One

INTRODUCTION

1. Philosophical Psychology and Anthropology

The philosophical component of this study adduces the reflections of such luminaries as Nicolai Berdyaev, Martin Buber, Karl Jaspers, Louis Lavelle, Emmanuel Mounier, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Max Scheler all of whom can be regarded as primarily philosophical anthropologists in fact if not in name. Also summoned for his thought is Friedrich Nietzsche who, along with Søren Kierkegaard, is ordinarily adjudicated to be the most influential proximate precursor of existentialism, which is essentially philosophical anthropology in composition. Existentialism, especially as delineated by Sartre, emphasizes that loneliness is intrinsic to what he calls human reality. In conjunction with Sartre, Nietzsche will assume the primary place in this study. He embodies an exceedingly complex and controversial personali- ty. Some reckon Nietzsche as being highly abnormal in that he was allegedly neurotic, even psychotic. Others see him as supranormal, and still others as si- multaneously an inferior and superior personality. Whatever Nietzsche was in fact, he is not generally regarded as normal in the sense of statistically average. Nietzsche’s personality and his variegated notions of it are largely aligned with his views on aloneness, especially the negative sort, which is loneliness, and the positive kind, which is solitude, both of which he lived to the extreme. I will frequently refer to the philosopher’s life and works to ex- emplify states of personality, aloneness, and their interconnection. The psychological side of this study features such notables as Ludwig Binswanger, Viktor Frankl, Erich Fromm, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, Karen Horney, Carl Gustav Jung, R. D. Laing, Abraham Maslow, Rollo May, and Anthony Storr. Most if not all of these psychologists or psychiatrists, as the case may be, were cognizant of many of the predominant philosophical un- derpinnings and implications of their thought. Philosophical anthropology is relevant to the descriptive and prescrip- tive domains of personality, or to what persons are de facto and what they value and aspire to be de jure. This investigation of the human situation in- volves axiology, the philosophical discipline that examines the composition, classification, and criteria of values, chiefly those of ethics. Consequently, these volumes contain what might be designated as the psychology of ethics and even more, the ethics of psychology. Besides axiology and most specifically ethics, the series emphasizes two other traditional basic branches of philosophy. One is metaphysics, which is definable as the inspection of the nature, kinds, hallmarks, and causes of be- 2 INTIMACY AND ISOLATION ing (reality) as such. So understood, metaphysics is not only the most rudi- mentary and universal of philosophical but of all academic subjects. The oth- er is epistemology, which analyzes the nature of the mind, or consciousness, and its species, characteristics, functions, validity, and reliability. Like axiology, metaphysics and epistemology are brought to the fore in the present analysis, principally in terms of their relationship to philosophical anthropology. These disciplines, in turn, are visualized predominantly from the perspective of philosophical personalism. This doctrine is definable as an inquiry into the nature of the person, especially in terms of its special onto- logical status and its singular significance, nobility, and inviolability. Perso- nalism also endorses solicitude for the nonpersonal world and nature as a whole such that it is inherently allied to environmentalism and ecologism. Personalism stresses that the query into personality is the pivotal point of departure for philosophizing itself and the key to understanding reality as a whole. Since this series is foremost a foray into the exploration of the notion and species of personality in the context of states of aloneness, it is patently fitting to call upon personalism as the centerpiece of the analysis. The study of personality—primarily in terms of relatedness, or together- ness, and, contrastingly, aloneness—greatly benefits in its theoretic and the- rapeutic spheres from having no academic barriers that prevent a synthetic approach to these phenomena. To acquire this more global grasp of the sub- ject matter, I have turned to fields beyond philosophy and psychology, such as literature and theology. In conformance with this integrative procedure, I have adhered to the advice of those such as St. Thomas Aquinas, who exhort us to take what is true and relevant from whatever source, however plebian and undistinguished it might be from a scholarly or sapiential slant. Hence, reference is made herein not only to learned articles and treatises but also to reports and sur- veys, including those presented in the various media. Given its psychological component, the undertaking also avails itself of clinicians’ observations and patients’ self-reports, structured and unstructured, over and above research findings pertinent to states of personality and aloneness. The overriding objective of this project is to provide a comprehensive conceptual framework embedded in experience with reference to diverse types of personality and aloneness, primarily in concert with one another. Accordingly, this volume and the study as a whole seek to avoid being but a scaffolding of purely theoretical abstractions and an assortment of a priori argumentations concerning its subjects. To this end, the present endeavor consists in a social, political, economic, and cultural critique mostly with re- spect to those phenomena that are conducive to predisposing, precipitating, and prolonging negative states of personality and separateness/separation.