Again, Table 17.1 provides some recommendations. A specific example is the UK’s national ‘Strategy for Tackling Loneliness’ document that includes actionable policy recommendations (UK Government, 2018). To oversee and implement the proposed changes a governmental level ‘Minister for Loneliness’ was appointed in 2018. New research initiatives were funded as well, such as the Loneliness and Social Isolation in Mental Health Network. Similarly, the Coalition to End Social Isolation and Loneliness (MacPherson, 2019) was created in the United States to address this issue. The organization, composed of a diverse set of allied medical stakeholders (consumer and patient groups, health plans, community-based organizations, private sector researchers and innovators), advocates for nonpartisan federal policy solutions. Around the same time, a European initiative to assist ageing migrant populations with issues of social vulnerability, loneliness, transnational care and support networks was also proposed (Ciobanu et al., 2017). Additional international efforts at the exo- and macrolevels aimed at enhancing the life quality and satisfaction of people who experience the absence of social relationships are documented in Cacioppo, Grippo et al. (2015). Summary and Concluding Remarks This chapter introduced the various psychological dimensions of loneliness. The condition was identified as a global concern spanning all ages and groups. To reiterate, Murthy (2020) characterized loneliness as the subjective emotion that people experience when they lack the essential social connections that help them psychologically function. Lonely people feel stranded, discarded or distanced from the people with whom they are closest to. Additionally, when people feel lonely, they yearn for the sense of intimacy, trust and the warmth of authentic friendships, loved ones and community relations. It has also been made abundantly clear that loneliness should be taken seriously, for the ramifications of prolonged feelings of rejection and isolation can have devastating negative effects on a person’s psychological and physiological health. Moreover, loneliness is a multisystemic phenomenon that involves intrapersonal characteristics associated with the sufferer (e.g. personality, cognition, emotional well-being) as well as communal, institutional and societal influences. Professional support personnel should bear this in mind as they devise and implement evidence-based preventative actions and interventions. Sample restorative practices to support lonely persons were reviewed. These vary in intensity and requisite levels of engagement. Whereas low-intensity self-directed prevention activities might involve locating and reviewing pertinent resources or journaling, moderateintensity behaviours ask the person to perhaps try public service volunteering, joining a club or participating in a supportive relationship based on a mentoring model. Necessitating the highest level of engagement and commitment, the severely distraught person may benefit from individual and group psychotherapy and medication.

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Finally, more distal prevention and intervention strategies require local communities, institutions and society at large to adopt innovative practices to assist hurting individuals. Specific ‘coping-with-loneliness’ and positive mental health initiatives, policies and programmes should be implemented by professional and civic entities. These actions call for increased funding and concerted efforts by germane professions to remedy the epidemic of loneliness. Ignorance, apathy and neglect of this issue will only further contribute to the deterioration of the psychological and physical well-being of the citizenry.

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Loneliness in Childhood Sivan George-Levi, Tomer Schmidt-Barad and Malka Margalit

Introduction Loneliness distress has been documented in children’s early developmental stages. Although some youngsters keep their experience of social distress to themselves, many others share their pain with family members, teachers and peers. Research has demonstrated that feelings of social exclusion should be treated as a significant developmental risk, as lonely children tend to become lonely adults. From the early stages of development, children are capable of identifying feelings of loneliness (Margalit, 2010), although young children may use words other than ‘lonely’ to share their experience. They may say, for instance, ‘I’m sad’ or ‘I’m bored.’ One out of ten preschool children (about 10 per cent) said they were lonely and unhappy with their social relationships in the playgroup (Coplan et al., 2007). About one out of five children aged seven to twelve (20 per cent) revealed that they were lonely, either sometimes or often (Qualter et al., 2015). In a recent survey, 14 per cent of children aged ten to twelve said that they were often lonely (Snape et al., 2018). Children who reported ‘low satisfaction’ with their relationships, either with family or friends, were likely to state that they were ‘often’ lonely (34.8 and 41.1 per cent, respectively) (Snape et al., 2018). Children want to be part of their peer group, and those who feel that they are left out often complain that they have no one to play with, and that this lack of playmates makes them sad. Asher’s pioneer research focused attention on children’s reports following situations of social exclusion and alienation (Asher et al., 1984). He interviewed children of different age groups about their painful experiences, from preschool through elementary school and adolescence (Asher et al., 1990). These early studies specified the various expressions of loneliness as painful internal reactions to interpersonal challenges and disappointments that could be understood within the context of friendship and peer rejection. In-depth interviews with preschool children indicated that they knew what the ‘loneliness’ construct meant, and could define their experiences as representing two different components: the first one – an affective reaction – a negative mood (‘feeling sad’), and the second one – physical placement – literal disconnection from others or a sense of exclusion (‘being alone’) (Asher et al., 1990; Snape et al., 2018).

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Young children were also aware of loneliness in others, and are able to differentiate between shy children versus those who experience social challenges. They prefer playing with socially competent children over less popular ones, including those who are shy, and they rate shy children as less popular (Margalit, 2010). Early childhood research has already demonstrated that the basic foundations of sound mental health are built early in life, given that positive and negative early experiences shape the architecture of the developing brain. The quality of early connections with parents and family members forms the basis of future social relations, social competence and life satisfaction. Loneliness has been associated with the unsatisfied need for intimate relationships with friends and/or unfulfilled expectations of belonging to a desired social group (Weiss, 1973, 1998). The goals of the current chapter are to address the core experience of children’s emotional and social lives, focusing on distress related to social connections and alienation at home, in school and among peers. On the basis of the salutogenic paradigm (Antonovsky, 1987; Mittelmark et al., 2017), which explores sources of health and well-being through a medical lens, we reject the understanding of loneliness as a dichotomy (lonely or not lonely), and propose discussing it as a dynamic movement along a continuum of gratified feelings of strong connectedness, closeness or relatedness, to the painful experience of isolation/alienation/loneliness. The idea underlying this paradigm is that people are neither completely lonely nor fully connected (Idan et al., 2017). The foundations of loneliness during childhood – presenting risk and protective factors as well as coping approaches – will be discussed. The chapter includes three parts: models and sources of loneliness; school is a lonely place; and prevention, coping and intervention. Models and Sources of Loneliness At the start of this chapter, it is important to emphasize that loneliness is a typical and common human experience. Almost all children experience loneliness from time to time. However, some children feel loneliness more often than do others, and they experience it as highly painful. Individual differences in loneliness may range from descriptions of short-lived experiences of alienation to a chronic and deeply negative experience of feeling excluded. Thus, it is not surprising that the study of the roots of loneliness has become a focus of research interest. Theoretical approaches to loneliness offer several major models, such as the social needs model and the cognitive discrepancy model. The social needs model hypothesizes a connection between objective social deficits and the subjective experience of loneliness (Heinrich & Gullone, 2006; Sullivan, 1953); as such, children experience loneliness when their social needs are not satisfied (Weiss, 1973). The cognitive discrepancy model, on the other hand, focuses on children’s subjective evaluation of their interpersonal relationships. From early developmental stages, children develop expectations regarding the quantity and quality of their social connections (Russell et al., 2012). The cognitive discrepancy model focuses on expectations for social relationships, rather than on objective situations. Both approaches accentuate the role of the social environment in children’s well-being and address the negative outcomes of loneliness. The evolutionary conceptualization of loneliness (Spithoven et al., 2019) suggests that loneliness has an inherited adaptive function, signalling people to their need – for the sake of their own survival – to connect to significant others. Thus, in the next section of this chapter, genetic aspects and family connections will be presented as one source of loneliness. Genetic

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sources of loneliness have been examined extensively following recent developments in genetic studies (Feng et al., 2019), and models that have examined interactions between various genes and social environments. Early research (McGuire & Clifford, 2000) was based on data from adoption studies and twin-sibling findings. As part of the Colorado Adoption Project, 133 sibling pairs completed a general loneliness scale at the ages of 9, 10, 11 and 12. In addition, in the San Diego Sibling Study, 142 sibling pairs between the ages of 8 and 14 completed a scale assessing loneliness at school. Both studies showed a significant heritability impact in children’s loneliness. Yet the study also highlighted environmental contributions to the children’s loneliness by showing that each sibling experienced unique relationships in the same family, in addition to the impact of peer relationships outside the family (McGuire & Clifford, 2000). One child in the same family may have a very supportive peer network, whereas another may feel rejected or neglected. Thus, environmental factors within and outside the family may determine how genes that contribute to loneliness are expressed and demonstrated. Research on gene-environment interactions has indicated that social–environmental factors (e.g. low social support) may have a more pronounced effect and lead to higher levels of loneliness in individuals who carry the sensitive variant of the candidate genes (Goossens et al., 2015). Shared and non-shared environmental influences account for significant variations in loneliness during childhood. Thus, an understanding of loneliness requires an examination of the complex interactions between genes’ impact and environmental factors (Cacioppo & Patrick, 2008). Temperament and Highly Sensitive Children As an example of the interaction between genetic-based characteristics and early environmental impacts, studies of temperament have revealed different levels of infants’ reactivity, from their earliest developmental stages. Observations of very young children have revealed their different reactions to noise, pain and satisfaction of basic needs, demonstrating their basic levels of sensitivity to different stimuli. Temperament has been defined as reflecting individual differences in reactivity and responses to different stimuli demonstrated in self-regulation abilities (Rothbart et al., 2001). The concept of the highly sensitive child (Pluess et al., 2018) emerged from Aron’s construct (Aron & Aron, 1997), and focused attention on children who are very sensitive to environmental influences. Children who experience frequent and intense levels of negative emotionality are more impulsive, easily aroused emotionally, less accepted by peers and at increased risk of becoming lonely (Henwood & Solano, 1994). The high levels of negative emotional arousal contribute to their tendency to withdraw socially, and may reduce the length of their social interactions. These children may not have enough opportunities to stay socially engaged and involved in order to develop social competence. They may have difficulties cultivating close satisfying relationships with adults and children, as well as gaining ageappropriate social skills (Margalit, 2010). Children who do not develop age-appropriate social skills and have lower social competence are at greater risk of experiencing unsatisfactory social relations. Social competence reflects the ability to generate and coordinate flexible adaptive responses to various interpersonal demands, opportunities and challenges (Margalit & Efrati, 1996), and includes prosocial actions such as helping, sharing and comforting, as well as the absence of antisocial behaviours, such as the inhibition of impulsive and disruptive behaviours that have negative social outcomes. Children with decreased social competence may not understand 252

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social communication, or may not acquire age-appropriate social behaviour. They may fail to understand the social situation they are in, or know how they are expected to behave. Additional sources of lower social competenc are difficulties in controlling impulsivity or avoidance/withdrawal tendencies. Children with poor self-control have fewer friends and are reported as less trustworthy by peers (Betts & Rotenberg, 2007). Conversely, increases in self-control predicted decreases in loneliness (Liu et al., 2016). Shyness is considered to be an example of internal social approach-avoidance conflict. Although shy children may wish to connect with others, they withdraw socially as a result of fears of unfamiliar people and social novelty, together with social-evaluative concerns (Coplan et al., 2015). Shyness and loneliness are two distinct concepts, yet they have strong associations with unsatisfactory social relationships. Shy children are characterized by their strong self-awareness and negative self-perceptions (Korem, 2019). Beginning in early childhood, shy children experience feelings of distress and increased anxiety in social situations outside the family, especially those that involve strangers or people unfamiliar to them. Research has documented the stable and strong relationships between shyness, anxiety and loneliness, presenting shyness as a predictor of loneliness (Zhao et al., 2018), and selfperceptions as mediators of these relations (Zhao et al., 2013). Additional consequences of shyness are tied to the way in which shy children perceive themselves. Already among pre-schoolers, it was found that shyness was tied to the children’s negative perceptions of themselves (Coplan et al., 2004). Contextual conditions also interact in the relation between shyness and loneliness; for example, shyness was found to be associated with loneliness in migrant children in China, suggesting that migrant shy children were more likely than their non-shy peers to feel lonely (Ding et al., in press). Attachment The quality of close relationships and attachment to fathers and mothers at early developmental stages has been considered a basic source of the development of loneliness. Attachment theory suggests that people form internal working models of themselves and of others in relationships, based on their experiences with childhood caregivers (Bowlby, 1988). According to attachment theory (Bowlby, 1982), the developmental experiences with early attachment figures (such as mothers and fathers) shape to a great extent the way in which people regulate their relationships with others throughout their lives. With regard to secure attachment, the working models include a positive view of the self and others, following warm and trusting relationships (Shaver & Mikulincer, 2010). When children feel securely attached, they acquire tools for down-regulating distress, enabling closeness to significant others; as such, they experience lower levels of loneliness. If the attachment to the early main caregiver is not secure, one of two attachment orientations may develop: anxious or avoidant. An anxious attachment orientation is characterized by excessive care-seeking and fear of rejection and loss. An avoidant attachment orientation refers to behaviours that inhibit closeness to others in order to avoid rejection (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2019). Early attachment interactions predict the development of interpersonal functioning during childhood and predict loneliness. Insecurely attached children experience difficulties in their social connections with children and adults and may feel lonely and excluded socially (Akdoğan, 2017; Al-Yagon et al., 2016). 253

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Entitlement Sources of loneliness may be found not only in children’s types of attachment to others but also in their unfulfilled expectations of adults and other children. The unmet belief that they are entitled to get what they wish for (i.e. the particular friends and relationships they desire) may lead to children’s feelings of frustrations and disappointment in their social connections. Sense of entitlement can be defined as the subjective perception that individuals deserve to get what they wish for (Solomon & Leven, 1975). In its maladaptive form, the sense of entitlement is considered to be an expression of narcissistic personality, with exaggerated expectations and demands of others, combined with a tendency to see oneself as special (Piff, 2014). Sense of entitlement develops through children’s interactions with attachment figures and is demonstrated through the quality of their social interactions (Rothman & Steil, 2012). In order to develop an assertive and appropriate sense of entitlement, children need to internalize into their working models of attachment a sense that they are worthy of being taken care of (Shaver & Mikulincer, 2002). An exaggerated sense of entitlement has been found to be associated with a range of maladaptive outcomes including disappointment from relationships and emotional distress (Trumpeter et al., 2008). Not surprisingly, Tolmacz & Mikulincer (2011) found that young adults with a maladaptive sense of entitlement tended to feel upset and lonelier in a variety of environments (Tolmacz & Mikulincer, 2011). Environmental Aspects Lonely children are not lonely all the time (Margalit, 2010). Thus, the challenge for mental health professionals is to identify the contextual conditions that may serve as risk factors for developing and maintaining loneliness, as well as the processes that promote feelings of social isolation. Perceived discrepancies between individual traits and situational demands increase stress and have been linked to greater negative affect (Spokane et al., 2000). A social environment in which one feels comfortable, safe and accepted (i.e. where adequate social support is available) may be vital for general well-being, as well as for reducing the risk of exclusion (McGuire & Clifford, 2000). Home and school are considered to be the two critical environments for understanding the development of loneliness. Family climate – the quality of relationships with parents and siblings – predicts the development of satisfactory or disappointing social relations within and outside the family (Nie et al., in press; Shi et al., 2017). For example, a recent study demonstrated the unique roles of family climate, loneliness and hopeful thinking in predicting children’s effort in schools (Feldman et al., 2018). Children’s characteristics and interactional partners within contextual conditions predict the development, maintenance and satisfaction deriving from social relations. Thus, the next section will present research on children’s relations with teachers and peers at school. School Is a Lonely Place In-depth interviews have demonstrated that many children feel dissatisfied with their relationships with friends and teachers at school, and they have reported feelings of frustration and loneliness (Margalit, 2010). Children have described themselves as being left out and excluded because of their lower athletic or academic abilities (Snape et al., 2018). It should be emphasized that 254

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distress resulting from exclusion is a personal and subjective experience that may not necessarily reflect the ‘objective’ social situation at hand, or peer rejection. This distress may reflect the children’s personal expectations and disappointments, as well as the quality and/or quantity of their social connections not only with peers but also with teachers. Relationships with teachers can lie at the root of loneliness at school. Attachment to Teachers and Learning Challenges Teachers play a significant role in children’s lives as well as in their adaptation to the school environment (Birch & Ladd, 1997). Many children have associated their loneliness at school with the quality of their relationships with teachers, their level of classroom participation, and their engagement and success (Murray et al., 2016). Secure attachment to teachers, among different age groups of children, has been shown to predict not only better grades but also social competence and better adjustment to school (Bergin & Bergin, 2009). Children, especially in preschool and elementary school, expect teachers to fulfil the role of a ‘secure base’, providing both material and emotional support, enhancing verbal development and alleviating emotional loneliness (Galanaki & Vassilopoulou, 2007; Veríssimo et al., 2017). The value of secure attachments in the school environment was particularly emphasized among children with special educational needs. For example, third-grade students with reading difficulties experienced lower attachment to their teachers, which predicted increased levels of loneliness (Al-Yagon & Margalit, 2006). A recent study, however, presented a more complex picture. Similar to the earlier study, the quality of the children’s relationships with their teachers predicted their loneliness; however, positive relationships with peers seemed to have a protective role and reduced social distress (Zhang et al., 2019). Peer Relationships and Social Status The results of several empirical studies conveyed that children with low social status and less acceptance and support from peers may experience loneliness (Margalit, 2010). In addition, learning difficulties and behaviour problems often predict social alienation (Tur-Kaspa et al., 1999). Lonely children reported that they were not satisfied with their social relationships, and often felt rejected by peers or had a small social network of friends (Asher et al., 1990; Nishimura et al., 2018; Qualter et al., 2010). A longitudinal study reported that lower peer acceptance and trust reported by five-year-old children predicted increasing loneliness in later years and throughout adolescence (Qualter et al., 2013). Longitudinal studies demonstrated that loneliness is a relatively stable experience for school-aged children, focusing attention on the ongoing influence between peer rejection, social competence and loneliness. In addition, the loneliness also predicts current and future mental health problems such as depressive symptoms and maladaptive behaviour (Nishimura et al., 2018). Moreover, loneliness during childhood is also a significant predictor of repeated health complaints such as headaches, stomach-aches and backaches (Lyyra et al., 2018). Although it is commonly accepted that children’s friendships serve as a buffer against loneliness, some children still feel lonely despite having friends (Nowland et al., 2019). One reason children may continue to experience loneliness despite their social connections is that some friendships may not be ‘high-quality’ friendships; children may also have low expectations of friendships. When children’s friends are insulting, or aggressive, the relationships will not decrease their loneliness. 255

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Children Online The use of online social networking has grown over the last twenty years, and research has pointed to the association between internet usage and depression (Miller, 2017). Individuals who use the internet may be more socially disconnected in ‘real life’ and, as such, experience loneliness. It is possible that the time spent online increases one’s experience of loneliness; conversely, however, perhaps people who are lonely cope with their distress by spending greater amounts of time online (Kim et al., 2009). It is thus not possible to draw definitive conclusions about the impact of the digital world on loneliness, and there are contradictory findings. Cross-sectional studies dominate the literature, making it difficult to establish causal connections (Nowland et al., 2018). In a comprehensive survey, Nowland et al., (2018) proposed a bidirectional and dynamic model demonstrating the relationship between loneliness and the use of the internet. They proposed that when the internet was used as a way to enhance existing relationships, and to forge new social connections, it was a useful tool for reducing loneliness. The study of socially anxious children supports this assumption (Bonetti et al., 2010). In this study, online communication boosted the feeling of connectedness among a socially anxious group of children. In comparison with how they felt during face-to-face communications, these children were more comfortable and ready to chat online, to share their feelings and to use this method of communication for self-disclosure and identity exploration. Another study followed 455 Chinese elementary school students who participated in two waves of a survey with a six-month interval. Results indicated that seeking school- and life-related information on the internet predicted more life satisfaction and less loneliness through improved self-esteem. Furthermore, self-esteem moderated the effects on loneliness of internet information-seeking. Specifically, internet information-seeking predicted less loneliness especially among children with low self-esteem (Liu et al., 2013). An additional study documented the behaviour of shy and lonely children, and demonstrated that they tended to stay online for longer periods of time (Gao et al., 2018). In conclusion, it seems that when online activities are used to withdraw from frustrating social interactions, the feelings of loneliness may be further intensified. Children often communicate and play computer games with existing friends and classmates, and also with ‘virtual friends’ whom they have not met. Only a few studies have documented the differences in these relationships, focusing attention on children who developed online relationships with virtual friends (individuals they have not met). The study showed that these connections were associated with enhanced loneliness, as reported by participants (Sharabi & Margalit, 2011). In another study it was reported that social exclusion, shaming, bullying and hostility from peers – transmitted ‘virtually’ – may increase the risk of loneliness. Continued social vulnerabilities may therefore extend to digital environments, following the children into their home environments; nevertheless, they are not necessarily created by online connections (Livingstone et al., 2018). It can thus be concluded that online communication has both advantages and disadvantages in the context of children’s loneliness. If children use online communication in a way that replaces their offline social connections, or as a way to escape their everyday challenges, this usage can lead to more loneliness and social difficulties. Yet when children use online communication and gaming activities in order to enhance existing friendships or to extend their social network, it may reduce loneliness. 256

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Prevention, Coping and Intervention The goals of prevention programmes are to avoid, or diminish, children’s loneliness within different environments, such as home and school, whereas the goals of intervention programmes are to ‘treat’ the lonely children and to help them manage or cope effectively with their loneliness (Israelashvili & Romano, 2017). Preventing loneliness during childhood includes paying attention to children’s social environments and/or focusing on strengthening their personal resources, from a salutogenic, resilience and strength-based perspectives (Antonovsky, 1987; Margalit, 2010; Mullin, 2019). Such empowering positive approaches are based on the belief that building up positive resources may successfully ‘inoculate’ the individual against current and future risks. The salutogenic approach emphasizes the empowerment of personal resources, positive selfperceptions and academic competence. Prevention approaches also include environmental changes such as increasing opportunities for practicing age-appropriate social skills in peer relations, and encouraging participation in leisure, extracurricular and community activities. Prevention efforts must target also their family and school environments, in an attempt to encourage the development of communities of trust, collaboration and hope. Although everyday experiences can certainly include challenging or sometimes even threatening experiences, they also include many positive encounters with oneself, others and the environment that may establish current and future personal strengths (Bauer et al., 2019). Such a school-based effective prevention programmes has been consisted of peer education, social skills promotion, interactive techniques and include an ‘entire school’ approach in order make a greater change in the school culture (Gaspar et al., 2018). Such school-based programmes have a focus on students’ social–emotional competence in order to help them to develop awareness of their strengths while promoting communication, problem-solving and emotion regulation strategies (Matos & Simões, 2016). In this regard, the ‘Social and Emotional Skills Promotion Program’, conducted among 960 Portuguese children (mean age of 12.5), showed that pupils that participated in the programme experienced greater improvement in their interpersonal relationships compared to pupils in waiting list (Gaspar et al., 2018). This intervention included twenty-two group sessions throughout the school year, which were carried out by teachers and psychologists. Another promising direction for school-based intervention can be found in the pilot study conducted by Orkibi et al. (2019). This longitudinal study examined the contribution of school-based psychodrama group intervention among forty adolescents and showed that participation in the psychodrama group demonstrated reduced levels of loneliness and depression in comparison to the comparison group. Examples of effective prevention and intervention strategies can also be found in clinical-medical settings. Some of the most effective interventions for reducing loneliness are those that focus on maladaptive cognitions about social situations (Masi et al., 2011). For example, it has been achieved by changing maladaptive social perception and cognition (e.g. dysfunctional and irrational beliefs, false attributions and self-defeating thoughts) (Cacioppo, Grippo et al., 2015). The efficacy of these interventions may be based on helping lonely individuals who tend to feel threaten from social interactions and to demonstrate greater sensitivity to rejection (Cacioppo, Grippo et al., 2015). Behavioural techniques such as exposure, behaviour experiment and behavioural activation were also found to be useful (Käll et al. 2020).

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Following our discussion of children loneliness online, there is a growing interest in digital intervention programmes that may reduce loneliness. For example, a promising result was reported in a six-week digital program that was designed to help young people with social anxiety disorder (SAD) to decrease loneliness (Lim et al., 2019). This programme has been focused on applying positive psychology strategies such as identifying strengths, increasing positive emotions and intimacy with existing friends while enhancing quality relationships. The programme was interactive and engaging and used daily sharing of posts and videos in attempt to increase young people social connections. The ways that children cope with loneliness during early developmental stages affect their social connections, school successes and well-being. Children’s coping is linked with efforts to regulate their own emotions, cognitions and behaviours, as well as to regulate their environment in response to stressful events (Skinner et al., 2013). Lonely children cope with distressing experiences in different ways. It may be a struggle for them to develop the social relationships they wish for, and sometimes they may ask for help from adults and peers. They may also look for alternative friends or activities. The alternative activities may be those that are done together with other children, or solitary activities. Lonely children may adopt passive coping strategies, remaining depressed and isolated. Research has differentiated between adaptive and maladaptive coping strategies (Skinner and Saxton, in press), and has also recognized the wide range of strategies that children use for different situations and periods, and the likelihood that most children experience loneliness from time to time. As a way of avoiding periods of loneliness, children described a wide range of possible activities, such as talking over their feelings with supportive adults or peers, reaching out and seeking alternative social connections, or finding activities to get involved in, such as computer games or sports. Their goals are to distract themselves from negative thoughts, frustrations, anger and sadness. They may attempt to reframe the meaning of a situation; for example, if they’re not invited to a social activity, they may adopt a new perspective towards it, such as devaluing it, and as such they may feel better (Snape et al., 2018). The perception of social support availability has been an important and effective coping factor. Social support refers to the social network’s provision of psychological and material resources intended to benefit an individual’s ability to cope with stress (Cohen, 2004). Social support may act as a buffer against stressors, reinforcing self-esteem, self-efficacy and sense of stability (Cohen & Wills, 1985). For example, The outcomes of interventions for children with special needs that aimed to teach social and friendship skills with peers showed increased social skills’ knowledge and reduced loneliness among the group of children with special needs, and also that their typically developing peers benefited from the intervention (Matthews et al., 2018). Research has shown that the effects of social support are cumulative, and support in different environments and from different sources (e.g. family, peers, and school) seems to act as a buffer against loneliness (Cavanaugh & Buehler, 2016). In addition, a meta-analysis documented the overall association between social support and well-being in children and adolescents (Chu et al., 2010) focusing on the difference between availability of social support and the subjective perception of social support. Research has demonstrated that the availability of perceived social support predicts feelings of closeness, satisfaction and positive emotions (Williamson et al., 2019). In conclusion, perceived social support may reduce and perhaps even prevent the negative effects of loneliness. Yet sometimes, the perception of receiving too much support can have an adverse impact, as excessive support may contribute to intrusive experiences. 258

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Various intervention approaches have been proposed to help children whose feelings of loneliness have gone from those of a temporary nature to those of a more prolonged nature as well as to help ensure that children who have reported temporary feelings of loneliness do not develop prolonged feelings of loneliness (Maes et al., 2020). Four major types of intervention approaches have been identified (Masi et al., 2011): ●●

●●

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Based on the assumption that social deficits are among the main causes of loneliness, some intervention programmes are focused on teaching and training social skills and social problem-solving strategies. As lonely children often feel socially excluded, additional intervention programmes offer counselling to parents and teachers, with a focus on explicit social support and secure attachment development. Social frustrations may cause children to withdraw from social relationships, and to reduce their social engagements. In order to maintain their relationships with peers, some intervention programmes have attempted to increase opportunities for alternative satisfying social leisure activities. Examples of this kind of interventions can be found in successful after-school programmes seeking to enhance personal and social skills in children and adolescents (Blum & Dick, 2013). Maladaptive social cognitions about friends and social relations may affect children’s relationships with both peers and adults. Some intervention programmes have adopted cognitive behavioural therapy approaches in order to challenge these beliefs, and also to enhance self-control and emotion regulation skills. For example, an intervention programme that has focused on promoting emotional intelligence (i.e. the ability to understand, use, and manage emotions) has been found to be important for maintaining meaningful social connections during childhood. It also supported effective coping with internalizing negative feelings such as loneliness (Davis et al., 2019).

A meta-analysis of loneliness interventions (Masi et al., 2011) revealed that only a few controlled studies have attempted to reduce children’s loneliness. Comparisons revealed that interventions designed to address maladaptive social cognitions were associated with the largest impact. As mentioned earlier, these interventions have been consistent with programmes such as educating individuals to identify the automatic negative thoughts that they have about others and about social interactions more generally, and to regard these negative thoughts as possibly faulty hypotheses that need to be verified rather than as facts on which to act (Cacioppo, Grippo et al., 2015). Moreover, with regard to loneliness, group therapy that has targeted adaptive social cognitions or promoting social skills showed advantages over individual therapy, since it provides opportunities for real-life social interactions, immediate social feedback and normalization of the loneliness experience (Wolgensinger, 2015). Conclusion and Future Research Directions In sum, this chapter reviewed the current research on the roots of child loneliness and its expression in different environments. The experience of loneliness during childhood seems to be related to children’s characteristics, and to the quality and quantity of their interpersonal connections. 259

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Children who avoid social connections, and who rarely interact with their peers, may suffer deeply from their own tendency to withdraw (Rubin et al., 2018). The subjective experience of social dissatisfaction during childhood was also shown to have a unique developmental significance, together with the actual quality of children’s relationships with parents, teachers and peers, all playing a critical role in shaping children’s social, emotional and cognitive development. Online ‘virtual’ environments seem to increase opportunities for staying socially connected, but may also increase the risk of loneliness. Virtual environments can also be used to develop digitally supported interventions to target loneliness among children. Future directions in research approaches as well as in education and consultation programmes need to further explore different expressions of loneliness during childhood, and to examine a variety of in-depth approaches to intervention. Special emphasized attention should be focused on sensitizing parents and teachers to the developmental risks of loneliness. Evidence-based programmes are needed, as well as innovative embedded technologies that would support children in developing satisfying connections and social competence. The complex factors that predict loneliness suggest that programmes should be tailored to the specific needs of the child, or the ‘at risk’ group, in order to be most effective.

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Adult Loneliness Elżbieta Dubas

Introduction Jacek Salij, among other scholars around the globe, described loneliness as the epidemic of the twentieth century (Salij, 1997: 26). This is a ‘plague’ of highly developed societies, also experienced currently in the twenty-first century, because loneliness is greatly conditioned by external social causes characteristic of civilizations (Dubas, 2000: 116–17). This thread of reflection on loneliness can be seen already in antiquity. In addition to the glorification of social life as a condition of happiness (Cicero) and the role of the state in satisfying the needs of the individual (Aristotle), there appears the aspect of the necessity to intertwine loneliness and communing with people (Seneca) (cf. Gadacz, 1995: 22–7; Kaczmarek, 1995: 59). As, in the course of modern history, the complications of social life that impede the harmonious development of people are observed, the criticism of civilization as a source of loneliness increases. A special example is the Enlightenment thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in which the evil of political devices is perceived (Rousseau, 2002) – it is ‘the whole madness of human devices’, encouraging a return to nature (quoted in Kaczmarek, 1995: 65). The following centuries of development of modern civilization intensified the loneliness even more: the nineteenth century through intensive industrialization and urbanization, the twentieth century through the hegemony of science and technology, the twenty-first century through the intensive development of modern information technologies and artificial intelligence. These changes weaken the natural intimate social ties, which makes people vulnerable to the pressure of the achievements of civilization. People living in contemporary culture lack community life (Merton, 1991) and close interpersonal relationships (Nouwen, 1994). They painfully experience loneliness in a crowd (Riesman et al., 1971). What civilization is like, then, is important for the experience of loneliness: whether it alienates people from themselves or becomes part of the process of their full development. In order to live a satisfactory (productive) life, a person ‘must strive to experience unity and wholeness in all spheres of his [sic] being in order to find a new balance’ (Fromm, 1996: 45). Adult loneliness is the main topic of this chapter. In colloquial Polish, the term ‘loneliness’ coexists with the term ‘aloneness’ and they are frequently used interchangeably. However,

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aloneness also has a positive aspect – it is then understood as solitude, a state that has been chosen and is expected, while loneliness is always an unwanted and painful experience. There are numerous and various situations, frequently common ones, which are recognized as those that create loneliness throughout our life (Dubas, 2000: 118–23). Experiencing them is always individualistic and subjective; the same situation does not have to provoke the feeling of loneliness in everyone and it may be ‘transferred’ into solitude and vice versa. Loneliness is quite commonly experienced, whereas solitude is still rather rarely. From research conducted in the 1990s, it could be seen that only 9 people out of the studied 150 acknowledged their solitude. Loneliness was experienced rather commonly, more often in the past (two-thirds of the studied subjects) than currently (less than half of the studied subjects) (Dubas, 2000: 240, 279). This chapter, its empirical part in particular, mostly describes loneliness because it is most frequently mentioned by the studied adult subjects, although aloneness, with its broader context, is also discussed. The theoretical part of the chapter presents a broad context in which to understand aloneness that is present in scientific reflection and which also includes loneliness. Theoretical Assumptions Together and Alone as the Key Context in Understanding Aloneness The analysis of the conceptual category of ‘aloneness’ has proved troublesome to researchers as far as the definition is concerned (see also Stern, in the Introduction of this Handbook). This results from the complexity and multidimensionality of the phenomenon, its cultural contexts and the varied individual experiences, as well as problems with verbalizing it, or the researchers applying different names to define aloneness. However, one may be inclined to draw the basic conclusion that Together and Alone are two initial situations that define aloneness and may become the key to understanding this phenomenon of human existence. This can be seen in Figure 19.1: Aloneness – interpretation of the meaning of the term that is an attempt to present the meanings related to aloneness in a comprehensive way and also ‘extract’ the core of aloneness at the same time. Aloneness treated as a universal phenomenon – a universal phenomenon of human existence – results from two initial situations: physical aloneness understood as lack of other people (Alone) and the situation of living among people, living with other people (Together). These two initial situations bear three implications, considering their emotional reception by a person: negative loneliness, referred to as isolation (with negative emotions), positive solitude (with positive emotions) and the situation with no reference to aloneness (lack of emotional reference to the situation of loneliness). Ambivalence and Oscillations of Aloneness Together and Alone are two perspectives of intellectual interpretation of human existence and, thus, aloneness. As Stern puts it, the two approaches – the communal and the individualistic – are often contrasted; they differently interpret and value the experience of aloneness or emphasize the need for, or the burden of, aloneness in different ways (see Stern, Introduction to this Handbook). From this point of view, aloneness may be either positive or negative, good or bad (Seweryniak, 1997: 34–41). Yet, ‘At every life stage, personhood is learned in large part through these experiences alone and together’ (see Stern, Introduction to this Handbook). Every day the experiences of being Together and Alone coexist in a person, thus bringing loneliness or not. As

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superior term

Aloneness

phenomenon of human existence

Alone

Together

 physical isolation  civil isolation  living alone…

   

two initial situations

living in a group living in partnership living in community living together…

loneliness (-)    

isolation alienation exclusion desolation… three implications Solitude (+)

   

physical isolation (by choice) developmental solitude creative solitude good solitude…

No sense of loneliness (0)    

no awareness of loneliness no verbalizing the phenomenon no experience of loneliness denying solitude…

The essence of aloneness  ambivalent  convertible

Figure 19.1  Aloneness – interpretation of the meaning of the term (from Dubas, 2006).

Koch says: ‘solitude is an experience, neither positive nor negative – it can be chosen or enforced, an experience accompanied by pleasure or pain, joy or suffering’ (Koch, 1994, quoted in Stern, Introduction to this Handbook). This points to the relativity of aloneness, its ambivalent character and with it – the possibility to shape it and change it. Ambivalence is the core of the phenomenon of aloneness (see Dubas, 2006: 335–6; Skarga, 2009: 181). ‘Aloneness is a phenomenon that is characterised by irremovable ambivalence’ (Domeracki, 2018: 125). Understood in this way, the two experiences, Together and Alone, become a certain foundation for experiencing the ambivalence of aloneness. Aloneness

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may be experienced in a very subjective way, but Together and Alone are also experienced in this way. This is possible thanks to the social and cultural halo around modern life, particularly in highly developed countries, where both the external and internal freedom of a person are values in the same way as is a person’s subjectivity, the possibility to realize lifestyles based on personally chosen values. A person is faced with an opportunity to make aloneness a value when they experience life from the perspective of oscillation, interpenetration of various phenomena and states of human existence. When a person rejects the arbitrariness of antinomy and dichotomy (opposites that are mutually exclusive) and when they do not perceive life from the passive and binary perspective of ‘either – or’, when they do not see the border points of continua of experiencing different phenomena of life as opposites that are mutually exclusive, they can include them in the process of continuous interpenetration. This is of great importance in the lifelong process of becoming a person who is more aware, more understanding and more fascinated with ‘mitigating’ the opposites (Piasecka, 2018). Ontological Cause of Aloneness The ambivalence of aloneness, apart from its significant external and internal causes,1 is explained by an ontological cause. This cause is well worth consideration as it may allow us to understand contemporary aloneness, particularly in adults. The ontological cause of aloneness results from the definition of human existence being an imperfect one, yet with the imprinted ‘matrix’ of perfection. People, by nature, are filled with dichotomies, antinomies and existential paradoxes. They are filled with internal discords. They are unfathomable in their dreams and, at the same time, imperfect in their actions. They are mysterious, unpredictable and impossible to programme. They are suspended between the need to maintain their own unique individuality and the need to belong to a group: a person wishes to belong, but at the same time wishes to be free and independent. Human life resembles a drama of ‘being torn’ between dreams about ideals and the impossibility of achieving them (see Dubas, 2000: 117). Wałejko writes about ontological aloneness, pointing to the personological attributes of humanity, such as self-ownership, self-control, non-transferability and impossibility of communication, self-determination and responsibility, acting independently, ‘the result of separateness and rationality that opens a human being to transcendence’ (Wałejko, 2016: 24). They constitute human life as a value, although they may be experienced as hardships. They place human experience in the space of Together and Alone. Thus, humanity, by nature, is doomed to aloneness. It is an immanent part of human existence. Aloneness is something so ‘human’, as integral to being person as striving for love or the need to be free. It seems that aloneness cannot be ‘uprooted’ from human fate and destiny. However, if it is ambivalent, aloneness may be overcome by bringing out its positive side. Experiencing aloneness, living it, may be directed in such a way that it favours human development, an increase in selfawareness, and achieving the true meaning of life (see: Dubas, 2000: 118). In this context, understanding existential dichotomies, their affirmation and discovering their meaning may become the manner in which the negative aloneness (loneliness) can be transformed into the positive (solitude). Understanding the position of people in the two worlds: the real and the ideal, creates space in which it is possible to oscillate between the two different states of aloneness. 264

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Shaping Aloneness It is important and necessary for pedagogues to recognize the phenomenon of aloneness so as to be able to prevent it or to create developmental solitude. Thus, it is not enough to be able to recognize aloneness, as we should also apply therapy in the circumstances of loneliness (Wałejko, 2016; Pawłowska & Jundziłł, 2003; Zalewska-Pawlak, 2007; Weinbach, 1986). Pedagogy could play the role of ‘a brace’ that fastens the issue of solitude in humanistic science, especially given the increasingly interdisciplinary character of modern pedagogy (Dubas, 2006), making a pedagogy of aloneness (pedagogical monoseology) possible (Dubas, 2007). It is in education that there is an opportunity to make aloneness a positive value in human life (Dubas, 2006). These processes are also important for an adult who experiences education very broadly; in the area of formal education (at school), but most of all non-formal (institutionalized out-of-school) and informal (learning from various everyday life activities) where a person should come across opportunities to experience aloneness as a value (Domeracki, 2018: 140–6; Wałejko, 2016: 231– 6; Dubas, 2006: 348). A person should become familiar with it, understand it better and use it as an ally in the process of becoming a better person. Wałejko points to the dialectics of aloneness and being part of a community as an educational challenge, including using the fact that they complement each other as the basis of the creative identity of a person, and points to harmonizing them as a way of optimization of relations with other people (Wałejko, 2016: 145). Together and Alone should equally be present as values in a person’s educational process. Aloneness is a universal phenomenon of human existence which has probably accompanied humanity since its beginning, and especially in the era of knowledge that we are experiencing, where virtual reality and the increasing importance of AI are particularly troublesome. Aloneness touches people at any age and in any period of life, although it is particularly difficult and hard to accept in childhood, when a person does not yet have an extended inner world, but also in old age when this inner world is falling apart; because it is the inner world which is a shield against experienced hardships, both external and internal.2 Aloneness also concerns the adult person. Considering the great timeline of adulthood as the period of human development, that is from eighteen years of age (that is from the formal beginning of adulthood) up until the end of life, together with all the developmental challenges, numerous and various roles played in life, as well as social tasks carried out by a person, the changing personal needs, expectations and possibilities, we should consider adulthood as a time of experiencing aloneness in an incredibly complex and multidimensional way that is difficult to define and describe. If we perceive adulthood as a social and cultural construct,3 then we may tie it to the various social roles attributed to an adult person. The manner in which a person is introduced to aloneness, how a person handles and experiences it and how much support is received, will determine the person’s experiencing good and/or bad aloneness. The classic roles of an adult person – the roles of spouse, parent, citizen – are difficult developmental challenges which bring about many insecurities and numerous burdens for the price of being independent;4 however, this independence may also be understood as being ‘doomed to aloneness’. The definition of adulthood formed by Włodzimierz Szewczuk, well known to Polish andragogues, points to it very distinctly: ‘An adult person is responsible for himself [sic], he is the subject of his productive activities, he decides about his life plan, he has to face the difficulties of realising it and he answers to the society for his actions’ (Szewczuk, 1959: 44). In this definition we can see the ambivalence of being an adult, which may be related to experiencing aloneness. Ambivalence itself brings about aloneness. 265

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Age norms are yet another sociocultural determinant of adulthood. They point to the differences in social roles and behaviour, depending on age. Aloneness in the period of adulthood may differ, depending on the different stages of adulthood: early adulthood (eighteen to twenty-five), young adulthood (twenty-five to fourty), mid-adulthood (fourty to sixty-five) and old adulthood (sixty to sixty-five and older), also called old age; remembering that old age is not a uniform period of development time and is marked by the beginning of old age, also referred to as young old (sixty to seventy-four), old-old (seventy-five to eighty-nine) and oldest old (ninety and older) (see: Dubas, 2009: 119; Dubas, 2018: 169). How does the aloneness of a contemporary person look in this context? The results of the studies presented herein are an attempt to answer this question. Methodological Note on Research Loneliness in adults is the subject matter of the empirical studies analysed further and realized as part of a qualitative research strategy based on an interpretative paradigm, the most important assumption of which is the notion that ‘knowledge is a creation of the human mind’ and that a researcher may concentrate on exploring social microworlds as the only real worlds in which people live (Malewski, 1998: 34). This methodological choice is well suited to the purpose of this research. Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln indicate that ‘qualitative research is an interpretative, naturalistic approach to the world. This means that qualitative researchers study things in their natural environment, trying to make sense or interpret phenomena using terms used by the surveyed people’ (Denzin & Lincoln, 2010: 23). Uwe Flick emphasizes that ‘qualitative research uses / . . . / text instead of numbers as empirical material, starts from the concept of social creation of the researched realities, focuses on the points of view of research participants, their everyday practices and knowledge about the subject of research’ (Flick, 2010: 23). The applied method is a group case study (Stake, 2010). Such a method allows for a multifaceted look at the phenomenon of loneliness in adulthood, and the empirical data may reveal its various different, but also similar, aspects. The statements of the respondents are subjective to a great extent, which remains in accordance with what Stake points to: ‘the responses provided are a mixture of opinions and feelings, descriptions and interpretations’ (Stake, 2010: 641). The case in this research is the aloneness/loneliness5 of adults from the perspective of experiences studied in the period of their formal adulthood, that is between eighteen and seventy years of age.6 The research technique is an interview which also includes narrative and biographical elements. The main research issue was included in the overall question: What does the loneliness of the studied adults look like, particularly in the context of the two initial situations: Together or Alone? Detailed questions were formed as follows: (1) How do the studied participants understand the phenomenon of aloneness (solitude and loneliness)? (2) How do the studied participants experience loneliness considering the temporary perspective? (3) Which childhood experiences formed their loneliness? (4) What significant events from the later periods of their life formed their loneliness? (5) To what extent do interpersonal relationships form the background of loneliness? (6) To what extent is aloneness a learning situation?

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The analysis of empirical data is qualitative (Babbie, 2008). It is aimed at ‘extracting’ and giving names to the features of the studied phenomenon – aloneness/loneliness in adulthood – that are related to Together and Alone, in order for them to be joined and thus give more insight (Konecki, 2000: 51). Research included several stages: (1) Preparation for research (theoretical and methodological) for the ten PhD students of pedagogy and psychology, carried out by the author of the text as part of a thirty-hour lecture course: Aloneness and loneliness in an interdisciplinary context, during the winter semester of the 2019–20 academic year. Familiarizing the students with the research tool elaborated by the author of the text and the situation of an interview they may be faced with. (2) Carrying out interviews in January 2020. The studies were conducted by pedagogy and psychology PhD students of the University of Łódz´.7 Each student made an election of one research participant. The small number of research participants does not allow for the generalization of the data, but research reveals ten different experiences of loneliness. (3) Analysing the collected empirical material by the group of PhD students on 24 January 2020. Each researcher (ten people) presented the content of their interview. All students participated in its interpretation. At this stage, the analysis of the material allowed us to draw a fundamental conclusion that age, that is, the criterion for determining different age cohorts of adults, is a criterion of secondary importance and only a formal one. The analysis showed that selective coding, concentrated on categories describing loneliness through extracting it and giving meaning to its features, (emotional) states, situations, events and so on, is the leading type of data coding. (4) Qualitative analysis of the empirical material was performed in February and March 2020 by the author. This analysis was aimed at defining specific categories describing loneliness in adults, understanding the meanings of aloneness that were revealed in the empirical material and providing them with theoretical codes. Taking notes, keeping a record of the respondents together with a map of theoretical notions describing the phenomenon of aloneness/loneliness in adulthood were used along with coding the empirical material. The record of the respondent was elaborated for each individual participating in the research. (5) A report of the studies, prepared by the author of the text in March 2020, includes a presentation of individual ‘components’: features, situations, events describing loneliness in adulthood, all in logical order and presenting the phenomenon of loneliness in adulthood in six categories: Understanding loneliness, Experiencing loneliness, Memory of experiences from childhood forming aloneness and loneliness in adults, Other significant events forming aloneness and loneliness in adults, Interpersonal relations as the context of loneliness and Learning loneliness/solitude, especially for the categories Together and Alone. The studies included ten people between twenty-three and sixty-seven years of age (eight women and two men) who reside in Łódz´ (a large city in central Poland) and smaller towns in its proximity. The formal age criterion was the only criterion when compiling a research sample, assuming that all the studied individuals are adults and that each adult has some experience related to loneliness.

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Loneliness in Adulthood in the Light of Own Research Understanding the Terms of Aloneness and Loneliness The studied adult subjects gave different meanings to aloneness and loneliness. Aloneness is a complex phenomenon, often meaning the physical state of lack of other people’s presence, being Alone, most frequently made by free choice. However, aloneness also includes positive notions, as it favours development and tranquillity. On the other hand, loneliness is a definitely negative mental state which reflects a lack of close emotional bonds with other people, also when being Together. (In the Polish language both notions: ‘aloneness’ and ‘loneliness’ are quite-often used interchangeably). Aloneness is such an existential concept and I have an impression that it is very hard to define it in one specific sentence /. . ./it may have different aspects and different dimensions, it may be positive and negative. It may also have different duration. It is hard for me to specify this, but I think that aloneness may mean the lack of another person in your life. (4:F,28)8 Aloneness poses a difficulty in its definition as it includes two antithetical experiences: a positive and a negative one. They both may be experienced at the same time or subsequently (5:F,26). I think it is easy to turn from solitude to loneliness /. . ./ I used to spend this time alone. Such solitude makes you not want to go out to friends, acquaintances /. . ./ I think it is related, because . . . you just start feeling reluctance towards such relationships. So, it is possible to turn from solitude to loneliness. (1:F,23) This bipolarity of aloneness may be perceived as a dilemma. The ambivalence and oscillations between the positive and negative assessment of aloneness show a significant difficulty in bringing together the two situations of Together and Alone. Despite my children’s efforts to take me to their home /. . ./ I’d rather stay at my place. Have this peace and quiet. But then all the memories come back, when my husband was still alive, when the children were around /. . ./ and now I’m on my own. Then I cry and feel upset and useless, but when someone wants to take me to their place, I insist on being left at my place. (8:F,65) The image of aloneness that is revealed from the experiences of the studied adult subjects most frequently shows loneliness, that is the negative aspect of aloneness – the sense of emptiness and experiencing sorrow connected with being left alone with all one’s problems, with uncertainty, with no support or ‘soulmate’. I’ve been living alone for five years now, since my husband died. Meanwhile, the children settled down and moved out, so when I was left alone I felt lonely. Loneliness is hard, unpleasant, awkward. /. . ./ You’re just sitting all by yourself and days never end, and nights are even worse. (8:F,65) Aloneness has its positive side too. It is identified with being with no people around by choice, it may open a new developmental dimension for a person. What is significant is the frequency with which the studied adults wanted the silence of solitude, how much they appreciated its benefits (6:M,41), (8:F,65).

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What is good about solitude, is the fact that you can think things through, realize them and analyse what has happened to you so far. (1:F,23) Being selfish all the time is a terrible thing, but being alone from time to time is recuperation of your physical and mental strength. (9:F,67) Early adulthood appears to be the time of becoming aware of aloneness in its negative form – loneliness, which is a result of the process of increasing self-awareness. I’d never thought about it before . . . /. . ./ and recently . . . I guess I grew up to it and came to the conclusion that, despite having someone to go out with during the weekend to have a beer or two, this is not the kind of a relationship I’d wish to have. Despite all this, I can still feel lonely, even though I am not alone. This is most striking now. When I’ve realised that. (1:F,23) Clear realization of the approaching burden of loneliness appears also at an older age, when faced with the threat of being dependent. I’m most scared by physical disability, that I’ll become dependent. Being dependent is a nightmare. (9:F,67) Thinking through one’s life situation favours realizing solitude and loneliness. I experience my solitude . . . sitting in silence and analysing all previous situations. I listen to music most of the time then and just think it all over /. . ./ I was sitting alone and concentrating on my thoughts. (1:F,23) A change of mindset concerning aloneness may also take place in the studied subjects during the interview. It is a good example of developing one’s self-reflection in a short period of time. During our conversation, I realised that not every aloneness is negative after all. (2:F,25) As a consequence of more mature self-reflection, an adult comes to understand the situations of loneliness that took place in the past. This allows relief of the negative autobiographical memory. I’m just beginning to realise that as a child I felt lonely just because I didn’t understand certain things and I also think that adults don’t understand many things as well. Because when we become adults, we often forget about the needs we used to have as children. (2:F,25) Experiencing Loneliness from the perspective of Time Aloneness is a phenomenon that, to some extent, touched/touches all of the studied subjects. This confirms the thesis of the universal character of aloneness, about which Domeracki writes: ‘Man is woven from aloneness, even if he is not aware of that fact and he thinks he is free from that. Thus, there are no people who are not marked by the ghost of aloneness’ (Domeracki, 2018: 321). Almost all of the studied subjects, except for one person (7:F,43), are currently experiencing loneliness, and it varies in its intensity. There are cases of an intense and almost lifelong sense of loneliness that was shaped in early childhood (9:F,67; 3:M,25); but it also happens that only at the onset of adulthood does a person begin to see how loneliness enters their life (1:F,23). There are people who declare a lack of experience of loneliness; they are well rooted in their families, have a rich social environment, are active (4:F,28) or experience loneliness just occasionally (10:F,67).

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There’s so much going on in my life and there are so many people that I don’t think I have the time to think about it /. . ./ it doesn’t even cross my mind because there’s always someone around and I am always with someone. (4:F,28) Experiencing loneliness has, on the one hand, an emotional-subjective dimension and is related to the sense of having no soulmate (6:M,41; 10:F,67), with the necessity to hide emotions (6:M,41), with the sense of being someone else, more sensitive, not liked by other people (9:F,67), with the sense of not being understood (2:F,25). On the other hand, however, it has a social and cultural dimension, as well as an objective one. It is related to the loss of someone dear, the death of a family member (5:F,26; 10:F,67), with growing apart from one’s homeland, its language and culture, one’s nearest and dearest, countrymen, and is also related to cultural differences (7:F,43). I’ve always been a bit of an odd-ball in the family, at school and at work. I was always talked down for my character./ . . ./ people don’t usually like the stubborn. (9:F,67) I was a bit plump and hated exercising in PE classes. And the kids would sometimes laugh at me,/ . . ./ well, yes, I guess I felt lonely. (10:F,67) In the perspective of the future, aloneness is rather hard to define rationally. A person does not want to see loneliness in their future, which is why they do not express their fears accurately, as if letting sleeping dogs lie: it would be devastating if she had to go on like this for longer. (3:M,25) Loneliness provokes even panic. Oh, Jesus!! /. . ./ I’m terribly afraid! But not this kind of solitude in which I won’t have any people around /. . ./ I’m afraid of having such a moment in life in which when I finally settle down with someone, /. . ./ I will wake up one day and think that this person doesn’t understand me at all. (2:F,25) Also attitudes that are clearly anti-anxiety can be observed. I’m not afraid, we’ll see how it goes, whether you can actually be afraid of aloneness /. . ./ the most important thing is to just live your life to the fullest, not to be afraid, to be brave, undertake various activities and, of course, look after yourself most of all. (4:F,28) The perspective of aloneness in the future looks brighter for some of the studied subjects than in the current times, which stems from their more mature decisions and choices, as well as from more mature actions. I think that in the future I’ll choose my companions differently and I also think that /. . ./I’ll cut off those relationships that made me realise that and we’ll see what that brings. (1:F,23) The perspective of becoming lonely in the future may be less favourable than experiencing it currently. This results from foreseeing the negative consequences of becoming older and losing one’s independence (9:F,67). The prospect of a lonely future can be found in advice given to isolated people. This advice is varied, but it all stresses the need to becoming personally involved with one’s own fate.

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You need to go out to people . . . sign up for some courses, to some club, even when you don’t know anyone – because you will get to know someone and it’s important to have something to get up for in the morning. And set some tasks to do – for example – I’ll go to the park tomorrow and then to a club, or – I’ll make a cake and ask someone over, or – best of all – go on a trip somewhere or to some workshop; there’s so much to do nowadays. You can’t just sit at home because it’s just sadness and illnesses. (10:F,67) Memory of Experiences from Childhood Forming Aloneness and Loneliness in Adults Events from childhood – their good or bad memories – remain with a person for a long time, shaping the matrix of their future ability to experience situations related to aloneness.9 Sometimes it is hard to talk about the ‘guilt’ of an adult-parent, because the two worlds – the world of a child and the world of an adult – are not identical. By gaining increased self-awareness with years, a person may include those experiences in their biography differently and draw good knowledge from bad experiences, therefore they will learn from their own biography (Dubas, 2017). We were at my family’s. There was my cousin there, she’s my junior /. . ./ My dad would pay more attention to her than to me /. . ./. Now, from the perspective of an adult person, I know why it was so. Mainly, it was because we would meet so rarely/. . ./. But back then I had a moment in which I felt so lonely and so hurt by my parents./ . . ./ I remember making a pledge that I’d never allow my children to feel so tragically low as I did at that moment. (2:F,25) A ‘difficult’ family is a particular circumstance that shapes the painful experience of loneliness fundamentally. A ‘difficult’ family means a broken home, a dysfunctional one, for example with a problem with alcohol or other behaviours presented by parents that are not socially acceptable. Parents do not meet a child’s needs, they are frequently absent, they do not create situations in which a child would be able to talk about their difficulties. Consequently, a child withdraws, learns to hide their problems, isolates from society and becomes alienated. They look for solutions alone, for example by undertaking socially unacceptable behaviour. A ‘difficult’ family leaves a person lonely in current and future life situations. I come from such a family where you wouldn’t really talk about your problems, so I was always left to my own devices with them and learnt to hide them./ . . ./ Actually, I’ve always been waiting for something since my childhood. My father would always promise to come back home and he never did. /. . ./ I never used to go out to people and that made my lack of social skill even greater, which related to becoming more lonely. /. . ./ Aloneness meant learning rather useless things, such as that life makes no sense, death is the solution to everything, people hurt and I’m useless at everything, nobody loves me /. . ./There’s no hope for me, no-one will come to me, it will prevail and you’ll have to be afraid. (3:M,23) The death of a close person is an event that influences a child’s consciousness immensely and breeds loneliness, particularly when it is related to a person they were closely bonded with. Experiencing death is a lesson for a child. In favourable circumstances, it can become a positive one. It was hard to come to terms with the fact that gran will no longer be with us. /. . ./ it resulted mostly from the fact of simply missing her and the awareness that I’ll never get to see gran again /. . ./I was

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very much worried about my gran /. . ./ I knew we were all together and we’ll survive somehow, but I kept asking whether she would manage because she was all alone /. . ./ It was as a child that I learnt that life is not eternal and that one day you leave more or less prepared, likewise – your family is more or less prepared for this departure /. . ./ certainly, knowing that everything goes away in life. /. . ./ made me learn new emotions that I’d never felt before. (4:F,28) Memory of school years was also related to negative experiences of this time – lack of acceptance, exclusion due to being different, for example overweight, and it also shaped the sense of loneliness (10:F,67). In the memory of our childhood, there are biographical episodes that are seemingly unimportant, but which shape out future life. Words of wisdom, a life motto quoted by important family members, were memorized by a child and used later in life in making their choices. These messages influenced the experiencing of future life as more together or more alone. Don’t pity yourself. Take life at face value and don’t count on anyone, do as my grandma would say: the less you expect from others, the healthier you are because you’re not angry when you don’t get something. (9:F,67) Loneliness experienced in childhood is very hard because a child lacks a fuller awareness of the whole situation. There is no inner world they can fall back on (Szczepański, 1988), nor is there any strategy to deal with loneliness. Childhood was the hardest for me because I didn’t know how to cope with it, I had no methods that would help me overcome that sense. (9:F,67) Other Significant Events Forming Aloneness and Loneliness in Adults Throughout our entire life, not just in our childhood, we are touched by a multitude of events that are perceived as significant, particularly from a time perspective. The studied adult subjects pointed to events that were of importance in the context of their experiencing aloneness and loneliness: the death of dear ones (6:M,41;10:F,67; 8:F,65), an illness of a close person (6:M,41), being left by a partner (5:F,26), children leaving home – ‘empty nest syndrome’ (8:F,65), burdensome household chores and family duties (8:F,65) and living alone (8:F,65). All these elements were difficult events. However, also here a certain ambivalence of experience can be observed, depending on the relationship that bonded the studied subjects with others: Oh, and there was the husband, but unfortunately he is dead too, sadly, although he was such a dear friend of mine . . . he was so . . . it’s difficult to talk about it . . . he wasn’t really supportive, but he was there and that’s what counts, because I wasn’t alone, and I have children, and grandchildren – that’s most important. (10:F,67) The study also shows the cultural context of aloneness. It can be seen in an event described as leaving for another country (in this instance it was coming from Mongolia to Poland to do PhD studies). The drama of this situation can be seen in the statement given by the studied woman: Everything I knew was left in Mongolia (7:F,43). Changing one’s fatherland for a strange country is the basis of a deep feeling of loneliness. The notion of aloneness is new to the Mongolian. People who lived in villages did not have the right to feel lonely. /. . ./ Before I came to Poland, I had not known the issue of loneliness. I was 272

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in my own country, in Mongolia, with my family and friends. /. . ./ in Poland I was completely alone among strangers. (7:F,43) It needs to be stressed that certain events often trigger other events and multiply the reasons for aloneness/loneliness. Interpersonal Relations as the Context of Loneliness Expectations towards people with whom we are in relationships are the key determinant of the sense of loneliness. There are expectations of reciprocity, devotion, understanding and depth in a relationship. Sometimes you build a relationship for many years with someone and later you realise that this relationship does not come up to our expectations 100%. /. . ./ Even though I have someone to go out with at the weekend and drink beer, this is not the relationship I would like to have. Despite all this, I can still feel lonely, though I’m not alone. (1:F,23) What determines the expectations connected with close bonds with people, including relationships with parents, is the need to be understood. For me, loneliness is when I feel that what I think, the problem I have, is not understood by the person who is the closest to me. /. . ./ when my partner does not understand my problems, my needs, my worries – that’s when I feel I can’t talk to him. (2:F,25) Another expectation related to interpersonal relationships is the need to be loved. This is a time in which a child wants to receive the most love from their parents. The moment you start to feel that there is not enough of this love, there immediately comes the feeling of repudiation which perhaps later changes into some kind of loneliness./ . . ./No understanding. (2:F,25) Expecting (to build) a stable relationship is particularly frequent among young adults. I feel lonely because I’m being left alone with all my problems, due to my male-female contacts, because there is no-one to talk to about emotions /. . ./ On the one hand, I am a womanizer, on the other – I care for a stable relationship. It is the lack of committing to one relationship that blocks me. I’m fully aware that what I do is not perfect. (6:M,41) In interpersonal relationships, one of the most often expected elements is the expectation of friendship. Friendship is, in a way, an antidote for loneliness. When I have a problematic situation, I don’t feel lonely or alone in the circle of my friends. /. . ./ When we talk, I always have a great sense of understanding coming from them. If I ever felt lonely at home or with a partner, I know that when I reach out to them for help, it will be a moment of great relief for me. (2:F,25) A failed friendship brings the pain of loneliness. I feel lonely because you could say ‘I have a friend’, but it depends on what this relationship looks like and I personally think that recently it has not been looking as it should nor does it deserve to be called one. (1:F,23) 273

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The need for friendship is also revealed in relationships with colleagues and acquaintances. Young people, but also those in the time of mid-adulthood, have many acquaintances around them. Circles of friends may socialize negatively. As a result of reflection, one may come to the conclusion that these circles of people must be changed or limited. I compensated for the lack of a father with friends or partnerships. /. . ./ I had a circle of a few hundred friends: parties, table billiards. Life verified it /. . ./ I got myself into the world of drug dealers. I weighed 40kg, got myself out of this, but I could not count on any of my friends because instead of helping me, they’d say ‘I end badly’. (6:M,41) Also neighbours may play an important role in dealing with loneliness. I feel lonely . . . sometimes, when the kids don’t call for a long time, or when my grandchildren don’t come for a long time, but then I pop in to my neighbour and I feel better already. She’s the same as me. (10:F,67) Family is also seen in the context of loneliness, but often in a binary way: as a situation eliminating, though also enhancing, loneliness (Dubas, 2000). However, a family is also a shield against loneliness, often for one’s whole life. It is impossible to overestimate the importance of family in the context of preventing loneliness (4:F,28; 5:F,26; 10:F,67). My family is big /. . ./ we stick together somehow and are always in touch, so even when something bad is happening, we can always count on each other./ . . ./ I’m not lonely and I don’t feel loneliness, because I don’t even think about it at all. (4:F,28) Learning (in) Aloneness Learning (in) aloneness is one of the manners of dealing with loneliness. It is taming loneliness (learning in the situation of loneliness) and discovering there a chance to develop (learning solitude). Eight of the studied subjects described learning (in) aloneness. This means learning how to be resourceful, and independent, how to make prudent decisions (e.g. choosing a life partner). Learning aloneness also means attempting to step out of loneliness. Aloneness and loneliness favour learning, it is related to the learning process. /. . ./I can count on myself and that has guided me since I was a child. (2:F,25) I’m learning myself, mostly. (9:F,67) Learning in a situation of loneliness does not only bring positive results; it also involves acquiring unhelpful attitudes towards oneself, towards other people and the world. as I used to sit alone, I would think a lot about this world, /. . ./ persistence in loneliness would impair my social skills even further and would create such an unreal world of expectations toward the world. (3:M,25) Reflection on experiences of loneliness encourages the reinterpretation of life experience and perceiving value in negative circumstances. Loneliness let me see some value in my family, that we can rely on each other in some way. (3: M,25)

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Solitude and loneliness are also a space for educational activity. I refreshed my German /. . ./ Sometimes when there was no money, I’d give private lessons in chemistry /. . ./ I did post-graduate studies /. . ./ this was very helpful at work. Now, when I’m retired, I read a lot about history, sociology and I’m learning about how shallow politics is. . . /. . ./I also did a computer course. /. . ./ computer, the Internet and searching for what interests me – this is my window to the world. (9:F,67) Learning in solitude also means learning alone, unlike most formal, school education. Learning requires concentration and it is best done alone. I can’t learn with someone else in the room, with someone at home. In order to acquire new information, I need to be alone. /. . ./even if this other person /. . ./ is perfectly quiet and does not disturb me. (2:F,25) Learning in the situation of aloneness may be realized, although it is not conscious. Aloneness was not connected with learning. /. . ./ the fact that I was alone was valuable and necessary for me to feel aware and self-confident. /. . ./ This was a time when I picked up on some toxic relationships that needed breaking off. /. . ./ What is good about solitude, is getting to know yourself, being with yourself. (5:F,26) Conclusions Together and Alone is a certain challenge for modern people of prosperous societies, where Alone is dominant, yet the need for Together is still strong. In this case, it means restoring balance between Together and Alone. This is best done through small communities (family, circles of friends, neighbourhood), which would need to be brought back to life. It is worth restoring the importance of a prosocial way of life and the social component of self-realization. The analysis of interpersonal relationships reveals their fundamental importance for experiencing both aloneness and loneliness. The need to be together, particularly the need of friendship and family (it should be emphasized that in previous studies the importance of friendship in solitude was not emphasized so strongly, and the importance of family was mainly emphasized [Dubas, 2000: 215–16]), coexists with the need to be alone. It is visible both in individual expectations and in the ways of handling solitude. High expectations towards Together are closely related to high expectations towards Alone. At the same time, there is a great difficulty in meeting those needs simultaneously. Reasons for loneliness (Dubas, 2000: 116–18) definitely fit into the context of Together and Alone. Loneliness from the perspective of causes can thus be seen as a subjective, individual experience, conditioned by social life and personal expectations, as a strong need of being Together, at the same time manifesting the need for self-realization. Strategies for handling loneliness10 also oscillate around the relations: Together (me and others) and Alone (me–me) too. Learning (in) aloneness is an attempt to reconcile two principal values: Together and Alone through autobiographical reflection. Thus, it is an example of social and emotional learning (Illeris, 2006), learning from one’s own biography (Dubas, 2017), as well as existential learning as a way of handling loneliness.11 Learning aloneness is at the same time learning to live.

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Adulthood is a period of great and constantly increasing self-awareness of people. Thanks to reflection that can be boosted and deepened, an adult changes their choices and modifies their lifestyle in such a way so as to make solitude favourable in their development. Education at every level has a great role to play, including educating adults. Breaking the dichotomy of Together and Alone is a significant educational challenge. This dichotomy can be replaced with oscillations between the two states by realizing the importance of both of them for human life. Aloneness needs to be explained in the context of values that are important for a person as an individual, as well as a social creature. The axiology of aloneness ought to include unmasking pseudo-values and restoring to aloneness values that constitute the holistic development of humanity.

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The Morality of Loneliness Jarosław Horowski

Introduction The aim of the analysis is to determine the relationship between morality and loneliness, and, more specifically, the impact that the threat of loneliness or loneliness as such can have on individuals’ moral decision-making. The resolution of this issue also leads to the determination of the moral value that loneliness can obtain as a result of being entangled in the resolution of moral dilemmas. Everyday life provides examples of situations in which people – choosing the moral good – at the same time agree to be rejected by those who feel uncomfortable with their decisions and, consequently, agree to be alone. It is also not difficult to find opposing examples where individuals, in order to avoid rejection by family members or friends, decide to hurt someone else or consent to humiliate themselves. A question about how the threat or the experience of loneliness can affect moral decisions made by the individual seems to be perfectly legitimate. Expressing the question in this way indicates the adoption of three assumptions that set the framework for this reflection. First, I assume that the actions of particular persons are not always consistent with their beliefs about their moral obligations in given situations. This issue was very well presented by Ovid in his famous sentence: video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor (‘I see and approve of the better, but I follow the worse’, Ovid, 2008: VII, 20–1), which suggests, for instance, a situation in which individuals give up the choice of what they consider to be good, under the influence of a fear of losing important goods or relationships. Second, I do not attribute to aloneness as such a positive or negative moral value. I perceive aloneness on an ontic level as a morally neutral state (Hartog, 1980: 13; Domeracki, 2016; Perrin, 2020). At the same time, I recognize that aloneness has different conditionings and is experienced differently by each individual. It might become an accepted, desired or avoided state (Stern, in the Introduction to this Handbook). In the mental dimension, it may be experienced as solitude or loneliness. As a consequence, aloneness could become a conditioning factor for moral choices, and indirectly decide on the moral value of an act, and thus aloneness can have a positive or negative moral value. Third, the analyses will not take into account the situation in which individuals choose loneliness, thus avoiding both involvement in the relationship and taking responsibility for

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another person. In this case, loneliness does not affect the quality of the moral choice, but rather it is used instrumentally to implement solutions to moral dilemmas. The choice of solitude becomes the justification for a lack of willingness or courage to take care of another person, and even, in extreme cases, for failing to fulfil one’s moral obligations towards another. Answering the previous question is problematic due to the difficulty in capturing both key phenomena, that is morality and loneliness. On the one hand, it is difficult to define morality which needs a reference point in the form of the criterion of moral good and evil, and changing the criterion often leads to a re-evaluation of the moral assessment of particular acts (Gert & Gert, 2017). On the other hand, negative emotions are not always associated with aloneness and it may not be treated as loneliness by the individuals. Therefore, the perspective of rejection and exclusion of individuals by the group of people to which they currently belong does not always have to involve the modification of their moral decisions. However, the difficulties outlined above do not justify ignoring the problem of the impact of negative feelings caused by rejection, exclusion, breaking relationships and loneliness on the decisions made by individuals; the impact that can be noticed in numerous everyday situations. The analysis will be divided into three parts. In the first one, the introduction to understanding differences between morality and moral reasoning will be presented. In the second, the relationship between morality and loneliness will be analysed. In the third part, the problem of the forgiveness of loneliness will be its crowning. In conducting this type of analysis, it is difficult not to refer to one’s own intellectual and cultural background, which in this case is neo-Thomistic philosophy and Christian thought. Referring to them, however, I try to use not world view solutions, but a natural approach to human nature and human relations that – based on natural cognition – is present within them. Morality and Moral Reasoning To solve the problem outlined in the title, it is first necessary to describe the difference between moral reasoning and moral decisions that lead directly to action. Consequently, one should first pay attention to the issue of moral reasoning. Moral reasoning is agents’ first-personal practical reasoning about what, morally, they ought to do (Maritain, 1990; Richardson, 2018). The reference point for this reasoning are subjective moral norms. The development of these norms is conditioned, on the one hand, by the direct knowledge of the surrounding reality and the concerns that arise as a result. These are not only cares for oneself, for one’s life and health, but also cares for other people, especially those as close as parents, spouses, children. On the other hand, decisions about the moral norms an individual recognizes are influenced by culturally transmitted interpretations of the world and accompanying interpretations of the obligations that one person has towards another (Archer, 2000). The moral reasoning of particular individuals are, therefore, conditioned by their subjective attitude towards moral good and evil. The availability of criteria for individuals’ moral evaluation of their acts makes it possible to determine what to do in given situations. The use of these criteria is easier when one subject and one object of given acts are included in given reasonings. However, finding good solutions in situations where the effects of specific decisions is experienced by a larger group of people makes it much more difficult (Spaemann, 2006). The acting subjects are the first who 278

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experiences the effects of their own decisions on themselves (Wojtyła, 1979). The consequences of these decisions are experienced also by the subjects’ relatives – wives, children, parents – and by strangers who are not the direct reference object of the doers. Sometimes individuals have to make decisions, being aware that by acting for the benefit of one person, they sacrifice the good of another. Practical reasoning is therefore always associated with a number of dilemmas (Chyrowicz, 2008). Further obstacles arise when individuals cross the limit of reasoning, gathering strength to make decisions. There can be no sign of equality between moral reasoning and making moral decisions (Spaemann, 2006). Individuals who have found solutions to moral dilemmas and thus formulated their own moral obligations can put these solutions into effect or refrain from implementing them under the influence of, for example, fear of the negative effects of given acts such as the loss of pleasant goods or the loss of the opportunity to acquire something that gives pleasure. Each decision not only includes the dialogue of mental authorities, reason and will but is also a drama taking place at the level of feelings. Consequently, the individuals, knowing what is good and what to do, might – under the influence of fear of experiencing unpleasantness or under the influence of the desire for pleasure associated with making different decisions – give up the actions described as good (Maritain, 1968). In resolving the tension which arises between the theoretical settlement of the moral dilemma and the emotions associated with the personal ‘costs’ of defined actions, the goods that attract the individuals will play an important role. The actions are of purposeful nature, which means that they are undertaken because of the possibility of acquiring goods, important either for the acting subjects or for their relatives or for strangers whose good is an object of sensitivity of the acting subjects. The intensity with which acting subjects care about their own good or the good of another person makes it easier or more difficult to bear the personal ‘costs’ of gaining it and dealing with feelings of fear or desire. Negative feelings are then sublimated by the pursuit of goods that are important to the individuals or their loved ones. It means that morality – as opposed to moral reasoning based on moral norms – is embedded in interpersonal relations. The tendencies to subjectivize and relativize the truth, present in contemporary culture, create a specific context for moral reasoning and the associated process of making moral decisions. Criticism of modernist ambitions to establish objective truth – not only in the natural sciences but also in relation to human spirituality – led to a state in which a multitude of equivalent truths, known as weak thought, are accepted (Sartre, 2007; Vattimo, 2012) and tolerance enabling their coexistence is postulated (Bronk, 1998). As a consequence, contemporary people, when assessing their own actions, cannot refer to unambiguous information provided in culture about what is morally good or morally bad (Bauman, 2008). Rather, they face the need to construct their own guidelines for action based on scattered premises (Archer, 2007, 2012; Haksar, 1998: 500). At the same time, the undermining of external, objective reference points for moral reasoning and moral decision-making causes the only determinant of moral good or evil to be feelings of pleasure or unpleasantness, expected as a result of adopting certain solutions (Kauppinen, 2018). The tension between the indications of reason and those solutions that have actually been put into action is also consistently eliminated. Deeds that are authentic, that is corresponding to the emotional preferences of the individuals, are considered good. This change in approach to morality is significant, given the issue of the relationship between morality and loneliness discussed here. Let’s look at the dilemmas that moral choice can cause 279

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when one of its side effects may be breaking relationships, rejection, exclusion – generally, loneliness. Moral Decision-making in the Context of the Threat of Loneliness Just as morality is difficult to unambiguously conceptualize, so also aloneness can be perceived differently by the individual, which was signalled in the introduction. There are people who accept loneliness because they are familiar with it or see a deeper dimension of loneliness: the chance it gives, for example, to explore themselves or unite with God in a deeper way (Domeracki, 2016; Stern & Wałejko, 2020). This aspect of loneliness is particularly exposed in pedagogy, becoming the foundation of education for loneliness (Wałejko, 2016; Stern, 2014). The individuals’ recognition of the development potential associated with loneliness means that the vision of loneliness does not cause negative feelings and they do not try to escape from loneliness. The works of Thomas Merton (1998) are undoubtedly an interesting guide on the way of discovering loneliness. The second group consists of those who perceive loneliness as an unpleasant experience and, as a consequence, want to avoid it (Sadler & Johnson, 1980; Dumm, 2008; Stern, 2014: 52–3; Mijuskovic, 2015: 2–6). I assume that especially for such people the prospect of loneliness is meaningful when making moral decisions. Situations in which people who negatively perceive loneliness have to face a decision resulting in such a state can be divided into two categories. The first consists of those activities that are oriented towards achieving a greater good, attractive for a given individual, and loneliness is in some sense a condition for its acquisition. In the second category I include those decisions where the individual does not strive for a good which is attractive for them, but still faces a dilemma whose solution may entail an experience of rejection, isolation, exclusion, that is loneliness. An example of accepting loneliness for the achievement of another good can be the attitude of scientists who, while departing for a research expedition, decide to separate from family, and sometimes don’t start a family at all, knowing that they will not be able to spend enough time for it. The problem they want to solve, however, absorbs them so much that the negative feelings associated with loneliness can be absorbed by the positive ones, associated with the pursuit of the goal established. Similarly, one can describe, for example, a situation where one parent temporarily leaves home to work and earn a living. Caring for spouse and children can lead to acceptance of separation, which is difficult in itself. A higher positive goal can also be seen in the decision to limit social contacts due to the care of a close relative (Leszko et al., 2020). Taking serious decisions important from the perspective of entire life it is sometimes necessary to accept temporary or permanent loneliness. In the examples cited here, we can see the process of sublimation of feelings, that is the absorption of negative feelings by the positive ones, related to the pursuit of the good perceived as more valuable. In the situations mentioned earlier, the good – which is the object of aspirations – is located in a sense on the horizon, it is possible to see it, which makes it easier for those who strive for it to deal with difficulties or suffering, including the experience of loneliness. In a much more difficult situation are those who at a given moment do not see the good that requires consent to loneliness. As an example of a situation in which the pursuit of an indefinite good requires consent to loneliness might serve the situation of adolescent persons who – believing in the future meeting of a person with whom they will build a mature relationship and a joint life project – 280

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accept temporary loneliness, that is do not enter into closer, intimate relationships with people for whom they do not want to take responsibility. By accepting temporary loneliness, such persons do not know its time limits and are not sure that this loneliness will ever reach its end. To sum up, it should be noted that the situations cited earlier include those in which disagreement with loneliness cannot be combined with the choice of moral evil, as well as those in which escape from loneliness implies some kind of injustice, that is it can be assessed as morally negative. While abandoning one’s life challenge – for example, a research expedition – due to concern for own family may be considered a morally neutral decision of an individual, leaving relatives and sick people unattended due to unwillingness to limit other contacts already implies a moral assessment. The second of the categories listed earlier consists of those in which maintaining a morally important relationship is intertwined with making a morally wrong decision, specifically when making a morally good decision can lead to breaking relationships with the person, whereas making a morally wrong decision is a condition for maintaining a relationship with that person. A necessity to solve this type of dilemma is faced at least by people who are urged by family members or friends, or a social group in which they function on a daily basis, to assist in causing harm to someone, or – in a more subtle way – to make decision that is favourable for them, for example in the professional sphere, which in fact also implies harming a stranger. The individual is then aware that the consequence of a possible refusal is weakening or breaking relationships with those whose closeness has thus far been one of the main values in their lives. A special case of a consent to evil in order to maintain a relationship with a loved one or to preserve one’s social position is the consent to hurt one’s own self. Such consent can be recalled, for example, in some marriages or intimate relationships where the desire to maintain relationships leads to consent, for example, to sexual abuse, or in the relationship of parents with children, when parents do not want to lose contact with children and do not protest against being abused by them. In the situations outlined earlier, one can observe the tension between the decision prompted by reason – which relates to the good of the people involved in the given situation – and negative feelings (mainly anxiety) which are associated with rejection, exclusion and loneliness. This fear may have different conditionings and intensity. It can be a fear of finding oneself on the margins of life of a wider national, local or professional community, that is fear of ostracism on the part of neighbours or colleagues. It can also be a fear of breaking relationships with relatives, parents, children, siblings: relationships that cannot be replaced. The dilemma of choosing moral good and loneliness or choosing moral evil and maintaining relationships might be solved differently. An example of the courage for the consent to rejection by one’s own people is the attitude of the prophet Elijah, described through the pages of Bible’s 1 Kings. Criticism of King Ahab’s conduct and the cult of Baal, spreading in Israel, made Elijah have to save himself twice, by fleeing (1 Kgs 17–19) (Martini, 1993). Bonhoeffer, who criticized the Nazi ideology prevailing in the Third Reich (Raum, 2002), was also excluded by his own people. The second pole of possible solutions to the dilemma of rejection or consent to evil are those decisions in which individuals, because of their fear of being excluded from the political community, adopt conformist attitudes and are afraid to criticize the evil to which the community gives consent. Examples of such people are difficult to find, because they do not talk loudly about their moral dilemmas and failures in settling them (giving in to fear and agreeing to evil is a 281

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failure, after all). An example of a solution to a moral dilemma dictated by fear is given by Dillon in an article devoted to self-forgiveness. He begins his analysis by telling the story of a woman named Alison, who as a teenager, didn’t defend her friend with a deformed face who was the object of mockery from her peers. Moreover, in the absence of her friend, she’s been joking about her appearance to gain acceptance among her school friends. In doing so she was also aware that her behaviour is bad (Dillon, 2001: 54). Opposition to the evil to which members of the wider community succumb is even more difficult because the political community’s rejection is associated with stereotypes that staying in the community (pólis) is synonymous with socialization, while staying out of the community is a consequence of a lack of socio-moral refinement (Mijuskovic, 1980: 71–2; Domeracki, 2018: 176–86). Therefore, making decisions as a result of which individuals can be rejected, excluded from the group in which they have grown up, with which they identify themselves, and whose welfare they care about, requires not only consent to loneliness but also being critical about the stereotypes according to which the one who is rejected is guilty of rejection, i.e. rejection or exclusion is a consequence of social maladjustment (Bauman, 2001). Of slightly different nature is the tension that occurs in a situation where moral evil is at stake on one side and on the other is the preservation of relations with loved ones, relations that are essential for the meaning of an individual’s life: children, parents, siblings. Because of the closeness and strength of these relationships, the pressure exerted on an individual to agree to moral evil is very high. A decision that is not favourable to a loved one may lead to a definitive breakdown of relationship, then irreplaceable. While breaking a relationship with a friend does not prevent making a new friendship, losing a child does not give a chance to have a new relationship of this kind. The suffering of loneliness then becomes inevitable, even when being surrounded by among other, close and kind people. Those who have testified in court against their own parents or children who have committed serious crimes have undoubtedly experienced extreme difficulties in, on the one hand, advocating for the moral good but, as a consequence, losing a loved one. Sentencing a loved one to many years’ imprisonment prevents one from enjoying their presence on a daily basis, and in practice might mean a definitive separation. Making decisions to choose a moral good that are contrary to the interests of the persons in close relationship with the persons making the decision has yet another effect that implies a sense of fear. Persons making such decisions lose control over the duration and development of relationships with persons important for them. They must reckon that these relationships will be definitively broken. Of course, in some cases, the objection to evil expressed in a particular decision can be understood by the persons who had persuaded the evil, and, consequently, the relationship with them may be rebuilt at a higher level than the original relationship. However, if these persons do not see the negative nature of their own claims, they will not seek to maintain or rebuild relationships with people who – in their opinion – have failed them. The persons who make decisions to choose moral good, cannot predict at the moment of making these decisions how given stories are going to develop, and in this decision they agree to every solution, even the most difficult for them. The previous analysis shows the relationship between making moral decisions and the emotions that are associated with loneliness. The ability to deal with these emotions can have a significant impact on the quality of given individuals’ moral choices. In order to choose the moral good in a particular situation, it is therefore necessary to organize one’s own feelings, so that in a certain 282

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sense they ‘listen’ to reason – which recognizes the moral good and evil – and ‘understand’ the arguments of reason which points at the morally good solutions. Such an arrangement of feelings is conceptualized in terms of moral virtues, especially temperance and fortitude. A person who, in the name of the moral good, expose themselves to the loss of personal contact, being it the source of their pleasure, is characterized by the virtue of temperance, i.e. the ability to give up the pleasure in favour of the good denoted by reason (Horowski, 2020). The decision to lose control over a relationship that is important for a given individual and consent to the suffering of loneliness is at the same time a manifestation of fortitude, that is the ability to master the fear in the context of making difficult decisions that may result in negative consequences. The inability to cope with the lack of what is a source of pleasure, as well as the fear of the suffering of loneliness might, consequently, lead to ignoring and hiding the evil committed by loved ones and, in extreme cases, to supporting them in activities that involve harming third parties. The issue of relations between morality and loneliness inevitably leads to the subject of the social nature of human beings and the relationships they create. Loneliness proves to be inseparable from community also on the moral level (Domeracki, 2020). Even if individuals decide to choose morally good solutions, the consequence of which will be to experience loneliness as a source of suffering, the reference point for such decisions are some persons. These may be decisions taken for self-interest, for one’s own good, if the condition of the relationship is the consent to be harmed. The point of reference for these decisions might be a stranger targeted to be hurt by someone close to the subjects making the decisions. Looking at this type of decision – the essence of which is to express opposition to the evil committed by loved ones – it is not difficult to notice that the abusers themselves are also the objects of love and concern of the persons expressing opposition to evil. For the consequences of given acts are experienced not only by the harmed persons but also by the acting subjects themselves, who through their acts determine the shape of their own personalities and build the foundations for their own future. Opposition to the evil to which individuals strive, therefore, becomes a signal for them that the action they want to take, instead of bringing success and happiness, can lead to failure and disappointment. A specific point of reference for some individuals may also be God, whom they discover in a personal dimension. If God is seen as a person, then, as Heschel argues, it is difficult not to look at another person through the prism of God’s love and care that He surrounds that person with. In other words, looking at people around with ‘eyes’ of God makes impossible to divide people into ‘own’ and ‘aliens’, and thus makes impossible to act for the benefit of ‘own’ while, simultaneously, ignoring the good of ‘aliens’ (Heschel, 1976). The previous analyses are based on the assumption that good and evil are objective in nature, that is that both subjects forming a relationship relate to a problem whose settlement is either morally good or morally bad, whereas its moral value is determined not by an arbitrary settlement of a given individual but by the real effects that a particular act produces. Thus, these analyses are built on the foundation of cognitivism or epistemological objectivism. However, completely different conclusions shall be drawn when the issue of loneliness or sustaining a relationship as a side effect of a possible decision will be analysed on the basis of a non-cognitive standpoint. The recognition that there are no external and cognitive (for individual) points of reference for their moral choices leads to the visibility of the role of subjective factors in moral reasoning and moral decision-making. As a result, an individual is attributed the power to be guided by its own preferences – not so much reason-based, but of emotional nature. 283

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The change of reference point makes the tension between the choice of the moral good and the experience of loneliness replaced by a situation in which the avoidance of rejection/loneliness becomes the criterion of moral good and evil. As a consequence, for individuals who use this way of thinking, all those choices that lead to maintaining and deepening relationships that are relevant to them, even if they involve harming strangers, are justified and fair. Wojtyła (1979), when analysing the human act in the context of the functioning of the individual in the community, distinguished between authentic actions (characterized by the conformity of moral judgement with the choice leading to the act), which included solidarity and opposition, and non-authentic actions – conformism and avoidance (the reasonable finding of the moral good does not lead to its choice). This division is built on the assumption of cognitivism. Wojtyła’s philosophical reflection leads to the conclusion that humans reveals their humanity in action when they are in solidarity with those who, according to their assessment, are striving for the moral good, and when they can consequently express their opposition to the morally bad strivings. Opposing attitudes – conformism or avoidance – are attitudes through which individuals do not confirm their own humanity. For conformity consists in the fact that individuals agree to the moral evil they perceive, and even cooperate in its realization, thus adapting – like an amoeba (Kwieciński, 1996: 22) – to the community conditionings of their own life. A non-cognitive standpoint leads to a reversal of moral evaluation of individual attitudes. The actions that are based on striving for harmony with the group, even at the cost of various kinds of compromises, are positively evaluated while entering into a dispute that may lead to the breaking of group relations becomes an undesirable effect. Scruggs draws an interesting conclusion on the relationship between making subjectivism the foundation of one’s own thinking and the feeling of loneliness based on the analysis of Merton’s work. The famous twentieth-century hermit shows, according to Scruggs, that subjectivism builds the individuals’ conviction of their functioning only in the space of their own thoughts, that is it leads from the feeling of breaking contact with the world (autonomously) and, as a consequence, to loneliness (Scruggs 2015). Judging Merton is right, it can be stated that the correlation between subjectivism and the sense of loneliness will be one of the important prerequisites when it comes to recognize striving to overcome the feeling of loneliness as an ethical criterion and a determinant of moral decisions. It is not difficult to find examples of how membership of a group is considered a basic criterion for assessing the good and evil of individual acts. Moral evil was justified by reasons of group affiliation, for example, by the German Nazis (Arendt, 2006). However, does the desire to maintain a relationship with a group justify consenting to an evil done to one’s own self or another person? Is the argument of national/class affiliation sufficient to justify moral evil? The questions just formulated remain somewhat unanswered. The issue of the correlation between an individuals’ attitude to loneliness and their moral choices, outlined in this point, turns out to be conditioned by the very attitude to objective truth. The analyses made only allow us to sketch an axis whose one of the poles creates a conviction of the objectivity of moral good and evil, and the attitude towards loneliness (readiness to accept it as a difficult experience, or a fear of it which hinders the freedom of the individual) acquires moral value in case it serves to realize a certain moral value. The second pole is, in turn, determined by epistemological subjectivism, the consequence of which is not only the relativization of good and evil, but also 284

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allowing to recognize the striving to avoid unpleasant situations (including loneliness) as a moral criterion. Making Moral Decisions after Experiencing Loneliness: Forgiveness of Loneliness as a Condition for Striving for Good The analysis undertaken in the previous section was based on the assumption that a state of loneliness may occur in the future as a result of a decision made by individuals contrary to the expectations and pressures of persons close to them or a social group visited on a daily basis. At this point, I would like to reverse the order of the states being considered and address the situation in which individuals have to decide whether or not to support the persons or group responsible for their loneliness. The point of reference for their decision are therefore the specific persons guilty of their loneliness or the social group that excluded/rejected them. An example of a situation in which a moral decision is made in the context of the experience of loneliness is the reference to spouses who have betrayed, passed away, that is, have become a cause of suffering associated with loneliness. Breaking a close relationship through the fault of one of the parties does not necessarily mean breaking relationships and contacts. The various dependences built often over years are in many cases permanent. For example, the spouses mentioned earlier whose marriage broke up as a result of betrayal of one of them, must keep in touch because of the common progeny. As a result, abandoned persons experiencing loneliness have to decide whether to help them in a difficult situation, without paying attention to the suffering they have experienced or refuse to help. The situation outlined previously – of an action in the context of experiencing the injustice of loneliness – can also have a social dimension. The civil war in Rwanda claimed about one million lives. Tutsi people have lost family and friends. Members of the generation that experienced genocide will sense a rupture of relationships that were important to them – for the rest of their lives. Their loneliness is the context for settling moral dilemmas and making decisions with regard to members of the Hutu tribe with whom they still live in one land (Staub et al., 2005). Consequently, they have to face moral dilemmas, for which one pole is the experience of loneliness and the associated feelings of anger, sorrow and sadness, whereas the other pole is the good of those who are guilty of their suffering. The situations mentioned previously are only examples of the common phenomenon of dealing with moral dilemmas relating to people who have experienced evil, being revealed, for example, during the experience of breaking relationships, rejection, exclusion or loneliness. Loneliness is in this case a synonym for the harm that one person has done to another. The harm causes resentment. Unwanted loneliness (solitude being a kind of harm) is consistently a source of resentment. Resentment can lead to revenge (Butler, 1827), whether it reveals itself in action to the detriment of a person guilty of loneliness or in indifference to their weakness, difficulties, life crises. Acting for the good of the perpetrator of the evil – a single person or the entire community – becomes in fact a kind of forgiveness, that is a cessation (on the part of the victim) of taking into account the experienced evil. Forgiveness is defined as coping with resentment, that is coping with the negative emotions that are caused by harm. Murphy, referring to Butler’s analysis, the forerunner of the philosophical reflection on forgiveness, describes it as forswear resentment 285

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– that is ‘the very personal response of anger or sometimes even hatred that one naturally (and perhaps properly) initially feels when one believes that one has been wronged by another’ (Murphy, 1998: 698). Forgiveness is seen as a solution to a past problem; a specific solution because it has to be faced by the person who is not to blame for the whole situation. When forgiveness is defined by reference to emotions, it appears as an act in which the relationship between the past and the present is broken – a relationship that is constituted by emotions, triggered by an event from the past whose existence is felt in the present. Forgiving a person guilty of loneliness is, therefore, in a way, coping with the negative emotions caused by rejection, exclusion or abandonment. However, a completely different meaning is given to forgiveness when it is considered a decision. For the act of making decisions does not refer to the past, which cannot be changed, but is an attempt to influence the future. If forgiveness is a kind of decision, it consists in acting for the good of the person or persons who have suffered harm, even if the painful feelings are still alive (Horowski, 2018). The forgiveness of loneliness in this case is to act for the good of the person or persons who are guilty of loneliness, even if this state is a source of suffering. The decision – as shown in previous analyses – is made for the sake of a specific good that can be achieved in the future, either by the actors themselves, or by their relatives or strangers. This means that the decision to forgive an evil that has meant introducing the victim into a situation of loneliness can find its motivation to achieve good for someone from the loved ones, or for the victim’s own self. Returning to the above examples, a betrayed and lonely spouse may decide to support an unfaithful spouse because of, for instance, their children. The quality of life of a spouse who has failed and has contributed to the loneliness of another person seems indifferent to the abandoned spouse, on the one hand, but indirectly it refers to the well-being of the children born in that family and for whom the betrayer is still a parent. A similar correlation can be found in the above-mentioned situation of two tribes living on the territory of Rwanda. The possible decision to forgive an evil that cannot be repaired is not a look to the past but into the future, so it needs a reference point that will ‘attract’ the will. This point is primarily the well-being of children and grandchildren. How representatives of the other tribe will be treated will determine the future not only of the people who experienced the genocide but also of their children and grandchildren, who will know the tragic events only from stories. People who have lost their loved ones in the civil war, who miss them and suffer from their lack, find themselves in an extremely difficult situation in which they have to build a better future for next generations together with the perpetrators of evil. They have to face difficult moral dilemmas in the context of the experience of loneliness, knowing that through their decisions they lay the foundations for the future. Reflection on moral decisions made in the context of the experience of loneliness inevitably leads, as it can be seen, to the question of the social dimension of human life and the relations created by the individual with other people. Just as for the choice of the moral good – of which one dimension is the consent to solitude – a point of reference is needed for an action on behalf of people guilty of loneliness, and it must be a personal point. The condition for such a decision is, therefore, someone for whom the person is ready to stop paying attention to the loneliness he or she has experienced: spouse, children, friends, people the victim feels responsible for and even strangers, whose well-being the victim is sensitive to. God might also be such a point of reference (Escher, 2013; Giannini, 2017). 286

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Conclusion The problem of the relation between morality and loneliness seems to concern the dramas taking place within subjects when they have to either deal with the dilemma of pursuing goodness, knowing that this entails experiencing loneliness, or have to make decisions to act for the wellbeing of those who granted the experience of the harm of loneliness. The distinction between moral reasoning and morality itself (the recognition of moral reasoning as a condition of morality, but not as its essence), however, leads to the question of other conditionings for moral choices which determine the actions that individuals actually take. However, the answer to the latter question takes the analysis back into the area of interpersonal relations, in which the possibility of achieving good for oneself or for others motivates the individuals to undertake certain actions and discard others. For consenting to or forgiving loneliness is easier when the point of reference for given decisions is the good of particular people, who are the objects of concern of the acting subjects. The drama taking place within subjects thus turns out to be a drama conditioned by the interpersonal relations that the individual creates, even if their lives are penetrated by the experience of loneliness. Moreover, the reflection presented earlier leads to the conclusion that the shape of the relationship between loneliness and morality is directly determined by a moral criterion and, ultimately, by an individuals’ attitude to objective truth, fundamental for it. The consequence of extreme subjectivism, which presumes that individuals have access only to the data of their own consciousness, is the denial of objective determinants of moral good and evil. As a result, morality can only be conditioned by subjective factors, including feelings associated with maintaining or breaking the relationships in which the individuals remain. The recognition of the permanence of relationships (important for individuals) as a criterion of good and evil removes the tension between the choice of the moral good and the experience of loneliness, because it justifies taking actions to avoid loneliness, even if they lead to harming others. In the perspective of this statement, one could pose the question of whether contemporary culture, which emphasizes subjectivism and thus conditions the feeling of loneliness of the individuals ‘living’ there, does not lead to making loneliness one of the most important determinants of moral choices. To conclude, I would like to point out that the focus of this reflection is on those situations in which loneliness appears as an important context for moral choices. So I deliberately omitted those situations when it is used instrumentally – as an asylum to avoid getting involved and taking responsibility for another person. The essence of these situations is the difficulty of facing the challenges brought about by fate, from which an individual wants to escape, and loneliness becomes a kind of ‘place of refuge’.

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Loneliness and Dementia The Role of Communication Alison Wray

Introduction Aloneness1 is a common circumstance associated with the ageing process, with many acquired constraints impeding the ability to engage with others regularly. Poor eyesight and hearing, as well as ambulatory limitations, may make travel and socializing difficult. Adult children may live too far away to visit often. The partner may have died. Contemporaries may have their own challenges for staying in touch and meeting up. Enforced absence of company can be difficult for people to cope with, particularly if their previous life has been one of companionship, camaraderie and busyness. Just at the time in their life where having others around might be rather helpful for practical reasons, let alone to keep their spirits up, people’s agency in creating the circumstances for this to happen can be severely curtailed. Thus, ageing is typically a period of stark adaptation. Irrespective of whether it is fully to their taste, many, if not most, of those who find themselves alone in older age are obliged to find a way of tolerating and working with their aloneness, navigating a path that minimizes the transition into loneliness. Doing so is imperative, given that loneliness is a recognized risk factor for the development and exacerbation of dementia,2 as well as a frequent secondary symptom of it. Dementia is a broad term that describes the cognitive symptoms of a number of different degenerative brain diseases. The most common are Alzheimer’s disease, of which an early symptom is impaired recall of recent events, and vascular dementia, which often entails a reduced capacity to process information quickly and effectively. Other dementia types can cause hallucinatory episodes, paranoia and general confusion. A much-quoted trope attributed to Kitwood runs: When you’ve met one person with dementia . . . you’ve met one person with dementia.3 That is, no two people are the same, and generalizations will only give us part of the picture. People bring to the experience of living with a dementia the styles, preferences, anxieties, beliefs, assumptions, traumas and triumphs of their life so

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far. Combine that with the individuality of each person’s dementia-causing brain disease, the unique brain that it acts upon and the specific set of circumstances and environmental and social landscapes within which they exist, and we can see that the main characteristic that binds people living with a dementia is their inherent difference from each other. Nevertheless, it is far from impossible to make useful general observations about the challenges that people living with a dementia face. In particular, as I observe in my previous work (e.g. Wray, 2020), even the well-documented differences between types of dementia become secondary when one looks at impediments to effective communication, as will be done here. This is because although there are many links in the communication chain, differently affected by each type of dementia, if any one of them gets broken, the outcome – a broken chain – will often be quite similar. One such outcome is highly likely to be an increased risk of loneliness. At a superficial level, loneliness is an unsurprising outcome of dementia. The inconveniences, anxieties and stigma of the disease, along with the difficulties that others have in knowing how to engage with people living with a dementia, are highly likely to undermine confidence on both sides. As well as being ostracized, ignored and overlooked, people living with a dementia may be lured in voluntary social withdrawal as a means of self-protection (Livingston et al., 2017: 13). Meanwhile, social isolation could in itself exacerbate, or increase the risk of developing, dementia symptoms. There are several possible reasons. Regular interaction with others may sustain brain function and boost the immune system, reducing stress and raising cortisol, adrenaline and noradrenaline levels (Seeman, 1996). Perhaps, for this reason, social interaction can counteract depression (Fratiglioni et al., 2000), which is in its own right a risk factor for dementia (Livingston et al., 2017). In those already living with a dementia, depression is likely to make it more difficult to cope with the dementia symptoms. Research also shows that the socially isolated are greater risk of stroke (Boden-Albala et al., 2005), and strokes can cause vascular dementia. Cohabitation with a partner has been found protective against dementia, probably for both practical and social/emotional reasons (Fratiglioni et al., 2000; Sundström et al., 2016). Yet it would be too easy to suppose that the company of others is a reliable solution for the challenges of dementia. Social situations can be potentially harmful too, if relationships are not good. Families do not always get on well, and the social dynamics within friendships are not always affirming for all parties. Social groups such as clubs and even religious organizations can be conservative when members cannot participate in the expected ways, and people who struggle to sustain status quo behaviours and responses can feel shunned and pushed out. It is with this rather complex set of considerations in mind that we shall investigate the relationship between dementia and loneliness, and, in consequence, explore an opportunity for defining loneliness in a way that transcends simple descriptions of its manifestations, in favour of identifying underlying causal dynamics. Definitions of loneliness vary considerably, but have in common ‘the individual’s inner emotional distress’, a feeling that is ‘unpleasant, aversive, and painful, and signals a wish for change’ (Margalit, 2010: 5). This experience may be associated with a sense of separation ‘from positive people, places or things’ (Woodward, 1988: 4), rejection or self-rejection (Stern, 2021) and – pertinent to the discussion to follow – also ‘personal feelings of meaningless, helplessness . . . and loss of freedom’ (Margalit, 2010: 7). Seeman (2019) helpfully observes that loneliness cannot be alleviated purely by providing access to more people, because the sense of desolation associated with loneliness relates to the 289

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absence of particular people with whom one has an emotionally meaningful relationship. In the discussion that follows, it will become clearer why it matters so much who is present. To pin down the role that others play in whether or not someone experiences loneliness, we need to consider what people typically do in each other’s presence and why. To this end, the next section outlines a model of how and why people interact. According to this model, breakdowns in communication will have an impact far more profound that simply not exchanging the surface information encoded in a message, and this deeper impact, it will be proposed, accounts for the feelings associated with loneliness. Communication and the Role of Context Why do we communicate? The skills and resources required to do so effectively are considerable and take many years to master fully. Accounting for the ubiquity and complexity of human communication requires us to look for a deep-seated motivation that justifies its evolution and retention in our species. It needs to be a motivation that is reflected in the communicative behaviours of other species, but which also explains why human language has the shapes and functions that it does. The proposal that I have developed over a number of years (Wray, 2002a, 2002b, 2008, 2020) is that communication is a mechanism for making improvements to our physical, cognitive and/ or emotional state that would otherwise be beyond our control. Our experiential world is in continuous flux and requires constant modification so that it remains aligned with our preferences and needs. It is up to us to find ways to achieve the necessary changes. For most of us, most of the time, we will first attempt to do so through our own direct action: making ourselves a drink, fetching an object, checking the time, closing the window and so on. But there are many aspects of our experiential world that we are unable (or unwilling) to change for ourselves, and in such cases, we need to engage someone else to act as our agent. Other people may have skills or knowledge that enable them to do something we can’t, or they may be in a better location or hold a more appropriate social role. We will aim to get our agents not only to make direct physical changes to our environment, but also to alter our cognitive and emotional state, by providing us with information, reassuring us and so on. Furthermore, since an important aspect of our emotional well-being is to be important to others, we also need people to pay attention to us and value the ways in which we can act as agents for changes in their world. Even when the speaker is trying to achieve something that appears fully altruistic, such as improving the interlocutor’s world at the expense of their own, the speaker is still driven to do that by the desire to improve their own world – feeling better for having done this good thing.4 This way of viewing communication is intuitively attractive, in that it maps onto what we can observe across the living world, where self-sufficiency is supplemented, to a greater or lesser extent in different species, by the beneficial actions of others. It is communication, whether by sound, gesture, colour, odour or electrical signals, that invites others of the same or another species to behave in some manner that advantages the communicating party. Such communication encompasses flowers attracting pollinators, insects repelling predators, fish and birds attracting a mate, and primates using gestures and sounds for a wide range of social as well as material purposes. Language,5 of course, offers a particularly intricate and textured potential for harnessing the agency of others. Its affordances also greatly increase our aspirations – that is, we can imagine 290

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and exercise much more control over our experiences due to the complex capabilities of language to encode messages to agents. However, with the scope to capture through language so many aspects of the experiential world, speakers and hearers encounter a potential problem: flooding communicative attempts with so much information that the core purpose of the message is obscured. The speaker needs to identify the subset of relevant information that their interlocutor (the person they are speaking with) is not currently familiar with, and encode only that, while the information they both already share is taken for granted. To achieve this, the speaker needs a sophisticated map of what the interlocutor does and doesn’t know and is most and least likely to expect to hear. We can envisage this as a Venn diagram, consisting of information that the speaker knows but the interlocutor doesn’t, information that the interlocutor knows but the speaker doesn’t, and information that they both know. If the speaker’s beliefs about what belongs in each category are accurate, a clear message can be produced, with just the right level of specification to achieve the desired outcome rather than cause confusion. Compare, for example, how, with different levels of shared knowledge, any of the following might be optimal for getting the interlocutor to perform a physical action: ●● ●● ●● ●●

Could you hang it out? Could you hang out the washing? Could you hang the washing out on the other line? If you look in the cupboard, you’ll see some pegs that you can use for hanging the washing on the line between the apple trees.

When the speaker wants to obtain information, the aim is to shift into the shared zone something currently only in the interlocutor’s exclusive knowledge store. Speakers need to signal to interlocutors what they don’t need to be told because they already know it, since it can’t be guaranteed that the interlocutor is aware of the speaker’s current state of knowledge. The question Why is Jane coming this afternoon rather than this evening? signals that the speaker already knows that Jane is coming and why, just not the reason for the timing. Speakers also need to gauge how the interlocutor is likely to behave in the face of different sorts of approach to addressing them, so that the message can be formulated with the right level of politeness, curtness or whatever, for achieving the desired response. This high level of awareness about the interlocutor’s knowledge, beliefs and typical response styles is vital for maximizing the likelihood of the utterance having the intended communicative impact – that is, achieving the desired change to the speaker’s world (Wray, 2020). This knowledge constitutes the context within which the communication takes place. Theories of the pragmatics of communication, including the cooperative principle and conversational maxims (Grice, 1975) and relevance theory (Sperber & Wilson, 1995), help characterize why it is confusing to an interlocutor if the speaker provides unnecessary information: interlocutors will assume the information is relevant and try to figure out why it’s been given. For example, imagine someone wanting to ask a supermarket assistant where the coffee is shelved and beginning by saying we’re in a supermarket. The assistant would not simply ignore the superfluous information, but rather seek a reason for its mention. Similarly, we use pronouns to reference items or people whose previous mention we assume our interlocutor will recall. As a

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result, renaming a referent will take on its own significance. For instance, in Frederick called the police, but not until after Frederick had left the scene, the default inference is that there are two different people with the same name. Since people are agents for change in others’ worlds, being alone will restrict the extent to which someone can sustain the world they want and, hence, their well-being. However, the mere presence of others is not enough. Those people must be available, willing and able to act as agents – and, as we shall see next, one impediment to this can be communication breakdown. On the other hand, the extent to which people’s well-being is compromised by the absence of agents will depend on what resources they have for sustaining their well-being single-handedly. We shall return to these considerations later, when we look at how social and personal factors shape people’s resilience to the effects of dementia. Dementia and Communication Breakdown With contextual information so precisely marshalled in our interaction, it’s not surprising that difficulties can arise when one of the participants has impaired cognitive capacities. As already noted, in order to say something apposite and effective, the speaker needs an adequate appreciation of the contextual information that the interlocutor will use to interpret what they say. One significant source of such information is what the interlocutor has previously said and done, and any events they have jointly experienced. People living with a dementia often have difficulties with gathering and retaining such information, on account of memory impairment, comprehension problems, reduced concentration, the inability to ignore extraneous noise and information and so on. At the point when they are trying to formulate a message that aims to get the interlocutor to act as their agent in altering their experiential world in some way, they may encounter gaps in their recall of what’s recently occurred, and may even be unsure where they are, what the parameters of the situation are (e.g. what it’s reasonable to expect) and whom they are interacting with (and hence how to address them appropriately and assess what changes they are likely to be willing and able to make). When they proceed to express their message, it will be shaped by these impoverished beliefs about the context – more specifically about how the interlocutor views the context, since that is what will determine how the utterance is interpreted with regard to relevance, focus and reasonableness. They may also have difficulties encoding and producing their language output itself. For instance, they might not be able to find a vital word that would point the interlocutor towards the relevant aspect of the context. Or they might struggle to speak fluently, so the interlocutor cannot successfully decode the message. These various difficulties are likely to place interlocutors in a weak position to pick up the intention of messages they hear, impeding people living with a dementia from achieving their communicative goals. People living with a dementia will also encounter problems when they are in the hearer role. Some interlocutors will be oblivious to the risk of their hearer not having tracked the context adequately and may make assumptions about what people living with a dementia can understand and appropriately interpret. Others may be acutely aware that they cannot take contextual information for granted as shared, but it will be difficult to know what is and is not known by the person living with the dementia. As we have seen, restating a referent will be confusing if the 292

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hearer does in fact recall the previous mention. Providing contextual information, such as where the conversation is taking place, will be pragmatically very marked if the person living with the dementia didn’t in fact require it.6 Of particular importance for our current discussion is what happens next: the onward impact of these difficulties. Focusing once more on people living with a dementia as speakers, we can see how their impoverished grasp of the contextual knowledge could well lead them to address the interlocutor inappropriately, say something unnecessary, inappropriate or irrelevant, and/or attempt to achieve, through the agency of the interlocutor, some change to their world that is not possible or not desirable. The effect on the interlocutor may be that they are confused, offended or annoyed that the speaker didn’t take into account the context as they expected them to. When an interlocutor responds in this way, people living with a dementia may realize that something has gone wrong, but they won’t necessarily be able to pinpoint what the problem is. They are likely to be embarrassed or annoyed at having confused or upset the interlocutor and disappointed and frustrated by the failure of their communication to achieve its goals. They may feel that they are increasingly powerless to influence their world without getting into difficulties with those they wanted to enlist as agents. In turn, this experience may direct them towards certain responses, of which three will be briefly described. First, the person living with the dementia might become argumentative about the legitimacy of what they attempted to achieve. Such a response may come across as extreme, unwarranted, inappropriate and unreasonable to interlocutors who cannot appreciate the person’s sense of disempowerment and frustration. People living with a dementia who become aggressive will soon become labelled belligerent, even disturbed. They be subjected to calming medication and/or socially spurned. A likely result is that they feel rejected, abandoned and unable to help themselves, and drift into depression and loneliness. Second, people living with a dementia may become fearful that whenever they attempt to change their world, they trigger antagonism and resistance. Preferring to protect their relationships, they may become acquiescent. Not attempting to pursue desired changes in their world reduces their agency for self-determination and is likely to undermine their self-esteem, leading to depression and, possibly, loneliness. Third, they might try to protect themselves from the unpleasant consequences of repeated failure, by refusing to engage with others. This, too, will undermine their agency and self-esteem, and they will find themselves alone, and lonely, even if others are around. Loneliness and the Absence of Self-determination The ideas outlined above have led me to wonder whether loneliness could usefully be conceptualized as the emotional distress arising from being unable to sustain adequate control of one’s experiential world. It is an interesting proposition for several reasons. First, it helps us understand why solitude and loneliness are not the same thing. A person on their own will not be lonely unless the absence of others is creating difficulties for them in making desired changes to their experiential world. Those well placed to achieve necessary physical tasks, find things out when required, express and receive affection through owning a pet, and sustain cognitive engagement through absorbing activities, and so on will be resilient against loneliness despite 293

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living alone. Since these factors are circumstantial, we have an explanation for why a sense of loneliness can come and go. Similarly protected will be people with rather modest needs for change, whether because they are well resourced, or because they sustain a general psycho-emotional state of contentment that leaves them with low anxiety about aspects of their world that others in their situation might be keen to see altered as soon as possible. On the other hand, for any person who needs or desires changes to their world that they cannot achieve directly, even being in the company of others will be no protection against loneliness, if those others are not available as agents. The elements mentioned earlier as central to definitions of loneliness can all be seen to derive from the shortfall in self-determination. Margalit (2010: 6–8) identifies four types of loneliness: emotional (no intimacy with others), social (no sense of belonging), existential (‘feelings of personal meaninglessness, helplessness, isolation, aloneness, and loss of freedom’) and representational (the realization that one can never be truly understood by others). All four are recognizable results of a breakdown in communication due to dementia. People living with a dementia realize that they are failing to keep emotionally and socially attuned with others, and, even if not rejected, withdraw themselves (emotional and social loneliness). They find they cannot sustain control of their experiential world (existential). And the absence of reliable shared contextual knowledge erects a barrier to the mutual mind-reading that is the prerequisite of effective communication, rendering them effectively incomprehensible to others (representational). Thus, although there is an undeniably close relationship between loneliness and the presence of others, it is not the whole story. Certainly, we rely on others to provide things that we cannot achieve alone, including the experience of trusting intimacy, reassurance, positive regard, entertainment and being valued. Loneliness, in the view proposed here, is not the absence of these experiences as such, nor the absence of people to provide them, but the sense of impotence associated with being unable to elicit them when needed. Intervening to Reduce the Risk of Loneliness For as long as loneliness is perceived as primarily a potential product of solitude, it will seem obvious to seek to combat it by placing people into the company of others. But the proposal above indicates why this might not always work. If someone is suffering from the effects of not being able to achieve necessary or desired changes to their experiential world via the agency of others, then providing others is only part of the solution. There must also be attention to how those others are predisposed and able to respond to the person’s attempts to enlist them as agents, and how the person perceives the risks of failing in those attempts. We have seen that the dangers of a mismatch between a speaker’s intentions and the interlocutor’s response are particularly great in the context of dementia, and so we shall remain with dementia when exploring potential solutions. Nevertheless, it should be clear that there is little, if anything, in the experience of people living with a dementia that cannot, to some extent, affect everyone. For we can all misjudge elements of the context, fail to express our message or understand someone else’s, or, for some other reason, find ourselves in a situation where we are impotent to alter some aspect of our experience. A subset of the unimpaired population particularly susceptible to these difficulties is those who interact with people living with a dementia, including family members, professional carers and the 294

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many types of occasional interlocutor, such as GPs, hairdressers and shopkeepers. They will be used in what follows to illustrate how all of us are potentially susceptible to a sudden or prolonged sense of loneliness when communication breakdown impedes the achievement of our desired goals. Since the points of personal vulnerability are emotional and social, it is to emotional and social resilience that we need to look for potential protection. These resources are presented below in terms of reserve. Reserve in this context does not refer to being shy or private, but to the notion of having something in reserve. The two concepts central to the discussion here – emotional reserve and social reserve (Wray, 2020) – extend an existing approach to understanding the causes of variation in people’s resistance to dementia and its symptoms: brain reserve and cognitive reserve. Brain reserve (e.g. Y Stern, 2012) relates to how resilient a person’s brain structure is to disease. Whether for genetic or environmental reasons, some people’s brains are larger and more connected than others, so that damage has less of an impact on function (e.g. Whalley et al., 2006), and/or symptoms take longer to be expressed (Fratiglioni & Wang, 2007: 12). Cognitive reserve is also protective against dementia symptoms. It reflects the effectiveness with which the brain structures are used (Steffener & Stern, 2012: 467). A useful analogy is that of a road network (brain reserve) and a driver’s familiarity with, and capability of exploiting, that network (cognitive reserve). Whereas brain reserve is a biological attribute, cognitive reserve is built at least in part by a person’s cognitive style and level of activity; in other words, cognitive reserve can be increased through behavioural choices. For a fuller account of brain and cognitive reserve, see Wray (2020: 28–32). Emotional Reserve Where brain reserve and cognitive reserve reflect the resilience that people have against dementia developing in the first place, emotional reserve reflects how well they are able to cope with dementia when it has developed. A person’s level of emotional reserve can affect not just how they feel about their condition, but also their capacity to sustain their self-confidence, sense of identity and positivity, all of which are often under threat (Brooker, 2007: 97; Watts & O’Connor, 2017: 108), and all of which are key to avoiding depression. The level of someone’s emotional reserve will probably reflect both general personality traits and their lifetime of experiences. There is a link between emotional reserve and emotional intelligence (Salovey & Mayer, 1990), though they are not the same thing: the latter is a more consistent trait, whereas emotional reserve can rise and fall in response to circumstances. High emotional reserve is likely to flourish in the presence of inner personal strength (Lundman et al., 2012) and self-transcendence (Norberg et al., 2015). Those able to muster high emotional reserve may well do so due to their ‘personal philosophy, spirituality, role models, learning opportunities, and cultural input [which bestow] the ability to override, as necessary, the lower brain’s response to threat’ (Wray, 2020: 104). Although conceptualized in relation to dementia, it is not difficult to see how the notion of emotional reserve can be extended to everyone, as a way of understanding how well we all manage challenging situations. For example, it is important that the individuals with whom a person living with a dementia interacts also have high emotional reserve. If they are unable to withstand the stresses of the situation, and consequently respond negatively, it will adversely affect the experience of the person living with the dementia. 295

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Social Reserve Social reserve is ‘the currency of resilience located in a person’s cultural and social context, both local and global . . . an external resource, deriving from how people living with a dementia, and those who support them, are viewed and treated in society’ (Wray, 2020: 76). Four subtypes can be identified: infrastructure; social attitudes; social groups, including family and friends; and social credibility. The state of a society’s infrastructure makes a considerable contribution to the daily experience of people living with a dementia and their families. Everything from the ease of accessing public transport to the joined-upness of the health and social care systems determines how easy it is to have a good day versus a fraught and frustrating one. Underpinning the policy decisions that shape the infrastructure are social attitudes, which in turn derive from deep cultural values and beliefs, amplified and modified by the print, broadcast and social media, along with films, dramas and novels. Social attitudes are shifting in the light of many concerted efforts to depict dementia more positively, but a persistent image remains that of a withdrawn person, alone and unable to communicate. The third subtype of social reserve relates to the benefits of positive engagement with family, friends and social groups. We have seen already that these benefits relate to others acting as agents to enhance a person’s well-being, and regular social engagement enables the person to seek and value more of it. Infrastructural limitations will easily create practical difficulties in accessing clubs and groups. Meanwhile, since communication problems can undermine the effectiveness of interaction, social groups can also reinforce loneliness by drawing attention to a person’s limited ability to marshal others’ agency. Finally, social credibility is a powerful positive force. Sabat (2001) and Wray (2010) both offer evidence of how effectively people living with a dementia can sustain high-level functioning when given a role, and Taylor (2007: 202) recounts his sense of affirmation when, accompanying his sick wife to the hospital, his primary identity was no longer that of a person living with Alzheimer’s: People instigated casual conversation with me. People treated me like I was independent, competent, knowledgeable, and important. People depended on me. People listened to me. People responded to me as if I were a husband, a full family member, and a responsible adult. In its various manifestations, then, social reserve plays a significant part in well-being. For everyone, of whatever age, with or without a cognitive impairment, inadequate social reserve will engender a sense of being under-supported, undervalued and powerless, with onward impact on self-esteem and self-confidence. This, I have proposed, is the recipe for loneliness. Alleviating Loneliness by Building Emotional and Social Reserve If loneliness arises when someone lacks a way of modifying their world through others’ agency, then interventions require attention to the following contributory factors: what the person might be trying to modify and why, what is preventing them making the change for themselves (where applicable), and what is impeding them from successfully enlisting the agency of someone else. Again, we shall focus here on people living with a dementia but continue to bear in mind that they represent the extreme end of experiences that everyone can have. 296

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First, we must recognize that it will not be possible to facilitate every change that a person living with a dementia seeks. It will be reasonably easy to act as agent when they want to swap their tea for coffee, but sometimes, unable to assemble an adequate appreciation of the context, they will seek changes that are simply impossible, such as going home to their (long-deceased) parents. But in lowering the bar enough for manageable intervention, we do get to the heart of the matter: the goal is less about whether each desire is met than that they feel adequately empowered to make changes to their world. Often, behind the material articulation of a desired change lies a deeper desire that can be fulfilled in some other way. Wanting to ‘go home’ is often an expression of the need for emotional security, or familiarity, or escape from a distressing environment. As such, looking at photographs, sharing a cup of tea, or putting on a much-loved film might alleviate the feeling. Moreover, underpinning specific expressed desires could be the more fundamental need to change something, anything in an experiential world that feels out of control. As such, almost any experience of agency may have a comforting effect. Rather than just taking the person off for a cup of tea, they could be invited to choose which room they go into, which teapot is used, and which colour cup their tea is served in.7 Thus, surprisingly minor and indirect interventions may deliver major benefits, by instilling a sense that they can determine their experiential world, including through the agency of others – something that makes the presence of others meaningful and a reliable shield against loneliness. Of course, fundamental problems with communication will be a persistent challenge for interlocutors as they try to establish what a person living with a dementia wants to achieve. Two important rules of thumb are, first, always to assume that a person’s utterance has some sort of purpose, and thus to look for what they may have said it for; and, second, always to treat a person’s utterance with attention and respect, even if it cannot be decoded. This is because, irrespective of what instrumental goal a person may have, it is almost certain that a concomitant goal is to create and sustain a positive experience during the interaction. Being ignored, dismissed or treated with frustration means that this goal is not achieved and the person feels worthless as well as impotent. Finally, as noted earlier, people need to feel of value to others. Therefore, interactions need to be two-way, identifying and honouring the skills, knowledge and overall personhood that each individual has to offer. Such interactions must be genuine as well, born of a fundamental desire to bind two (or more) people together as mutual providers of something the other needs. Practical examples of this include getting a person living with a dementia to help with tasks rather than having them done for them while they sit and watch (e.g. Sheard, 2015); giving them genuine care responsibilities for animals, plants and other people (e.g. Burgess, 2015); and knowing what views and expert advice they might be able to offer, so that there is a strong personal motivation for ensuring they understand and are understood (Wray, 2010). Conclusion The notions of emotional and social reserve have been introduced to conceptualize people’s resilience to the experiences associated with dementia. But dementia is just an extreme case of a more universal phenomenon. What happens in dementia is that important tools of communication that we need for protecting our well-being are damaged, with the result that it is difficult to keep others engaged and to sustain high levels of emotional reserve. People living with a 297

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dementia are at particular risk of being unable to shape their moment-by-moment experience, but, as noted already, anyone can encounter impediments to the attempt to control their world. Insofar as they, too, are left feeling disempowered, they too will experience loneliness, as defined here. The descent into loneliness is exacerbated by defensive responses that, as we have seen, may encourage someone who is repeatedly failing to enlist others’ agency, to withdraw from trying to do so. Indeed, loneliness may tie into depression and hopelessness because of a particular irony about the role that others play in our well-being. When a person already experiencing the loneliness of disempowerment seeks a way to escape this negative experience and finds they cannot do so on their own, it will be to others that they want to turn, as agents for making this urgent change to their world. But they are in this situation in the first place because such people aren’t available. If the unavailability, incapability or unwillingness of others to act as their agent is the cause of the problem in the first place, then, both cognitively and emotionally, there will seem to be no way out. What started as a circumstantial moat around the person, created by the misfortune of not being able to enlist others as agents for change, now becomes a cognitive and emotional moat, founded in the perception that the agency of others is not an available or safe solution. Once this happens, the ability of others to intervene by building up the person’s social reserve will be considerably diminished. The person will be isolated from others’ agency and feel helpless and hopeless. All of us, as instruments of positive societal goals, must understand the many ways in which everyone, with or without a dementia to deal with, will benefit from strong social reserve as a resource for building their emotional reserve. None of us can completely control our experiential world, and we all need a measure of resilience against unavoidable disappointments and frustrations. Our tolerance for these discomforts will be greater if we feel more in control of the aspects of our experience that do seem achievable. Recognizing the role that we play in supporting each other’s well-being is a win-win, in that it not only enables others to control their world more successfully but also feeds our own need to have an experiential world in which we are of value to others. In this symbiosis, much loneliness might be avoided.

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Loneliness and Care of the Elderly Rafał Iwański

Introduction Demographic forecasts unequivocally indicate that in the coming years the number of the elderly in the population of particular countries will continue to grow. In the case of countries which are members of the European Union the percentage of senior citizens will increase from less than 20 per cent to more than 29 per cent in the next few decades (World Bank, 2020). An ageing population poses numerous challenges to societies in terms of meeting a variety of seniors’ needs (Uhlenberg, 1992). The mainstream discussion within public policy remit include health, care and social matters. However, the issue of loneliness among people at the age of sixty-five or over is equally important; in case of dependent persons – also their family caregivers. The phenomenon of loneliness concerns people of different ages, but in the advanced age it may pose a particular problem. However, it is worth emphasizing that the ageing process alone does not condition loneliness (Donaldson & Watson, 1996). While reflecting on the loneliness of the elderly, including the aspect of care, four approaches to the problem might be distinguished. The first one concerns the elderly who manifest independent living capacity, and where loneliness has psychosocial, economic or geographical background (such as rural areas). In this case solitude might be a conscious and desired choice. At times the elderly adopt a model of social functioning in the advanced age where they limit social activities of their own will. The second one is connected with people who, for health reasons or due to reduced mobility, are forced to limit their life activities to the household. The third group consists of the elderly who need help and support in everyday activities, and who get the necessary assistance from family caregivers. In this case the issue of loneliness is not exclusive to the elderly, but also includes professional and social life of the caregivers – mostly family, unprofessional carers. The fourth group consists of residents in care centres which are run by social care institutions and the health care sector. Residents in such institutions are the elderly needing long-term care, who cannot depend on their family or local environment to provide them with pertinent support. Loneliness is defined by researchers of various fields of science, including psychology, philosophy, sociology, pedagogy and economics. Depending on the research perspective adopted,

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different aspects are stressed. According to Perelman and Peplau (1982) loneliness is related to an unpleasant experience caused by the deficit in social network in qualitative and quantitative terms (Pikuła, 2015). On the other hand, loneliness may be a desirable state, explicitly positive, for instance as respite from the society. Loneliness may have emotional dimension which results from loss (for instance widowhood) or lack of close person, but also social one, where we lack social network such as friends and acquaintances, when we are not a member of community, we lack the sense of belonging (Weiss, 1973; Baarsen et al., 2001). In my analysis I will use the terms presented by Stern in the Introductory chapter where the emotion of loneliness (which is a negative emotion) and a situation of solitude (which may be experienced positively or negatively) are differentiated (Stern, in the Introduction to this Handbook). The chapter analyses solitude different aspects and contexts of loneliness (social, psychological, socio-economic), which are particularly significant from the perspective of the elderly. The chapter will consist of three parts. The first part will present theoretical concepts and address the issue of solitude among the elderly on the basis of social, psychological and economic sciences. Solitude among the elderly will be considered both as an independent decision as well as a necessity. The second part will attempt to identify various aspects, problems and issues related to loneliness in the advanced age, based on current research, analyses and reports, including the author’s own research. In the last part of the chapter, attention will be focused on summarizing and developing recommendations in order to minimize negative aspects of loneliness in the advanced age on household basis and in macrosocial terms. Advanced Age, Loneliness and Care In case of social age, it is most commonly determined on the basis of analysis of occupied roles which, depending on a phase of life, differ in their nature, scope and meaning (Szatur-Jaworska et al., 2006: 47). In economic terms, two approaches to ageing might be adopted. The first one is associated with reaching retirement age which entitles to pension rights. The other one defines an elderly person as an individual who, due to their advanced age and all the limitations arising from it, is not able to perform a paid job. Legal and social definitions and thresholds of advanced age are essentially attributable to the acquisitions of the right to benefits, concessions and so on. Advanced age and the process of ageing have various dimensions and natures. It is determined by highly individualized factors. The same applies to loneliness and solitude. According to Bennett the dominant feature which differentiates the community of the elderly is isolation which might lead to loneliness. Compulsory retirement, low pension entitlements, widowhood, physical infirmity, geographical distance from children and widespread bias towards the elderly are listed as independent factors conducive to isolation (Bennett, 1973: 179–80). It is worth noticing that it is the teenagers and children who are more likely to suffer from loneliness than the elderly. Seniors have developed methods to compensate for the deficiencies and adapt. Young people only begin to acquire competences in this area (Mushtaq, 2014). While reflecting on the loneliness of advanced age, including the aspect of care, four approaches to the problem are to be distinguished. The first one relates to old persons who have the capacity to lead an independent life, and where the problem of loneliness is of psychosocial, economic or geographic (areas with low degree of urbanization) nature. The elderly in this group, despite having the capacity to lead an independent life, may require support in other areas of 300

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life, including emotional support. In this case, solitude might be also related to conscious and desirable choice. It is worth emphasizing that regardless of seniors’ degree of dependency, maintaining social relations influences the quality of seniors’ life, and may contribute to reducing stress (Caplan, 1981; Szatur-Jaworska, 2006). Social isolation may have negative effects in terms of reducing cognitive functions and those connected with social adaptation (Bennett, 1973). Nonetheless, compensation may occur, and an individual will not be affected by the deficits resulting from limited social contacts. The second approach is related to people who, due to the health condition and decreased mobility, are forced to reduce their life activity to their own household. The risk of occurrence of factors which restrict the capacity to live independently increases with age. Help and support are mainly connected with the work in household (shopping, cooking, cleaning). Also, it is of significant importance for this group of seniors that the apartment, block of flats, locality are adjusted to their needs resulting from their limitations. In terms of construction, particularly of public space, many countries promote universal design standards or gerontechnology solutions. Gerontechnology is interdisciplinary field of knowledge which focuses on developing technologies aimed at meeting the needs of seniors and improving the quality of their life (Bronswijk et al., 2009). Through applying appropriate technological solutions, it is possible to enable persons with disabilities to live independently or with the help of the person providing assistance. This group includes the ‘prisoners of the fourth floor’, that is old persons who live in a building without an elevator. It is a problem particularly important in the former Eastern Bloc countries, where largepanel prefabricated blocks of flats were dominant in the post-war period. The third group consists of seniors who require help and support in everyday life, and the care is provided to them by immediate family members and/or are assisted by professional caregivers from health sector (nurses, physiotherapists) and social assistance (professional care services). The scope of assistance includes most everyday activities, such as feeding, washing and hygiene activities, and running a household. In this case, the loneliness issue might not be exclusive to seniors only. It also may afflict caregivers, mostly family – unprofessional ones, in terms of their work and private life, since some seniors may not be left unattended even for a short time. It particularly applies to the caregivers of seniors with whom it is impossible to make contact, for instance in late-stage Alzheimer’s disease, chronic mental health concerns or in the case of unconsciousness resulting from injuries or neurological diseases. It is also of significant importance whether the caregiver is alone and whether they can depend on other members of family, neighbours or distant friends. The problem might also apply to childless couples in the advanced age, when one of the spouses cares for the other and cannot rely on support and help (Leszko et al., 2020). Paradoxically, in this respect, isolation may be a desired situation, particularly in case of caregivers who experience caregiver burnout. Necessity to spend twentyfour hours a day with the caretaker constitutes a great physical and psychological challenge (Mace & Rabins, 2011). This is why it is extremely important that the caregiver has the time only for themselves, which unfortunately is not always possible due to limited family care potential and lack of public support mechanisms in the care among family caregivers. In case of certain diseases typical for senior age, such as Alzheimer’s disease, period of care might take years, and as time passes care resources decrease: human, material and financial, whereas the risk of caregiver burnout increases. Moreover, as research results indicate, family 301

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caregivers are a group most exposed to low moods and depression. Especially, when caregivers are at senior age, care burden has a destructive influence on their health (Santos-Orlandi et al., 2019). The results of research conducted by Jones and Peters (1992) in a group of 256 family caregivers indicate that the loneliness experienced by caregivers constitutes a dominant factor related to anxiety and depression. Due to the ageing of the population in particular countries, care burden ratio for families will increase (European Commission, 2018; World Bank, 2020). In case of Poland, demographic burden ratio, that is the relation between persons of working age and the number of people at the age of sixty-five or over, increased in the last decade from 18.9 in 2009 up to 26.1 in 2019 (Central Statistical Office 2020). The last category consists of residents in health protection sector and social assistance where seniors, with no capacity to lead an independent life, reside, and who cannot rely on support which is safe and pertinent to the needs from their family or local environment. This is the group subject to experiencing a specific level of loneliness in a group. Feeling loneliness results in a decrease of life satisfaction (Herman et al., 2018). The longing for family home among seniors who reside in a care home might also influence the feeling of loneliness (Halicka, 2006). Although they sometimes reside in facilities for 100 or even 300 residents, they are separated from their previous environment. The group includes seniors who have family and friends and maintain contacts, but also the elderly who were abandoned by their family members (regardless of reasons). Seniors who do not have any family and do not expect to maintain contacts are a separate category in this group. Institutions which provide twenty-four-hour residential care sometimes focus on addressing the basic living needs of the residents. In many countries, including Poland, there is a shortage of people willing to work in these care facilities. The salary of aid institutions’ employees, which is financed and co-financed from public funding (including obligatory social insurance), does not encourage to start a job in this sector. The lack of nurses, caregivers, occupational therapists and other professionals who work for the benefit of old persons is noticeable in European Union countries. The shortage of professionals in the care area is directly relevant for the quality and life comfort of old persons. Exploited workers of aid sector focus on satisfying seniors’ basic life needs (hygiene and welfare), and not always have the time and strength to address higher needs, such as conversation, contact and bond (Iwański, 2016). Regardless of the category we choose to classify particular seniors, the problem of loneliness and solitude is becoming an urgent social issue, especially in terms of further ageing of the population. Social, Psychological and Economic Conditioning of Seniors’ Loneliness The loneliness might be considered in terms of causes. Tiwari (2013) differentiated three types: situational loneliness, developmental loneliness and internal loneliness. By virtue of the issues under analysis, the first type of loneliness, related to socio-economic and cultural environment, will be of particular interest. Special attention is to be turned to demographic and migrational processes, that is an increased life expectancy and the feminization of seniors’ population (Tiwari, 2013). Loneliness might be of short-term or chronic character, depending on the period of time an individual has been experiencing it for (Fopka-Charchut, 2013; Fopka-Kowalczyk, 2018). In the case of the elderly, there are a few factors which contribute to loneliness. One of them is social isolation, which may result from a disease and a difficulty with soliciting the help, 302

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possibly caused by embarrassment or non-acceptance for one’s own limitations. The elderly may also struggle to maintain proper relations with the younger generation due to intergenerational conflict. The crises related to widowhood or death of a close family member are also of great importance. For many old persons the change of residence and the end of social and professional activity may pose a problem, since it is reflected in feelings of rejection and not being needed. In many countries with negative long-term external migration balance, the problem with leaving ageing parents and grandparents in the country is noticeable (Szatur-Jaworska, 2006: 60–79). Dubas points out that it is seniors and children who are most subject to loneliness in modern world. She even describes a kind of advanced age loneliness which is connected with the experience of lack of psychological bonds with the close ones, lack of understanding, growing dependency, impoverishment of internal world and social exclusion (Dubas, 2000: 123). Moreover, according to Baltes and associates the nature of ageing causes the decline of capacity for adjustment with age and the balance between costs and benefits derived from the advanced age is becoming more and more negative (Halicki, 2006: 269–70). Seniors’ loneliness may even pose one of gerontological taboos (Dubas, 2013). Members of younger generations are sometimes aware that they neglect older members of their family; however, they manifest high competence in rationalizing reasons for maintaining occasional contact. Work, child care or territorial distance constitutes perfect excuses to reduce contact to a strict minimum comprising holidays or important events of family life. On the grounds of sociology, multiple theories on ageing have been developed, which refer to social, economic and cultural conditioning, and which include issues of the advanced age loneliness to a different extent. Social exclusion theory implies that social exclusion of seniors is natural and socially acceptable. The elderly should save strength and resources which will positively affect their mood and reduce stress. Whereas activity theory assumes that regardless of age we have the need to remain active in every possible and desired sphere of life. Phenomenological and socioenvironmental conceptions assume that an individual creates their own vision of ageing, but the environment enforces certain patterns of behaviour which the elderly should follow. Social exchange theory implies that seniors are marginalized, because their resources reduce with age, which in turn creates imbalances in terms of exchange with other social groups. Political economy of advanced age assumes that the society grants social status to the elderly by determining their social position and lowering income (Halicki, 2006; Leszczyńska-Rejchert, 2008: 36–7). Sociological theories stress social construction of ageing strictly related to social interaction and separation of powers (Powell and Hendricks, 2009). Given the progressing ageing processes, it is increasingly difficult to marginalize the elderly for they constitute not only a growing social group, but also electoral group, most often a disciplined one. We can distinguish two models of social functioning of the elderly in terms of the risk of loneliness. The first one includes people with features of an activist, involved in social and political matters. These are the seniors who despite having acquired pension rights continue to work, travel and actively participate in society. They join courses, trainings and classes at the university of the third age. They have a need for maintaining intense social contacts. They care about themselves by putting attention to what they wear and how they look. They do sports, exercise and take any action which may help them maintain physical fitness. They are also the elderly who take part in religious services or who are members of prayer groups for instance. This group is less likely to experience loneliness. The second model is represented by people 303

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whose activity is limited to their households, which is a choice or a result of a disease. These people, due to a permanent isolation, may feel bereft. These persons are frequently the residents of stationary care facilities – seniors who have no time to maintain contacts with their peers because they take care of their grandchildren. Also, seniors who moved with their children and grandchildren and experience adaptation problems, particularly in case of immigrants where there is an additional problem connected with not knowing the local language and cultural conditions appear (Wasilewska-Ostrowska, 2013). It is a group which is at a special risk of experiencing loneliness at an advanced age. On a psychological basis loneliness might be considered as a lack of bonds, relations and intimacy with others, which result from inability, lack of skills to maintain them or gradual fading. In this perspective being lonely does not necessarily mean loneliness in physical terms (Krupa, 2013). From a psychological perspective, ageing is an individual experience of the ageing process, which involves cognition, self-assessment, motivation and feelings (Zych, 2001: 172). A person may consider themselves to be older when they notice biological and cultural symptoms of ageing, or receive such signals from social environment. Psychological age is determined on the basis of intellectual functions, ability of senses and adaptability of an individual. It may be established based on subjective assessment of an individual or tests (Szatur-Jaworska, 2000: 36; Szarota, 2010). It is worth noting that from a psychological perspective the ageing process may take a negative form because of numerous health and social factors. Changes as regards the limitation of adaptation abilities and the loss of functional efficiency might contribute to adopting a passive lifestyle (Świtoń & Wnuk, 2015). It is particularly noticeable in the case of stationary care facilities’ residents who are often not able to satisfy their needs in terms of desired frequency and quality of contacts with their family members and friends. The results of research made by Aylaz et al. (2012) among seniors residing in long-term care facilities indicate a positive correlation between loneliness and geriatric depression. Liu et al. (2016) achieved similar results, stating positive relationship between loneliness and the risk of depression. In addition, within psychosocial needs of the elderly, there may be distinguished five main categories which are important in the analysis of issues related to loneliness and solitude: integration, usefulness and acceptance, autonomy, safety and life satisfaction. In case of the need for integration, the elderly demonstrate various preferences within the intensity of social contacts (Bilikiewicz & Parnowski, 2006: 469). Seniors may express the willingness to isolate, particularly widows, lower-educated persons or those who suffer from health problems (Wenger et al., 1996). Loneliness of the elderly may also be considered in the light of economic sciences, particularly in the case of issues related to living conditions of the elderly, including incomes. In countries where pension schemes were introduced, whether based on insurance or procurement principles, social transfers constitute the main source of income among the elderly. Due to a dynamic growth of the number of seniors or increasing life expectancy, many countries decided to increase the age which entitles to acquire pension rights. Essentially every country may initiate discussions on how to minimize the burden on working people, while maintaining the level of retirement pensions enabling the elderly to live dignified advanced age. Senior citizens who will not have resources to cover their needs, including basic ones, will be dependent on family and social assistance institutions. Economic deprivation will translate

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into inability to meet the needs in terms of social contacts, autonomy and independency. It may even be described as ‘systemic loneliness’, because given the neglect in terms of the construction of successful pension systems, a substantial part of seniors will be left without the resources sufficient for dignified life after completion of professional activity. In EU countries in 2018, 16 per cent of people at the age of sixty-five or over were at risk of poverty. Profound differences between Member States are visible. In case of Estonia, 46.8 per cent of pensioners are at risk of poverty, in Latvia – 46.1 per cent. At the other extreme are Slovenia 6.4 per cent, Norway 7.7 per cent and France 8.2 per cent. Due to the difference in the amount of benefits, women are at a greater risk of poverty (Eurostat, 2020). Aloneness in the Place of Residence – Pros and Cons Solitude among elderly people may take two main forms: negative and positive. Seniors may experience loneliness when they live alone, but also when they are members of a greater group of family or care facility. Apart from this, we must not forget about the caregivers of dependent seniors, very often of advanced age themselves, who are also affected by the problem of loneliness and solitude in the care. In 2017 the author of the chapter conducted research among the elderly who lived in assisted housing. These are the flats built and partly equipped by municipality, fully adjusted to seniors’ needs, including the elderly with disabilities (Giezek & Iwański, 2017). The analysis of the data obtained indicates that seniors may be divided into two groups. The first group is made up of seniors who regained their residential independence after living with their children and grandchildren. The second group are the seniors who despite an offer to live together with their family, and their functional constraints, want to live independently, in case of the test group – alone. Following are the statements of the surveyed seniors: A woman, 75 years old: ‘For a few years, after my husband’s death, I had housing problems and had to live with my daughter and her children. There was a big dog in the apartment, too. It wasn’t a good time, I felt bad. Now, I am independent again, I don’t even invite my family too often . . .’ A woman, 87 years old: ‘My son persuades me to live with him, at his house. But I don’t want to, I won’t make it in a loud house, with grandchildren. Even when they visit me, they make a mess, and after two hours I wait until they leave.’ Independence and self-determination constitute undeniable value for people in a test group. It is an example of solitude, even desired in some cases. The seniors surveyed, who had families, emphasized that they love their children and grandchildren, but they are not willing to live with them. The noise bothers them; they have their routines and habits. If they are missing something, they have neighbours around them who they have known for years and can rely on them. The information presented constitutes another argument for the concept of ‘aging in place’, which assumes that we should grow old in our own environment, having provided appropriate conditions in terms of cities, districts, buildings and apartments themselves (Davey et al., 2004). The neighbourhood is also important to the elderly, the environment they live in, not only the flat (Oswald et al., 2011).

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Independent and autonomic ‘ageing in place’ is an idea endorsed by an increasing number of communities within the concept of deinstitutionalization (WHO, 2020). It is worth emphasizing that ageing in one’s own home, even when living alone, is perceived as desired and positive. It is not a symptom of loneliness, but creating conditions to enable a senior to grow old in a place they know, where they are a host and decide independently about their life. It is a desired kind of solitude from a positive perspective. The concept under consideration is based on a voluntary choice and does not constitute an excuse not to create places for the depended persons or other housing facilities devoted to seniors (residential home, nursing home, etc.). It is the house suited to the needs and adjusted to the elderly that may constitute the first and very significant link in the care system and support (Lawler, 2001). Ageing population and the increase in the number of households run by only elderly persons influenced the development of environmental gerontology which concentrates on the description, explanation and optimization of relations between seniors, and social and spatial environment (Wahl & Weisman, 2003). Although seniors need some forms of positive solitude, difficult loneliness seems to be an almost stereotypical part of ageing. Over the years, peer group population decreases, exposing a senior to a number of losses; the risk of widowhood also increases. Loneliness and isolation influence the decline of cognitive functions of seniors. Thus, it is of great importance to introduce activation activities, especially in the group of the elderly with a lower level of education (Shankar et al., 2013). The isolation seniors experience may lead to deterioration of health in somatic and psychological terms (Cornwell & Waite, 2009; Richard et al., 2017). Results of the research conducted by Hackett and the team suggest that the experience of loneliness causes disturbed response to stress by people with diabetes (Hackett et al., 2019). It is one of the civilization diseases that seniors are most subject to. Loneliness may increase the risk of ischaemic heart disease and brain stroke in lonely seniors, and preventative strategies targeted at loneliness may contribute to lowering the risk of cardiovascular disease (Valtorta et al., 2018). According to the research done by OʼSúilleabháin et al. (2019), the experience of emotional loneliness may influence a premature death of the elderly. Loneliness may increase the risk of low mood and even depression (Cacioppo et al., 2006). According to estimates, 5–30 per cent of people aged sixty-five or over are at risk of depression (Świtoń & Wnuk, 2015: 244). The risk is additionally increased in a group of seniors who struggle with the so-called empty-nest syndrome (Wang et al., 2017). Moreover, loneliness and social isolation in advanced age constitute a social factor of increased suicide risk among the elderly. This is particularly applicable to widowed and divorced older men who have a problem fitting in with the society (Baumann, 2008: 84). Preventing negative effects of loneliness in seniors’ population in individual countries poses a challenge for social policy. Research results indicate that the experience of loneliness in negative perspective influences health in psychological and somatic perspective (Montero-López et al., 2019). If we accept the assumption that loneliness is an increasing health epidemic (Higuchi, 2018), it is vital to take necessary actions to reduce the scale of the phenomenon and level negative effects of loneliness. Family Caregivers – Longing for Solitude In 2018–19 the author of the article conducted research among caregivers of the patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease (n = 486) in Szczecin (Poland). The research was divided into two 306

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stages; in the first, quantitative, stage, 486 care environments were researched with the author’s questionnaire concerning care. In the second, qualitative, stage, forty-six environments were drawn out of the population analysed in the first stage, and in which extensive interviews were held with main caregivers of patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease aged seventy-five or over. Patients suffering from dementia diseases constitute a special group for the disease is progressive and the care period is counted in years; in extreme cases care may be necessary even for twenty years. In case of the test group, in 47 per cent of households only one caregiver and one caretaker lived. In one-fourth of environments only one person provided care. Women aged on average sixty-two constituted 72 per cent of caregivers (Iwański & Bugajska, 2019). Loneliness in care was a common thread mostly in two main dimensions. The first one was represented by caregivers described as ‘prisoners of care’ for they must be with the patient at all times separated from the world, longing for relationships, contacts, often lonely. Some part of people needed time just for themselves, time of solitude, respite, but due to lack of support, it was impossible. The second dimension may be described as loneliness in care, where family members refuse to help or the main caregiver does not want or cannot ask for help. At times caregivers are isolated from the world, locked with a caretaker suffering from dementia. After a few weeks, months or even years of continual care, they may long for solitude, the time only for themselves. Following are the statements of surveyed caregivers. A wife aged 80 takes care of a husband aged 75: ‘I have no freedom. I can’t go to the shop alone when I want to buy something. Like a child, he wants to go with me everywhere.’ A wife aged 71 takes care of a husband aged 78: ‘You know, the hardest part is that I can’t go for a walk with him, he doesn’t go, so I don’t go. I can’t leave him at home alone.’ A husband aged 75 takes care of a wife aged 79: ‘No opportunity to freely slip out from home and settle some things, the ones which (.) it’s not that I want to go and relax, but, well, every time we go out requires some kind of supervision.’ A wife aged 86 takes care of a husband aged 88: ‘Can’t go anywhere, any vacation. Things changed. They used to have an allotment, mum can’t go there – sister took it. She is a prisoner of her own home, you name it, marital house arrest.’ When caregivers do not have time for themselves, and are burdened with care, it fosters caregiver burnout which may translate into diseases and somatic and psychological disorders. Sometimes, even if the family care potential is greater, the main caregiver does not turn to family members for help. A husband aged 83 takes care of a wife aged 83: ‘Sometimes when I’m tired I actually have such a feeling, but at the same time, I try to think rationally and not to give in to it, not to sit on a rock somewhere and cry, and I try not to burden my family, they are busy with work.’ Despite the fact that a number of caregivers were advanced in age, and struggled with diseases and limitations themselves, some of them tried to protect their family members from the duties related to care. They explained that they do not want to overload their children and grandchildren with problems, and that they will handle everything. What is worth emphasizing, 74 per cent of respondents do not consider putting sick family member in stationary care facility. 307

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Conclusions and Recommendations The analysis of issues related to loneliness of the elderly and their caregivers inclines to provide guidance considering reduction of negative aspects of loneliness and strengthening in areas where the solitude is desired. Advanced age itself does not pose a social threat, but the accompanying conditionings, including dependency and loneliness, contribute to a significant decrease of the quality and comfort of seniors’ life. Within public support systems, health and successful ageing promotion should be carried out, including prophylaxis preventing isolation and loneliness of seniors, although, and it is worth stressing, the advanced age does not have to be necessarily linked to loneliness (Mushtaq, 2014). In macrostructural terms, it is important that individual areas of social policy, introduced and implemented by central and local authorities, include elderly people’s needs, including dependent people and their caregivers. Many deficient spheres within seniors’ social activity may be levelled through dedicated programmes and policies, including social security (pensions and social benefits), education (for instance, universities of the third age), health (development of geriatrics), social assistance (long-term care, social work with the elderly), housing and infrastructure (universal planning) and so on. Regarding the dynamic projected growth of elderly persons in populations of individual countries, special attention should be drawn to senior issues being an integral part of policies, for instance, based on the concept of sustainability (Ciegis et al., 2009). Through the implementation of deliberate and dedicated social policy considering the challenges of the advanced age, the risk of experiencing negative aspects of loneliness among seniors’ population might be minimized. The effect of an ageing population will be an increase in demand for care services, provided mostly by family caregivers at present. This is why it is important to create public and social support systems. Family caregivers fear social isolation and expect respite care (Stoltz et al., 2004). In order for a caregiver to have a moment for himself or herself, respite care should be secured in the form of community services, crisis intervention, telephone support and substitution care (Leong et al., 2001). The last form of care in particular is highly desired by caregivers, for it allows for the rest for a period of one or two weeks (Iwański & Bugajska, 2019). A caregiver and a caretaker frequently create a strong bond, which prevents a caregiver from leaving a caretaker in the care of strangers, which is why community and neighbour care should be supported. One of the forgotten social groups are orphaned caregivers. After months, or sometimes even years of care of a dependent person, after they pass away, caregivers sometimes struggle to fit in and find their place in the family and society (Iwański et al., 2018). It is important to create support groups, especially programmes which aim at repeated professional activation and help with recovering from the crisis related to mourning, and so on. Stationary long-term care, in accordance with the deinstitutionalization concept, is for people who cannot receive the support which is safe and meets their needs in their place of residence. It is a costly choice, and its cost will continue to grow in the coming years (cost of labour, medical procedures, medicine, etc.) (Santana et al., 2016). This is why it is significant to introduce standards which guarantee the right for intimacy, self-determination and solitude to the elderly. At present, old persons in many facilities are forced to reside with strangers in one room, often for a period of even many years. They are not comfortable during care-hygienic and

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therapeutic activities (Iwański, 2016). Ensuring social contacts is equally significant, especially in the case of bedridden patients. It is possible to receive bedside therapy; thanks to properly adjusted and equipped facilities it should be possible to safely move dependent people to public places. Allowing seniors in long-term care facilities to maintain social contacts at a desired level and constitutes a part of antidepressant and anti-dementia prophylaxis. Activities undertaken in terms of minimizing the risk of loneliness among the population of residents in long-term care facilities should be included in aid plans and constitute its integral part. The number of single-person households run by the elderly will increase. In this case it is vital to implement social programmes, which will cross-link seniors. Places and areas where the elderly will be able to meet, such as senior clubs, day care centres, recreation rooms and senior universities, should be created. It is public authorities who should initiate and support such projects. Also, solutions aimed at maintaining intergenerational bonds and contacts are very important. The results of the research conducted by Zhou et al. (2018) show that the more social support a senior gets, the less loneliness they experience and the better they cope with loneliness. It is vital not to stigmatize, marginalize or exclude the elderly from the labour market, social, cultural activity and so on. Seniors must feel that regardless of health condition and socioeconomic situation; they constitute an integral and significant part of society.

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Mortality and Loneliness Towards Less-lonely Grief Sarah James and Piotr Krakowiak

Introduction Human experiences relating to mortality are associated with attachment, grief and both individual and wider sociocultural influences and dynamics. In the midst of grief some people experience loneliness even when others are with them and supporting them. It is apparent, therefore, that grief and loneliness share many overlapping features and emotions, just as dying, for some, can also be lonely. Throughout time and across cultures, people have often developed complex support systems and rituals to try and make sense of mortality and bereavement both existentially and in practical terms, including to mitigate against loneliness (Breen and O’Connor, 2011). More recently in the Western context, however, grieving in modernity has been constrained by social and medical constructs which constitute ‘appropriate’ or ‘abnormal’ expressions and experiences of grief, and by socio-economic factors (Mellor and Shilling, 1993; Walter, 2020) – all of which also appear to contribute to loneliness. In response, the predominant twentieth-century view that grief is something to be ‘worked at’ and ‘recovered from’ (Freud, 1917; Kübler-Ross, 1969) is now being challenged by more naturalistic social constructs and practices relating to end-oflife care; funeral rituals; the nature of grief; and to supporting both bereavement and loneliness (James, 2015; Krakowiak, 2020). There is an urgent need, therefore, for Western societies to reclaim their innate ability to be compassionate and community-centred, such that we are enabled to situate ourselves alongside the person in grief: empathically, reflexively and with integrity. The chapter begins by contextualizing Western sociocultural constructs, constraints and theories relating to views about attachment, loss and bereavement, with particular emphasis on significant events, values and practices from predominantly Western and European perspectives. Having considered such issues at a macro-level, the chapter proceeds by considering different concepts of loneliness with respect to grief, for adults, as well as for children and young people. In the context of loss and bereavement, loneliness appears to be a far more widespread feature

Mortality and Loneliness

in late modernity – particularly in urban areas and where family members are more commonly dispersed. The ensuing section exploring Kellehear’s (2013) concept of ‘compassionate communities’ thus highlights the extent to which both compassionate awareness and action can significantly support and enable people for whom grief is not only painful but so often lonely, too. Rather than specifically focusing on an individual person’s own death, and the extent to which loneliness may be an aspect of the dying process, however, this chapter predominantly considers loneliness and grief – and indeed the loneliness of grief – from a wider, communitiesbased perspective. Sociocultural and Historical Contexts: Western Views on Grief and Loneliness Love (as an expression of attachment) and loss (as an experience of separation), whether physical, material or metaphysical, have evidently featured in human and hominid lives for millennia (Berger et al., 2015). Just over a century ago, British attitudes and approaches to death, for example, were markedly different from those of today: people generally died at home with their loved ones at their bedside; the wake was open to the local community (often in the front room where the deceased lay in an open coffin); and burial typically followed a few days later (Litten, 2002). With the exception of sudden and unexpected death, therefore, the process of dying was rarely solitary. The material culture associated with death and mourning mirrored social class, status and gendered roles, with royalty and aristocracy setting the bar (Berridge, 2001). For the socially elite and middle classes, the nineteenth century was characterized by strict mourning customs and attire, demarcated not only by gender and social status but also by a socially constructed hierarchy of loss. As child mortality was significantly higher than today, the mourning period for a widow, for example, was markedly longer than for the death of a child (Houlbrooke, 2020). Such mourning customs also supported – and were influenced by – a flourishing industry associated with all aspects of the mourning process. Wealthy Londoners, for example, were often buried in vaults or catacombs in the newly landscaped cemeteries such as in Highgate, often in elaborate triple-shelled coffins, whereas those with little or no money were usually buried in crowded paupers’ graves funded by contributions from burial clubs (Litten, 2002; Strange, 2003). The early twentieth century in Britain witnessed dramatic change in the way mourning was both regarded and practised such that the ‘visibility’ of death and mourning all but dissipated, leading to a predominant period of sequestration during most of the twentieth century (Mellor, 1992; Mellor and Shilling, 1993). Although there is some evidence to suggest that latenineteenth-century publications were beginning to replace ‘the fear of death’ with an emphasis on ‘the joy of life’ (Berridge, 2001: 9), the paradigm shift in mourning practices is ultimately considered a response to the mass annihilation of lives during the First World War; the ensuing in situ burials replaced by memorialization; and the call by government for those in mourning to adopt normal attire and keep the nation’s morale (and conscription to the army) as high as possible (Gorer, 1965). The need to adopt what has since become known as a ‘stiff upper lip’ (Capstick & Clegg, 2013) was surely compounded towards the end of the First World War by the catastrophic loss of lives during the erroneously named Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, which not only caused 500 million deaths worldwide but also more locally required hurried burials in

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mass graves (Schoch-Spana, 2000). At around the same time, Freud’s seminal work, Mourning and Melancholia (1917), proposed, in rather functionalist terms, that grief is (or should be) a solitary process, requiring the grieving individual to ‘work at it’ to procure detachment from the deceased. Criticized for pathologizing grief, and for basing his thesis on his work with a relatively small number of psychiatric patients, Freud’s work nevertheless continues to influence Western views of, and medical practices in, ‘complicated grief’ as an abnormal mental state (Parkes, 2006; Shear, 2010). Ariès (1974: 81) considered the paradigm shift from relatively elaborate mourning to the more sequestered, private (and lonelier) grief to be borne of modernity’s ‘displacement of the site of death’ from home to hospital and to increased secularization, particularly in mainland Britain rather than in continental Europe. In structuralist terms this might signify a transition for both mortality and mourning from Nature to Culture (Lévi-Strauss, 1963; James, 2015), as with Western constructs of childbirth (Kitzinger, 2012). Grief in Western Late Modernity Views and attitudes relating to the nature of bereavement, and with care of the dying, began to change in the 1960s with the development of the five stages of grief model by Kübler-Ross (1969, 2009). Although criticized more recently for implying that grief is formulaic and linear (Corr, 1993; Parkes, 2013), it has nevertheless become an embedded model within Western sociocultural consciousness and the public domain, and appears equally applicable to the dying as well as the experiences of those grieving (Corr, 2019). In the 1990s, and in marked contrast to Freud’s work on solitary grief and the need to detach, contemporary bereavement models suggest that mourning comprises a ‘continuing bond’ with the deceased person which changes over time, but for which there is no resolution or ‘closure’ (Klass et al., 1996) – and nor should there be. Such a view resonates with, and reflects, key work on attachment and imprinting by Lorenz (1935), developed further by Bowlby (1960a, 1960b) and Ainsworth (1978; Bretherton, 2013) through their seminal works on attachment, separation and grief in infancy. In less than a century, therefore, bereavement theories and models relating to attachment ranged from Freud’s (1917) argument for the need to detach, to a recognition of the ways in which attachments naturally, and perhaps necessarily, continue after someone has died. Concurrent to the development of entirely new ways of understanding grief in the West, at the wider sociocultural level grieving began to re-emerge from the private, sequestered domain to the shared, public domain (Walter, 1994). In the context of loneliness, therefore, this may enable grieving to be less solitary, even if grief (and loneliness) reside, and are experienced, predominantly within the individual sphere. Knowing that others are going through something similar can be of comfort during periods of private or solitary grief. Conversely, witnessing more openly emotional displays of grief may feel alienating, and thus more lonely, to others. There is a significant body of literature which suggests that the unprecedented public mourning in 1997 for the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, effectively became a catalyst for suppressed, personal grief in Britain (Biddle & Walter, 1998; Walter, 1999). More recent events in Poland have evoked public expressions of grief which suggest similar changes. The death in 2005 of the Polish pope, John Paul II, engendered a considerable outpouring of both public and private grief in Poland, and there is substantive, predominantly Polish, literature, describing and analysing the ensuing period of national mourning (Dziedzic, 2009, for example). Five years later, in 2010, 312

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the Smolensk air disaster resulted in the deaths of all ninety-six passengers on board, including the Polish president, Lech Kaczyński, along with many other Polish dignitaries, ministers and relatives of the Katyn Massacre victims. They had been travelling to pay tribute to the graves of Poles executed by Soviet NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) in Katyn, Russia. It has been suggested that the resulting wave of national grief and mourning has since contributed to political division in Polish society through what many consider to be a form of emotional leverage (Szeligowska, 2014). Such examples illustrate what Walter (1994) considers late modernity’s ‘revival of death’ from its previously sequestered, private domain, and its move to reclaim the concept of the ‘good death’ (Walter, 2003: 218). Grief now appears to reside more prominently in our shared social, material and virtual landscapes (Maddrell, 2012), as evidenced by roadside memorials; individualized burial and memorial sites and more hands-on ‘DIY’ funerals (West, 2013). In contrast to Freud’s insistence that grief and grieving are, or should be, private and thus a potentially more lonely experience, there are significant changes today which suggest far more naturalistic constructs of grief and of dying are re-emerging. What happened in the twentieth century when Britain witnessed a dramatic change in the way mourning was both regarded and practised is presently happening in Poland and Eastern Europe. The following section focuses on how loneliness at the end of life and following loss can be experienced by many, particularly by those lacking effective support. Loneliness and Grief In the context of loneliness, and further to detailed analyses relating to loneliness in Chapter 1, various theoretical insights concur that human grief is an emotional response to forms of loss, particularly, but not exclusively, occurring when someone dies. Although this chapter’s focus is predominantly on bereavement and loneliness when experienced by others after a significant loss, it is important to recognize that both loneliness and grief can also be experienced by the dying. Death and dying come in many forms, of course, but when the process of dying is a more gradual decline, as with terminal illness, for example, a significant range of emotions – including grief and loneliness – can be felt. Stern (2021) identifies three dimensions of loneliness: separation; a sense of rejection; and a sense of self-rejection. Since dying is essentially a transitional process (Kalish, 2019), it also denotes a process of separation: from one’s life, loved ones, and from the world. Clearly the death of a significant other is frequently associated with a deep sense of missing the deceased, and of feeling physically alone or ‘abandoned’, but the extent to which grief is expressed or internalized is considered by anthropologists to vary considerably across time and space (Engelke, 2019). In the Western context, the experience of loneliness is considered highly subjective: an individual can be alone without feeling lonely, and can feel lonely even in the company of others (Hawkley & Kocherginsky, 2018). Social relationships and support are important for health and well-being (Litwin, 2018; Children’s Society, 2019). Kahn and Antonucci’s (1980) ‘social convoy model’ describes patterns of changing social relationships with respect to personal factors (such as age and gender) and situational factors (e.g. roles, values, culture). This model highlights the increasing importance of the quality, rather than 313

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the quantity, of social and emotional contact. Events such as marriage, divorce, retirement and bereavement often affect and effect the composition of social networks and the availability of support. The death of a spouse appears, therefore, to shape many older adults’ social relationships (King et al., 2020), and may also increase the risk of mortality for grieving individuals (Stroebe et al., 2007). As such, loneliness is considered to be a significant Western public health challenge (Holt-Lunstad, 2017), in that both loneliness and social isolation may shorten life expectancy (Steptoe et al., 2013). In the Eastern European context, the transition to a more Western lifestyle appears to have resulted in an increase in the experiences of both solitude and loneliness among elderly people in Poland, as well as by family caregivers during the caring process and even more after the death of the spouse (Krakowiak, 2020). With respect to the somewhat functionalist constructs of ‘healthy’ grieving referred to earlier in the chapter, which require grief to be ‘worked at’ in order to gain ‘acceptance’ and ‘closure’ (Bonanno & Papa, 2003), it is not difficult to consider the extent to which such expectations may significantly challenge or potentially worsen the experience of grief for those feeling isolated and/or lonely. Conversely, if well-meaning friends, relatives or colleagues recommend or suggest coping mechanisms, grieving individuals may feel confused, compromised or lacking in agency with respect to their own grief experience and perceived needs (Langer, 2010). Enabling people to have agency is thus of significant importance (see also the section ‘Grief, loneliness and children’, this chapter). Contemporary constructs of bereavement also reflect significant differences – if not a binary divide – relating to both theory and practice, with what might be classed as two distinct ‘camps’: the medical model and the social model. Medical constructs of ‘typical’ grief trajectories (Bonanno & Malgaroli, 2019) are defined by several diagnostic manuals with further signs and symptoms provided for ‘abnormal’ or ‘complicated’ grief (Boelen et al., 2017). Such Western constructs primarily reflect the dominance of both psychology and medicine in the field of bereavement during the nineteenth century (Souza, 2017), though there is evidence to suggest that a more patient-centred approach is being considered in psychotherapy (Moayedoddin & Markowitz, 2015). In contrast, social constructs and models of bereavement are rooted in anthropological and thanatological studies which see expressions and feelings of grief as natural emotional responses – often culturally ‘framed’ – among humans and other animals (Anderson, 2020). Complicated Grief Sometimes an individual’s experiences of grief are so all-consuming over a prolonged period that it severely affects not only their personal well-being but also their ability to function at work or interpersonally. Complicated grief is thus seen as a mental health problem or illness. Although some of the characteristic signs and symptoms are also common features of normal grief, such as intense yearning, longing or emotional pain; frequent preoccupying thoughts and memories of the deceased person; and a feeling of disbelief or an inability to accept the loss, complicated grief develops over time and can lead to suicidal ideation (Szanto et al., 1997; Shear, 2015). Frequently – though not always – complicated grief can develop in the absence of support. The old adage of ‘least said, soonest mended’ is still quite prevalent, including with bereaved 314

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children in schools (Potts, 2013: 95), and in the absence of emotional support both children and adults’ complicated grief may only be ‘noticed’ when referrals are made to mental health specialists. Readers wishing to explore or gain a deeper understanding of this relatively rare mental health problem will no doubt find Complicated Grief, by Stroebe et al. (2013) very helpful in this regard. Grief, Loneliness and Adults – Including Losing a Partner Loneliness towards the end of the life of a spouse, partner, family member or significant other is often experienced during the final caregiving process, as is referred to as ‘anticipatory grief’. More typically, a spouse/partner or adult child will become the main caregiver – either in the home or within a clinical or residential care home setting. Not all elderly people have a family carer available or nearby, however, which may significantly contribute to loneliness, especially for those widowed. Conversely, there is a very real risk of social exclusion for family carers, particularly if they are elderly, when they take on the responsibility of caring for a dying person in a home setting (Krakowiak, 2020). Although sudden death is deeply shocking and especially hard to make sense of, a slow, lingering terminal illness can erode carer well-being day by day, and may have a significant impact on other family members. During anticipatory grief one can experience sadness, anger, frustration, desperation, anxiety, panic, insecurity, guilt, shame, love, isolation and depression. Furthermore, many relatives and loved ones experience feelings of intense guilt from wishing it would all be over soon. All the feelings and thoughts experienced at this time can be just as intense and difficult as those following death (Taee & McNicoll, 2019). Understandably, caring for the dying also increases awareness of one’s own mortality. This can lead to a heightened level of death anxiety in some carers, and a reduced ability to plan for the future. Furthermore, a systematic review of anticipatory grief studies questioned the concept that anticipatory grief was an alleviator of carer grief in the period after death (Nielsen et al., 2017). Therefore, adequate support for lonely family caregivers in end-of-life care is a key challenge for health and social care communities. All attempts to mobilize social forces in every possible dimension should be considered as important for reducing the stress and burden of family carers, often left alone with the seriously ill and dying (Krakowiak, 2020). After death occurs, work with families, respecting sociocultural diversity and assessing the needs of adults experiencing bereavement are important aspects in bereavement support work. Research on the experiences of bereaved carers identifies various factors seen to contribute to a ‘good death’ for their loved ones (Holdsworth, 2015). For some carers, particularly if they are well supported emotionally and in more practical terms, providing loving, end-of-life care can actually lessen their own death anxiety and enable people to see dying and death as natural and affirmative rites of passage. Age, Lifespan and Grief It may help to understand the different dynamics in the lifespan of couples and families experiencing the loss of a partner identified both theoretically and in practical guides for carers and people in mourning (Krakowiak, 2007). The death of a partner before the age of thirty has an increased chance of being a death from unnatural causes (Wilson, 2018). If the deceased was 315

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part of a family, any children will be young, and the surviving partner will have the heartbreaking task of explaining difficult events to the children or others in the family (Wilson, 2013). A study of the financial implications of the death of a partner has shown that dealing with financial issues occupied a considerable amount of time. Finances could take an immense emotional toll, adding to the distress of the bereavement and loneliness of the partner in the face of economic changes following a death (Corden et al., 2010). When loss occurs between the ages of thirty and forty, it seems to be followed by an intense sense of disappointment and unfairness. The survivor finds himself or herself grieving also for the life which the dead partner will never have. The distraught parent watching the children’s suffering feels the drive to try to be both mother and father to them (Wilson, 2018). The death of a partner between forty and fifty typically also affects teenagers, and the surviving parent may feel totally inadequate to cope alone. Over fifty, any children will have left home or be studying in further education, so grief is compounded for the lone parent in the empty nest. Bereaved people are often angry and bitter, and in this age group men and women would very often like to be in another relationship eventually (Wilson, 2013). Despite increasing awareness of the importance of sexuality for older adults, research rarely acknowledges mourning the loss of sexual intimacy. Findings from the survey of 104 women, 55 years and older, revealed that a large majority (72 per cent) anticipated missing sex with their partner and 67 per cent would want to initiate a discussion about this. The important role for friends and professionals in confronting this neglected issue of disenfranchised grief and loneliness of sexual bereavement has been addressed (Radosh & Simkin, 2016). Those losing a partner over sixty are often people who have just retired. This group is potentially very vulnerable: growing social and geographical mobility may mean that children and grandchildren live many miles away. Those aged seventy to eighty are typically a group with failing health, where one of the couple has become the carer for the other. This puts a huge amount of physical and emotional stress on them. The surviving partner finds themselves lonely and perhaps in need of care, with failing mobility and cognitive ability (Wilson, 2013). People from this age group are trapped between different worlds. Modernity and postmodernity are fast changing social structures. Modernism affirms faith in progress, in the future, in science, in expertise, with its emphasis on leaving the dead behind and therapy to help malfunctioning individuals adjust. Late modernity entails new forms of social relationships and often first-hand experience is valued over expert knowledge (Giddens, 1991). In this trend from modernity to late modernity or postmodernism, the experience of grief, and the frameworks within which grief is interpreted, are currently undergoing profound changes (Walter, 2007), often causing suffering and loneliness of those rooted in the earlier forms of coping with death and bereavement. At eighty plus, nowadays, many people are still active. Bereaved men and women still manage to stay at home and have some degree of independence. It is often the loneliness, isolation and lack of conversation with people that they report finding most difficult (Wilson, 2013). One qualitative study of widowed ‘baby boomers’ who attended grief support groups revealed three themes: (a) the importance of a support group as a safe haven coupled with the value of sharing a similar loss; (b) challenges related to group support and (c) fractured individual and social selves. Such insights provide us with the potential to recognize a ‘fractured self’ in widowhood, and thus to meet the needs of, provide hope for, and empower widowed survivors in a modern landscape (Hilliker, 2016). 316

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Ninety-plus people teach us that we should never stereotype or dismiss on age grounds. The great example of Captain Tom Moore becoming a national hero in the UK at the age of ninetynine teaches more than many books. The widower, who was celebrated as the most successful fundraiser for the NHS, has been confirmed by The Guinness Book of Records as inspirational for people in the UK and internationally (Suggitt, 2020). Very often the problem is not with age, but society’s attitude to age. The difficulties this age group face are loneliness and health concerns. We cannot begin to imagine what it must be like to be bereaved of somebody with whom you have shared a life for a significant period of time, and the crushing desolation that a loss can bring (Wilson, 2013). A Swiss longitudinal study has brought evidence of the strong impact that the loss of a loved one can have on the depressive symptoms of the elderly. On the subject of gender, it failed to find any evidence of a ‘feminization of bereavement’ as applied to advanced old age, but women, who often live longer, are more frequently the survivors and thus have to cope with longer periods of bereavement (d’Epinay, Cavalli & Guillet, 2010). People’s experiences of bereavement are clearly complex and varied. The elderly, however, are more likely to experience multiple forms of loss such as the deaths of a spouse or partner; friends and relatives. Similarly, other forms of loss common among the elderly include loss of roles, for example, through retirement; loss of or a substantial reduction in income; and losses relating to health, mobility or cognition – often within relatively short periods of time. Paradoxically, perhaps, many older people may be more resilient, exhibiting effective coping strategies borne of accrued life experiences (Krakowiak, 2007). Having knowledge of the risk factors associated with loneliness may, therefore, be useful in developing and applying intervention strategies and in identifying potentially vulnerable individuals. A study by van Baarsen (2002) emphasizes how significant both self-esteem and social support are in mitigating the experience of loneliness among bereaved elderly people. Regardless of someone’s age, however, it is important to recognize that some bereaved people will experience loneliness due to ‘disenfranchised grief’, defined by Doka (1989: 4) as the grief that persons experience when they incur a loss that is not or cannot be openly acknowledged, publicly mourned, or socially supported. Doka further suggests that disenfranchisement can apply to recognized forms of loss, including the death of a pet (Spain et al., 2019), and the more recently acknowledged forms of grief experienced by babies and children separated from their mothers at or after birth (Verrier, 1993). Doka’s concept has been widely accepted by practitioners, educators and researchers in the field of death, dying and bereavement, especially in validating the experiences of a broad range of bereaved people (Corr, 1999; Piazza-Bonin et al., 2015; for example). Examples of disenfranchised grief include death due to AIDS; suicide; infertility (McBain & Reeves, 2019) perinatal death (especially miscarriage in the first trimester); elective abortion; the death of a lover or ex-spouse; convicted criminals and prisoners; and so on. Those affected often perceive a lack of recognition or empathy by others (Thompson & Doka, 2017), including within schools and colleges (James, 2015; Pataky & Parent, 2018). Disenfranchised grief is often further compounded in the workplace by policies which reflect a supposed ‘hierarchy of grief’, and which purport to quantify bereavement in terms of the amount of leave an employee is entitled to based on the ‘type’ of relative and an assumed degree of closeness (Robson & Walter, 2013; Wilson et al., 2020). Consequently, disenfranchised grief may 317

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yield more intensified feelings due to the relative lack of empathic social, emotional and work-/ community-based support (Parkes & Prigerson, 2010). Given Walter’s (1994) thesis that late modernity in the West is witnessing a ‘revival of death’, it seems we need also to complement this with a revival of empathy, compassion and heightened grief awareness. A caring, compassionate society ought, therefore, to appreciate that ‘healthy’ grief honours cherished relationships, and that mourning is both natural and essential for those who are striving to live in productive and meaningful ways in the aftermath of loss (Corr, 1999). New Responses to Grief: Compassionate Communities As detailed earlier, the death of a partner or close relative is generally a highly stressful experience, associated with an irretrievable sense of loss coupled with the need to adapt or rebuild a new identity. Grief is a process which predominantly manifests itself on two levels: first, the individual level, relating to the personal experiences of the mourner; and second, the social level, which relates to a series of behaviours and rituals associated with death and bereavement in the community (Krakowiak, 2007). At the time of writing this chapter, the Covid-19 pandemic is considered to have effected anticipatory, disenfranchised and complicated grief among many owing to the nature of the disease and its impact, and the extent to which the caring role is significantly constrained by infection control policies and practices (Wallace et al., 2020). It remains to be seen whether or not the pandemic has also increased the prevalence of lonely forms of grieving, especially in the context of the requirements to isolate and to ‘shield’, thus resulting in periods of required separation. The most coherent approach to bereavement support in many Western countries is provided by palliative care services, which emphasize support for family carers before and after a person’s death. Policies and guidelines on standards of care propose that support should be offered according to the needs of both patients and their families (World Health Organization [WHO], 2007). In reality, though, the standards of palliative care support often differ from the guidelines and may also relate to local and regional health budgets (Aoun et al., 2017), such that many people still suffer alone within our societies and communities during periods of mourning and bereavement. As a response to that, the ‘Compassionate Communities’ bereavement support approach has been developed to encourage people to support one another in order to reduce feelings of isolation and to provide meaningful social and emotional interactions. Accordingly, this approach is known to enhance the health and well-being of members of the local community across a range of challenging situations, including for those experiencing loneliness in grief (Kellehear, 2013). This approach arose from Kellehear’s (2005) concept of compassionate cities, the charter for which recognizes that many people who live with life-threatening or life-limiting illness, along with their caregivers and the bereaved, are commonly living in segmented social groups, forced to experience lifestyles that are often socially hidden and disenfranchised from wider society (Kellehear, 2005). Despite the aforementioned evidence for a ‘revival of death’ in late modernity (Walter, 1994, 2020), it is important to hold sight of the extent to which some people’s lives and grief remain sequestered (Mellor and Shilling, 1993). For those who do seek support in their bereavement, research suggests it is predominantly with members of the family and/or with friends (Benkel et al., 2009; Logan et al., 2018). 318

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The development of compassionate communities is also in response to the perceived care needs among older people, as well as for the bereaved. Put simply, it is a call for social engagement in matters to do with dying, death, loss and care; a movement towards the recognition that endof-life care is a societal and community-based responsibility (Kellehear, 2013). Rather than building bereavement services around palliative care programmes, compassionate communitybased services ought, therefore, to be developed far more holistically and inclusively, ensuring that professional care complements, rather than replaces, the care provided by any existing social networks (Rumbold & Aoun, 2015). Aoun et al. (2018: 1378) clarify these notions by suggesting: [a] public health approach, as exemplified by compassionate communities policies and practices, should be adopted to support the majority of bereaved people as much of this support is already provided in informal and other community settings by a range of people already involved in the everyday lives of those recently bereaved. Continuity matters, and compassionate communities provide this in the midst of increasing fragmentation characteristic of society in late modernity. Recent data collected from 140 family caregivers, responding to questions regarding anticipatory grief, also emphasized the importance of social networks for bereavement support (Breen et al., 2017). As with the concept of disenfranchised grief discussed earlier, the bereaved often report feeling judged if they are not grieving the ‘right way’, but also that being given information and being encouraged to talk can be beneficial (Breen & O’Connor, 2011). Caregivers who have experienced similar losses tend to be extremely willing to provide pertinent, empathic advice for others in similar situations, though it is important for advice to be given and received as something to consider, rather than obligatory: encouraging and supporting agency is paramount (James, 2015). Experiential knowledge can likewise be harnessed to (a) inform progress; and (b) effect the development of bereavement care strategies for the good of the local community (Breen et al., 2017). Grief, Loneliness and Children Western perceptions by adults of children and childhood have varied significantly throughout history. Contemporary views of childhood also vary, from rights-enabling to over-protective and ‘Disneyfying’ (Giroux, 1994). By viewing children and childhood as potentially vulnerable, coupled with the predominance of twentieth-century developmentalist notions of children’s cognitive and intellectual capabilities, it is not uncommon for some adults to view children as incapable of voicing or even knowing their own feelings or needs (Lansdown, 2011; Oswell, 2013) – yet recent studies and projects which actively empower children and young people’s voices unquestionably demonstrate that they have far clearer understandings of what adversely affects their well-being, and what promotes it (Children’s Society, 2019). Childhood can thus be a period of significant loneliness for those who feel alienated or voiceless. As with adults, children and young people feel abandoned in their grief – not just by the person who has died, but commonly by those around them who may not be recognizing or supporting their needs (Child Bereavement UK [CBUK], 2018). Given that grief is experienced when an attachment is severed, and that separation and loneliness are inherently linked (Stern, 2021), it is by no means unreasonable to assume, therefore, that lonely aspects of grief may be commonly experienced by children – just as loneliness is (Weeks and Asher, 2012). 319

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Clearly there is insufficient scope within this chapter to explore such concepts in depth; it is nevertheless appropriate to keep in mind other comparatively voiceless and marginalized people in society: just as the elderly or infirm may experience loneliness, as discussed earlier, so potentially are those from all age groups who are Black or from minority ethnic backgrounds; are women or girls; have disabilities; or who identify as LGBTQ+, for example. In the spirit of advocating a truly human-centred, inclusive narrative, therefore, this section on children – who are in so many ways marginalized or voiceless – is intended to highlight a real concern relating to bereaved children’s needs and experiences, and the necessity for adults to become more cognizant of the importance of empowering children and young people to have agency. Due to the ethical sensitivities associated with conducting research with groups perceived to be more vulnerable, there is a relative paucity of data reflecting bereaved children’s voices (James, 2015). Emergent data from child bereavement charities, coupled with the few available studies conducted with bereaved children, highlight the extent to which support and comfort need to be child-centred, rather than adult-centric (Cranwell, 2007; Stokes, 2009; CBUK, 2018). As it is commonplace for grieving children to ‘puddle-jump’ – that is to oscillate between periods of quiet aloneness and sadness (or loneliness, even), and periods of social and more carefree activity – children are potentially vulnerable to being misunderstood by adults who may expect children’s grieving behaviours to be more consistent and akin to their own (James, 2012; Rawstrone, 2017; CBUK, 2018a, 2018b). Furthermore, adults often have a tendency, in good faith, to organize activities or to make suggestions for grieving children, which may not be right for that particular child at that particular time. As referred to previously, some adults in schools continue to advocate a ‘least said, soonest mended’ approach to child bereavement (Potts, 2013: 95). Decisions relating to whether or not a child should attend a funeral, for example, are frequently made based on adult-centric views on what is best for the child, if not for the adults (Holland, 2003), and whether or not a child is capable of ‘understanding’ it. Despite the ‘revival of death’ in late modernity discussed previously (Walter, 1994), which in part is evidenced by the relative surge in open discussions about death and dying, the development of ‘Death Cafés’ and the natural death movement (Lofland, 2019), discussions about death and proactive death education generally exclude children (James, 2012, 2015) – in part because it is assumed it will lead to death anxiety. In marked contrast, anthropological studies of children in non-Western communities reveal the wholly inclusive ways in which children of all ages actively observe and participate in issues relating to and ritualizing death, such that the need for death education would be anathema. The West, it seems, has much to learn in this regard. Building on the literature relating to children’s rights and the child’s voice (Messiou, 2002; Adderley et al., 2015; Jones and Welch, 2018), therefore, it is particularly salient – if not imperative – for grieving children in Western societies to have agency such that they are enabled to make their own decisions and choices (and to change them); to voice their needs and access support; and effectively to be in control of their own grief journeys and continuing bonds. A simple, but poignant, example of this can be illustrated from a study by James (2015) on bereavement and death education in primary schools: following the death of the mother of two primary school-aged boys, which occurred just before the start of the school day, their father asked both boys if they wanted to attend school or to stay at home. The younger sibling chose to remain at home with Dad, while the older sibling (let us call him Joshua) wanted to attend school. 320

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The headteacher described his conversation with Joshua’s class teacher just before the bell rang for lessons to begin: The teacher said, ‘well I think we need to tell the class.’ I said, ‘well let’s put the child in control here; let’s find out . . . [he may not want] a big announcement’. (From James, 2015: 157) The headteacher’s subsequent message to Joshua was: You’re in control, we’re here for you. If you want to be in your class and not talk about it, we’ll do that for you. If you need at any point to come out and come and talk to us, we’re here for you. (‘HT2’, cited in James, 2015: 157) A similar example of facilitating child agency, from a different participating primary school, highlights clearly the extent to which children’s needs or desires can be very individual: We’ve had a bereavement this week, actually, and that little boy wanted to tell all of his class, tell his teacher and then come in here [to the school’s nurture room] and tell me, [and] that’s fine. (‘NTP9’, cited in James, 2015: 157–8) Giving children agency can also require adults (or indeed older young people) to empower children’s voices to be actively listened to, but also for their voices and thoughts to be uninterrupted and not pre-empted. A lovely example of this was shared during an informal discussion with a school counsellor who had been chatting with an eight-year-old girl (let’s call her ‘Rosie’) about her grandmother’s recent death, the transcript for which is as follows: Counsellor: I’m really sorry to hear about your Nana, Rosie. Where do you think she is now? Rosie: [smiles and points to the ceiling] Counsellor: Oh! Is she on the ceiling? Rosie: [giggles, shakes her head and points upwards again] Counsellor: Oh, silly me: she’s in the classroom upstairs! Rosie: [more giggles, head-shaking and emphatic gestures upwards. . .] Counsellor: I’ve got it: she’s on the roof! This banter continued in a similar vein, with more and more giggles from Rosie, but it is tempting to assume that she was trying to indicate that her Nana was in heaven, or that she was a ‘star in the sky’. The counsellor, however, let the story unfold, without interrupting or trying to feed words or ideas to Rosie until such time that she found her voice. Eventually it transpired that Nana was buried ‘up’ in Scotland. Her counsellor – clearly very experienced in relating to children and in giving them agency – knew the benefits of letting Rosie lead the conversation, though even he was unable to anticipate the ending. But it is highly likely that many adults having a similar conversation with a child would be tempted to take the lead, especially if the child is perhaps a little shy, thus shifting the agency and power to the adult, and possibly also resulting in the introduction of ideas that may be confusing or at odds with the child’s understanding or beliefs. In terms of lonely dimensions of grief or grieving, therefore, children who lack agency or empathic support may feel more isolated and lonely in their grief. If this results in quiet or withdrawn behaviour, the child’s needs and emotions may be particularly difficult to identify or meet. Schools have a significant role to play in supporting bereaved children, and in liaising with parents/carers and any outside agencies (Holland, 2008, 2016; CBUK, 2018b). Given the sensitive 321

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nature of supporting bereaved children, and the extent to which many adults may lack confidence in this area, it is extremely important for whole school training in loss and bereavement awareness and support to underpin and inform provision. Specific courses and resources are generally available throughout Europe and North America, but for readers interested in accessing free resources and in gaining an insight into child bereavement support provision, Child Bereavement UK1 is one such charity exemplifying contemporary approaches and expertise. Staff trained in supporting children’s loss and bereavement are also able to advise parents on how to invite, and answer, their children’s questions, and on the avoidance of euphemisms which may be taken literally by children, and which can also contribute to ‘magical thinking’ (Mallon, 2018). It may, for example, be comforting to be told that ‘Nana is a star in the sky’, but – paradoxically – children are known to cope far better with clear, honest explanations. One of the best examples of explaining death to very young children is in Bruna’s (2006) Miffy book, Dear Grandma Bunny. Set in simple rhyming language, with poignant line drawings, the story outlines Miffy’s experiences when Grandma Bunny dies, and of seeing her first in her bed, and then in her coffin: ‘Miffy knows she isn’t sleeping / and she isn’t breathing any more’ (Bruna, 2006: 4). After the funeral, Miffy takes flowers and plants to her grandmother’s grave, thus facilitating her continuing bond with Grandma Bunny, and providing a form of proactive self-comfort. Supporting children’s grief tends to be reactive, rather than proactive (Holland, 2003) – the view being that it is better to protect children from death until it is unavoidably encountered. Not surprisingly, therefore, child bereavement theorists and practitioners advocate the importance of naturally enabling children to learn about and openly question what death and dying are (or may be) – both at home and in schools. Conclusions and Recommendations This chapter has focused on a range of issues and constructs relating to loneliness and bereavement. By considering some of the socio-historical contexts which underpin contemporary views and practices, particularly in Britain and Poland, we propose that when grieving is constrained in various ways, a culture of loneliness, or ‘mortality loneliness’, can develop. It remains to be seen the extent to which the Covid-19 pandemic may have exacerbated loneliness, but even at the beginning of periods of social lockdown, communities generally characterized by relative anonymity appear to have adapted quickly to become compassionate communities (see Douglas, 2020, for example). Death remains both ubiquitous and elusive – the greatest mystery of all. But as social and emotional beings, with both a capacity and need for meaningful interpersonal attachments, it is imperative that we continue to recognize the ways loneliness can affect grief, and vice versa. Since loneliness may also been described as an emotion of absence, or of love that is now absent (Stern, 2021), grief and loneliness appear to be natural responses to our human capacity for love. But here’s the rub: our capacity to offer compassionate support to those experiencing lonely forms of grief is significantly constrained and challenged by the predominant zeitgeist of socio-economic individualism. We need, therefore, to recognize and reclaim our innate ability to be communityminded. Kellehear’s concepts of compassionate cities (2005) and compassionate communities (2013), coupled with the need for people of all ages and circumstances to be afforded agency, are thus of paramount significance. Similarly, recognizing that grieving is natural and often complex, rather than a solitary process aimed at resolution (Freud, 1917), enables us to be situated alongside the person in grief: empathically, reflexively and with integrity.

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Conclusion Lifelong Learning of Aloneness Julian Stern

Introduction If a person’s life is characterized by the ebb and flow of togetherness (as described in Chapter 1), then this is not experienced passively. People actively learn from all the positive and negative experiences of togetherness and of aloneness. By ‘learn’, I do not wish to sound absurdly optimistic, suggesting that people can always gain from painful experiences. Experience of persistent loneliness may teach us that we have little worth; experience of being trapped in an abusive relationship may teach us despair. Consider these examples: ●●

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A baby can learn to cope with separation from a carer. The lesson may lead to independence, or may lead to anger. An adolescent can learn the power of silence. This may encourage a strong sense of self, or it may lead to withdrawal into a lonely isolation. An adult can learn from the loneliness of moving to a new city, and it may lead to increased social activity, or to alienation. An older person can learn from bereavement to make the most of every moment, or to dwell in the past.

Learning continues throughout a life: learning is, in Hanks’s words, ‘a way of being in the social world’, and not, or not simply ‘a way of coming to know about it’ (Hanks, in Lave & Wenger, 1991: 24). This chapter considers how solitude, silence and loneliness come and go throughout our lives, and are learned – or lead to other forms of learning – that are important (in positive or negative ways) to what it means to be a person. Such learning of aloneness is as important to those living in close-knit communities (and to those who see social and communal structures as central to their philosophies) as it is to those who live alone (and to those whose social theories focus on individuals and individualism). This chapter explores the learning of personhood through aloneness and the learning of aloneness throughout life. It draws on the research presented throughout this Handbook as well as other sources, to see how aloneness sits at the centre of so much of lifelong learning. In recent years there has been a massive increase in research and popular books on various aspects of aloneness, and this growing literature helped drive the creation of this Handbook. Researchers have been able to link loneliness, isolation and poor health (Cacioppo & Patrick, 2008), and to

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link healthy solitude and silence and good health (Moustakas & Moustakas, 2004). There have been research guides to loneliness (Weiss, 1973), to silence (Hägg & Kristiansen, 2012) and to solitude (Storr, 1988), and there have been separate guides from the perspective of psychology (Margalit, 2010; Coplan & Bowker, 2014), public health (Hammond, 2018), education (Stern, 2014; Stern & Wałejko, 2020) and philosophy (Mijuskovic, 2012; Domeracki, 2018). Political moves to appoint a ‘minister for loneliness’ in the UK (i Newspaper, 2018) and Australia (Wahlquist, 2018) indicate the high level of social concern. But the various fields and disciplines are rarely brought together. This Handbook, therefore, presents research based in schools and higher education (Chapters 3, 4, 15, 16), psychology and therapy (Chapters 11, 12, 18, 20, 21), and care (Chapters 23, 24, 25). The Handbook also brings together disciplines, from philosophy and religious studies (Chapters 1, 2, 9, 10, 17, 22), through historical and cultural studies (Chapters 5, 8, 13), to business studies (Chapter 6), politics (Chapter 7) and languages/linguistics (Chapters 14, 23). In the current chapter, the work is revisited through the central concept of personhood and the approach to understanding the world known as personalism. Following accounts of personalism and the learning of aloneness at all ages, these ideas are applied across the spectrum of accounts of people’s lifelong learning, from communal to individualist accounts. Personalism and Aloneness Personalism is ‘a philosophical and political movement [that] is antagonistic to both individualism and collectivism and argues for a deeply relational view of the self’ (Fielding & Moss, 2011: 48). An early advocate, Mounier, similarly described personalism as a way that avoids the hard individualism of isolated beings and the hard collectivism of merely being part of a larger organization. ‘To exist is to say Yes, it is acceptance and membership’, he notes, and ‘[y]et always to assent and never to refuse is to sink in a quicksand’ (Mounier, 1952: 47). Hence, ‘[t]o exist personally means also, and not seldom, knowing how to say no, to protest, to break away’ (Mounier, 1952: 47). It is this combination of joining and breaking away that makes personalism such an insightful approach to the role of aloneness in communal and social contexts. Personalism is not a single theory or philosophy of personhood, but a movement (as quoted earlier), and a way of directing people’s attention to personhood. For Rauch, Mounier’s personalism is more of a ‘pedagogy’ than a single theory of persons. Mounier, he says, can better be seen as ‘a teacher . . . [rather than as] an academic philosopher’ (Rauch in Mounier, 1952: ix). People described as personalists have been influential in religious, educational, psychological, political and philosophical disciplines. Martin Luther King Jr, Karol Wojtyla and Michael Polanyi are described as personalists (Beauregard & Smith, 2016: 9), as are the philosopher Macmurray (Stern, 2012) and the personal construct psychologist Salmon (1988). All have been interested in lifelong learning, in different ways. It is the ways in which personalism addresses individualism and collectivism, and the ways in which it is broadly educational, that are at the centre of this account of aloneness. Yet there is little in the personalist literature that describes positive forms of solitude. I have argued elsewhere how two philosophers described as personalist, Macmurray and Buber, are ‘missing’ solitude from their accounts (Stern, 2018). Like that account, this chapter attempts to draw on personalist accounts to explore different forms of aloneness in distinctive ways – recognizing the individualist and communal accounts well represented in this Handbook, and starting from the phrase ‘alone together’. The phrase was used as the title of Turkle’s influential 324

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book on the lack of close online relationships, as ‘[t]he ties we form through the Internet are not, in the end, the ties that bind’, although ‘they are ties that preoccupy’ (Turkle, 2011: 280). Half a century earlier, Macmurray used the same phrase in a description of how important personal relations are to each of us. Macmurray describes personal relationships – in contrast to other kinds of relationships including functional social relationships – as characterized by irreplaceability. Our personal relations . . . are unique. As husbands or wives, as parents, as brothers, or as friends, we are related as persons in our own right: and we are not replaceable. If I lose a friend I lose part of my own life. This is not a mere poetic metaphor. For we are what we are through our intercourse with others; and we can be ourselves only in relation to our fellows. (Macmurray, 2004: 169, first published in 1956) Such personal relationships, in turn, make for community of a particular kind, in which people treat each other as ends in themselves, rather than (primarily) as means to further ends. Personal relations are unique, therefore, and are also direct. We cannot be related personally to people we do not know. We must meet; we must communicate with one another; we must, it would seem, be alone together. (Macmurray, 2004: 169, first published in 1956) To be in a personal relationship and therefore to be in a community, this suggests, has to be a matter of direct meeting rather than, for example, having common beliefs or membership of a common organization. We must be ‘alone together’. This may mean we must at least attempt to be together in personal relationships notwithstanding our fundamental ‘aloneness’. Such an interpretation echoes his biographer’s account of Macmurray’s post-1945 sense of regret that ‘left him, in a deep part of himself – and despite his fabulously good humour and generosity of spirit – locked in a certain unrelievable loneliness’ as he ‘was banished by historical circumstances from his natural milieu, a fish out of water, an artist without a culture, a believer with no community’ (Costello, 2002: 292). Yet there is another interpretation of Macmurray’s phrase. Perhaps there is a sense in which he means that we can be together (in a personal relationship with others) even when we are alone, as the personal relationships (our ‘togethernesses’) themselves make us the persons we are, even when alone. The first, more pessimistic, interpretation of Macmurray’s ‘alone together’ reflects the later views of Turkle (at least with respect to online relationships) and those of contributors to this volume, such as Mijuskovic (Chapter 16) and Domeracki (Chapter 1) (with respect to all of life). The second, more optimistic, interpretation of ‘alone together’ reflects a more communal approach to life, such as those described in this volume by James and Krakowiak (Chapter 23). Macmurray’s ambiguity helps bridge these traditions. Personalism grapples with what makes a ‘person’, and this is not always the same as what makes a ‘human being’. There are many positions represented in this Handbook, but in the current chapter, ‘person’ is used rather than ‘human being’, reflecting a sense of personhood that may not exactly coincide with humanity. That is, a non-human animal (Morton, 2017), or even plants and non-animate beings, might have elements of personhood. Separating ‘personhood’ and ‘humanity’ (and ‘humanism’) is partly derived from philosophical personalism (Burgos, 2018), as personalists generally assert personhood as distinct from the biological category to which human beings belong. (A number of important personalists were – and are – religious writers who 325

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attribute personhood to God or gods.) But the distinction between personhood and humanity is also derived from various forms of transhumanism and critical posthumanism (Haraway, 2004; Herbrechter, 2013; Nayar, 2018), which argue for the blurring of the boundaries of humanity, and deep ecology (Naess, 2008), which argues for the ethical or political significance of different beings and for at least an ‘expanding circle’ (Singer, 2011) of ethical significance beyond humanity. An example of the challenge of understanding the aloneness of persons, in a ‘personal world’ (i.e. a world in which personhood might be ascribed to non-human entities), is the relationship of persons to what is called nature. Many accounts of solitude in nature (as Fulford describes in Chapter 4) test what is meant by solitude. Being apart from other human beings can enable being in a more direct relationship with ‘nature’, a mountain (in the account of Shepherd, 2011), a daffodil (Wordsworth, 1994: 287), a dog (Koller, 1990), or all the teeming life of Walden Pond (Thoreau, 2006). This is one of the reasons that some personalists may ‘miss’ solitude, as it is so hard to achieve while maintaining a broad sense of personhood. Buber describes the difference between being an ‘individual’ and a ‘person’, attempting to distinguish his views from those of his conversational partner, the psychotherapist Carl Rogers. Being an ‘individual’ means being unique, but ‘a person . . . is an individual living really with the world’ (Buber, 1998: 174). And with the world, I don’t mean in the world – just in real contact, in real reciprocity with the world in all the points in which the world can meet man. I don’t say only with man, because sometimes we meet the world in other shapes than in that of man. But this is what I would call a person and if I may say expressly Yes and No to certain phenomena, I’m against individuals and for persons. (Buber, 1998: 174) Buber’s personalism, like that of Macmurray, bridges the traditions of more individualist approaches (which he ascribes to Rogers) and more communal or in some cases collectivist approaches: it is a bridge and not a simple rejection. Understanding different forms of aloneness is illuminated by such a philosophy. However, it is worth considering the whole spectrum of theories in order to explore the lifelong learning of aloneness. Learning Aloneness Aloneness and togetherness are experienced differently at different life stages, as people learn and develop over time. Infancy is described by developmental psychologists such as Bowlby in terms of the ‘making and breaking of affectional bonds’ (Bowlby, 2005, title) and by Winnicott in terms of the child’s transition from being ‘merged’ with the carer to a healthy ‘separation’ (Winnicott, 1964: 168) – healthy if the child is confident of the carer’s return. Both recognized the ambivalence in separation and togetherness as related to the ambivalence of guilt (recognition of one’s own wrongdoing) and more broadly of love and hate (which may be directed at the same object). In adolescence and emerging adulthood, the separation and togetherness is more comprehensive, one might say, with adolescents often fighting against their family ties (while usually remaining in the family) and emerging adults often leaving home and creating new families – described by Erikson as typically involving a contest between intimacy (and solidarity) and isolation (Erikson, 1980: 178). Building on the work of Winnicott, Galanaki (2005) explains how children from a very early age learn not only to be alone, without a carer, but also to be alone while with another person. 326

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Aloneness as a ‘state of communicative rather than physical isolation’ (Galanaki, 2005: 128) is gradually learned in the early years of life as a way to ‘simply exist’, without feeling the need to communicate or engage. This is an important stage in the development of personhood, she says, and it can be experienced positively, as solitude, or negatively, as loneliness. By the time children reach school age, they are learning from a wider range of adults and from friends. Or, rather, they are learning friendship. Friendship is typically developed alongside a sense of ‘choice’ and ‘freedom’. As Hey describes it, friendship is the ‘first practice of the “reflexive” self’ and is ‘lived by . . . young people as an ontology and epistemology of the self through the “other”’ (Hey, 2002: 239). Hey recognizes that this choice brings with it the choice to break friendships, and children’s ‘making and breaking of relationships, and the ways they use these to distinguish between self and Other’ (Epstein, 2002: 149) leads to a consideration of learning the ontology of aloneness. Ollie, aged eight, describes loneliness as experienced ‘When I wen’t to the part [park] I when’t whith some of my friends and they ran away’ (in Stern, 2014: 22). The breaking of friendship is one of the most common routes into loneliness, and the absence of friends can also be associated with learning healthy forms of solitude. Within schools, opportunities for solitude are rare yet much sought, by all the children researched in my own project on the topic (Stern, 2014). In this Handbook, Lees (Chapter 2) provides a fascinating count of how the learning in school should include learning solitude, as well as learning in solitude and silence (Lees, 2012). Cleveland (Chapter 10) provides a therapeutic account of learning silence. As all these authors stress, children and young people are agentic in their learning of aloneness: they have a say in the processes, even if they do not have complete control. Bosacki (Chapter 11) provides an account of adolescents’ use of silence: the increasing agency of adolescents is what allows them to separate from the families or households to which they still belong. Adult separation and togetherness are experienced and learned in the making of new families (with young parents, especially after moving house, often reported as the loneliest of age-groups, Weiss, 1973), and in work. Historically, it has been the influence of industrial work, more than family life, on aloneness (in various forms) that has interested researchers. Nineteenth-century sociologists (among many others) described the experience of industrial work in terms of alienation or anomie in contrast to togetherness in community/communism or teamwork (Marx, 1964; Marx & Engels, 1970; Durkheim, 1952, 1973; Tönnies, 2001). They provide contrasting views of the value or harm of separation and of togetherness. Littman‑Ovadia writes of the ‘balanced’ adult life made up of ‘solitary doing, communal doing, solitary being, and communal being’ (Littman‑Ovadia, 2019: 1953). Weiss claims that [s]ociologists have given a great deal of attention to ‘alienation,’ by which most mean something like the social or psychological estrangement of an individual from an activity or social form with which he is nevertheless at least nominally associated . . . [t]here seems to be very little overlap between the phenomena considered in discussions of alienation and the experience of loneliness. (Weiss, 1973: 4, but see Stern, 2021) However, this is in part a matter of scale (as those sociologists describing alienation tended to study the macro- rather than micro-level) and in part a matter of discipline. The emotion of loneliness makes more of an appearance in literature and the arts (Stern, in Chapter 7) than it does in sociological and even psychological research until the late twentieth century. There are some studies of workplace loneliness and connectedness (Stern, 2013b; Stern & Buchanan, 2020). 327

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The work of Pirrie and Fang on the important role of the ‘quiet professional’ (Chapter 15) and Weir (Chapter 5) complements accounts by Cain (2012), Whittaker (2015) and Rufus (2003), all of whom write normative studies of workplace solitude as a healthy (or at times healthy) alternative to modern economic forms of constant enforced sociability. How adults can or should experience positive forms of aloneness in homes or workplaces, and how they can or should avoid or mitigate negative forms of aloneness, can be described as learning processes – without avoiding the political and economic dimensions of the experiences. Since 2020, there has been much re-learning of adult aloneness in the workplace and home (which may be the same place), as a result of the lockdown responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. Dubas (Chapter 19) provides a superb account of learning in adulthood that occurs through what she describes as an ‘oscillation’ between aloneness and togetherness. Into old age, the experience of aloneness is often of a loss of connection and loss of purpose – as a result of a loss of paid work, loss of family (through moving away and through death), and loss of position in society. And yet, despite popular views of old age as a lonely period of life in contemporary society, it appears to be a time when loneliness rates are not particularly high. There are problems of social isolation – for example as a result of lack of cheap or available transport – but this is not, it seems, accompanied by more loneliness. As Townsend describes it, ‘[t]o be socially isolated is to have few contacts with family and community; to be lonely is to have an unwelcome feeling of lack or loss of companionship . . . one is objective, the other subjective, and, as we shall see, the two do not coincide’ (Townsend, in Weiss, 1973: 175). In a major study of old age, de Beauvoir also notes the contrast between old age as ‘seen from without’ (de Beauvoir, 1972: 21) and old age as ‘being-in-the-world’ (de Beauvoir, 1972: 315). She describes the ‘discovery and assumption’ of old age (de Beauvoir, 1972: 315) and in this way stresses how old age, its isolation and its sometimes tenuous connectedness are created and then learned in particular cultures and historical periods. Within this Handbook, there is more on old age in Part III on loneliness than in the other parts, perhaps reflecting – while also going beyond – the stereotype of lonely old age. Chinese traditions of ageing have not been so lonely, so the account by Wong (Chapter 8) is a good example of self-development in solitude continuing throughout a life into ‘sagehood’, which is positively associated with old age. The accounts of Wray (Chapter 21) on the loneliness of dementia, and of Iwański (Chapter 22) on the loneliness associated with the elderly and with those who care for them, take us into experiences newly learned (such as living alone or living in care homes), and the experience at times of ‘unlearning’ (through forgetting or losing skills or executive functions), characteristic of many of us in old age. Yet even when facing one’s own death or the death of someone close (James and Krakowiak, Chapter 23), there is a tension between the sense of the loneliness of dying and death, and the possibility of having a ‘good death’ that helps develop the possibility of continuing bonds. In all these accounts of the lifelong learning of aloneness, are there different patterns represented in those descriptions rooted in more communal and in more individualist approaches to aloneness? Many of the more communal accounts are historically specific – showing differences between different times or different cultures. From the famously historicist account of childhood by Ariès (1996), through the historicism of adults at work in the sociology of Marx (Marx & Engels, 1970), to the historicism of de Beauvoir (1972) on old age, the life course of connection and separation is described as mutable and as subjective as well as objective and 328

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related to particular historical and cultural traditions. However, other authors stress more universal psychological phenomena or philosophical interpretations of persons in society. Solitude, silence and loneliness in more community-oriented traditions and more individualistic traditions should both be noted. Personalism is a way of bridging many, if not all, of these varied approaches. And so it is the range of views, from communal to individualist, historicist to universal, that is the topic of the following sections. Communal Aloneness For some community-oriented writers, solitude is a challenge and can even be seen as pathological. A good example of aloneness described by a communally oriented theorist is provided by Csikszentmihalyi (2002), in a book on ‘flow’ which is often read as celebrating solitudinous concentration. ‘Of the things that frighten us’, he says, ‘the fear of being left out of the flow of human interaction is certainly one of the worst’ and ‘only in the company of other people do we feel complete’ (Csikszentmihalyi, 2002: 165). He continues, in a passage that may be intended as more rhetorical than empirical: The density of human contacts that great cities afford is like a soothing balm; people in such centers relish it even when the interactions it provides may be unpleasant or dangerous. The crowds streaming along Fifth Avenue may contain an abundance of muggers and weirdos; nevertheless, they are exciting and reassuring. Everyone feels more alive when surrounded with other people. (Csikszentmihalyi, 2002: 165) Of course, Csikszentmihalyi recognized the ‘long tradition of wisdom warning us that “Hell is other people”’ and the idea that ‘[other] people cause both the best and the worst times’ (Csikszentmihalyi, 2002: 165). Yet his conclusion is that ‘flow’ can rarely be achieved, and that the solitude needed is in a sense contrary to human nature – as ‘[t]here is no question that we are social animals’ (Csikszentmihalyi, 2002: 165). ‘Whosoever is delighted in solitude,’ goes the old saying that Francis Bacon repeated, ‘is either a wild beast or a god.’ One does not actually have to be a god, but it is true that to enjoy being alone a person must build his own mental routines, so that he [sic] can achieve flow without the supports of civilized life – without other people, without jobs, TV, theaters, restaurants, or libraries to help channel his attention. (Csikszentmihalyi, 2002: 173, and see also Chapter 13 of this Handbook) Given the ambiguity of personhood, described earlier in this chapter, it is worth saying once again that what counts as the ‘community’, and therefore what counts as separation from community, may be interpreted in many different ways. Fulford (Chapter 4) describes solitude in order to engage with ‘nature’ (sometimes, tellingly, referred to as ‘communing’ with nature) and Simpson (Chapter 9) describes solitudinous attempts to engage with God or gods. Our whole universe may be described as a single community, as in the deep ecology of Naess (2008), or as a single community and in some senses as a single organism in the Gaia theory of Lovelock (2000). In such models, solitude is entirely relative – such as solitude from people, or solitude in order to get in touch with community. Those senses of solitude, and of community, are certainly rich in their educational implications. Nevertheless, there are many writers who are community-oriented and who see solitude and silence as either problematic or at best a ‘rest’ in order to be able to return to the more ‘normal’ communality. 329

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Loneliness in such accounts is often seen as precisely the absence of the necessary belonging to community. Peterson contrasts ‘Loneliness/Avoidance of commitment’ with ‘Intimacy’, describing loneliness as a ‘disorder of love’, in his categorization of strengths and their opposites (Peterson, in Csikszentmihalyi & Csikszentmihalyi, 2006: 45). Peterson’s model seems even more inimical than that of Csikszentmihalyi to positive versions of ‘solitude’ or ‘silence’. Yet there are many communityoriented theories that give a much bigger role to ‘good’ aloneness. Lantieri describes ‘schools with spirit’ in which ‘[t]here would be places and time for silence and stillness, to help us face the chaos and complexity of school life yet stay in touch with inner truth and the web of interconnectedness’ (Lantieri, 2001: 9). Here, silence and stillness are intended not as an avoidance of connection but as a way to ‘stay in touch’ with ‘the web of interconnectedness’. In a similar approach, also based in schools, Kessler writes of the ‘seven gateways to the soul in education’ which include ‘silence and stillness’ (Kessler, 2000: 36). Silence is a ‘respite from the tyranny of “busyness” and noise’ (Kessler, 2000: 17) and a ‘tool for cultivating rest and renewal’ (Kessler, 2000: 36). ‘Like silence’, she says, ‘solitude evokes fear in some young people’ especially because ‘people in authority’ use it as punishment, ‘but is a rare solace for most’ (Kessler, 2000: 49). All the young respondents (aged seven to eight, or twelve to thirteen) in my own research (Stern, 2014) expressed a wish for more opportunities for solitude in school: this was not just wanted by the more contemplative or the more introverted respondents. Individualist Aloneness More individually oriented writers, likewise, have a whole range of attitudes to the different forms of separation. Hobbes (1968 [1651]) is often described as the model of ‘possessive individualism’ (Macpherson, 1962), and is positioned by Cacioppo and Patrick as the central figure in the postRenaissance shift to ‘greater isolation’ in Europe, exacerbated by ‘the rise of Protestant theology, which stressed individual responsibility’ (Cacioppo & Patrick, 2008: 53–5). Hay writes of the ‘lonely European’ in a similar vein, also focusing on Hobbes (Hay, 2007: 64–7) and running on to the ‘loneliness of Calvinism, and its illustration in Hogg’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner’ (Hogg, 1978 [1824]; Hay, 2007: 63). Hobbes himself certainly writes of the unlimited appetites of people, albeit the appetite for knowledge is greater than for food or other pleasures (Hobbes, 1968: 124), and without enforced control by an all-powerful government (the Leviathan of the title), life would be ‘solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short’ (Hobbes, 1968: 186). Solitude is a form of suffering and people are by nature individually competitive, so it is fear – fear of solitude and, ultimately, fear of death – that drives all human activities. ‘My mother gave birth to twins’, he says: ‘myself and fear’ (Hobbes, quoted in Gert, 2010). (Winnicott and Bowlby might have something to say about the Hobbes household approach to child-rearing.) What strong government can provide is a respite from the battle to survive, a respite in which sociability can be achieved. Hobbes combined possessive individualism with solitude as an evil to be avoided. This, it seems, was translated by writers such as Locke and Hume into liberal political philosophy in the eighteenth century. Locke, for Macpherson, ‘starts with the individual and moves out to society and the state, but . . . as with Hobbes, the individual with which he starts has already been created in the image of market man’ which is central to ‘English liberal theory’ (Macpherson, 1962: 269–70). In Hobbes, and in later liberal theory, ‘market man’ chooses to engage with society rather than suffer in solitude, and people should be taught to avoid the problems associated with solitude. 330

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Domeracki (Chapter 1) refers to loneliness as a ‘virus’, but one that seems to be endemic – characteristic of all humanity. It is the sociable Hume who gives one of the strongest defences of sociability and attacks on solitude: Celibacy, fasting, penance, mortification, self-denial, humility, silence, solitude, and the whole train of monkish virtues; for what reason are they everywhere rejected by men of sense, but because they serve to no manner of purpose; neither advance a man’s fortune in the world, nor render him a more valuable member of society; neither qualify him for the entertainment of company, nor increase his power of self-enjoyment? We observe, on the contrary, that they cross all these desirable ends; stupify the understanding and harden the heart, obscure the fancy and sour the temper. We justly, therefore . . . place them in the catalogue of vices. (Hume, 2010: 1410) The poet Larkin wrote of longing for solitude, while aware that virtues ‘are all social’, so if you dislike being deprived of solitude it is ‘clear you’re not the virtuous sort’ (Larkin, 1988: 56). However, the ‘market man’ liberal model could also be used to celebrate solitude. Robinson Crusoe, a novel by Defoe (2001) that was inspired by the real life of Alexander Selkirk, describes the shipwrecked hero as building a good life, alone, prior to meeting the only other inhabitant. Marx criticizes the absurdity of such ‘Robinsonades’, claiming that they are not about a ‘return to a misunderstood natural life’ but a false and unimaginative conceit used by economists such as Smith and Ricardo to describe an individualism in which a person is wholly responsible for their economic activity, rather than being socially determined (Marx, 1973: 83): The human being is in the most literal sense a ζῷον πολιτικόν, not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society. Production by an isolated individual outside society – a rare exception which may well occur when a civilized person in whom the social forces are already dynamically present is cast by accident into the wilderness – is as much of an absurdity as is the development of language without individuals living together and talking to each other. (Marx, 1973: 84) Notwithstanding Marx’s criticisms, economists have continued into the twenty-first century using Robinson Crusoe to illustrate economic theory.1 Individualist approaches to solitude, silence and loneliness are as wide-ranging as the community-oriented approaches. The radical individualist anarchist Stirner (1963) provides a heroic account of the individual against society, in what some saw as a reductio ad absurdum of the ‘market man’ of classical economics. Stirner’s was an atomistic view of humanity in which ‘[t]he egotistic individual’ can at best ‘inflate himself to the size of an atom’ (Marx and Engels The Holy Family, quoted in Selsam and Martel, 1963: 311). A much more subtle approach is taken by Wittgenstein, an individualist in the form of a ‘solipsist’. He describes solipsism as ‘correct’ as ‘[t]he world is my world’ and ‘I am my world’ (Wittgenstein, 1961: 57). Wittgenstein’s philosophy is seen by some as not only solipsistic but as ‘haunted by loneliness’ (Floyd, in Rouner, 1998: 79). However, Rée (2019) provides a more ‘sociable’ account of his life based on Wittgenstein’s family letters. The Tractatus ends, ‘[w]hat we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence’ (Wittgenstein, 1961: 74), a proposed silence on all matters of ethics and religion – indeed on all further philosophy, as he claimed the book was philosophy’s ‘final solution’ (Wittgenstein, 1961: 4). Yet Rée claims that ‘[a]s far as [Wittgenstein] was 331

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concerned the fact that ethical and religious attitudes fall outside the limits of articulate thought was not their weakness but their glory’ (Rée, 2019: 8) as it points to the ineffable. Much more explicit work on individualism leading to loneliness is provided by philosophers such as Mijuskovic (2012, and Chapter 16 of this Handbook) and Domeracki (2018, and Chapter 1 of this Handbook). For Mijuskovic in particular, ‘all men are activated by a fear of aloneness or loneliness – and . . . consequently every human thought, passion, and action derives from this one original, ubiquitous source, or fund, of frightened, psychic energy’ (Mijuskovic, 2012: lii). As Koch describes it, ‘Mijuskovic’s central thesis is as uncompromising as it is extreme: the loneliness of man is “the original primordial fact”’ (Koch, 1994: 174), as ‘mere awareness of our separate self-existence is, or automatically produces, a kind of ontic loneliness’ (Koch, 1994: 181). Another version of individualism is that provided by Hay (2007), who describes it as distinctive of, and problematic for, Europeans in particular. Hay’s account of the ‘lonely European’ is clearly historicist and culturally specific (and see Wong in Chapter 8 for an account of Chinese solitude). (Hay, 2006, is himself a relational, communal, theorist.) Is individualism a universal human characteristic, or one specific to particular cultures? Mijuskovic’s account is of a universal character, while that of Hay is culturally specific. Hay is joined, from a post-colonial perspective (or at least fighting for a post-colonial world), by Fanon. Fanon attacks individualism head-on: after European colonizers go, individualism will be ‘the first to disappear’, as ‘[t]he colonialist bourgeoisie had hammered into the native’s mind the idea of a society of individuals where each person shuts himself up in his own subjectivity, and whose only wealth is individual thought’ (Fanon, 1963: 36). European romantic views of the value of solitude are contrasted by Fanon with African communalism, with colonial powers ‘outlawing’ communal senses of ‘[b]rother, sister, friend’ and replacing them with the idea that ‘my brother is my purse’ and ‘my friend is part of my scheme for getting on’ (Fanon, 1963: 36). Whether personhood – individually or communally – develops universally or in historical, social and cultural contexts, it is complex in its relationship to different forms of aloneness, and there is no avoiding the sense of aloneness being learned. That is an underlying theme of this whole Handbook. Conclusion: A Research Archipelago In Chapter 1, a description of how this Handbook came together described the various contributions to research on solitude, silence and loneliness, from various academic perspectives and practitioner and public policy contexts, as a kind of alliance or archipelago. That is, neither a single unified discipline nor a mere topic-related collection of unconnected disciplines. As an archipelago, there is, throughout the Handbook, a sense of how people come to realize their personhood at every stage of their lives through experience of both aloneness and togetherness. Whereas sociability, noise (especially talk) and intimacy are described in every educational, psychological, philosophical and historical account of humanity, accounts of solitude, silence and loneliness are – poetically – left out of the group, silenced, or seen as faults, even vices. Schools promote ‘buddy benches’ to avoid the horror of childhood solitude (Tan, 2016), and universities convert largely silent libraries into noisy ‘social learning spaces’ (Bryant et al., 2009). What we present here may not quite be a ‘manifesto’, in the style of Rufus’s Loners’ Manifesto (Rufus, 2003), 332

Conclusion

but it is certainly an alliance against the ignoring, underplaying or marginalizing, of research on solitude, silence and loneliness. The Handbook is broadly educational, but it draws on and contributes to numerous professional and practices settings, and a number of disciplines. This time, in this chapter, it’s personal. As editors and authors, we look forward to a strengthening of research and of the relationship between research and practice across all these areas. Alone and together, we hope to contribute to a better understanding of solitude, silence and loneliness.

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Introduction 1 2 3 4 5

https​:/​/ww​​w​.who​​.int/​​news-​​room/​​fact-​​sheet​​s​/det​​ail​/d​​eafne​​ss​-an​​d​​-hea​​ring-​​loss. http:​/​/www​​.camp​​aignt​​oendl​​oneli​​ness.​​org​/t​​hreat​​-to​​-h​​ealth​/. http://www​.thesilverline​.org​.uk/. http://www​.childline​.org​.uk. As well as a Handbook, many of us – and a number of others – also join together in the ISRS: the International Society for Research on Solitude (http://isrs​.usz​.edu​.pl/).

Chapter 1 1 It should be noted that in the Heidegger’s nomenclature, the term ‘negativity’ is not used in an evaluative but factual meaning. Human life runs from nothingness emerging from non-existence through the fact of birth (thrownness), through nothingness not defined in advance by any given meaning or framework becoming something there each time (projection realizing its own possibilities), to nothingness dissolving in death, annihilating this life irretrievably. 2 About the phenomenon of the falling see Heidegger, 2004: § 38, 224–30, 1962: § 38, 219–24. 3 In the sense given to this term by Rorty (Budziak, 2006: 10) or Popper (Kublikowski, 2004). They do not write specifically of Tillich, who clearly sympathizes with existentialism. The following account allows the existentialist-oriented Tillich to present himself as an essentialist without falling into contradiction. 4 ‘Grand narrative’ and ‘metanarrative’ can be used interchangeably, and both concern paradigmatic ways of perceiving solitude in philosophical categories developed throughout history. 5 Levinas juxtaposes lonely and inner thinking as equivalent (Levinas, 1998: 40; Migasiński, 2017: 183). 6 The term ‘difficult good’ brings to mind and is a play on the title of Levinas’s Difficult Freedom (Levinas, 1991b). 7 McGraw describes ten types of solitude: social, erotic, cultural, metaphysical, cosmic, epistemological, (in)communicative, (un)ethical, existential and intrapersonal (intraself) one (McGraw, 2010: 107). In his earlier works the author also takes into account religious solitude (McGraw, 2000: 112–19). McGraw describes some basic types of loneliness: spatial, temporal, yearning, missing, mourning and bereaving one (McGraw, 2010: 107) and, more generally distinguishes positive, desired, aloneness and its degenerate form, ‘unwanted absence of meaningful intimacy and intimate meaning(fulness)’ or loneliness, which he calls ‘negative aloneness’ (McGraw, 2010: 60–3). Finally, he describes some basic types of aloneness: aloneliness, loneness, alonism, lonism, lonerism, reclusiveness, seclusion, physical and social isolation, desolation and solipsism (McGraw, 2010: 17). 8 It seems to me that on the typology of solitude McGraw takes a similar view (McGraw, 2010: 17). 9 The term ‘monoseology’ comes from the old Greek language from the words ‘μόνωσις, εως, ἡ’ meaning ‘solitude’, ‘abandonment’ (and its variants: ‘μονόω’ – ‘to make oneself lonely’, ‘to separate from others’, ‘to be alone’, ‘to isolate’; ‘to be alone, abandoned, separated’; ‘μονώδης, ες’ – ‘lonely’; ‘μονώτης, ου, ὁ’ – ‘loner’; ‘μονωτικός, ή, όν’ – ‘lonely’; ‘μόνος, η, ον’ – ‘alone, lonely’, ‘deprived (of someone or something)’, ‘one, only, single’ and ‘λόγος, ὁ’ – ‘theory’, ‘science’, ‘explanation’.

Notes

Chapter 4 1 The capitalized ‘Nature’ that appears here is also in some of the literature on which the chapter draws – particularly in the work of Henry David Thoreau. Here, ‘Nature’ implies a link with a higher being or the divine revealed in the natural world, and Nature as the dwelling place of God. The use of ‘nature’ indicates phenomena of the physical world – the character and inherent qualities of the outdoor, natural environment. 2 See ‘Introduction’, [online], Available at: https​:/​/ww​​w​.gut​​enber​​g​.org​​/file​​s​/573​​93​/57​​393​-h​​​/5739​​3​.htm​. Accessed 30 March 2020. 3 See Torrey (1906) Paragraph 64: ‘Some scraps from an essay on “Sound and Silence” written in the latter half of this month – December 1838’. [Online], Available at: https​:/​/ww​​w​.gut​​enber​​g​.org​​/file​​s​/573​​ 93​/57​​393​-h​​/​5739​​3​-h​.h​​tm. Accessed 30 March 2020.

Chapter 6 1 ‘Chaordic’ is, simply put, an organization exhibiting both chaos and order (Hock, 2000).

Chapter 7 1 https​:/​/ww​​w​.bfi​​.org.​​uk​/fi​​lms​-t​​v​-peo​​ple​/4​​f4​bb5​​ef544​​37. 2 It is worth apologizing for the absence of a soundtrack, a gallery of pictures and extended quotations from poetry and novels. However, thanks to the internet, the art, music and literature referred to in this chapter are widely available online as well as in (physical) libraries. The author encourages readers to consult the original artists – as he did while writing the chapter. It would, in any case, be cumbersome to publish the chapter with all the accompanying art. The novelist Vikram Seth wrote An Equal Music, about a group of musicians. An accompanying CD was produced, with examples of the music mentioned, but Seth noted, ‘Why append a CD . . . to a novel about music? Is it not rather like attaching a whale to a copy of Moby Dick?’ (Seth, 2000: 7). 3 One such ‘quiet’ form of solitude is enstasy, the quality of being ‘within oneself’. That is described in the Introduction to this Handbook. However, it is not used explicitly of the art, music or literature exemplified in this chapter. 4 For example, at https​:/​/ww​​w​.you​​tube.​​com​/w​​atch?​​v​=i4Q​​​M2uEN​​kE8 or https​:/​/ww​​w​.you​​tube.​​com​/w​​ atch?​​v​=RI3​​​jqcZy​​EW8. 5 Gardiner describes a similar paused bar of silence, in Bach’s Actus Tragicus, as an ‘active, mystical silence’ (Gardiner, 2013: 149). 6 https​:/​/ww​​w​.bac​​hvere​​nigin​​g​.nl/​​en​/bw​​v​/​bwv​​-988/​. 7 http://www​.oxfordmusiconline​.com/. 8 http://www​.oxfordmusiconline​.com/. 9 https​:/​/ww​​w​.you​​tube.​​com​/w​​atch?​​v​=7LC​​​DWGHy​​HMk. 10 http://www​.oxfordmusiconline​.com/. 11 https​:/​/ww​​w​.you​​tube.​​com​/w​​atch?​​v​=JeF​​​waWFT​​GYU. 12 http:​/​/www​​.poet​​s​.org​​/view​​media​​.php/​​prmMI​​​D​/193​​66. 13 https​:/​/cu​​ltura​​colec​​tiva.​​com​/a​​r t​/10​​-pain​​tings​​-that​​-show​​-how-​​solit​​ude​-c​​an​-be​​-your​​-​best​​-comp​​ anion​​-2. 14 There are several performances available online, for piano (https​:/​/ww​​w​.you​​tube.​​com​/w​​atch?​​v​=JTE​​​ FKFiX​​Sx4), for symphony orchestra (https​:/​/ww​​w​.you​​tube.​​com​/w​​atch?​​v​=yoA​​​bXwr3​​qkg) and even for a ‘death metal’ group (https​:/​/ww​​w​.you​​tube.​​com​/w​​atch?​​v​=kGE​​G4JiO​​​qew​&t​​=136s​). 15 http://yayoi​-kusama​.jp/. 16 https​:/​/ww​​w​.wor​​ldart​​found​​ation​​s​.com​​/yayo​​i​-kus​​ama​-m​​useum​​-inau​​gural​​-exhi​​bitio​​n​-cre​​ation​​-soli​​tary-​​ pursu​​it​-lo​​​ve​-br​​ings-​​close​​r​-art​/.

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Chapter 8 1 Counted by the author. 2 Shendu is the usual term used to denote the idea of vigilance in solitude, but other terms are sometimes also used, such as jindu. In fact the two characters jin and shen are collocated to form the word jinshen, which means ‘cautious’. 3 ‘Ideal people’ is the translation for junzi. Other translators often render it as ‘gentleman’ (e.g. Milburn, 2016; Pang-White, 2018), sometimes as ‘superior man’ (e.g. Chan, 1973) or ‘noble person’ (e.g. Bloom, 2009). 4 This is the alternate translated title of The Book of Poetry. 5 The other two are that ‘his father and mother are both alive and his older and younger brothers present no cause for concern’, and that ‘he can get the most eminent talents in the world and educate them’ (Bloom, 2009: 148). 6 理 (li) and 氣 (qi) , respectively, in Chinese. 7 As Lee (2000) observes, Benjamin Franklin’s table of morality bore a very interesting resemblance to these Chinese ledgers of merit and demerit. Franklin kept ‘a small book, full of ledgers in which he would mark the faults he made against the thirteen virtues . . . considered to be important in the conduct of a virtuous life’ (p. 673), the second of which happened to be silence. See also Maas (2020). 8 Transliterated as ren according to the official system used in Mainland China; variously translated as ‘Goodness’ (Confucius, 2003) and ‘humaneness’ (Keenan, 2011), among others.

Chapter 9 1 Gen. 2.18. 2 J. G. Zimmermann was a Swiss physician, naturalist and philosopher whose seminal book Solitude (originally published in 1754) examined the advantages and disadvantages of solitude and its influence on the imagination. 3 A term coined by Weber to describe the religious geniuses, the creative individuals inspired by personal experience in solitude (Zeitlin, 1988). Within Judaism and Christianity these include, among others, Moses Maimonides, Saaida Gaon, Martín Buber, St Ignatius of Antioch, Origen, Augustine of Hippo, Teresa of Avila, Martin Luther and Thomas Merton. 4 Hitbodedut (Hebrew: ‫התבודדות‬‎) ‘self-seclusion’ is a form of private meditation that places emphasis on solitude, involving extemporary, spontaneous prayer and direct communion with God. It was developed in the late eighteenth century by Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, the founder of Hasidic Judaism who described it as ‘the highest practice of all. One must therefore set aside an hour or more each day to talk with God by themselves . . . One can pour out their words before their Creator. This can include complaints, excuses, or words seeking grace, acceptance and reconciliation. One must beg and plead that God bring them close and allow them to serve God in truth’ (R. Nachman). 5 Jews who are returning from a secular lifestyle looking for personal, spiritual transformation. 6 Third order normally denoted lay brethren who live in their own communities but follow the guiding principles of the order to which they belong. In the Benedictine community they are known as ‘oblates’ (Latin oblãtus –‘to offer’), as Benedict did not write separate first and second rules for men and women, and a third order for laity.

Chapter 10 1 https​:/​/ww​​w​.you​​tube.​​com​/w​​atch?​​v​=92X​​​VwY54​​h5k.

Chapter 12 1 http:​/​/www​​.ambe​​r​.com​​.pl​/a​​ktual​​nosci​​/89​-w​​ywiad​​y​/337​​5​-w​-c​​iszy-​​i​-sam​​otnos​​ci​-ro​​zmowa​​-z​-m​a​​cieje​​m​ -roz​​enber​​giem. 2 John 8.

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Chapter 13 1 https​:/​/ww​​w​.reu​​ters.​​com​/a​​rticl​​e​/us-​​brita​​in​-cr​​ime​-l​​gbt​/t​​eenag​​ers​-a​​dmit-​​homop​​hobic​​-lond​​on​-bu​​s​-att​​ack​ -o​​n​​-two​​-wome​​n​-idU​​SKBN1​​Y220H​. 2 https​:/​/ww​​w​.bbc​​.co​.u​​k​/new​​s​/uk-​​engla​​nd​-me​​rseys​​i​de​-4​​87362​​97. 3 For more information about the school protests, see https​:/​/ww​​w​.bbc​​.co​.u​​k​/new​​s​/uk-​​engla​​nd​-bi​​rming​​ h​am​-4​​99785​​51. 4 The far-right government of Jair Bolsonaro changed this to Ministry of Women, Family and Human Rights, which is under the command of a pro-life, anti-feminism religious fundamentalist. 5 Bolsonaro made the ‘gay kit’ as a central piece of his electoral campaign. In his inaugural speech in 2019 he singled the fight against ‘gender ideology’ at schools as his main political platform as president. 6 Elsewhere named ‘genderism’ and ‘gender theory’. As a rhetorical device, ‘gender ideology’ is used in a number of anti-gender movements worldwide. For a discussion of the history of the term, see Butler (2019) and Corredor (2019). For an analysis of its transnational contours, see Corrêa (2018) and Moragas (2020). 7 See Butler’s comments on this attack here: https​:/​/ww​​w​.ins​​idehi​​ghere​​d​.com​​/news​​/2017​​/11​/1​​3​/jud​​ith​-b​​ utler​​-disc​​usses​​-bein​​g​-bur​​ned​-e​​ffigy​​-​and-​​prote​​sted-​​brazi​​l. 8 https​:/​/as​​sets.​​publi​​shing​​.serv​​ice​.g​​ov​.uk​​/gove​​rnmen​​t​/upl​​oads/​​syste​​m​/upl​​oads/​​attac​​hment​​_data​​/file​​/8057​​ 81​/Re​​latio​​nship​​s​_Edu​​catio​​n_​_Re​​latio​​nship​​s​_and​​_Sex_​​Educa​​tion​_​​_RSE_​​_and_​​Healt​​h​_Edu​​catio​​n​.pdf​. 9 In corpus-based linguistics, a ‘concordance’ refers to a specified number of words to the left and right of the search term. Examining a word’s concordances can help to build up a semantic profile of that word which can contribute to revealing any underlying discourses in the text(s) under scrutiny. 10 Search terms (or ‘node words’) are lemmas, that is the base forms of words which can vary in terms of word class, grammatical tense and so on. So promot* includes promote, promotes, promoting, promoted, promotion and so on. In corpus-based linguistics, lemmas are indicated through the use of an asterisk. 11 https​:/​/ww​​w​.pro​​grama​​escol​​asemp​​artid​​​o​.org​/. 12 Available at https​:/​/ww​​w​.cam​​ara​.l​​eg​.br​​/prop​​osico​​esWeb​​/prop​​_most​​rarin​​tegra​​?codt​​eor​=1​​70703​​7andf​​​ ilena​​me​=PL​​+246​/2. 13 Ofsted stands for the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills. It is a nonministerial department which has responsibility for inspecting services which provide education and skills for learners of all ages, and for regulating services that care for children and young people in England.

Chapter 15 1 Garbo went on to become even more successful when her first sound film proclaimed, ‘Garbo talks!’ This is a salutary lesson for ‘quiet professionals’ everywhere. 2 https​:/​/ww​​w​.the​​guard​​ian​.c​​om​/fi​​lm​/20​​19​/oc​​t​/05/​​garbo​​-lett​​ers​-f​​or​-sa​​le​-ec​​ho​-lo​​ne​ly-​​life-​​of​-fi​​lm​-ic​​on. 3 OED, 2005. 4 https​:/​/ww​​w​.tim​​eshig​​hered​​ucati​​on​.co​​m​/blo​​g​/phi​​losop​​hical​​-defe​​nce​-t​​radi​t​​ional​​-lect​​ure. 5 Psychoanalytic geographers Kingsbury and Pile describe that it is ‘the unstable ground of ordinary human suffering’ (Kingsbury & Pile, 2014: 8), out of which the pillars of psychoanalysis emerge. Even more evocatively, ‘[L]ike Rome, psychoanalysis lives in its ruins’ (Kingsbury & Pile, 2014: 8).

Chapter 19 1 Causes of aloneness were presented here in four general categories: the external – civilization-related, external – environmental, internal – personal, and the ontological (Dubas, 2000: 116–18). 2 The concept of the inner world – see, for example, Jan Szczepański (1988). The inner world is a certain kind of firewall against the hardships of the outside world and the difficult existential experiences, a protection against loneliness and a chance to develop solitude. 3 Malewski (1990). 4 Independence is the key category describing adulthood from the socio-normative perspective (Szewczuk, 1959). 338

Notes

5 Due to the broad Polish understanding of the word ‘aloneness’ and in order to emphasize the simultaneous presence of loneliness, I shall frequently use the term ‘aloneness-loneliness’, similarly to Łopatkowa (1983). 6 Due to the specificity of late adulthood, also referred to as old age, these studies do not include the age group of seventy or older. People who were older and potentially less able, less independent and less active were also excluded from these studies. The age group of sixty to seventy is more often characterized by the features of mid-adulthood (despite retiring), that is good health, independence, varied activity and interest realization. In the light of the latest research, mid-adulthood is being prolonged (Leszczyńska-Rejchert, 2019). 7 I would like to express my gratitude to the students who conducted the interviews, namely: Gabriela Dobińska, Dominika Fijałkowska, Aleksandra Grotowska, Maciej Jabłoński, Monika Kamieńska, Katarzyna Okólska, Gansarnai Oyun, Joanna Siewierska, Izabela Socha and Natalia Zygmunt. 8 Codes used in the text: from 1 to 10 – a number determining the ordering number of a studied subject; F – female, M – male; 28 – calendar age of the studied subject. 9 This is to do with shaping the pre-trust in the first years of a person’s life (Erikson, 2000). 10 Techniques for overcoming loneliness: the me–other people relationship, the me–me relationship, the me–God relationship, the me–nature relationship (Dubas, 2000: 123–4; 282–99). 11 Loneliness is one of the three main existential concerns of man, next to death and suffering (Fabiś, 2013).

Chapter 21 1 I am grateful to Julian Stern and Christopher Sink for very helpful suggestions on a previous draft of this chapter. 2 Not all those living with a dementia are old. Nor is aloneness, and its transition into loneliness, only experienced by those living with a dementia. Much of what I say in this chapter could be applied equally well to anyone living alone, to people living with other disabilities, and, indeed (as I will indicate), to those who find themselves in a caring role. My discussion is not intended to exclude these groups. But the focus on dementia, and, within that, on older people, who are more often additionally socially compromised due to naturally occurring co-morbidities, will facilitate exploring the impact of acquired cognitive impairment on communication, which is the main purpose of the chapter. 3 This phrase is consistently associated with Kitwood, though I have yet to find a published source in which he states it. 4 For a full discussion of whether altruism can be defined in this way, and a more general exploration of the proposal that all communication is undertaken for the benefit of the speaker, see Wray (2020: 159–67). 5 Humans also communicate in other ways: facial and body gestures, non-linguistic sounds like grunts and laughs, and so on. I focus here on language because it encodes at the deeper level that is particularly relevant for the ensuing discussion. 6 Social ambiguities or awkward pragmatic gaps (Wray, 2020: 201ff) can then arise, when one or both parties cannot determine what it’s appropriate to say next. 7 A broader set of recommendations for building social and emotional reserve for people living with a dementia can be found in Wray (2020: 247–68).

Chapter 23 1 http://www​.childbereavementuk​.org/.

Conclusion 1 As at https​:/​/em​​l​.ber​​keley​​.edu/​/​~mcf​​adden​​/eC10​​3​_f03​​/Robi​​​nson2​​.pdf.

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398

Index

Solitude, silence and loneliness are addressed throughout the book and do not therefore appear in the index. Aaron, Richard  220 Abramowitz, Jonathan S.  247 Adair, John  70 Adderley, Rebecca J.  320 adolescence. See childhood and adolescence aggression. See anger Ainsworth, Mary D Salter  312 Airenti, Gabriella  156 Akdoğan, Ramazan  253 Albania  85 Alerby, Eva  6, 36, 44, 131–4, 136, 189–99 Alexander technique  69, 76 alienation  26–7, 83, 85, 98, 100, 103, 136, 158, 171, 201, 233, 238, 241, 251, 327 Alzheimer’s disease. See dementia America. See United States of America Anderson, G Oscar  240, 244 Anderson, James R.  314 Andersson, L.  240–1, 243, 244 anger  43, 158, 172, 233, 258 Anglicanism. See Christianity Anglo-Saxon language  92, 99 Anikin, Andrey  152, 153 animals, non-human  4, 15, 60, 213, 218–19, 224, 293, 317, 325, 326 anomie  327 Antonovsky, Aaron  251, 257 Antonucci, Toni  313 anxiety  8, 42, 63, 85, 153, 154, 158, 190, 205, 206, 208, 241, 243, 244, 246, 247, 253, 256, 270, 302, 315. See also fear Aoun, Samar M.  318, 319 Appiah, Kwame Anthony  21 Aquinas, St Thomas  229, 278 Arabic language  2 Archer, Margaret S.  278, 279 architecture  192 Arendt, Hannah  6, 16, 47, 80, 83, 90, 233, 284 Ariès. Philippe  312, 328 Aristotle  31, 124, 218, 224–6, 261 Arnold, Karen D.  242 Arpin, Sarah N.  244

art and painting  13, 14, 16, 83, 89–103, 106, 113–15, 164, 167, 213, 234, 246, 247, 327 artificial intelligence. See computing Asbury, Edward Titus  244 Ashby, W Ross  70 Asher, Steven R.  154, 250, 255, 319 Assor, Avi  160 asylum. See refugees Athanasius of Alexandria  3 Athens  67. See also Greece Augé, Marc  22 Augier, Mie  79 Ault, Nancy  52–3 Austin, John Langshaw  180 Australia  15, 49 authenticity  71 autism spectrum disorder  8 Averill, James R.  34, 35, 37–9, 42 Aylaz, Rukuye  304 Aznar, Ana  159 Baarsen, Berna van  300, 317 Babbie, Earl R.  267 Bach, Johann Sebastian  93–4, 336 Bachelard, Gaston  76, 192, 195–8 Bacon, Francis  166, 329 Bainbridge, John  200 Bakhtin, Mikhail  93–4 Ball, Stephen J.  39, 203–4 Bandura, Albert  141–2, 156 Banerjee, R.  155 Banzan, Kumazawa  111 Baran, Bogdan  25, 26 Barbour, John D.  116, 118–21 Barker, John  5 Barstead, Matthew  146 Bartlett, Monica Y.  244 Bass, Bernard M.  71 Batchelor, Stephen  34, 35, 37, 40 Bateson, Gregory  193 Bauer, Georg F.  257 Bauman, Zygmunt  279, 282

Index

Baumann, Katarzyna  306 Beatles, The  201, 206 Beaulieu, Alain  77–8 Beauregard, James  324 Beck, Hamilton  28 Beckett, Samuel  101 Beethoven, Ludwig, van  96–7 Belgium  239 Bell, Robert A.  240 Bengtsson, Jan  198 Benjamin, Walter  93 Benkel, Inger  318 Bennett, Ruth  300, 301 Bennis, Warren G.  71 Berdyaev, Nikolai  30 bereavement. See death Berger, Lee R.  311 Bergin, Christi Ann  255 Bergin, David A.  255 Bergmark, Ulrika  189 Bergson, Henri-Louis  166, 227 Berkeley, George  220 Berlyne, Daniel E.  153 Berridge, Kate  311 Berry, Wendell  103 Berryman, Jerome W.  152, 153 Bessaha, Melissa L.  246, 247 Betts, Lucy R.  253 Beutel, Manfred E.  239 Bhagavad-Gītā  3–4, 60 Bhutan  85 Biale, David  122 Bibby, Tamara  205 Bible  74–6, 116, 118, 121, 218, 281. See also Christianity; Judaism Biddle, Lucy  312 Biesta, Gert  40 Bilikiewicz, Adam  304 Birch, Sondra H.  255 Bischetti, Luca  155, 156 Black, Bruce  6 Blaga, Lucian  16, 80, 83 Blakemore, Sarah-Jayne  151 Blanchard, Ken  70 Blasco, Maribel  138 Block, Peter  70 Bloom, Adi  40, 337 blues  99 Blum, Robert  259 Blyth, Dale A.  244 Bode, Carl  60 Boden-Albala, B.  289

400

Boehner, Joel  56 Boelen, Paul A.  314 Bohm, David  75–6 Bokszański, Zbigniew  21 Bollnow, Otto Friedrich  197–8 Bolsonaro, Jair  338 Bonanno, George A.  314 Bonetti, Luigi  256 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich  104–5, 132, 281 books and reading and writing  13, 14, 16, 47, 59, 89–104, 112, 146, 169–70, 205, 207, 213, 247, 327. See also specific authors and specific books; libraries Borba, Rodrigo  6, 132, 133, 135, 174–88 boredom  8, 63 Bosacki, Sandra  132, 134, 135, 151–61, 327 Botez, Angela  83 Bound Alberti, Fay xvii, 6–7 Bowers, Barbara  50 Bowker, Julie C.  34, 35, 37, 38, 41, 43, 118, 217, 324 Bowlby, John  1, 7, 253, 312, 326, 330 Bowles, Samuel  39 Bowring, Richard  109 Brazil  135, 174, 177–80, 183–7 Brearley, Michael  70 Breen, Lauren J.  310, 319 Bréhant, Jacques  14 Brentano, Franz  230–1 Bretherton, Inge  312 Brexit (UK withdrawal from EU)  85 Britain. See United Kingdom Bronfenbrenner, Urie  240–2 Bronk, Andrzej  279 Bronswijk, J E M H van  301 Brontë, Charlotte  98 Brontë, Emily  98 Brooker, Dawn  295 Bruce, Robert V.  34 Bruch, Heike  69 Bruna, Dick  322 Bruner, Jerome  153–4 Bryant, Daniel  106 Bryant, Joanna  332 Brzezinski, Zbigniew Kazimierz  23 Buber, Martin  1, 122, 166, 193, 324, 326, 337 Buchanan, Michael, T.  15, 18, 46–57, 327 Buchholz, Esther  34, 35 Buczyńska-Garewicz, Hanna  29 Buddhism, Buddha  3, 49, 115, 121, 126, 144, 234 Budziak, Anna  335 Buehler, Cheryl  258

Index

Bugajska, Beata  307, 308 Bull, Hedley  85 bullying  40, 146, 157, 175, 179, 180, 182, 183, 187, 256 Bunkers, Sandra Schmidt  147, 148, 150 bureaucracy  70 Burger, Jerry M.  47, 48 Burgess, June  297 Burgos, Juan Manuel  325 Burke, Christine A.  35, 36 Burke, Edmund  166 Burnett, Richard  35 Bush, Susan  113 Busso, L.  71 Butler, Joseph  285 Butler, Judith  178, 179, 201, 338 Byrnes, Deborah A.  43 Cacioppo, John, T.  8, 103, 213, 237, 242, 252, 306, 323, 330 Cacioppo, Stephanie  213, 237–9, 243, 246, 247, 257, 259 Cage, John  102–3, 167 Cahill, James  114 Cain, Susan  48, 56, 328 Cairngorms  4, 59, 61, 62, 64–6, 204 Callard, Felicity xvii Camus, Albert  166, 218, 229 Canada  157, 158, 160 Caplan, Gerald  301 Capodilupo, Christina M.  157, 158 Capstick, Andrea  311 Caranfa, Angelo  35 Cardinal, Roger  96 Carlen, Pat  40 Carmeli, Abraham  71 Cartesian, philosophy. See Descartes Castelli, Mike  54 Castro, Roney Polato de  175 Catholicism. See Christianity Cavanaugh, Alyson M.  258 Cavell, Stanley  59, 60 Celtic  60 Cervantes, Miguel de  79 Chan, Lisa  74, 75 Chan, Wing-Tsit  104, 108–9, 337 Chandler, David  78 Chang, Edward C.  243 Channing, William Ellery  58, 60 Chao I.  112 Chapman, Judith  51 charisma  15, 16, 70, 97–8, 102, 122, 126

Chase, Catherine C.  153 Chaucer, Geoffrey  92, 101 Cheng, Anne Anlin  208 Chewning, Susannah Mary  126 Chiang Hsun  104 Child Bereavement UK (CBUK)  319–22 childhood and adolescence  7, 37–8, 90, 103, 134, 135, 137–61, 172, 214–15, 217, 232–3, 240, 242, 243, 246, 247, 250–60, 269, 271, 272, 274, 280–2, 286, 300, 311, 312, 314–15, 317, 319, 323, 326–8, 330. See also schools Childline  8, 335 China  17, 85, 87, 103–15, 157, 239, 240, 253, 256, 328, 332, 337 Chipua, Heather M.  240 Choi, Suk Gabriel  109–10 Chomsky, Noam  221–2 Chorley, Matt  35 Christianity  3, 4, 15, 17, 46–57, 65, 92, 104–5, 107, 114, 116–28, 162–3, 167, 177, 178, 218, 234, 278, 330, 337. See also Bible Christie, Ernie  162 Christodoulou, Georgia  160 Chu, Po Sen  258 churches. See Christianity Churchill, Winston  73, 74, 86–7 Churchman, C West  71 Church of England. See Christianity Chyrowicz, Barbara  279 Cicero  166, 261 Ciegis, Remigijus  308 Ciobanu, Ruxandra Oana  248 Cioran, Emil  83, 166 citizenship, citizenship education  1, 28. See also politics; rights Clandinin, D Jean  50 Clare, John  95 Clark, Laura  35 Clark, Natalie E.  40 classrooms. See schools Cleary, Thomas  108 Clegg, David  311 Cleveland, Rachel  247 Cleveland, Richard E.  132, 134, 135, 137–50, 327 Clifford, Jeannie  252, 254 Cline, Erin  56 coaching and mentoring  245, 246 Coburn, Tom  54 Cohen, Ira J.  117, 121 Cohen, Sheldon  258 Cohen-Mansfield, Jiska  247 Cohn-Sherbock, Dan  123, 124

401

Index

Cole, L E.  76 community, communion  32, 35, 65, 82, 83, 104–5, 111–12, 117, 118, 121, 123, 125, 235, 240, 245, 246, 249, 257, 261, 275, 281, 282, 284, 300, 301, 305, 311, 317–19, 322, 324–30, 332 computing  21, 23, 34, 40–2, 64, 84, 93, 98, 146, 150, 156–7, 162, 170, 198, 215, 239, 246, 256, 258, 260, 261, 265, 296, 324–5 Confucius, Confucianism  17, 104–11, 113, 115, 132, 337 Congregation for Catholic Education (CCE)  49, 51, 53–5 Conklin, Jeffrey  71 Connelly, F Michael  50 Connelly, Mary S.  71 Conrad, Joseph  228 consciousness  218–35 conversation. See dialogue Cooper, David E.  35, 131, 192, 193 Coplan, Robert J.  34, 35, 37, 38, 41, 43, 118, 147, 152, 154, 155, 157, 158, 217, 250, 253, 324 Coppard, Alfred Edgar  102 Coppock, Vicki  44 Corden, Anne  316 Coriolanus (Shakespeare)  92 Cornwell, Erin York  306 Corr, Charles A.  312, 317, 318 Corrêa, Sonia  178, 186–7, 338 Corredor, Elizabeth S.  338 Costello, John E.  325 counselling and therapy  7, 200, 201, 205, 206, 210, 214, 233–5, 245–7, 259, 324 courage  169, 278, 281 Covey, Stephen  70, 72 Covid-19. See pandemics Craddock, Emily  242 Crane, Brent  73 Cranwell, Brian  320 Crawley, David  52 creativity  15, 54, 79, 92, 132, 162–73, 208, 209. See also art and painting; books and reading and writing; music; poetry Crotty, Michael  50 Csikszentmihalyi, Isabella Selega  330 Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly  160, 244, 329, 330 Cuba  88 Cummins, Phillip D.  223 Cunningham, Lawrence S.  127 Cuyvers, Win  67 Cywiński, Aleksander xvii, 16, 18, 80–8 Czech Republic  239 Czelakowska, Danuta  167

402

Czerepaniak-Walczak, Maria  163–4 Czerniak, Stanisław  24–6 Damasio, Antonio  79 Danneel, Sofie  244 Daoism  106–8, 112, 115, 132 Dashiell, John F.  153 da Silva, Luiz Inácio Lula  184 Davey, Judith  305 Davis, Sarah K.  259 daydreams  196 deafness. See hearing impairment death and bereavement  1, 3, 4, 24, 28, 91, 92, 170, 216–17, 220, 243, 265, 271, 272, 288, 300, 303, 305, 310–22, 328, 339 de Beauvoir, Simone  5, 328 De Beer, John  53 Debord, Guy  22 Defoe, Daniel  38, 94, 331 de Lange, Nicolas de  125 Dembling, Sophia  48, 56 dementia  216, 288–98, 301, 306–7, 309, 328, 339 Deming, W Edwards  72 democracy  80, 83–4, 88. See also politics; power Deng Delong  114 Deniz, M Engin  241, 242 Denmark  96, 239 Denzin, Norman  266 d’Epinay, Christian J Lalive  317 depression  96, 161, 238, 241, 243, 246, 247, 256, 258, 302, 304, 306, 309, 315, 317 Deresiewicz, William  71, 75 Derryberry, Elizabeth P. xvii Descartes, René  29, 220, 222, 225, 230 de Souza, Marian  49–51 Detrixhe, Jonathan J.  35 Dewey, John  39, 83, 157 dialogue  32, 54, 152, 204–5 Diana, Princess of Wales  312 Dick, Bob  51 Dick, Bruce  259 Dickens, Charles  16, 100 Dickinson, Emily  16, 73, 98, 99, 193 DiJulio, Bianca  236–9, 243, 244 Dillon, Robin S.  282 Dilthey, Wilhelm  20 Ding, Xuechen  253 Di Sipio, Linda  54, 55 Doka, Kenneth J.  317 Dolichan Kollareth  159 Domeracki, Piotr  7, 8, 14, 19–33, 171, 263, 269, 277, 280, 282, 283, 324, 325, 331, 332

Index

Donaldson, Jean M.  299 Don Quixote. See Cervantes Donwood, Stanley  205 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor  169, 229 Douglas, Alfred  100 Douglas, Ian  322 Downie, James  61 Drageset, Jorunn  243 dreams. See sleep Drucker, Peter Ferdinand  77 Drwięga, Marek  25–6 Dryburgh, Marjorie  110 Du, P.  108 Dubas, Elżbieta (Elżbieta Dubas-Kowalska)  xvi, 33, 214, 215, 261–76, 303, 328, 338, 339 Dubnow, Simon  122 Duhn, Iris  143–5 Dumm, Thomas  92, 280 Durà-Vilà, Glòria  49 Dürer, Albrecht  92–3 Durkheim, Émile  327 Dykstra, Pearl A.  237 Dziedzic, Jan  312 Earl, Patricia Helene  52 Eastaugh, Charlie  5 Ebrey, P.  105 Eckert, Penelope  175 Eckhart, Meister (Master) (Eckhart von Hochheim)  166 ecstasy  3–4, 16, 90–4 Edery, Rivka  241 Efrati, Meira  252 Egan, Ronald  105 Egypt  49, 118 Einav, Michal  237 Eisenhower, Dwight D.  69 Eisner, Rotem  247 elderly. See old age Elias, Norbert  21 Eliezer, Rabbi Israel ben  122 Elijah (prophet)  119, 281 Eliot, George (Mary Ann Evans)  94 Ellenberger, Henri  224 Ellis, Viv  177 Elman, Benjamin A.  111 Emerson, Ralph Waldo  43, 58, 75, 79 emotional intelligence (EI)  15, 71, 78, 259, 295 Emperor Augustus Caesar  91 Emperor Claudius  161 Emperor Kangxi  108

Emperor Qianlong  106 Emperor Yongzheng  105–6, 108, 115 Empress Renxiaowen  108 Engel, Susan  157 Engelberg, Edward  98, 101 Engelke, Matthew  313 Engels, Frederick  327, 331 England. See United Kingdom English language  2 Englund, Peter  189 enstasy  3–4 environment. See nature, Nature Epictetus  28, 166 Epicurus  221, 225 Epstein, Debbie  174, 184, 327 Eraslan-Capan, Bahtiyar  244 Erford, Bradley T.  141, 142 Erikson, Erik  124–5, 141, 326, 339 Erlich, Shmuel  122, 124 Erricker, Clive  38 Erricker, Jane  38 Erwin, Michael S.  77 Escher, Daniel  286 Escola sem Partido (ESM) (Non-Partisan School)  178, 183–7 Estonia  305 ethics  29, 110, 167, 205–6, 208–9, 215, 219–21, 229, 232, 234, 277–87 ethnicity. See ‘race’ and ethnicity Etzioni, Amitai  70 European Union  87, 299 exile  1–3, 13, 16, 90–4, 98, 99, 103. See also refugees Ezer, Tamar  34, 44 Fabiś, Artur  339 Fabricio, Branca Falabella  175 families  1, 6–8, 45, 84, 91, 104, 123, 124, 146, 153, 157–9, 163, 166, 170–1, 186–7, 208–9, 232–3, 235, 237, 238, 240–6, 250, 252–4, 258, 260, 265, 268, 270–5, 277, 279–82, 285–6, 296, 297, 299–309, 311, 314–18, 320–2, 325–8, 332. See also homes Fang, Nini  132, 136, 200–10, 328 Fanon, Frantz  6, 332 Farkašová, Etela  167, 169 Fava, Giovanni A.  247 fear  80–2, 86, 88, 154, 161, 205, 230, 247, 270, 282, 330 Feeney, Denis  90 Feeney, Timothy K.  247 Feldman, David B.  254

403

Index

feminism. See genders and sexualities Feng, Chunliang  251–2 Ferrari, Anderson  175, 179, 185, 186 Ferry, Luc  21 Feuerbach, Ludwig  16, 100 Feuerborn, Laura  160 Fichte, Johann Gottleib  227 Fielding, Michael  39, 324 Filek, Jacek  170 Filippova, Eva  155 Finnish language  2 Fisher, John W.  111 Fitzgerald, Des xvii Fivush, Robyn  159 flâneur  82, 93 Flavell, Linda  132 Flavell, Roger H.  132 Fleming, Jean  52 Flick, Uwe  266 Flint, Kevin J.  39 Floyd, Juliet  331 Fokkema, Tineke  237, 239 Fopka-Kowalczyk, Małgorzata  302 Foran, Andrew  196 Ford, Donald H.  240, 244 forests. See nature forgiveness  215–16, 285–6 Forrest, Michelle  35, 146–7 Foster, Charles  4 Foucault, Michel  192 France  88, 169, 239, 305 Francis, Dennis  175 Frank, Arthur xvii Frankenstein  98 Frankl, Viktor  168 Franklin, Benjamin  337 Fratiglioni, Laura  289, 295 freedom  1, 31, 43, 164, 170, 190, 219–20, 224, 225, 231–2, 234, 235, 264, 294 Freeman, Laurence  127 Freire, Paulo  36 French language  2, 93 Freud, Sigmund  205, 214, 227, 228, 232, 235, 310, 312, 313, 322 Friedrich, Caspar David  16, 96, 98 friendship  1, 3, 6, 15, 24, 60–3, 65, 66, 91, 92, 96–8, 101, 107, 111–13, 146, 154, 157, 158, 162, 170–1, 190, 196–7, 200, 201, 203, 237, 240–2, 244, 246– 8, 250, 251, 253–6, 258, 259, 268, 272–5, 277, 281, 282, 285, 286, 300–2, 314, 317, 327, 332 fright. See fear Fritz, Heidi L.  155, 156

404

Fromm, Erich  35, 261 Fromm-Reichmann, Frieda  233 Fulford, Amanda xvi, 15, 18, 58–67, 326, 329 Furlong, Monica  127 Gable, Shelly L.  244 Gadacz, Tadeusz  261 Gaia  329 Galanaki, Evangelia  34, 35, 37, 43, 47, 56, 155, 255, 326–7 Galla, Brian M.  160 Gallagher, Michael Paul  54 Gao, Fengqiang  256 Gaon, Saaida  337 Garbo, Greta  200–2, 209, 338 gardens  4, 105, 113 Gardiner, John Eliot  336 Gardner, William L.  71 Garewicz, Jan  28 Gaspar, Tania  257 Gatto, John  43 Gaultiere, Bill  49 genders and sexualities  16, 82, 99–100, 103, 135, 157–60, 174–88, 207, 213, 218, 235, 236, 238, 239, 242, 311, 313, 316, 317, 320, 331 Genghis Khan  70 George-Levi, Sivan  214–15, 250–60 Georgia  87 Georgianna, Linda  5 Gerhart, Diane R.  144 German language  275 Germany  104, 234, 235, 239, 284 Gert, Bernard  278, 330 Gert, Joshua  278 Ghoshal, Sumantra  69 Giannini, Heidi Chamberlin  286 Gibbon, Edward  73 Giddens, Anthony  85, 316 Giessner, Steffen R.  70, 71 Giezek, Marta  305 Gintis, Herbert  39 Giroux, Henry A.  319 Giuffré, Salvatore  114 Glaser, Barney, G.  50–1 God/gods  92, 100, 118–20, 122–6, 164, 170, 219, 220, 224, 225, 229, 232, 280, 283, 286, 325–6, 329, 336. See also religion; specific religions Goian, Ion  81–2 Gold, Eluned  35 Golden, Jeanette  242 Goleman, Daniel  71, 78 Golka, Marian  23

Index

Goossens, Luc  37, 252 Gopnik, Alison  45 Gore, Joanna Stephanie  39 Gorer, Geoffrey  311 Görg, Peter H.  120 Gottman, John M.  71 Gould, Glenn  94, 103 Gouldner, Alvin  50 government. See democracy; politics Gray, Peter  34, 43, 44 Great Britain. See United Kingdom Greece  90, 95, 119, 171, 219, 225 Greek language  74–5 Green, James M.  183 Green, Peter  3, 91 Greenleaf, Robert K.  70 Grice, H Paul  291 Griffiths, Martin  86 Grippo, Angela J.  237–9, 243, 246, 247, 257, 259 Gruer, Maggie  61 Grun, Anselm  162 Guardini, Romano  166 Gueldner, Barbara  160 Guignon, Charles  96 guilt or shame  159, 233, 271, 326 Gullone, Eleonora  251 Habermas, Jürgen  16, 80, 84, 156 Hackett, Ruth A.  306 Hackman, Michael Z.  70 Hägg, Henny Fiska  324 Haidt, Jonathan  244 Haimes, Yacov Y.  72 Haksar, Vinit  279 Hale, Henry E.  86 Halicka, Jerzy  302, 303 Halicka, Małgorzaty  302, 303 Hall, G Stanley  151 Hall, Jeffrey A.  35 Hall, Radclyffe  16, 99–100 Hamer, Richard  91–2 Hamlet  138–9 Hammond, Claudia  7, 324 Hanks, William, F.  323 Han Zhuo  105 happiness. See joy HaRamban, Avraham ben  119 Harari, Yuval xvi Haraway, Donna J.  326 Harber, Clive  37–40 Harding, Walter  60 Hard Times  100

Hardy, Thomas  102 Harris, Thomas  6 Harrison, Henrietta  110–11 Harter, Susan  151, 156 Hartog, Joseph  277 Hasankhoyi, S.  71 Hawkley, Louise C.  213, 237, 238, 242, 313 Hawthorne, Nathaniel  58 Hay, David  111, 330, 332 Hayes, Steven C.  247 hearing impairment  96, 335 Hebrew language  2 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich  16, 26–7, 100, 224, 227, 232, 233 Heid, Markham  76 Heidegger, Martin xvii–xviii, 25–6, 29, 31, 64, 193, 197, 230, 335 Heifetz, Ronald  69 Heinrich, Liesl M.  251 He Jingming  106 Helbraun, Elizabeth  35 helplessness  82, 289, 294, 298 Hendricks, Jon  303 Hennegan, Alison  99 Henriksen, Mads Gram  24 Henwood, Patricia G.  252 Herbert, Zbigniew  135, 172 Herbrechter, Stefan  326 Herman, Aleksander  302 hermits  106, 107 Hersey, Paul  70 Heschel, Abraham Joshua  121, 124, 127, 128, 283 heteroglossia  93 Hey, Valerie  327 Hickman, Craig  69 Hide, Kerrie  5 High, Sue  177 higher education. See universities Higuchi, Machiko  306 Hildebrandt, Lea K.  157 Hillel the Elder  118 Hilliker, Laurel  316 Hindi language  2 Hinduism  3, 4, 60, 126, 234 Hippler, Stefan  40–3 Hippocratic Oath  78 Hirschman, Albert O.  40 Hobbes, Thomas  1, 16, 80–2, 330 Hock, Dee  336 Hockney, David  89 Hoegaerts, Josephine  147 Hogg, James  330

405

Index

Hölderlin, Friedrich  16, 95–7, 100 Holdsworth, Laura M.  315 Holland, John  320–2 Hollenhorst, Steven J.  73 Holocaust, Shoah  78 Holt-Lunstad, Julianne  8, 236–42, 314 Hoły-Łuczaj, Magdalena  29 homes  1, 4, 8, 13, 22, 26, 37, 42–3, 94, 95, 98, 101, 102, 106, 112, 114, 117, 123–4, 136, 139, 142, 152, 160, 190–2, 197–9, 245, 254, 257, 271, 272, 275, 301, 302, 305, 306, 308, 309, 326, 328. See also families Honneth, Axel  16, 80, 83–4 hope, hopelessness  3, 9, 15, 24, 67, 80–1, 107, 158, 164, 203, 207, 208, 223, 230, 254, 257, 271, 298, 316 Hope, Max  43 Horowski, Jarosław  8, 214, 215, 277–87 Houlbrooke, Ralph  311 households, housing. See families; homes Howie, Dorothy  240 Hu, Danfei  70 Huang Jingren  106 Hudson, Wayne  51 Hulme, Eileen  156 human rights. See rights Hume, David  166, 214, 220–4, 226, 227, 234, 330, 331 Hung, Ruyu  106–7, 197, 198 Hungary  97 Huppert, Felicia A.  35, 36 Hussain, Saddam  88 Husserl, Edmund  29, 218, 226, 227, 230–1, 234, 235 Hutcheson, Ernest  102 Huxley, Aldous  20 Hyde, Brendan  138, 148 Hyland, Terry  35 Hymel, Shelley  43 Hynes, Arleen McCarty  247 Idan, Orly  251 Idel, Moshe  119 Illeris, Knud  275 imagination. See creativity Imai, Masaaki  72 India  60 individualism  32, 83–4, 111, 323, 324, 326, 328–31 information technologies. See computing International Society for Research on Solitude (ISRS)  335

406

intimacy. See genders and sexualities introversion  73–4 Iran  87 Ireland (Irish Republic)  96 Islam, Muhammad  4, 49, 92, 116, 121, 234 Israel  123, 243 Israelashvili, Moshe  257 Italy  31 Iwański, Rafał  8, 216, 299–309, 328 Jackson, Brad  69 Jackson, Philip W.  138 Jackson, Robert  53 Jacobs, Jill  123 James, Sarah  214, 216–17, 310–22, 325, 328 Jamie, Kathleen  4 Jamison, Rhonda  154, 157–8 Jane Eyre  98 Jantzen, Grace  5 Japan  42, 104, 109, 110, 239, 243 Jaspers, Karl Theodor  166 Jaworski, Adam  35 Jazaieri, Hooria  161 Jennings, Patricia  147 Jeremiah  92 Jesus  49, 53, 69, 74, 92, 93, 120, 121, 169, 173 John, Tara  236 John of the Cross  125 Johnson, Boris  69 Johnson, Daniel M.  35 Johnson, Judith  244 Johnson, Robert  99 Johnson, T. B  280 Johnson, Toni A. M  174 John the Baptist  74, 119–20 Jolson, Al  99 Jones, Christopher D.  73 Jones, David  103 Jones, Dee A.  302 Jones, P.  71 Jones, Phil  320 Josephus (Titus Flavius Josephus, Yosef ben Matityahu)  74 Jotischky, Andrew  125 joy  3, 4, 13, 23, 37–9, 41, 46, 62–3, 71, 73, 82–3, 91, 97, 103, 105, 109, 113, 123–6, 153, 155, 160, 161, 168, 201, 204, 208, 209, 224, 230, 232, 234, 235, 261, 263, 279, 282, 283, 311, 329–31 Joyce, James  102 Jozsa, Dan-Paul  235 Judaism  4, 17, 74, 92, 116–28, 337 Jule, Allyson  35

Index

Julian of Norwich  5, 92 Jundziłł, Elżbieta  265 Jung, Carl  30, 121, 228 Kabat-Zinn, Jon  144 Kaczmarek, Kamil  261 Kaczyński, Lech  313 Kafka, Franz  16, 101 Kagge, Erling  4, 102, 131 Kahn, R. L  313 Kaibara Ekken  110 Kaizen  72 Kalil, Isabela  178 Kalish, Richard A.  313 Käll, Anton  257 Kamieńska, Anna  14 Kandappa, Mano  40 Kant, Immanuel  218, 222, 224–8, 230, 231, 234, 235 Kaplan, Aryeh  119, 163 Kapusta, Andrzej  24 Karpman, Stephen  44 Kashdan, Todd B.  156 Kaufer, Katrin  75–6 Kauppinen, Antti  279 Keats, John  95 Keenan, Barry C.  110, 111, 337 Kellehear, Allan  311, 318, 319, 322 Kemp Smith, Norman  225, 228 Kennedy, A. L  205 Kerouac, Jack  73 Kessler, Rachael  5, 330 Kethledge, Raymond M.  77 Kierkegaard, Søren  5, 16, 34, 94, 101, 131, 162, 166, 218, 233 Killen, Patricia  53 Killgore, William DS xvi Kim, Junghyun  256 Kim, Jung-Yeup  114 King, Brittany M.  314 King, Jr, Martin Luther  324 King Ahab  281 King Lear (Shakespeare)  92 Kingsbury, Paul  206, 338 Kirkova, Zornica  107 Kirkwood, Maria  57 Kisielewski, Stefan  21 Kitwood, Tom  288, 339 Kitzinger, Sheila  312 Klass, Dennis  312 Klatte, Maria  134 Klein, Melanie xvii

Kmiecik-Baran, K.  170–1 Knippenberg, Daan van  70, 71 Koch, Philip  4, 5, 13, 37, 38, 116, 263, 332 Kocherginsky, Masha  313 Koller, Alice  4, 326 Konecki, Krzysztof  267 Korab, Kazimierz  21 Korczak, Janusz  167 Korea  109–10, 132 Korem, Anat  253 Kraftl, Peter  43 Krakowiak, Piotr  214, 216–17, 310–22, 325, 328 Krasicki, Jan  30 Kristiansen, Aslaug  324 Krokos, Jan  23 Kromolicka, Barbara  1 Kruczyński, Wojciech  20 Krupa, B.  304 Kua, Ee-Heok  243 Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth  310, 312 Kublikowski, Robert  335 Kucirkova, Natalia  145–6 Kugel, James L.  118 Kumazawa Banzan  109 Kunowski, Stefan  166 Kusama, Yayoi  103, 336 Kvale, Steinar  50 Kwieciński, Zbigniew  284 Ladd, Gary W.  255 Laing, Olivia xvii Lamb, Peter  85 Lamnina, Marianna  153 Langer, Ellen  144 Langer, Susanne  314 Langton, Rae  180, 184 Lanier, Jason  41 Lansdown, Gerison  319 Lantieri, Linda  5, 330 Laozi  108 Large, Tom  240, 241 Larkin, Philip  16, 78, 98, 101, 331 Larson, Reed  37, 48, 157, 161 Lasch, Christopher  22–4 Lash, Nicholas  169 László, Ervin  76 Latour, Bruno  76–7 Latsch, Alexander  242 Latta, Robert  224 Latvia  305 Lawler, Kathryn  306 Lawrence, David Herbert  102

407

Index

leadership  14, 15, 46, 48, 50, 53, 68–79 Leavey, Gerard  49 Leech, Kenneth  125 Lee, Thomas H C.  337 Lees, Helen E.  2, 5, 6, 14, 34–45, 103, 174, 327 Legge, James  108 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm  220, 224, 225, 227, 229 Leicester, Mal  94 Leighton, Frederic  100 Lennon, John  99 Leonardo da Vinci  89 Leong, Joy  308 Lerner, Richard M.  240, 244 Leszczyńska-Rejchert, Anna  303, 339 Leszko, Magdalena  280, 301 Leven, S.  254 Levinas, Emmanuel  30–1, 78, 166, 335 Levine, David P.  200, 201, 204, 210 Lévi-Strauss, Claude  312 Lewin, Kurt  70 Lewis, Ann  39 Lewis, Kevin  98, 99 Li Bai  106, 113 liberty. See freedom libraries  137, 146, 190, 191, 196–9, 245, 246, 329, 332 Liddicoat, Anthony J.  184 Lieberman, David A.  76 Liiceanu, Gabriel  28–9 Li Jie  112 Likert, Rensis  70 Lim, Lena L.  243 Lim, Michelle H.  258 Lincoln, Yvonna  266 Lindén, Axel  4 Lind, Erki  112 Linka, Anna  1 Lipps, Theodor  234 Liszt, Franz (Ferencz)  16, 97, 98, 102 literature. See books and reading and writing Litten, Julian  311 Littman-Ovadia, Hadassah  327 Litwin, Howard  313 Liu, Lijun  304 Liu, Ru-De  253, 256 Liu An  107 Liu Zongzhou  110 Livingston, Gill  289 Livingstone, Sonia  256 Li Zehou  114 Llewellyn, Grace  43 Locke, John  220–2, 226, 330

408

Łódź  267 Łódź, University of  267 Lofland, Lyn H.  320 Logan, Emma L.  318 lonesomeness  16, 98, 132 Long, Christopher R.  46, 49, 52, 54, 56, 75, 237 Łopatkowa, Maria  339 Lopez, Shane J.  213 Lorenz, Konrad  312 love  1, 7, 14, 43, 51, 57, 59, 79, 90, 92, 99, 100, 103, 105, 107, 111, 125–7, 169, 183, 205, 206, 232–4, 237, 264, 271, 273, 283, 305, 311, 315, 322, 326, 330 Lovelock, James  329 Løvlie, Lars  198 Luhmann, Maike  238 Luhmann, Niklas  240 Lunbeck, Elizabeth  24 Lundman, Berit  295 lute  105, 113–15 Luther, Martin  337 Lynch, Michael  78 Lyyra, Nelli  255 Ma, D.  108 Maas, Harro  337 McBain, Tristan D.  317 McCartney, Paul  99 Maccoby, Eleanor E.  153 McCollum, Eric E.  144 McDaniel, Kris  213 McDonald, Kristina L.  154 Mace, Nancy L.  301 Macfarlane, Robert  59, 61, 205 McGeachy, Margaret, G.  99 McGillivray, Anne  137 McGlashan, Mark  179–80 McGraw, John Gregory  19, 20, 32–3, 335 McGuire, Shirley  252, 254 Machiavelli, Niccolò  16, 80, 82 McKee, David  103 Mackenzie, Mrs  61 McLaughlin, Colleen  141, 148 Macmurray, John  1, 78, 324–6 McNicoll, Wendelien  315 MacPherson, Andrew  248 Macpherson, Crawford Brough  330 Maddern, Kerra  39 Maddrell, Avril  313 Maes, Marlies  151–2 Magdalene, Mary  173 Magyar-Moe, Jeana L.  244

Index

Maimonides (Moses ben Maimon)  337 Maimonides, Rabbi Abraham  119 Main, John  127, 163 Maitland, Sara xvi, 131 Malebranche, Nicolas  220 Malewski, Mieczysław  266, 338 Malgaroli, Matteo  314 Mallon, Brenda  322 Malmedie, Lydia  177 management. See leadership Manchester, University of  199 Mandeville, Bernard  166 Manicheans  225 Mann, Farhana  246, 247 Manney, Jim  56 Manolache, Viorella  82 Marcel, Gabriel  166 March, James  79 Marcoen, Alfons  37, 161 Margalit, Malka  7, 250–60, 289, 294, 324 Margolin, Ron  122 Maritain, Jacques  278, 279 Markowitz, John C.  314 Marquard, Odo  24, 25 Marquette, Heather  126 Marquis, Don  206 Martin, Gabrielle N.  156–7 Martini, Carlo M.  281 Marx, Karl and Marxism  16, 100, 178, 233, 235, 327, 328, 331 Masi, Christopher M.  257, 259 Maslow, Abraham  35, 48 Mason, Steve  74 Masschelein, Jan  67 Matejko, Jan  166 Matos, Margarida Gaspar de  257 Matthews, Nicole L.  258 Mattos, Amana Rocha  175, 179, 184, 185 Matuchniak-Karasuska, Anna  29 May, Theresa  236 Mayer, John D.  295 Mehta, Ravi  134 melancholy  17, 28, 92–3, 106, 200, 312 Melia, Susan  49 Mellor, Philip A.  310, 311, 318 Melser, Derek  44 Melville, Herman  100–1 Mencius  109 Mendes-Flohr, Paul  189 Mengstie, Sisay  40 mental health xvi, 8, 35, 36, 72, 75, 103, 147, 151–61, 233, 241, 243–4, 246–9, 251, 301

mentoring. See coaching and mentoring Merback, Mitchell B.  92–3 Mercury, Freddie (Farrokh Bulsara)  98 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice  192, 194, 195, 197 Merolla, Andy J.  35 Merton, Thomas  73, 107, 111, 121, 126–8, 261, 280, 284, 337 Messiou, Kyriaki  320 Meyerhoff, Eli  36 Michailakis, Dimitris  240, 243 Michalski, Krzysztof Jerzy  25 Miguel, Luis Felipe  185 Mijuskovic, Ben Lazare xvi, 1, 7, 214, 217–35, 280, 282, 324, 325, 332 Miksza, Małgorzata  173 Mikulincer, Mario  253, 254 Mikułowski Pomorski, Jerzy  22 Milani, Tommaso M.  175 Milburn, Olivia  108, 337 Miller, Eric D.  256 Miller, Michael  51 Milton, John  101 mindfulness  122, 143–5, 160, 210 Mirk, John  137 Miskolci, Richard  178, 183 mistrust. See trust Mitra, Sugata  42 Mittelmark, Maurice B.  251 Mittler, Peter  240 Moayedoddin, Babak  314 Moby Dick  336 Moita Lopes, Luiz Paulo da  175, 184 monasteries  3, 113, 117, 120, 126, 127, 145, 167, 170, 331 Monbiot, George  41 Mongolia  272–3 monks. See monasteries Montaigne, Michel de  28, 166 Montero-López, María  306 Montessori, Maria  135, 167, 172, 173 Montgomery, Catherine  43 Montgomery, (General) Bernard  70 Moore, Captain Tom  317 Moore, George Edward  224 Moragas, Mirta  338 morality. See ethics Morbitzer, Janusz  21 Morrish, Liz  179, 241 mortality. See death Morton, Timothy  4, 325 Moses  49, 118, 119, 121 mosques. See Islam, Muhammad

409

Index

Moss, Peter  324 Mounier, Emmanuel  324 Moustakas, Clark  7, 324 Moustakas, Kerry  7, 324 Msibi, Thabo  175 Muhammad. See Islam, Muhammad Muller, A Charles  107 Mullin, Amy  257 Mumford, Michael D.  71 Murdoch, Iris  78, 90 Murphy, Jeffrie G.  285–6 Murray, Christopher  255 Murris, Peter  147 Murthy, Vivek  236, 237, 246, 248 Mushtaq, Raheel  300, 308 music  13, 14, 16, 17, 89–103, 121, 138–9, 167. See also lute; piano; specific composers and performers Muslim. See Islam, Muhammad Nachmann, Larry D.  24 Naess, Arne  4, 329 Nagata, Kabi  100 Naito, Asao  35, 40 Najjari, Firouzeh  247 Napoleon (Napoléon Bonaparte)  85 Narchal, Renu  242 National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) (UK)  176 nature, Nature  4, 13–15, 58–67, 78, 81, 93–8, 100, 102–3, 113–15, 142–3, 165, 167, 169–70, 192–3, 204, 220, 271, 312, 326, 329, 336. See also wilderness Nayar, Pramod K.  326 Nęcka, Edward  166 Neff, Kristin D.  158 Neill, Alexander, Sutherland  36 Neilson, Matthew G.  159 Nelson-Becker, Holly xvii neoliberalism xvi, 136, 203, 205 Nesmith, Michael  72 Netflix xvi Netherlands  239 Newport, Cal  42 Newton, Isaac  221–2, 226, 227 Newton, K M.  94 Newton, Nigel  44 New Zealand  85, 239 Neyfakh, Leon  41 Ng, Yee-Ling  111 Nguyen, Thuy-Vy T.  156, 161 Nie, Qingqing  254

410

Nielsen, Mette Kjaergaard  315 Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm  166, 218 Ni Peimin  104, 115 Nishimura, Takuma  255 Noddings, Nel  43, 44 El Nokali, Nermeen E.  242 Norberg, Astrid  295 Norman, Kathi  244 North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea)  80, 85 Northouse, Peter G.  69 Norway  305 Nouwen, Henri J M.  18, 116, 261 Nowak, Antoni J.  30 Nowak, Ewa  138 Nowland, Rebecca  34, 255, 256 Nye, Rebecca  111 Oakley, Lee  43 O’Connor, Frank  101–2 O’Connor, Moira  310, 319 O’Connor, Stephen J.  295 O’Donnell, Ian  5 Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education)  338 Ogle, Donna M.  149 Oiveros, Lehmann  139 old age  5–8, 28, 82, 169, 216, 217, 234, 238–40, 242, 243, 246, 247, 265, 266, 269, 270, 288–309, 314, 317, 319, 323, 328, 339 Olearczyk, Teresa  131, 132, 134, 135, 162–73 Oliver, Christine  40 Ollendick, Thomas H.  147 Olson, Margaret  196 Olton, Roy  86 O’Meara, Thomas F.  26 online. See computers Oosthuizen, Ann  100 Origen of Alexandria  337 Orkibi, Hod  257 Orón Semper, José Víctor  138 O’Rourke, Kevin  132 Orr, Deborah  35 Ortega y Gasset, José  20, 30 Orwell, George (Eric Arthur Blair)  20, 87 OʼSúilleabháin, Páraic S.  306 O’Sullivan, Michael  93 Oswald, Frank  305 Oswell, David  319 Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso)  2–3, 16, 90–2, 94, 277 Padova, University of  199 Paganini, Niccolò  16, 97, 102

Index

painting. See art and painting pandemics xvi, xvii, 14, 16, 19–21, 42, 72, 84–5, 200, 206, 209–10, 213, 235, 311–12, 318, 322, 328 Pang-White, Ann A.  108, 337 Papa, Anthony  314 Parent, Kathryn Tetuan  317 parenthood, parents. See families Parkes, Colin Murray  312, 317–18 Parnas, Josef  24 Parnowski, T.  304 Parry, Ken  69 Pascal, Blaise  166 Passchier, Wim F.  189 Passchier-Vermeer, Willy  189 Pataky, Meghan Gabriel  317 Paton, Herbert James  225 Patrick, William  8, 103, 252, 323, 330 Patterson, Jo Ellen  247 Patti, Chris  78 Patton, (General) George  71 Pavlich, George  189 Pawłowska, Róża  265 peace  14, 36, 45, 75, 81, 103, 106, 111, 121, 124, 126, 131, 133, 136, 155, 162, 163, 168, 172, 173, 189–91, 195–9, 202, 232, 237, 268 Pedler, Mike  71 Peim, Nick  39, 43 Penderecki, Krzysztof  166 Peng, D.  105 Peplau, Letitia Anne  240, 244, 300 performativity  36 Perlman, Daniel  240, 244, 300 Perrin, Christophe  90, 277 Perry, Grayson  79 Persian language  60 Persico, Tomer  122 personalism  324–6, 329 Peters, Gary  89 Peters, Tim J.  302 Peterson, Christopher (Chris)  330 Petrakis, Vicki  49 Petrarch  166 Pexman, Penny M.  155 Philips, Adam  201, 202, 205 Philips, Katherine  93, 94 Piaget, Jean  87, 141, 157 piano  102, 103, 336 Piano, Jack C.  86 Piasecka, Małgorzata  264 Piazza-Bonin, Elizabeth  317 Picard, Max  131

Pickering, Sue  49 The Picture of Dorian Gray  100 Piersel, Wayne C.  40 Pietrzyk-Reeves, Dorota  23 Piff, Paul K.  254 Piirto, Jane  47 Pikula, Norbert G.  300 Pile, Steve  205, 206, 338 Pilkington, Cynthia L.  40 Pirrie, Anne  6, 132, 136, 200–10, 328 Pitcairn Islands  85 Plato  31, 83, 218, 219, 222, 225, 227, 230, 231 pleasure. See joy Pliny the Elder  74 Plotinus  222 Pluess, Michael  252 poetry  15, 17, 58, 60, 64, 77, 106, 113–15, 121, 133 Poland  97, 167, 173, 215, 239, 265, 267, 272–3, 302, 306–7, 312–14, 322 Polanyi, Michael  195, 324 Polish language  171, 261, 268, 339 politics  14, 80–8, 214 Pope, Alexander  93, 94 Pope Francis  53 Pope John Paul II  163 Pope Paul VI  49 Pope Pius XI  163 Popper, Karl Raimund  21, 23, 335 Porter, Bill  107, 133 Portugal  96, 257 Potts, Shirley  314–15, 320 Powell, Jason L.  303 pragmatism  80, 83, 84 Pressley, Elvis Aron  99 Priest, Quinton Gwynne  112 Prigerson, Holly G.  317–18 prison  3, 13, 317 privacy, private  14, 34 professions, professionalism. See work Protestantism. See Christianity psychoanalysis. See counselling and therapy punishment xvi, 2, 3, 37–8, 47, 73, 91, 137, 142, 224, 233, 330. See also prison Purcell, Henry  93 Puszko, Hanna  25 Putnam, Robert xvii Qatar  87 Quadt, Lisa  217 Quakerism (the Religious Society of Friends)  44 Qualter, Pamela  250, 255

411

Index

Rabbi Gillman  118 Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav  337 Rabelais, François  79 Rabins, Peter V.  301 ‘race’ and ethnicity  160, 177, 207, 213, 243 Radosh, Alice  316 Rahav, Shakhar  110, 111 Rant, Melita Balas  76 Rantzen, Esther  8 Rauch, R William  324 Raum, Elizabeth  281 Rawstrone, Annette  320 reading. See books and reading and writing Recchia, Holly Elizabeth  155, 159 Rée, Jonathan  331–2 Reeves, Patricia  317 refuguees  1, 174. See also exile Reid, Julian  78 Reisman, David  7, 101, 261 religion  16, 17, 31, 116–28, 236, 240, 289, 303, 324–6. See also specific religions; spirituality Religious Society of Friends. See Quakerism Renaut, Alain  21 respectfulness xvii, 111, 183 Reuter, Dennis  148 Ricardo, David  331 Richard, Aline  306 Richardson, Henry S.  278 Richardson, Thomas  244 Ricoeur, Paul  162, 230 rights  1, 34, 36, 44, 86, 176, 177, 179, 300, 303, 338 Riley, Gina  43 Rilke, Rainer Maria  16, 78, 101, 167 Rittel, Horst  71 Robert, Marc  90 Roberts, Peter  197 Robertson-Snape, Fiona  85 Robin Hood  82–3 Robinson Crusoe. See Daniel Defoe Robson, Patricia  317 Roehlkepartain, Eugene C.  244 Rogacz, Dawid  31 Rogers, Carl Ransom  326 Rokach, Ami  236, 237, 241, 243, 244 Romania  80, 91 Romano, John L.  257 Romanticism  16, 82, 90, 94–8 Rome, Roman Empire  90 Rondeau, Jean  93 Ronstadt, Linda  72 Rorty, Richard  21, 23, 25, 26, 335

412

Rosen, Charles  97 Rosiak, Marek  23 Rossiter, Graham  49 Rotenberg, Ken J.  7, 43, 253 Rothbart, Mary K.  252 Rothman, Allison M.  254 Rouner, Leroy S.  331 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques  166, 229, 261 Rousseff, Dilma  177–8, 184 Row, Jess  45 Rowe, Mary Budd  194–5 Ruan Yuan  111 Rubin, Kenneth H.  260 Rufus, Anneli  3, 4, 328, 332 Rumbold, Bruce  319 Russell, Bertrand  220 Russell, Daniel W.  251 Russia  87, 97, 243, 313 Rustin, Michael  206 Rutter, Michael  39 Rwanda  285, 286 Rymkiewicz, Wawrzyniec  25–6 Sabat, Steven R.  296 Sacks, Jonathan  118–19, 123 Sadler, W A.  280 sadness  93, 153, 159, 258, 271, 285, 315, 320 Sagan, O. xvi–xviii Said, Edward  97, 203, 209–10 Saint-Amant, Antoine Girard de  93 St Anthony  3, 49, 92, 120 St Augustine (St Augustine of Hippo)  6, 49, 225, 231, 337 St Benedict  126, 337 St Ignatius of Loyola  56, 337 St Jean, Shawn  61 St Jerome  92 St Paul  116 Salij, Jacek  261 Salmon, Phillida  324 Salovey, Peter  295 Santana, Rui  308 Santner, Eric L.  96 Santos-Orlandi, Ariene Angelini dos  301–2 Sarah, Robert  164, 165 Sarstedt, Peter  72 Sarton, May  4 Sartre, Jean-Paul xvi, 16, 26, 89, 101, 169, 214, 218, 227, 231, 279 Saudi Arabia  87 Sauntson, Helen  6, 132, 133, 135, 174–88 Savage, Anne  5

Index

Saxton, Emily A.  258 Scandinavia  60 Scharmer, C Otto  75–6 Schiller, Friedrich von  96 Schirmer, Werner  240, 243 Schmidt, Jerry Dean  112 Schmidt-Barad, Tomer  250–60 Schneiter, C.  72 Schoch-Spana, Monica  311–12 schools  8, 15, 34–57, 75, 90, 135, 137, 140–2, 146–61, 167, 174–88, 198, 215, 240–2, 248, 250, 251, 254–8, 260, 270, 272, 280, 314–15, 317, 320–2, 324, 330, 332, 338 Schopenhauer, Arthur  28, 166, 227–9 Schubert, Franz  102 Schulz, Kathryn  61, 193 Schwartz, Jay W.  152, 155 Scollon, Ron  194 Scollon, Suzie  194 Scotland. See United Kingdom Scruggs, Ryan  284 Scuton, Roger  86 Sedaka, Neil  72 Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky  179, 180 Seeman, Teresa  289–90 self-harm. See suicide and self-harm Seligman, Martin E P.  152, 160, 244 Selkirk, Alexander  331 Sellars, Wilfrid  23 Sendak, Maurice  103 Seneca  166, 261 Senechal, Diana  43, 45, 47 Senge, Peter M.  72 Sennett, Richard  97 Șerban, Henrieta xvii, 16, 18, 80–8 Seth, Vikram  336 Seweryniak, Henryka  262 sex, sexuality. See genders and sexualities Sha’ked, Ami  237, 241, 243, 244 Shakespeare, William  16, 92 shame. See guilt or shame Shamir, Ronen  203 Shankar, Aparna  306 Sharabi, A.  241, 256 Shaver, Phillip R.  253, 254 Shear, M Katherine  312, 314 Sheard, David M.  297 Sheldrake, Philip F.  116–17, 120 Shelley, Mary  98 Shen Congwen  112 Shepherd, Anna “Nan”  4, 15, 58–67, 204, 326 Shestov, Lev  166

Shi, Xinxin  254 Shiba Rokuro  104 Shih, Hsio-yen  113 Shilling, Chris  310, 311, 318 Shin, Jeong  110 Shovestul, Bridget  238, 239 Shute, Nevil (Nevil Shute Norway)  71 Shvedko, Anastasia  246 shyness  8, 146, 154, 251, 253 siblings. See families Sicily  96 Sillin, Jonathan G.  39 Silver Line, The  8, 335 Sim, Disa  34 Sima Qian  112 Simkin, Linda  316 Simms, William Gilmore  52 Simões, Celeste  257 Simon, Eti Ben  238 Simpson, Gillian  17, 18, 116–28, 329 Sinatra, Frank (Francis Albert)  98 Singapore  243 Singer, Peter  326 Sink, Christopher A. xvii, 213–17, 236–49, 339 Skarga, Barbara  263 Skinner, Burrhus Frederic  76 Skinner, Ellen  258 Ślęczek-Czakon, Danuta  171 sleep  172, 218, 238 Sliwa, Jim  238 Slovenia  305 Smith, Adam  331 Smith, Bessie  98 Smith, Peter Scharff  5 Smith, Simon  324 Smith, Tiffany Watt  96 Snape, Dawn  250, 254, 258 Sobczak, Katarzyna Natalia  21 Sobota, Daniel  31 Sochaczewska, G.  171 social media. See computing social networking. See computing Socrates  31, 165 Söderlund, Helena  195 Solano, Cecilia H.  252 solipsism  29 solitary confinement. See prison Solomon, I.  254 soul. See spirituality South Africa  80, 85 Souza, Margaret  314 Spaemann, Robert  278, 279

413

Index

Spain  96 Spain, Breeanna  317 Spanish language  2 Spender, J-C  72 Sperber, Dan  291 Spiegelberg, Herbert  230, 234, 235 Spinoza, Benedict (Baruch)  4, 7, 94 spirituality  14, 17, 67, 71, 75, 103–15, 126, 165, 188, 191, 192, 199, 213, 219, 222, 224, 234, 236, 240, 245, 295. See also religion; specific religions Spithoven, A W M.  251 Spitz, René  233 Spokane, Arnold R.  254 sport  70, 74, 157, 173, 241–2, 246, 270, 303 spouses. See families Springfield, Dusty (Mary O’Brien)  98 Stables, Andrew  197 Stake, Robert E.  266 Standing, E M.  173 Staub, Ervin  285 Staufer, Jill  201–2, 210 Steben, Barry D.  110, 111 Steffener, Jason  295 Steger, Michael F.  156 Steil, Janice M.  254 Steiler, Joseph Karl  96 Steiner, George  95 Steiner, Rudolf  135, 172 Stepanova, Jekaterina  113 Steptoe, Andrew  314 Stern, Julian (L J Stern) xvii, 1–9, 16, 18, 34–40, 43, 47, 48, 51, 54, 56, 89–103, 131–3, 174, 213, 262, 263, 277, 280, 289, 295, 300, 313, 319, 322–33, 339 Stern, Yaacov  295 Stillingfleet, Edward  221 Stirner, Max, (Johann, Kaspar, Schmidt)  1, 331 Stoicism  225 Stokes, Julie  320 Stolz, Peter  308 Stone, Darwell  120 Stonewall (charity)  176, 179 Storr, Anthony  34–6, 73, 121, 324 Strange, Julie-Marie  311 Strauss, Anselm L.  50–1 Stroebe, Margaret  314, 315 Su, Frank  199 Suggitt, Connie  317 suicide and self-harm  85, 93, 99, 243, 244, 317. See also death Sullivan, Harry Stack  251

414

Sundararajan, Louise  34, 35, 37–9, 42 Sunderland, Jane  179–80 Sundström, Anna  289 Sun Tzu  70 Surrette, Tanya  157, 158, 160, 161 Sutton, Philip W.  85 Swartz, Holly A.  246 Sweden  195, 200 Świtoń, Anna  304, 306 Switzerland  85, 317 synagogues. See Judaism Syria  87 Szahaj, Andrzej  21, 22 Szanto, Katalin  314 Szarota, Zofia  304 Szatur-Jaworska, Barbara  300–1, 303–4 Szczecin, University of  13 Szczepański, Jan  272, 338 Szeligowska, Dorota  313 Szewczuk, Włodzimierz  265, 338 Szmidt, Krzysztof  166 Szynkaruk, Olga  91 Taee, Katrina  315 Taiwan  85, 104, 208 Taizé  127 Tan, Siu-Lan  332 Tao Yuanming  133 Tartakovsky, Eugene  243 Tarugu, Jayanthi  247 Taumoepeau, Mele  153–4 Taylor, Charles  77–8, 96 Taylor, Richard  296 technology. See computing Tenebaum, Harriet R.  159 Teresa of Avila  125, 337 Tetlow, Joseph  56, 57 Thayer, Colette  240, 244 therapy. See counselling and therapy Thích Nhất Hạnh  131, 145, 163 Thomas, Virginia D.  35–7, 41, 43 Thomism, Thomist. See Aquinas Thompson, Neil  317 Thoreau, Henry David  4, 15, 16, 58–67, 73, 75, 76, 101, 326, 336 Tibet, China  87 Tien, Adrian  115 Tillich, Paul  14, 26–7, 166, 335 Tiwari, Sarvada Chandra  302 Toffler, Alvin  20 Tolmacz, Rami  254 Tolman, Edward  76

Index

Tolvajčić, Danijel  26 Tönnies, Ferdinand  327 Torrey, Bradford  60, 64, 65, 336 Townsend, Peter  7, 328 transcendence. See spirituality Transcendentalism  58 Trump, Donald  87–8 Trumpeter, Nevelyn N.  254 trust  79, 107, 161, 162, 178, 210, 234, 237–9, 248, 253, 255, 257, 294, 339. See also hope Tur-Kaspa, Hana  255 Turkle, Sherry  21, 324–5 Tu Wei-ming  110 Twain, Mark (Samuel Langhorne Clemens)  99 Twenge, Jean M.  156–7 Tyler, Imogen  24 UCLA loneliness scale  8 Uhlenberg, Peter  299 Ukraine  87, 243 United Arab Emirates  87 United Kingdom (and England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales)  59, 64, 85, 88, 89, 96, 100, 135, 174, 180–3, 204, 208, 236, 238, 239, 243, 248, 311–13, 317, 321, 322, 324, 330. See also Brexit United Nations (UN)  80, 85, 86 United States of America, USA  16, 24, 42, 58, 82, 85, 87–8, 98, 99, 142, 143, 158, 236, 238–40, 243, 246, 248 universities  8, 133, 134, 189–210, 303, 308, 309, 332. See also specific universities Valle, Ron  140 Valtorta, Nicole K.  306 Vandenakker, John Paul  126 Van der Gucht, Katleen  158 Van Doesum, Niels J.  160 Van Gogh, Vincent  166 Van Meter, Jeffrey B.  146 Vassilopoulou, Helen D.  255 Vattimo, Gianni  279 Venice  96 Vermes, Geza  74 Verrier, Nancy  317 Verrissimo, Manuela  255 Vervoorn, Aat Emile  107 Victor, Christina xvii Viertel, Salka  200, 202 Vietnam  145 Vincent, David xvi, 34, 120 Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet)  166

von Wright, Moira  44, 192, 194 Vracheva, Veselina P.  155–7 Vroom, Victor  70 Vygotsky, Lev  141, 153–4 Waddell, Margot  207 Wahl, Hans-Werner  306 Wahlquist, Calla  324 Waiblinger, Wilhelm  95–6 Waite, Linda J.  306 Walden Pond. See Thoreau Wałejko, Małgorzata xvii, 1, 5, 13–18, 36, 38, 39, 43, 264, 265, 280, 324 Wales. See United Kingdom Walker, Matthew P.  238 Walker, Scott (Scott Engel)  73 Wallace, Cara L.  318 Wallerstein, Immanuel  85 Walter, Tony  310, 312, 313, 316–18, 320 Walton, Gerald  40 Wampler, Karen S.  247 Wanderer, The  91–2 Wang, Bi  132 Wang, Fan-sen  110 Wang, Guojun  306 Wang, Hui-Xin  295 Wang, Jingyi  239, 240 Wang, Qi  159 Wang, R.  105, 107, 108 Wang Fuzhi  114 Wang Xiang  108 Wang Yangming  109–11 Wang Yanning  113 Wasilewska-Ostrowska, Katarzyna  33, 304 Watson, Nicholas  5 Watson, Roger  299 Watts, Paul  295 Weare, Katherine  35 Webb, Diana  3, 4 Webber, Melvin M.  71 Weber, Max  70, 102, 121, 234–5, 337 Weeks, Molly Stroud  319 Weeks, Murray  155, 157 Weil, Simone  73, 75 Weinar, Leif  44 Weinbach, I.  265 Weinstein, Netta  158, 161 Weir, David xvi, 3, 15, 16, 68–79, 328 Weisman, Gerald D.  306 Weiss, Robert S.  1, 7, 171, 237, 241, 243, 244, 251, 300, 324, 327, 328 Welch, Sue  320

415

Index

The Well of Loneliness  99–100 Wenger, G Clare  304 Wen Zhengming  114 Wessels, Francois  54 West, Ken  313 Whalley, Lawrence J.  295 White, Emily  1 Whitley, Rob  238 Whitman, Walt  16, 98, 99 Whittaker, Elvi  328 Wickrama, Kandauda A S.  240, 243 Wilde, Oscar  16, 100 wilderness  17, 68–79, 81, 105, 107, 331. See also nature, Nature William of St-Thierry  3–5 Williams, Hank  99 Williams, Rowan (Lord Williams of Oystermouth)  117, 120, 126–7 Williamson, Ben  41 Williamson, J Austin  258 Wills, Thomas A.  258 Wilson, Deirdre  291 Wilson, John  315–17 Wilson, Travis M.  154, 157–8 Winnicot, Donald Woods xvii, 1, 7, 35, 200, 202, 208–10, 326, 330 Wittgenstein, Ludwig  2, 6, 136, 331 Wnuk, Agnieszka  304, 306 Wohlleben, Peter  4 Wojtyła, Karol Józef  278–9, 284, 324 Wolf, Norbert  96 Wolfe, David  34 Wolgensinger, Laure  259 Wong Ping Ho xvi, xvii, 17, 18, 103–15, 131–6, 328, 332 Wood, Alex M.  244 Woods, Judith  35 Woodward, John C.  289 Woolf, Virginia  168, 169 Wordsworth, Dorothy  94 Wordsworth, William  16, 94–5, 98, 326 work  1, 6, 8, 68–79, 83, 136, 200–10, 235, 240, 270, 300, 302, 303, 309, 314, 316–18, 327–9, 333

416

World Health Organisation (WHO)  189, 318 Wray, Alison  8, 216, 288–98, 328, 339 writing. See books and reading and writing Wu, G.  108 Wu Hung  105, 106, 115 Wuthering Heights  98 Wyschogrod, Michael  78 Xu Shangying  115 Al-Yagon, Michal  253, 255 Yang, Chunyan  156 Yang, Jui-sung  110 Yan Ying  108 Yarnell, Lisa M.  159 Yates, Richard  7, 101 Yemen  87 Yi Gan  109–10 yoga  4 Yolton, John W.  220 Yoneyama, Shoko  35, 40, 42 Yung, Bell  115 Zahavi, Dan  24 Zalewska-Pawlak, Mirosławę  265 Zaleznik, Abraham  69 Zeitlin, Irving M.  337 Zeng Guofan  108, 110–11 Zeng Shen  107 Zhang, Feng  255 Zhao, Jingjing  253 Zheng Zhen  112, 113 Zhou, Xinyue  244 Zhou Guangya  309 Zhu, Ying  153 Zhuangzi  107 Zilboorg, Gregory  232–3 Zimmermann, Johann Georg Ritter von  28, 42, 120, 337 Zong Bing  113, 114 Zullig, Keith J.  244 Zych, Adam A.  304



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