Capacity to be alone is a developmentally acquired ability, considered by
object relations theory
Object relations theory is a school of thought in psychoanalytic theory centered around theories of stages of ego development. Its concerns include the relation of the psyche to others in childhood and the exploration of relationships between ...
to be a key to creative living.
Julia Kristeva
Julia Kristeva (; born Yuliya Stoyanova Krasteva, bg, Юлия Стоянова Кръстева; on 24 June 1941) is a Bulgarian-French philosopher, literary critic, semiotician, psychoanalyst, feminist, and, most recently, novelist, who has ...
sees it as central to an authentic inner life, as well as to creative sublimations in life and art.
Conceptual development
D. W. Winnicott
Donald Woods Winnicott (7 April 1896 – 25 January 1971) was an English paediatrician and psychoanalyst who was especially influential in the field of object relations theory and developmental psychology. He was a leading member of the Br ...
in his article of that name (1958/64) highlighted the importance of the capacity to be alone, distinguishing it from both withdrawal and loneliness, and seeing it as derived from an internalisation of the non-intrusive background presence of a mothering figure. Winnicott in his writings always stressed the importance of the baby being allowed "just to lie back and float", and of the "opportunity that the baby has to experience separation without separation". Out of those early experiences emerges the capacity to be alone in (or out of) the presence of others - something which might have to be re-acquired later in life through psychotherapy.
A later strand of analysis, drawing on the work on listening of
Theodore Reik
Theodor Reik (; 12 May 1888, in Vienna, Austria – 31 December 1969, in New York) was a psychoanalyst who trained as one of Freud's first students in Vienna, Austria, and was a pioneer of lay analysis in the United States.
Education and career
...
, has emphasised the importance of the ''analysts capacity to be alone in the analytic situation - to remain centred in themselves in the face of the projections and resistances of the patient.
Creative adaptations
André Green saw the fertile interaction of reading/writing as rooted in the capacity to be alone.
See also
References
{{Reflist, 2}
Further reading
*D. B. Kafri, ''A Study of the Capacity to be Alone'' (2007)
External links
Capacity to be alone
Childhood
Object relations theory