‘Solitude is not thrust upon any lovable person’: loneliness, shame and the problem (of) personality

Abstract

The relationship between loneliness and shame is frequently asserted, usually under-theorised, and very rarely subject to historical attention and care. Researchers in and across a number of disciplines are comfortable in the truism that shame and stigma are attached to loneliness through a series of psychosocial processes and dialogues, with negative social, medical, cultural and political valuations of loneliness dovetailing into neoliberal (and older) logics of individual responsibility for relationships and health. Far less clear is where these languages come from; how shame has accrued (or been assembled) around loneliness as an emotion or experience; and how this has changed over time. Drawing on the author’s practice as a historian of medicine, this article follows the problem of ‘personality’ through primary sources in print journalism, loneliness activism, public health work, and the psy and social sciences. It traces shaming narratives on loneliness through interwar and postwar conversations on selfishness, self-pity and the typology of lonely personalities, and considers how discourses on hostility and intolerance shaped a growing theorisation of chronic and intractable loneliness.

The loneliness pandemic?

“…Articles in this special edition point to the importance of taking a careful view of loneliness with informed historical study, a long view that will help us understand this 21st-century bleakness. Cooper (2024) celebrates 'humanities methodologies which excavate and contextualise historical discourses on loneliness', offering insight into questions 'which might otherwise be opaque'.…”

“…Urban overcrowding, for example, has been shown to drive feelings of disconnectedness (Rugel et al, 2019), as has an absence of contact with the natural environment (Hammoud et al, 2021). Having contributed to discrimination and loneliness, such policies then add to the shame that is interwoven with loneliness, as described by Cooper (2024), who notes that 'people who experience loneliness are frequently made to feel ashamed, as structural causative stories (such as the cost of living crisis, the impact of austerity policies, or the longer and deeper unravelling of the welfare state) are elided in favour of a shaming language of social ineptness and personal failings'.…”