Loneliness And Time

From the acclaimed author of Imagine Wanting Only This—a timely and moving meditation on isolation and longing, both as individuals and as a society. There is a silent epidemic in America: loneliness. Shameful to talk about and often misunderstood, loneliness is everywhere, from the most major of metropolises to the smallest of towns. In Seek You, Kristen Radtke's wide-ranging exploration of our inner lives and public selves, Radtke digs into the ways in which we attempt to feel closer to one another, and the distance that remains. Through the lenses of gender and violence, technology and art, Radtke ushers us through a history of loneliness and longing, and shares what feels impossible to share. Ranging from the invention of the laugh-track to the rise of Instagram, the bootstrap-pulling cowboy to the brutal experiments of Harry Harlow, Radtke investigates why we engage with each other, and what we risk when we turn away. With her distinctive, emotionally-charged drawings and deeply empathetic prose, Kristen Radtke masterfully shines a light on some of our most vulnerable and sublime moments, and asks how we might keep the spaces between us from splitting entirely.

"It is a dreadful thing to be possessed, to be invaded by a spirit woman who commands your body and soul and looks out at the world through your eyes. It happened to me in 1778. Pray it will never happen to you." Adele's diary tells the story of her domination by an incubus Lynne, a serving girl in a London ale house who died a violent death and commandeered Adele's body for eight years. Can Adele be held responsible for Lynne's crimes? Will the evil spirit return and renew her tyranny over Adele's mind? Lynne has moved on into the 21st century, but the transmigration has left her emotions flat. Lynne is eager to go back to her first life and experience once more the passion she felt for her lover, Jack. To do so, she needs a channel to the past: the manuscript of Adele's diary, if only she can find it. A time-slip novel set in contemporary Los Angeles and 18th century London, The Loneliness of the Time Traveller is a story of love, crime, and adventure combined with fantasy, a little bit of Jane Austen-style irony, and a healthy serving of social criticism.

This book represents a comprehensive examination of loneliness in childhood and adolescence.

Cocker shows how foreign landscapes and their inhabitants have been used by travel writers as a means to self-definition as well as a source of image, fantasy, even self-image. Loneliness and Time illuminates the appeal of travel - the desire to explore the unfamiliar and the strange - that captivates us all.

In recent years its medical implications have brought loneliness to the centre of attention of mass media, government agents, and the general public. However, as this volume demonstrates, loneliness is not merely a psychological, individual, or health issue. In multiple ways, it is a serious social problem as well. Yang urges fellow researchers and scientists to broaden the existing definition and classification of loneliness, to measure loneliness with greater accuracy, and to establish more specifically the connection between loneliness and particular illness. Drawing on vast sources of data including literary works, case studies, and large-scale sample surveys covering a broad spectrum of countries (Europe and beyond), the empirical research of this study produces and presents simple but effective evidence for the social nature and variations of loneliness. Examining loneliness at higher levels, including ethnic groups, classes, national cultures, and societies, Loneliness will appeal to students and researchers interested in areas such as sociology, pyschology, and mental health.

Despite 21st-century fears of a modern "epidemic" of loneliness, its history has been sorely neglected. A Biography of Loneliness is the first history of its kind to be published in English, offering a radically new interpretation of loneliness as an emotional language and experience. Usingletters and diaries, philosophical tracts, political discussions, and medical literature from the eighteenth century to the present, historian of the emotions Fay Bound Alberti argues that loneliness is not an ahistorical, universal phenomenon. It is, in fact, a modern emotion: before 1800, itslanguage did not exist.As Alberti shows, the birth of loneliness is linked to the development of modernity: the all-encompassing ideology of the individual that has emerged in the mind and physical sciences, in economic structures, in philosophy and politics. While it has a biography of its own, loneliness impacts onpeople differently, according to their gender, ethnicity, religion, outlook, and socio-economic position. It is, Alberti argues, not a single state but an "emotion cluster", composed of a wide variety of responses that include fear, anger, resentment and sorrow. In spite of this, loneliness is notalways negative. And it is physical as well as psychological: loneliness is a product of the body as much as the mind.Looking at informative case studies such as Sylvia Plath, Queen Victoria, and Virginia Woolf, A Biography of Loneliness charts the emergence of loneliness as a modern emotional state. From social media addiction to widowhood, from homelessness to the oldest old, from mall hauls to massages,loneliness appears in all aspects of 21st-century life. Yet we cannot address its meanings, let alone formulate a cure, without attention to its complex, protean history.

This innovative book provides a new conceptual analysis of loneliness – a condition associated with severe health consequences, including increased morbidity and early death. Arguing that social connection is not the only answer, it explores pathways for transforming loneliness to healthy solitude. The first part of the book draws on the humanities and arts, including psychology, philosophy, and literature to analyse the common, and potentially serious, problem of loneliness. It makes the case that the condition is less a deficiency than a state of self-disconnection that modernity feeds through social forces. The second part of the book looks at how person-centred health care can help educate persons to transform loneliness into healthy solitude. It provides an analysis of self-connection and spiritual connection, discussing how these forms of contact can mitigate risks associated with both lack of social connection, and social connection itself, such as self-disconnection and rejection by others. It goes on to demonstrate that connection to the self and spirit can make aloneness a resource and facilitate access to benefits of connecting with others. This thought-provoking book provides students, scholars, and practitioners from a range of health and social care backgrounds with a new way of thinking about, researching, and practising with lonely people.