Loneliness and Psychopathology

Although the importance of loneliness in human behavior has been known at least since the days of Aristotle,1 who remarked that “no one would choose the whole world on condition of being alone, since man is a political creature and one whose nature is to live with others,” the psychiatric literature contains a dearth of references to the subject. For the most part, our insights into the nature of loneliness have been derived from poets and philosophers who often emphasized its excruciatingly painful and driving qualities. Kant2 speaking on aesthetics stated that “deep loneliness is sublime but in a terrifying way.”

Early psychoanalytic writings3 made no mention of loneliness, although Freud4 seemingly sensed its significance as he explored the implications of the unheimlich in human experiences. Noteworthy contributions to the subject are of more recent date. Harry Stack Sullivan5 spoke of loneliness as an “exceedingly unpleasant and driving experience connected with an inadequate discharge of the need for human intimacy.” Frieda Fromm-Reichmann6 noted that “people are more frightened of being lonely than of being hungry, or being deprived of sleep, or of having their sexual needs unfulfilled.” Weigert7 indicated that “a human being who remains isolated, threatened by loneliness, feels the urgent need to justify his existence against the onslaught of the non-self, the horror of non-being.” And von Witzleben8 underlined the importance of loneliness in human behavior, stating that it “belongs to what is philosophically known as the fundamental basis of being.”

In this paper an attempt will be made to enlarge upon our understanding of loneliness, its nature and vicissitudes, and, in a general way, to further the hypothesis already formulated by Fromm-Reichmann that loneliness “plays an essential role in the genesis of mental disorders” undergirding in some fundamental way most, if not all, forms of psychopathology.

By way of a definition, we will endeavor to distinguish f