On Loneliness

On Loneliness

Therapeutic growth and the capacity for solitude

Recorded Saturday 18 January 2020

With Lesley Caldwell, Dr Richard Gipps and Dr Akshi Singh

CPD Credits: 4.5 hours

“I’ll never attain any degree of freedom till I’ve learnt to disagree with people—to stand alone—to face up to human loneliness.”
Marion Milner (1927)

Why is it that some people never experience the emotion of loneliness, while others feel excruciating anxiety in solitude? This talk attempts to understand aspects of an individual’s psyche that predisposes them towards either tendency.

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FULL PROGRAMME

Dr Akshi Singh
Facing up to Human Loneliness: Marion Milner’s Experiments with Solitude
Milner’s writing—autobiographical and psychoanalytic—provides an intricate account of what is at stake in the capacity to be alone—and what links or severs solitude from moments of creativity and insight. Her work allows us to think about what is necessary, mysterious, and terrifying about the prospect of being in the presence of ourselves, and the others who accompany our solitude.

Lesley Caldwell
The Place Where We Live: Being at Home Being Alone
Winnicott’s account of being alone in conjunction with the idea that home is where we start from concerns the patient in analysis, the widespread condition of homelessness in the contemporary world, but also the engagement with the art object and what it offers. Both aloneness and solitude are fundamental conditions for participating fully in everyday life and difficulty, and in being able to undertake an analysis. Lesley is interested in how a concern with being in the particularity of the consulting room also offers a perspective on art and beyond.

Chaired Q&A with speakers

Dr Richard Gipps
Love’s Possibility: On Loneliness, Madness and Human Dignity
A distinction can be drawn between feeling and being lonely, between ordinary loneliness and loneliness-beyond-loneliness. The capacity for ordinary loneliness may be compared to that for hunger: without an ability to register lack, one goes mad (loneliness-beyond-loneliness) or starves to death even if food or love is available. Recovery from mental illness requires developing the ability both to feel and to tend to one’s loneliness, and correlatively to develop or recover a sense that it’s intelligible that one be loved. Examples from poetry and from the autobiographies of psychotherapy patients are used to illustrate the central themes.

Chaired Q&A with speakers

FEES

Includes: 1 year’s access, test and CPD Certificate of Attendance, subtitles and transcript

INDIVIDUAL

£60 (or £48 Confer member)

GROUP RATE

£50pp in groups of over 10 (please apply to accounts@confer.uk.com)

CPD

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) credits for 4.5 hours are available as part of the course fee. You will need to fill out an evaluation form and pass a multiple choice questionnaire related to the content in order to receive your certificate. You can submit this test up to a maximum of 5 times.

SCHEDULE

00:00:00
Introduction

00:02:07
Dr Akshi Singh
Facing up to Human Loneliness: Marion Milner’s Experiments with Solitude

01:10:17
Lesley Caldwell
The Place Where We Live: Being at Home Being Alone

02:09:40
Discussion

02:47:42
Dr Richard Gipps
Love’s Possibility: On Loneliness, Madness and Human Dignity

04:02:18
Discussion

04:36:10
End

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

By attending this workshop virtually, participants will be able to:
  • Explain why is it that some people never experience the emotion of loneliness, while others feel excruciating anxiety in solitude
  • Describe how the depressed, anxious and even the psychotic can re-experience solitude as a resource when they discover that they are loveable;
  • Differentiate between feeling and being lonely, between ordinary loneliness and loneliness-beyond-loneliness
  • Engage therapeutically with the phenomenon of loneliness as it is transformed into an inner sanctuary that the client can use as a resource for reflection, rest and creativity