Lecture 8: solitude
A paradox: people need attachment, affiliation, and sociality, yet seek
solitude. Why?
solitude vs. loneliness (Long & Averill)
Scholarly discourse — a 2002 keyword search in PsychInfo: 1790
articles on loneliness, and only 177 on solitude.
Popular discourse — a 2002 search in Infotrac: 729 articles on
solitude, 538 on loneliness.
The Wilderness Act of 1964 (US Public Law 88-577) mandates that
congressionally designated wilderness areas promote opportunities for
solitude.
benefits of solitude (Larson)
Larson (1997): 483 fifth through ninth graders provided
experience-sampling reports on their companionship and subjective states
at random times over a week.
The findings:
- Time alone becomes more voluntary across this age period.
- For 7-9 graders (but not 5,6 graders) solitude has a positive
aftereffect on the emotional state.
- Among the same group, those who spent an intermediate amount of time
alone were better adjusted than those who spent little or a lot of time
alone.
slide 3
correlations between life situation variables and time
alone
slide 4
affect after being alone
Affect after being alone vs. with people, as a function of current
companionship: more positive in older (but not in younger) children.
slide 5
adjustment after being alone
Less adjustment problems associated with intermediate time alone, in older (but
not in younger) children.
slide 6
GPA and time spent alone
slide 7
solitude in adolescence: summary
"As a whole, then, these findings indicate that adolescents' solitude is
valuable, not as an end in itself, but as a strategic retreat from
an engaged and happy social life."
"Given that aloneness is related to both positive and negative outcomes, a
worthy goal of future research would be to differentiate 'healthy
solitude' from 'unhealthy solitude'. [...] Only if one can measure desire
to be alone unconfounded by global misanthropy might voluntary aloneness
be related to healthy solitude."
"The findings here also contradict the poetic image of healthy solitude as
a blissful transcendent state. If anything, feeling comparatively worse
when alone is related to better adjustment: Healthy solitude appears more
likely to be vegetative 'down time'."
Cf. Big Two-Hearted River by Ernest Hemingway:
Nick was hungry. He did not believe he had ever been hungrier. He
opened and emptied a can of pork and beans and a can of spaghetti into the
frying pan.
"I've got a right to eat this kind of stuff, if I'm willing to carry
it," Nick said. His voice sounded strange in the darkening woods. He did
not speak again.
slide 8
benefits of solitude (Long & Averill, cont.)
Adult humans spend about 29% of their time alone, and want even more. Why?
- Freedom. (From constraints; to engage in desired
activities.) (Observed and unobserved behavior.) "To take advantage of
the opportunities afforded by solitude, a person must be able to turn a
basically terrifying state of being into a productive one."
- Creativity. Adolescents who cannot tolerate being alone often
fail to develop their creative talents. Creativity requires "loosening"
of cognitive structures:
- imagivative involvement in multiple realities;
- self-transformation;
- reconstitution of cognitive structures.
- Intimacy.
- Spirituality. Moses, Jesus, Mohammad, the Buddha.
"For most individuals, its potential benefits [of solitude] far outweigh
its dangers."
slide 9
benefits of solitude (cont.)
Publius
Cornelius Scipio Africanus:
"nunquam minus solum esse quam cum solus esset"
(never less alone than when alone)
"He renounced the pleasures of both tyranny and justice, of his populous
couch, of his banquets and even of erudition — all to close himself
up for thirteen years in the Pavilion of the Limpid Solitude."
The Garden of Forking Paths
Jorge Luis Borges
slide 11
solitude: three parting quotes
— Aristotle (from Politics):
But he who is unable to live in society, or who has no need
because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a
god: he is no part of a state.
— Francis Bacon (from Of Friendship):
It had been hard for him that spake it to have put more truth and
untruth together in few words, than in that speech, Whatsoever is
delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.
— Abraham Cowley (from Of Solitude):
Cogitation is the thing which distinguishes the solitude of a god from
a wild beast.
