دانلود کتاب راهنمای تنهایی

Animals, prehumans, and humans share a common characteristic: they prefer to live in groups. From an evolutionary, genetic fitness standpoint, this makes sense because groups are able to fend off predators (both within species and without), locate food and shelter, and provide potential mates for the continuity of one’s genes. While we can only speculate about what animals and prehumans think or feel about their existences, we do know that humans have always had a good awareness of the social, psychological, and emotional benefits of being in a group. On the other hand, humans have also known both the peace of being alone and the pain of loneliness. Loneliness is the “negative and distressing emotional state that arises from a discrepancy between one’s desired and perceived levels of social connectedness” (Perlman & Peplau, 1981, as cited in Spithoven et al., 2019, p. 376). Loneliness has been of interest to philosophers, poets, and scientists for much of human history. For example, a whole field of philosophy, existentialism, focuses much of its attention on the absurdity of life and understanding the pain of individual life (e.g., we are born alone and die alone). Freud thought that the clash of our instinctual drives led to our feelings of loss and abandonment from birth (Gornick, 2013). Fromm-Reichmann and Sullivan thought that loneliness was a primary issue in any psychopathology (Loucks, 1980). Despite the centrality of loneliness to a host of human conditions, little theoretical and empirical attention was devoted to this problem in the early days of psychology. Indeed, my search of the psychology literature (the Psycinfo database) from 1900 to 1934 for any paper with the word “loneliness” in the title revealed that no papers were published on the issue.1 Solely measured by Psycinfo data, one might conclude that scholars were not very interested in loneliness for a long while after that. As can be seen in the accompanying graph (see Fig. 1), research and theory on loneliness did not really take off until the early 1980s, with 168 papers between 1981 and 1985. In the ensuing 45 years, research on loneliness has increased steadily with a virtual tsunami of papers (1212) in the period 2016–2020, nearly double that of the previous 4-year period (659)! The nearly 4-year block from 2021 to 2025 has 2316 papers (through June 6, 2025), as interest in loneliness continues to increase at an incredible rate. Loneliness represents an important clinical, psychological, sociological, cultural, and health issue. Referring to the last issue, much research has found a strong link between loneliness and poor physical health (Baarck & Kaovacic, 2022; Holt-Lunstad et al., 2015). Indeed, one meta-analysis concluded that the effects of loneliness on the body are as harmful as those of smoking and are more harmful than either physical inactivity or obesity (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2010). Loneliness also appears to be a risk factor for increased morbidity and mortality (Luo et al., 2012). Loneliness touches so many aspects of so many lives in many complicated ways, and it affects an astonishing number of people. One study found that 1 in 3 persons in industrialized nations has “occasional” loneliness, and 1 in 10 says that they have “constant” loneliness (Spithoven et al., 2019). Loneliness has also increased in the population, in the young and old (Hawkley et al., 2022). A recent meta-analysis found a virtual linear increase in loneliness year after year from 1976 to 2019 among emerging adults (age period between 18 and 29 (Arnett et al., 2014; Buecker et al., 2021). In a study with a participant sample that had a mean age of 63, 88% reported moderate or high levels of loneliness (Fan et al., 2022). Loneliness is such a burgeoning problem today that worldwide, governments are taking action. For example, the United Kingdom has appointed a Minister for Loneliness, and Japan has created a cabinet-level position for a similar Minister of Loneliness (Steptoe, 2023). Additionally, in 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General issued an advisory on the “Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation.” It is against this timely backdrop that the zeitgeist appears well suited for a comprehensive examination of what we know about loneliness.