A Review of the Call of Solitude: Alonetime in a World of Attachment: Ester Schaler Buchholz, Ph.D. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997, 365 pp. and Private Matters: In Defense of the Personal Life by Janna Malamud Smith. New York: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1997. 278 pp.

The aloneness of the unique self is worlds apart from the loneliness of the relational self.

This Year, knee surgery forced upon me a long period of confinement to bed. I was cut off from much of my normal social interaction—the daily give-and-take of meetings, plans with friends, street life. I was not able to busy myself with the innumerable small tasks of household life. For the most part, I saw patients, and then lay in bed, reading and thinking, for six weeks.

I experienced a gamut of states of solitude. I felt extremely anxious, frustrated, and bereft. I was consumed with thoughts of what I was missing. I feared being forgotten. And, to my surprise, I experienced ecstatic and joyful feelings of connection to myself and contentment with just being, a state that my busy life often precludes.

What made the transition from painful “loneliness” to contented “aloneness” possible? And conversely, what made contented “aloneness” dissolve into painful “loneliness” again? The two experiences may be “worlds apart,” but the conditions that create each state often seem to be