So the title of this session is or this talk is uh loneliness and interpersonal connection
and the main thing I want to do is to identify a problem with what I think is the main account of
loneliness in most of the literature which is what I'll call the absence account.
First though some general remarks on those two terms in the title
um I can be brief with these because the points have been made by the other speakers.
First of course there's no one thing called loneliness, there are many different kinds
of loneliness different types of loneliness. People become lonely for different reasons they
experience their loneliness in different ways. Loneliness can be caused by grief or the collapse
of social networks or bereavement or moving to a new city. People experience their loneliness in
different ways: as a temporary state that they all pass out of, or an enduring feature of their life,
some experience their loneliness as a fundamental feature of the human condition as such that can't
be escaped. And all of these should be factored into any account. We must take seriously diversity
of experiences of loneliness partly because if we don't do this we're likely to give bad advice.
So the other day reading the popular magazine Psychology Today,
there's an article on loneliness, one article called “10 things lonely people can do”,
number 1 is remind yourself that loneliness is only temporary. Now that's going to be true for
people who experience what's called situational loneliness like if you're sent to work, you know,
sent to work in another city you don't know anyone. For a month sure your loneliness
is temporary but those who experience chronic loneliness that's catastrophically bad advice.
So we have to take serious diversity of forms types and experiences of loneliness.
Similar things are true of this term interpersonal connection. Again there are lots of different
ways that we can connect with people there are different ways to connect with them different
kinds of connection. I can connect you in with all of you in a sense by giving this talk but that's
different from the connection I had with the guy on the train this morning when we were chatting
coming out of Birmingham New Street. You can have deep enriching sustained contacts with people,
not just encounters and connections but long-term connections tied together by love, empathy,
trust and belonging. Hence we distinguish casual acquaintances that guy on the train
I'm never going to see or talk to again from people I'll see over a long period of time,
interpersonal connections that provide my life with meaning and structure and identity. All
forms of interpersonal connection that define who I am as a person and in the absence of which I'd
be very different and maybe a diminished person. So again there's no one thing called interpersonal
connection there are very many ways to connect with people and surely one of the things that
most human beings need to flourish is a whole diversity of kinds of interpersonal relationships
you know. For example during lockdown one of the things that struck me very quickly is
how much of my social world isn't made up of close friendships and family members but
spontaneous ad hoc improvised encounters with people: chatting to baristas in a coffee shop,
grumbling with people in the post office queue, etc. we need a whole range of different forms
of interpersonal connection. Some deep some rich some sustaining some temporary some ad hoc
and all that means it's going to be very difficult to say anything general about loneliness and
interpersonal connection. They're all extremely diverse and they connect in various diverse ways.
Now that doesn't mean that we can't say anything in general about the connection between loneliness
and interpersonal connection and in particular doesn't mean that we can't give some general
account of what loneliness is. For example you can acknowledge diversity but recognize underlying
patterns or unities and within the academic literature and loneliness as we've already
heard actually there is a certain standard account or standard set of accounts which you might just
call absence accounts where the general idea is that experiences or feelings of loneliness involve
a sense of the absence of something social (more on that in a sec) but the absence of something
social which is desired necessary maybe even vital for life, the absence of which is therefore going
to be painful or distressing and these absence accounts I think you see them in psychology and in
the tiny philosophical literature in mental health research and they seem to be fairly standard
and they resonate with the ways that people will tend to talk about loneliness in everyday life.
For example when you talk about loneliness or ask people to describe it people will talk about lack
of friends, not having the contacts I want, empty diary, no one ever calls, my Whatsapp
is empty of any contacts, the phone never rings. There's a rhetoric here of emptiness, loneliness,
absence that seems to be a characteristic of these experiences. So on the handout there are
a couple of quotations from various psychologists and philosophers which give testimony to this.
I'm not going to go through them because we've already heard some of them already but the basic
idea then is that central to experiences of loneliness are these experiences of absence.
Now of course these accounts will need some wor—for example there'll be certain ambiguities
like what is it that's lacking is it just relationships period or certain kinds of
relationships or is it relationships that have a certain kind of depth or significance to us
some of these accounts are quite ambiguous on this. For example some people like quite
narrow definitions of loneliness when they ask what's this social thing that's missing
some people say well it's intimate trusting relationships, that's the absence of those is
what is loneliness for example the relationships you might have with your parents or your children
or with a significant life partner but then again that just seems to be far too narrow.
You can have a broader account of the social thing that's missing maybe it's social relationships
or social encounters I don't have a relationship with that guy on the train this morning
we had a conversation for 20 minutes but that social encounter that contact
could be something that I would miss for example I did miss it in lockdown. I like random spontaneous
encounters with people even if they're not going to become a lasting part of my life
so maybe we should have a broader sense of the social thing that's missing
sure deep intimate meaningful relationships but also like casual ad hoc relationships,
corridor conversations with colleagues that you that you've known for five years but never get
beyond having the same conversation every Monday morning. I enjoy those but it could also be
something more abstract like social possibilities a sense of belonging to the world which have a
very broad definition of what this social thing is it doesn't have to be narrowly defined in
terms of certain kinds of relationships with a profound deep and meaningful depth you know if
human beings have a diversity of social needs that will include something more broad and expansive.
Also if you look at some of those accounts they're often quite ambiguous about how loneliness relates
to other experiences so one of those quotations is from two philosophers cracking paper on loneliness
where they say that loneliness involves the feeling that certain social goods are missing and
out of reach either temporarily or permanently. Now again that's kind of ambiguous for one thing
if you say that social relationships are absent that's very different from saying that they're
out of reach I mean that bottle I've been drinking from is out of reach but it's definitely there and
present it'd be very different from saying it's not there and again that will show up
in experiences of loneliness. I mean is it the case that there are people you could have social
contacts with they're just not here maybe because I'm the only singleton in my friendship group and
every weekend now all of my annoying friends are partnered up they do fun things of the
weekend they never invite me (it's an invented example). Thank you for laughing in sympathy!
So again they're going to be sort of ambiguities here is it the fact that the social
opportunities and contacts are absent out of reach for some reason or they're just not there those
seem to be crucially different also we'd have to distinguish loneliness from other negative
experiences that can cause social goods to be out of reach. For example if I'm experiencing
say profound guilt or shame maybe I've done something morally awful and no one knows I
feel terrible that's going to show up in my interpersonal behaviour, my demeanor, I'm going to
be constantly especially thinking do they know is that why Matthew's not making eye contact with me
that he would usually do does he know? Has someone told him? Has Henry just texted him and said:
do you know what Ian did and who spoiled things? To me, so other emotional, negative emotional
experiences like guilt and shame could also cause social goods to be absent but in very
different ways. So some experience of loneliness might have a moral dimension that others don't
or there could be compound sorts of kind of guilty loneliness or loneliness and guilt and again more
work here to distinguish between these different kinds of experience. I mean, if there's a profound
moral dimension to your loneliness that's going to be very different conceptually and practically.
So lots of different kind of work to do on these accounts you know we can ask: What sorts of social
goods are absent? What sorts of relationships are missing? Is it the fact that they're not
there or they're not as you would want them to be? Is it that you perceive that over time the
social relationships you have seem to be thinning and dimming down and diminishing? Or is it that
your friendship network has just as many people as it always did, it's just now being painfully
restructured, for example as everyone partners up and you're the only one left as a small isolated
atom in a way that it used to be 10 years ago. Now all these details of course that you could
easily deal with by doing lots of philosophy and psychology and looking at first-person accounts
the one feature of all of those accounts I've just described is that they all still buy into
some form of the absence account. They all still buy into the same idea that abstract loneliness
is fundamentally and essentially an experience of absence that that is a definitive quality.
So I want to in the last bit of this talk now offer an alternative possibility
which is that at least some experiences of loneliness don't just involve a sense of absence
they also evolve a sense that these social possibilities that are absent for me
are still going to be present for others and here this is inspired by work for by Matthew
Ratcliffe who's a philosopher at the University of York. So Matthew suggested in at least some cases
loneliness has a double structure: I am lonely because I am experiencing certain desirable social
possibilities as absent for me but as present for others. Maybe as present for you or present for
people like you or maybe as present for everybody else as if I'm the only one who's been excluded
here and again this points to different kinds of loneliness. If you think that these social
possibilities can be accessed by other people but not by you that's going to affect how you
think about the world if you think I'm the only one who can't access social possibilities and
absolutely everyone else can then that sounds tantamount to despair whereas if you think
well it's people like me who can't access these possibilities but other people can now in these
cases then you have absence but also a sense of presence and that's built into the experience.
You experience these social possibilities as absent for me but as present for others maybe
you think these possibilities are absent for you temporarily or permanently maybe you think there's
something wrong with you that you can't access them. I mean here we can look at two metaphors
that people use we're talking about these kinds of loneliness one is the metaphor of a key.
So one writer says with loneliness it's like you don't have the key that unlocks social
possibilities when other people step out into the social world they carry their key with them and
they can just unlock interactions relationships and social possibilities but when you turn up
you don't have your key and you can't get in you can't access social possibilities you know.
And again that can be a diverse experience maybe I had the key and I lost it. Maybe the key was taken
away, maybe my key was destroyed by a traumatic experience, maybe they've changed all the locks
in the social world to keep people like me out which would fit with the dimension of exclusion
that's part of loneliness. So the key metaphor can be useful, you need various things to go up
into the social world and interact and maybe you need a key that you don't have anymore and because
you're locked out to the social world you're going to experience this form of loneliness.
I mean think of the visual image of loneliness as a person there's no window here but a person
sitting at a window and in that case they're looking out into a social world and they
experience the absence of those possibilities but they will see other people taking them up.
Those people have the key they can access the social world they can interact with one another
but I’m stuck inside on the other side of the glass and of course that glass wall metaphor
is also used in lots of psychiatric narratives as well so the key metaphor can explain this
these possibilities are present for you people because you all have the key
lucky bastards but people like me don't have the key or I don't have the key or something
has gone wrong with my life that my key has been taken away. Hence a sense of exclusion
from the world another metaphor is hunger. So one writer says loneliness is like hunger
you're constantly hungry all the time for those social connections and contacts that
nourish and sustain you that give you a sense of emotional stability identity belonging warmth etc
but it's like you're always hungry because now you're being starved of those social contacts.
Those social contacts that nourish you have been taken away or they're diminishing in
their quality, frequency and significance and again the hunger metaphor fits with this
presence absence idea maybe you're sitting there hungry looking at the social world starving away
because you don't have that nourishment but you're seeing plenty of other people you know sitting
in the rich buffet of the social world gorging yourself and all the social opportunities. They're
well nourished, they are satisfied, they are full of social options and opportunities, but I'm not
and that comparative aspect I think is very important to certain experiences of loneliness
because I can think that I'm hungry without thinking that everyone else is hungry.
In fact it'll sometimes be painfully obvious I'm the only hungry one here so whichever metaphor
you use you can draw out this idea but at least certain experience of loneliness how this absence
present structure. Absence is central maybe to all experiences of loneliness
but at least some experiences also involve a sense of absence what's absent for me is present for you
what's painfully lacking in my life is so clearly a part of all of your life
the person at the window looking in a vibrant warm bright cheerful social order they can't access,
the person looking longingly of friends playing in the park, having a drink, enjoying the sun even
though that's totally absent from their world. And again there's diversities here maybe they're
absent forever maybe I'm locked out permanently maybe this isn't a dry spell maybe it's a desert
I've just moved into, maybe the hunger never goes away, maybe the key never gets returned.
So that I think might be an important correction to at least some forms of the absence model
certain experiences of loneliness have this double presence absent structure
and here are three reasons to finish why we might want to take this seriously.
First reason it would help us to identify a certain specific kind of loneliness so
this is the claim Matthew Ratliffe makes in that paper amidst the diversity of forms of loneliness
this is one that has a special characteristic absence and presence
and it's always going to be progressive when we have concepts that let us identify
specific kinds of human experience otherwise you'll just get glossed together as sort of
absence even if you have really specific accounts of different types of absence you're still missing
the absence presence accounts so it helps us to identify a genuine kind of human experience.
Second I think this presence absence account might help us to explain certain features of
the psychology of loneliness. So think about the ways that in many cases of loneliness a person is
provoked to try to understand and explain their loneliness and they can engage internally in
processes of questioning and self-questioning like: Why is it that I'm the lonely one? Why
can't I access these social possibilities? Is it something wrong with me or is it something wrong
with you? Is it something about the world? Is it something I'm doing wrong that I could
correct? Or is it something fixed about me which means I'm never going to be able to access this?
Is it some form of prejudice or discrimination? Or is it is it something else,
why is it that it's present for me, sorry absent for me, but so present for you? You often see this
in first person narratives: people engaging and often quite painful and sometimes self-destructive
self-rumination. People endlessly reflecting on what they might have done, what might have
happened, what might be causing this. I think one way to understand those ruminations is people
struggling with this absence presence account—why is it that it's so present for you and you're
so obliviously happy with all the social possibilities that just appear snap of a
finger whereas people like me just get locked out? So i think the present absent account can help us
understand some of the painful psychological dynamics of certain experiences of loneliness.
Third and final reason I think the presence absence account helps us to understand some of
the painful moral and emotional dynamics of some of those experiences.
So in some first-person narratives of loneliness people say when I'm reflecting on this situation
where you're all just happily enjoying these experiences and social contacts and I'm locked out
I find myself becoming bitter, envious, jealous, resentful. So reading one account of narrative the
author said I've always been a lonely person but lately I'm feeling I’m becoming a bitter person.
I find myself privately jealous of my friends, I wonder what they're doing tonight that I'm not a
part of it. I start to engage in quasi-paranoid speculations about being left out or excluded
and I don't want to become one of those bitter jealous envious people. One it's
awful to experience those emotions but also it's going to make me into the sort of person
who's going to be unattractive to social contact and I think that those moral emotions like envy
bitterness resentment that's important part of many experiences of loneliness they're really
common in first person accounts and not just on Reddit and Quora but they seem to me to be rather
understood in some of the academic literature. But you can understand interpersonal moral emotions
like resentments bitterness envy and jealousy if you build in this absence present structure
because what you're trying to understand is what's wrong with me or wrong with you that
you have these things and I don't and that you don't seem to notice these disparities between us
and that can tie as well to wider concerns about stigma, characterizations of lonely people etc.
But there's at least three reasons then to want to have this presence absence
account: (1) it identifies certain kinds of experience of loneliness with this unique
feature; (2) it might help us to understand the psychological dynamics of loneliness;
and (3) it also might help us to understand some of these negative
moral emotional states like envy and bitterness jealousy and resentment.
If so, then we should have it on the table now that's not really an answer of how
loneliness and interpersonal connection relate to one another but at least it might indicate some of
the complexities that will be experienced by some lonely people when they're trying
to create social connections. Because if you have all of these painful psychological moral
and emotional dynamics churning away that's difficult enough to cope with as it is but if
you want to add to that the further task of then trying to find ways to connect with other people
including people that you regard as having some special social key or access or powers that
you don't have and you can't explain why that should indicate something of a difficulty this
task both philosophically and conceptually but also practically and therapeutically.
Thanks for listening folks!