Bloomsbury Solitude Studies – serie

This book explores adolescents’ (10-18 years) experiences of silence, solitude, loneliness within the school setting. Although many studies explore social withdrawal and loneliness in adolescence, little is known about young people’s experiences of solitude as a state of being alone. This book ties together cutting-edge research from developmental psychology and education on solitude in adolescence, and opens the way to a pedagogy of solitude and well-being.Sandra Leanne Bosacki explores concerns about how adolescents learn social and solitude skills and the extent to which such skills are harmful or helpful, including self-control and regulation, and self-compassion. The book further explores implications of solitude studies for practice and provides recommendations for future research and education. Holistic models of education are encouraged to promote a balance of social and solitude skills that combines social management with self-regulation and self-compassion.

This book explores adolescents’ (10-18 years) experiences of silence, solitude, loneliness within the school setting. Although many studies explore social withdrawal and loneliness in adolescence, little is known about young people’s experiences of solitude as a state of being alone. This book ties together cutting-edge research from developmental psychology and education on solitude in adolescence, and opens the way to a pedagogy of solitude and well-being.Sandra Leanne Bosacki explores concerns about how adolescents learn social and solitude skills and the extent to which such skills are harmful or helpful, including self-control and regulation, and self-compassion. The book further explores implications of solitude studies for practice and provides recommendations for future research and education. Holistic models of education are encouraged to promote a balance of social and solitude skills that combines social management with self-regulation and self-compassion.

This book presents a thematic analysis of various aspects of solitude, silence and loneliness, from the ancient world to the present day, explored thematically with consideration to the links between aloneness to other social and political issues. The themes include exile (expulsion from a community), ecstasy (getting ‘out of oneself’) and enstasy (being comfortable within oneself), to the Romantic idea of the artist as solitary. There is work on aloneness in and through nature, especially the importance of natural settings for positive experiences of solitude. A central theme is alienation and its emotions, with the idea of loneliness and the rejected self being a more modern experience. The book explores modernism and postmodernism as presenting new forms of solitude in the twentieth century, and how, more recently, there have been attempts to ‘recover’ the self, through therapeutic uses of the arts. All of these types and experiences of aloneness are described through the lenses of artistic, literary and musical forms of expression, as aloneness is not only explored and articulated through these art forms, but is in many ways created through these art forms.

This book presents a thematic analysis of various aspects of solitude, silence and loneliness, from the ancient world to the present day, explored thematically with consideration to the links between aloneness to other social and political issues. The themes include exile (expulsion from a community), ecstasy (getting ‘out of oneself’) and enstasy (being comfortable within oneself), to the Romantic idea of the artist as solitary. There is work on aloneness in and through nature, especially the importance of natural settings for positive experiences of solitude. A central theme is alienation and its emotions, with the idea of loneliness and the rejected self being a more modern experience. The book explores modernism and postmodernism as presenting new forms of solitude in the twentieth century, and how, more recently, there have been attempts to ‘recover’ the self, through therapeutic uses of the arts. All of these types and experiences of aloneness are described through the lenses of artistic, literary and musical forms of expression, as aloneness is not only explored and articulated through these art forms, but is in many ways created through these art forms.

This open access volume is an interdisciplinary anthology on loneliness that brings together for the first time a variety of disciplines to provide a comprehensive overview of research into a defining condition of our age.Loneliness is currently a widely debated topic in intellectual and public discourse that is occasionally, though controversially, seen to be an important public health hazard and that is often, and also controversially, said to be a marker of our digital and post-pandemic age. The volume brings together the contributions from leading researchers in philosophy, literature, psychology, cognitive science, history, anthropology, health science and business studies. Despite the wide scope of topics and differences in methodology, the contributors all investigate, in various forms, conceptual and empirical questions as they arise in the attempt to understand what loneliness is and whether we should think of it as the signifier of our time. The collection brings together chapters that investigate loneliness from a conceptual standpoint such as philosophy, psychoanalysis, or literature. They prepare the ground for a second section in which loneliness is investigated as it manifests itself in old age and at the end of life, as posing crucial problems for contemporary society. The contributions to the third section then research concrete manifestations of loneliness, such as loneliness amongst asylum seekers, in the workplace, and during the Covid-19 pandemic. Together these chapters offer a unique portrait of loneliness in our time that presents this hotly debated phenomenon in a multi-faceted, novel, and nuanced way.The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the University of Exeter, Maynooth University, UCLA and Bentley University.