Scales: depth of loneliness
Purpose of the test
Diagnosis of the depth of experiencing loneliness
Instructions for the test
You are offered 12 questions and 4 answers to them. Choose the one that best matches your idea of yourself.
Test
| № | Questions | Answer options | |||
| always | often | sometimes | never | ||
| 1 |
Does it happen that you do not find understanding among relatives (friends)? |
||||
| 2 |
Do you ever think that no one really needs you? |
||||
| 3 |
Do you ever have a feeling of being abandoned, abandoned in the world? |
||||
| 4 |
Are you experiencing a lack of companionship? |
||||
| 5 |
Do you ever have a feeling of acute longing for something irretrievably gone, lost forever? |
||||
| 6 | Do you feel overwhelmed by superficial social contacts that do not allow for true human communication? | ||||
| 7 | Do you feel that you are dependent on other people? | ||||
| 8 | Are you now able to truly empathize with the grief of another person? | ||||
| 9 |
Can you express your empathy, understanding, sympathy to a person? |
||||
| 10 |
Does it happen that the success or luck of another person makes you feel hurt, sorry for your own failures? |
||||
| 11 | Do you show your independence in solving difficult life situations? | ||||
| 12 | Do you feel in yourself a sufficient reserve of opportunities in order to independently solve life problems? | ||||
Processing and interpretation of test results
This questionnaire is processed quite simply. The following points are assigned to the answers of the subject: always - 4, often - 3, sometimes - 2, never - 1.
The key to measuring the severity of loneliness is this:
12-16 points - a person is not experiencing loneliness now;
17-27 points - shallow experience of possible loneliness;
28-38 - deep experience of actual loneliness;
39-48 - a very deep experience of loneliness, immersion in this state.
Sources
Korchagina S.G. Psychology of loneliness: tutorial. – M.: MPSI, 2008.The test is aimed at determining the depth of the experience of loneliness and its type (diffuse, alienating, dissociated).
Instruction.“You are offered 30 questions or statements and two possible answers to them (yes or no). Choose the one that best matches your idea of yourself.
1. Do you think that no one really knows you?
2. Are you experiencing Lately lack of friendship?
3. Do you think that relatives and friends are not very worried about you?
4. Do you have the idea that no one really needs you (can they easily cope without you)?
5. Are you afraid of appearing intrusive with your revelations?
6. Do you think that your death will not bring much suffering to your relatives and friends?
7. Are there people in your life with whom you feel like "their"?
8. Do you sometimes have opposite feelings towards the same person?
9. Are your feelings sometimes extreme?
10. Do you ever have the feeling that you are “not of this world”, everything is different for you, like for others?
11. Are you more interested in your friends than they are in you?
12. Do you feel like you give more to people than you get from them?
13. Do you have the mental strength to truly deeply empathize with another person?
14. Do you find the means to fully express your empathy for the sufferer?
15. Do you experience (longing, regret, pain, repentance) about something that has gone forever?
16. Do you notice that people avoid you for some reason?
17. Do you find it difficult to forgive yourself for weakness, mistake, oversight?
18. Would you like to change yourself somehow?
19. Do you consider it necessary to change something in your life?
20. Do you feel a sufficient reserve of strength to independently change your life for the better?
21. Do you feel overloaded with superficial social contacts?
22. Do you feel that other people understand that you are different from them and in general “foreign”?
23. Does your mood, state depend on the mood, state, behavior of other people?
24. Do you like to be alone with yourself?
25. When you feel that someone does not like you, do you seek to change your opinion about yourself?
26. Do you strive to ensure that everyone always understands you correctly?
27. Do you think that you know your habits, features, inclinations well?
28. Does it happen that you surprise yourself with an unexpected act (reaction, word)?
29. Does it happen that you cannot establish a relationship that suits you?
30. Have you ever felt completely accepted, understood?
Results processing and interpretation
Processing is done in accordance with the key, a simple summation of points.
People who are experiencing diffuse loneliness, distinguishes suspicion in interpersonal relationships and a combination of conflicting personal and behavioral characteristics: resistance and adaptation in conflicts; the presence of all levels of empathy; excitability, anxiety and emotivity of character, communicative orientation. In many ways, this contradiction is explained by the identification of a person with different objects (people), which naturally have different psychological features. In a state of acute experience of diffuse loneliness, a person strives for other people, hoping to find confirmation of his own existence, his significance in communication with them. This fails, because a person does not communicate in the proper sense, does not share his own, does not exchange, but only tries on the guise of another, that is, he is identified with him, becoming, as it were, a living mirror. Such people react very sharply to stress, choosing a strategy for seeking sympathy and support. Intuitively anticipating his true, existential loneliness, a person experiences tremendous fear. He tries to "escape" from this horror to people and chooses the strategy of interaction with them, which, in his opinion, will provide him with at least a temporary acceptance - identification. He demonstrates absolute agreement with the opinions, principles, morals, interests of the one with whom he communicates. In fact, a person begins to live by the mental resources of the object of identification, that is, to exist at the expense of another. Striving for true human communication, he acts in such a way that he does not leave himself the slightest chance to fulfill this desire. The consequence of this, of course, is the most severe experience of loneliness, filled with fear, disappointment and a sense of the meaninglessness of one's existence. With successful treatment of this condition, the personal characteristics of clients change towards harmonization and consistency. Loneliness is manifested in excitability, anxiety, cyclothymic nature, low empathy, confrontation in conflicts, a pronounced inability to cooperate, suspicion and dependence in interpersonal relationships.
The next kind of loneliness dissociated- represents the most complex state both in terms of experiences, and in terms of origin and manifestations. Its genesis is determined by pronounced processes of identification and alienation and their abrupt change in relation even to the same people. First, a person identifies himself with another, accepting his way of life and following it, infinitely trusting "as himself." It is this “as oneself” that forms the basis for understanding the psychological genesis of this state. After complete identification, a sharp alienation from the same object follows, which reflects the true attitude of a person towards himself. Some aspects of his personality are accepted by a person, others are categorically rejected. As soon as the projection of these rejected qualities is reflected in the object of identification, the latter is immediately rejected in its entirety, that is, a sharp and unconditional alienation occurs. The feeling of loneliness at the same time is acute, clear, conscious, painful.
dissociated loneliness expressed in anxiety, excitability and demonstrative character, confrontation in conflicts, personal orientation, a combination of high and low empathy (in the absence of an average level), selfishness and subordination in interpersonal relationships, which, of course, are opposite tendencies.
Loneliness, and its kind.
Instructions for the testYou are offered 30 questions or statements and 2 possible answers to them (yes or no), choose the one that best matches your idea of yourself.
Test- Do you think that no one really knows you?
- Have you experienced a lack of companionship lately?
- Do you think that relatives and friends are not very worried about you?
- Do you feel like no one really needs you? (can they easily manage without you)?
- Are you afraid of appearing intrusive with your revelations?
- Do you think that your death will not bring much suffering to your relatives and friends?
- Are there people in your life with whom you feel like "one of you"?
- Does it happen that you experience opposite feelings towards the same person?
- Are your feelings sometimes extreme?
- Do you ever have the feeling that you are “not of this world”, everything is different for you, like for others?
- Are you more interested in your friends than they are in you?
- Do you feel like you give more than you get from them?
- Do you have enough spiritual strength to truly deeply empathize with another person?
- Do you find means to fully express your empathy for the sufferer?
- Do you experience (longing, regret, pain, repentance) about something irretrievably gone?
- Do you notice that people avoid you for some reason?
- Is it difficult for you to forgive yourself for weakness, mistake, oversight?
- Would you like to change yourself in some way?
- Do you think it is necessary to change something in your life?
- Do you feel a sufficient reserve of strength to independently change yours for the better?
- Are you overwhelmed by superficial social contacts?
- Do you feel that other people understand that you are different from them and, in general, “alien”?
- Does your mood, state depend on the mood, state, behavior of other people?
- Do you like being alone with yourself?
- When you feel that someone does not like you, do you seek to change your opinion of yourself?
- Do you strive to ensure that everyone always understands you correctly?
- Do you think that you know your habits, features, inclinations well?
- Does it happen that you surprise yourself with an unexpected act (reaction, word)?
- Does it happen that you can not establish a relationship that suits you?
- Have you ever felt completely accepted, understood?
The state of loneliness (without defining the species):
- "+" 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 29, 22
- "-" 13, 14, 30, 24
People experiencing diffuse loneliness are distinguished by suspicion in interpersonal relationships and a combination of conflicting personal and behavioral characteristics: resistance and adaptation in conflicts; the presence of all levels of empathy; excitability, anxiety and emotivity of character, communicative orientation. In many ways, this contradiction is explained by identification with different objects (people), which naturally have different psychological characteristics. Recall that in a state of acute experience of diffuse loneliness, he strives for other people, hoping to find confirmation of his own existence, his significance in with them. This fails, because a person does not communicate in the proper sense, does not share his own, does not exchange, but only tries on the guise of another, that is, he is identified with him, becoming, as it were, a living mirror. Such people react very sharply to stress, choosing a strategy for seeking sympathy and support. Intuitively anticipating his true, existential loneliness, a person experiences tremendous fear. He tries to "escape" from this horror to people and chooses the strategy of interaction with them, which, in his opinion, will provide him with at least a temporary acceptance - identification. He demonstrates absolute agreement with the opinions, principles, morals, interests of the one with whom he communicates. In fact, a person begins to live by the mental resources of the object of identification, that is, to exist at the expense of another. Striving for true human communication, he acts in such a way that he does not leave himself the slightest chance to fulfill this desire. The consequence of this, of course, is the most severe experience of loneliness, filled with fear, disappointment and a sense of the meaninglessness of one's existence. With successful treatment of this condition, the personal characteristics of clients change towards harmonization and consistency.
Alienating loneliness is manifested in excitability, anxiety, cyclothymic character, low empathy, confrontation in conflicts, pronounced inability to cooperate, suspicion and dependence in interpersonal relationships. Let us briefly repeat the features of this state of loneliness.
The next type of loneliness - dissociated - is the most complex state, both in terms of experiences, and in terms of origin and manifestations. Its genesis is determined by pronounced processes of identification and alienation and their abrupt change in relation even to the same people. First, a person identifies himself with another, accepting his way of life and following it, infinitely trusting "as himself." It is this “as oneself” that forms the basis for understanding the psychological genesis of this state. After complete identification, a sharp alienation from the same object follows, which reflects the true attitude of a person towards himself. Some aspects of his personality are accepted by a person, others are categorically rejected. As soon as the projection of these rejected qualities is reflected in the object of identification, the latter is immediately rejected in its entirety, that is, a sharp and unconditional alienation occurs. The feeling of loneliness at the same time is acute, clear, conscious, painful.
Dissociated loneliness is expressed in anxiety, excitability and demonstrative nature, confrontation in conflicts, personal orientation, a combination of high and low empathy (in the absence of an average level), selfishness and subordination in interpersonal relationships, which, of course, are opposite tendencies.
A subjectively positive type of loneliness - controlled loneliness, or solitude, is a variant of experiencing psychological separation, one's own individuality, which is personally conditioned by the optimal ratio of the results of the processes of identification and isolation. This dynamic balance can be considered as one of the manifestations of the psychological stability of the individual in relation to the influences of society.
Korchagina S.G. Psychology of loneliness: a study guide. - M .: Moscow Psychological and Social Institute, 2008.
Views: 8959
Category: PSYCHODIAGNOSTIC TECHNIQUES » Personality diagnostics
Introduction……………………………………………………………………………...3
1 Theoretical analysis personality loneliness problems
1.1 The history of studying the problem of loneliness.………………………………….5
1.2 Studying the problem of loneliness in different schools……………………..10
1.3 Types and types of loneliness……………………………………………………...13
1.4 The problem of loneliness in youth……………………………………………...16
2 Overview empirical research loneliness problems
2.1 Review of dissertation research on the problem of loneliness …………...20
3.1 Method of subjective feeling of loneliness D. Russell and M. Ferguson……………………………………………………………………………..22
3.2 "Loneliness" questionnaire S.G. Korchagina…………………………………..22
3.3 Questionnaire for determining the type of loneliness S.G. Korchagin……………..22
Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………….26
List of used literature……………………………………………...27
Appendix A…………………………………………………………………………28
Introduction
“Loneliness is by no means a rarity, not some unusual case, on the contrary, it has always been and remains the main and inevitable test in a person’s life” (T. Wolf)
“To be able to endure loneliness and enjoy it is a great gift.” (Bernard Shaw)
How often do we try to avoid what, in essence, helps us to live. People have been trying for centuries to avoid loneliness or try to get used to it. Dissenting - cursed loneliness, resigned - did not notice, wise - enjoyed. Loneliness always exists, and therefore we need it. You can feel lonely both alone and in a crowd of people. The feeling of loneliness depends on the structure of the personality.
We live in a time when there are huge changes in lifestyle associated with changes in all areas of activity. These changes are global in nature, and Russian society today finds itself in a state called the "cultural gap": "the space between the end of something definite and the beginning of something unknown, marginal in its essence."
Such periods occur in every society. It was then that a person begins to realize his own uselessness and the impossibility of realizing his individual abilities. At the level of society, this is stagnation, a crisis; at the human level - the disintegration of higher values and social alienation.
In modern society, loneliness is generated by the loss of the meaning of human existence. “Too many objective factors have fallen on our impetuous age, and each individual person alone is simply not able to resist them. That is why we say that our time is a time of alienation and loneliness.
The problem of loneliness has always worried mankind, occupying the minds of philosophers, writers, and scientists. Recently, more and more new works have been devoted to the problem of loneliness, exploring the causes of loneliness, its essence, characteristic manifestations and influence on different categories of people in different periods of life. However, at present there is no consensus on what loneliness is: trouble or happiness, norm or pathology.
The degree of development of the problem. Western social science, which has been dealing with the problem of loneliness for several decades, has developed many approaches to its study. In the corpus of philosophical, psychological, sociological literature there are numerous scientific work on this issue. Most of them were published in the last decades of the 20th century, but most of them are small articles, often of a popular scientific nature, or fragmentary reviews.
Relevance of the study and problem statement.With a fairly frequent indication of loneliness as a mental phenomenon in domestic psychology, its theoretical and empirical studies are practically absent. The position that the health of society is the health of its members deserves to be studied in the context of a capacious, interdisciplinary category of loneliness. The manifestations and consequences of a person's subjective loneliness become especially topical and significant. The need to analyze the nature and essence of this state, the specifics of its experience and manifestation in life and activity is becoming more and more obvious.
Objective : the study of the features of experiencing loneliness in adolescence.
Work tasks:
- study this mental phenomenon;
- study the concept of loneliness in various schools;
- to study the typology and types of loneliness;
- to review empirical studies of the problem of loneliness in modern scientific literature.
1 Theoretical analysis of the state of loneliness of the individual
- The history of the study of the problem of loneliness
Loneliness as a mental state with a pronounced negative connotation has been known to mankind, at least since ancient times. In the history of philosophical and psychological thought, the understanding and explanation of the problem of loneliness is quite diverse: from admiration for it to Ancient East to rejection in Ancient Greece, from the awareness of the need for loneliness for self-knowledge of a person, his creative development before understanding it as the curse of humanity.
According to Plato, the path of friendship is the condition for achieving truth, goodness and beauty. Aristotle also in the "Nicomachean Ethics" devoted many pages to describing the virtues of friendship, while noting the importance of individual development. The ancient Greeks thought more about how to avoid loneliness, considering the most acceptable and optimal path of friendship.
For Plato and Aristotle, a person was unthinkable without a prosperous policy. The happiness of the individual took place only in the context of a rationally arranged society. It is only in the Alexandrian period that we find a man separated from his fellows. Man's self-sufficiency was no longer based on belonging to the polis. "From now on, the path to his salvation was to be revealed as a personal and thus a lonely path."
If the Epicureans still affirmed the dependence of a person on a few especially close people, then the skeptics rejected the very possibility of the duration and permanence of something, including the permanence of one's own "I".
With the development of Christianity, the need to compensate for feelings of disunity and abandonment also increased. Medieval man managed to find a means of getting rid of loneliness - it was an absolute essence with which you can always make contact, you can pray to her. But then severe suffering led a person to understand his detachment and separation even from God. Nevertheless, it should be especially noted that it was at that time that the positive aspects of loneliness in the personal development of a person, in clarifying his relationship with the world, had already been revealed.
With the completion of the medieval stage of development, a person begins to turn more and more not to the absolute and eternal God, but to the person himself, his universal essence (G.W. Hegel), the concept of generic essence (L. Feuerbach), the concept of class consciousness (K. Marx) . And “as soon as a person understands his true essential position and to the extent that he understands it, he becomes hopelessly lonely. Now, at his own discretion, he creates any relationship and allows any meaning that will only allow him to avoid his loneliness.
At the end of the Renaissance, starting with M. Montaigne, we note the focus on the personality of a person - the problem of his personal identity.
Then R. Descartes shows a more distinct awareness of his own subjectivity and metaphysical loneliness. Philosophy focuses on the problems of the relationship between the perceiving, self-conscious "I" and its knowledge of the external world and other consciousness, which found expression in the views of Leibniz, in his doctrine of monads.
A major step towards understanding loneliness as a mental phenomenon was made by Hegel. He proposed a theory about "two worlds of a spirit alienated from itself." Loneliness is presented as the loss of two relationships: connection with oneself and connection with the social world. The latter is a necessary condition for uniting a person with himself. A person must have a "home", both in the objective and subjective sense. The nature of loneliness consists in the self-love of the subjective spirit, its desire to affirm its own selfhood without its correlation with the activity of the objective world spirit - the absolute idea. As a result, the subjective spirit becomes entangled in its own contradictions, which give rise to an unhappy consciousness in a person.
The Danish theologian and philosopher Soren Kierkegaard considered loneliness as a closed world of inner self-consciousness, fundamentally not opened by anyone except God. The only interlocutor of a person lost in the world can be the image of God in himself.
Husserl's phenomenology gives an idea of consciousness as an endless stream of experiences, completely isolated from everything external and material. This is a recognition of the fundamental loneliness of man, eternal and inescapable.
In our work, we consider loneliness, first of all, in the European, Western tradition.
The inherent human protest against loneliness has become the general theme of many humanistic teachings that arose in the West in XX century. There are several stages in the study of the problem of experiencing loneliness. In foreign scientific research, interest in the problem of loneliness manifested itself in the 50-60s of the twentieth century. It was believed that the experience of loneliness is a sign of "commercial", "consumer" relations that develop in society. The first concepts were built on the basis of observations and theoretical studies. In the 60-80s of the twentieth century, several schemes were proposed that are still significant for foreign and domestic researchers of this problem (Weiss, 1973; Peplo and Perlman, 1980; Sandler and Johnson, 1980; Jones, 1981). In the 70-80s, the problem of loneliness appeared as a subject in socio-psychological theoretical and applied foreign studies. The phenomenon of loneliness has been studied as a condition identified with negative emotions, depression (Rubinstein and Shaver, 1979; Young, 1978), associated with social isolation, but not caused by it (Townsend, 1968; Johnson and Sandler, 1969). It has been found that loneliness has a number of characteristics: acuteness, limit and type of experience (Weiss, 1978; Perlman, Peplo, 1980; and others).
Representatives of various scientific schools and directions (cognitive, existential, sociological, psychodynamic, interactionist, etc.) indicate different causes and features of the course of loneliness. If researchers of the psychodynamic direction consider the negative experience of the early years of life as the cause of loneliness, then the humanistic concept of C. Rogers assigns the leading role to current influences in the process of socialization. The originality of the cognitive approach lies in the mixing of types of experiencing loneliness and the opposition of the actual and desired interaction of the subject.
In the studies of Jones, Freamon, Goswick (1981) and others, loneliness is considered as an interpersonal problem in the categories of "relationship to another", "closedness-openness", "lack of social skills", "trust" and others. Representations of Flanders (1982) expanded the phenomenology of loneliness: he included in the analysis of the state of loneliness the processes of adaptation and living strategies.
The existentialists A. Berdyaev, M. Buber, A. Camus, J.-P. Sartre, M. Heidegger, K. Jaspers paid the greatest attention to loneliness. The loneliness of a person is considered as a realization of the principle of a closed anthropological universe, according to which, the internal isolation of a person is the basis of any individual existence. Therefore, a person chooses loneliness when he does not find an emotional response in the course of communication with other people. According to the philosophy of J.-P. Sartre, a person's path to himself or "into himself" is always in conflict and is associated with the awareness of loneliness as an existential situation of human existence in the world.
In the work of the French essayist and philosopher A. Camus, who comes from a firm conviction in the absurdity of human existence, the ancient myth of Sisyphus is called the symbol of the "human condition". From the point of view of Camus, the boundless loneliness of Sisyphus becomes a confirmation of his strength and inner freedom.
F. Nietzsche, and then E. Fromm continued the idea of I. Kant that loneliness can come from the fall of moral standards. E. Fromm called the cultivation of unreasonable needs the cause of loneliness.
K. Horney considered loneliness to be a consequence of the negative manifestation of the ideology of market relations, the competitiveness of man with man.
V. Frankl believed that a person falls into a state of loneliness having lost certain values and the meaning of life.
D. Rismen and O. Toffler saw the cause of loneliness in the acceleration of the pace of life in the conditions of the scientific and technological revolution, when a person remains "alone in the crowd" .
We can assume that loneliness as an objective psychological problem of our time does not lose its relevance. For example, N.E. Pokrovsky calls it the “plague of the 20th century”, which requires serious reflection, theoretical and experimental scientific research.
In the last decade of the last century, interest in the problem of loneliness has increased again. Among contemporary works we can highlight the scientific comments of André (1991), which affirm a positive meaning in the nature of the experience of loneliness; a study by Rokach and Brock (1996) identifying coping strategies and loneliness factors.
In the domestic literature, the analysis of isolation, loneliness, alienation concerned the problem of mental state in extreme conditions (O.A. Kuznetsov, V.I. Lebedev, B.F. Lomov, V.N. Myasishchev, N.Yu. Khryashcheva, S.T. .Yurskikh and others), the problems of the consequences of divorces and losses, the negative results of the interaction of subjects (A.V. Gozman., G.S. Gurko, L.A. Korostyleva and others), the inability to find an emotional response (K.A. Abulkhanova-Slavskaya, E.I. Golovakha, A.G. Kovalev, I.S. Kon, B.D. Parygin, etc.), etc. Fundamental methodological principles concepts of domestic psychology: about the essence of personality and its psychological structure (B.G. Ananiev, A.N. Leontiev, S.L. Rubinshtein, G.M. Andreeva, A.V. Petrovsky, K.K. Platonov), about systemic, interfunctional organization of the human psyche and consciousness (L.S. Vygotsky), ideas about the psychological stability of the personality (E.P. Krupnik), about the dynamics of the personality as the interaction of basic psychodynamic tendencies: identification and isolation. In recent years, in domestic science, the phenomenon of loneliness was represented in the philosophical (I.M. Achildiev, L.I. Starovoitova), philosophical and sociological (G.M. Tikhonov, Zh.V. Puzanova), sociological (Yu.M. S.V. Kurtian) directions. It is important to note the socio-psychological research of Yu.M. Shvalba, O.V. Dancheva, psychological and pedagogical - O.B. Dolginova
Having studied these studies, we can conclude that the phenomenology of loneliness is not sufficiently developed in domestic science. Loneliness as a complex, mental phenomenon is the object of various humanities: sociology, classical social philosophy and psychology. However, in domestic psychology, with the exception of the dissertation research by Dolginova O.B. while there are no special works devoted to loneliness. Its essence, psychological nature, genesis have not been studied, its place in the system of classification of mental phenomena has not been determined. It can be said that domestic psychological science as if not noticing this phenomenon. This is probably why the approaches to the study of loneliness presented in world psychology are associated with the names of foreign scientists who, in the outgoing twentieth century, studied this extremely relevant phenomenon in various aspects. Of course, in the Soviet period of the formation and development of psychology, some scientists saw a threat to a person in an acute experience of a feeling of loneliness. Here, for example, are the words of one of the classics of psychology, B. G. Ananiev: “As cities and mass communications grow enormously ... the loneliness of a person increases, the conflict between a person as a subject of communication and his impersonality in the sphere of communication intensifies ...” .
With a fairly frequent indication of loneliness as a mental phenomenon in domestic psychology, its theoretical and empirical studies are practically absent. The position that the health of society is the health of its members deserves to be studied in the context of a capacious, interdisciplinary category of loneliness. In the protracted conditions of socio-economic instability characteristic of our country, the manifestations and consequences of a person's subjective loneliness become especially topical and significant. The need to analyze the nature and essence of this state, the specifics of its experience and manifestation in life and activity is becoming more and more obvious.
One cannot but agree with Dolginova O.B. that when using in the description or analysis of personal manifestations of such terms as “loneliness”, “feeling of loneliness”, “state of loneliness”, “need for loneliness”, “isolation”, “solitude” , etc., unreasonably broad conceptual transfers are used. For example, the great work of O.N. Kuznetsov and V.I. Lebedev, “Psychology and psychopathology of loneliness”, which undoubtedly has scientific value, has little to do with loneliness itself. Most likely, the authors use the term "loneliness" as a substitute for the concept of sensory deprivation. It is undeniable that these two psychic phenomena require further scientific research and clear separation.
I.S.Kon, as well as R.S.Nemov, considering the psychology of adolescence, describe some of the reactions of the individual and her environment to loneliness, make an attempt to determine the causes of this condition. Apparently, these scientists did not set themselves the task of considering loneliness as a mental phenomenon, to investigate its psychological nature, since they do not even give it a definition.
In the work of Yu.M. Shvabl and O.V. Dancheva, in our opinion, the concepts of “loneliness” are replaced by “solitude” and “isolation”, which leads to irreplaceable conceptual and actually psychological losses. V.A.Andrusenko also calls loneliness isolation from people, the world as a whole, but offers the category of "spiritual loneliness as a necessary stage in determining the possibilities of one's "I".
An analysis of the scientific literature shows that no work has yet been written that would give a holistic description of the state of loneliness as a psychological and pedagogical problem. The complexity of building a scientific theory of loneliness lies in the fact that, on the one hand, it is a global, essential, socially conditioned phenomenon with insufficiently clear criteria signs, on the other hand, it is a fact of a complex mental experience that goes into the depths of individual consciousness (reflection, intimacy , subjectivity, etc.)
1.2 Exploring loneliness in different schools
In the psychoanalytic approach, Zilburg distinguished between loneliness and solitude. He considered solitude to be the essence of a “normal” and “transitory frame of mind” resulting from the absence of a specific “someone”. Loneliness is an irresistible, unpleasant (it corrodes the heart like a “worm”), a constant feeling. Zilburg believes that the causes of loneliness are such personality traits as megalomania, narcissism and hostility, as well as the desire to maintain an infantile sense of one's own omnipotence. Such a narcissistic orientation begins to form in childhood, when the child, along with a sense of joy to be loved, experiences the shock caused by the fact that he is a small, weak creature, forced to wait for the satisfaction of his needs from others.
Fromm-Reichmann, in highlighting the causes of loneliness, emphasizes the detrimental consequences of prematurely weaning a child from maternal caress.
The person-centered approach of K. Rogers differs from the psychoanalytic one in that he pays little attention to early childhood memories, believing that loneliness is caused by current influences that a person experiences.
According to Rogers, loneliness is a manifestation of a person's weak adaptability, and its cause is a phenomenological discrepancy between the individual's ideas about his own "I". The process of loneliness can be divided into 3 stages:
- Society influences a person, forcing him to behave in accordance with socially justified patterns that limit freedom of action.
- Because of this, contradictions arise between the inner true "I" of the individual and the manifestations of his "I" in relations with other people, which leads to the loss of the meaning of existence.
- The individual becomes lonely when, having removed the protective barriers on the way to his own "I", he nevertheless thinks that he will be denied contact by others.
And here a vicious circle turns out: a person, believing that his true "I" is rejected by others, closes in his loneliness and, in order not to be rejected, continues to adhere to his social restrictions, which leads to emptiness. Thus, in loneliness, a discrepancy between the real and the idealized "I" is manifested.
In the socio-psychological approach, in contrast to psychoanalysis and the Rogerian approach, where the cause of loneliness is the person himself, some representatives social psychology blame society for the emergence of loneliness. So Bowman identified several factors contributing to the increase in loneliness in modern society: the weakening of ties in the primary group; increasing family and social mobility.
Riesman believes that one of the main causes of loneliness is the orientation towards others. People with this orientation want to be liked, constantly adapt to circumstances, and are detached from their true selves, their feelings, and their expectations. This leads to the fact that such a person can acquire a "syndrome of concern" and dependence on the attention of others around him from other people. And this need can never be satisfied. Riesman characterizes American society as "outward directed" and writes that its members form "a lonely crowd."
Slater calls modern society individualistic. Due to the fact that it is impossible to achieve the satisfaction of the need for communication, belonging and dependence in it, a person develops loneliness.
In the interactionist approach, Weiss identified two types of loneliness: social and emotional. Social loneliness is the result of a lack of meaningful friendships or a sense of community, which can be expressed in anguish and feelings of social marginality. Emotional is the result of the absence of such a close intimate attachment as love or marriage. At the same time, a person may experience a feeling similar to "anxiety of an abandoned child."
In the cognitive approach, L. E. Peplo believes that loneliness arises in the event of awareness of the dissonance between the desired and achieved level of one's own social contacts.
Existential psychology is closely related to existential philosophy. The first attempts to directly transfer the ideas of the philosophy of existentialism into psychological and psychotherapeutic practice (L. Binswanger and M. Boss) gave very limited results. A number of existentially thinking philosophers (M. Buber, P. Tillich, M. Bakhtin, etc.) had a great and direct influence on psychologists, but the tops of existential psychology today are general psychological theories and methodological foundations of psychological practice, developed on the basis of the philosophy of existentialism such by authors such as W. Frankl, R. May, D. Bugental.
In existential psychology, there is a basic conflict caused by the confrontation of the individual with the givens of existence. Under the given existences, here they understand certain final factors that are an integral, inevitable component of a person's being in the world. Loneliness or, to be more precise, isolation is one such given. Summarizing everything that has been said earlier, we can say that, unlike psychoanalysis and person-centered therapy, existentialists, firstly, do not consider this feeling pathological, and, secondly, they see its causes in the conditions of human existence.
One of the representatives of this trend, I. Yalom, considering isolation as one of the givens of existence, notes that it is not isolation from people with the loneliness generated by it and not internal isolation (from a part of one's own personality). This is a fundamental isolation - both from other creatures ("the gap between self and others") and from the world ("separation between the individual and the world"). Thus, he distinguishes two types of isolation: existential and fundamental.
In his work "Existential Psychotherapy", he considers several paths leading to the realization of existential isolation - a confrontation with death and freedom. Knowledge of the finiteness of one's own being makes a person understand that no one can die together with someone or instead of someone. Freedom, understood here as taking responsibility for your life, implies your own "authorship" of life, the acceptance of the fact that no one else creates and protects you. Individual experiences of defamiliarization also lead to existential isolation - states in which the veils of reality are torn off the world constituted by us, and symbols are “bursted out” from objects. And then the person loses the feeling of comfort, belonging to something familiar.
Speaking about the connection between growth and isolation, Yalom gives a definition of Rank, who believed that the process of growth is closely related to separation, transformation into a separate being (growth implies autonomy, individuation, independence and self-control). However, a person pays for the separation with isolation.
A person, writes Yalom, has two ways of protecting himself from the "horror of final isolation" - partial acceptance of this given and relation. Although relationships cannot destroy isolation, they help to share loneliness with other people and then "love compensates for the pain of isolation." This is in tune with M. Buber, who believed that “great relationships break through the barriers of sublime solitude, softening its harsh law and throwing a bridge from one independent being to another across the abyss of fear of the universe.”
Without accepting his isolation, without meeting it steadfastly, a person cannot turn to others with love. Caught in the sea of existence, experiencing the horror of loneliness and striving to get out of it as quickly as possible, we not only move away from others, but also “hit others” so as not to drown. In this situation, we cannot relate to others, perceiving them the same as we are - frightened, lonely, constituting the world from things. The other becomes "it" for us and, being placed inside our own world, becomes a means for denying isolation. Running further and further away from awareness of the givens of existence, a person builds relationships that give "products" (eg merger, power, greatness) that help deny isolation.
K. Mustakas, another representative of the existential direction in psychology, shares the "vanity of loneliness" and true loneliness (in this his position is similar to the view of loneliness in some Eastern religions). He defines the first as a complex of defense mechanisms that removes a person from solving essential life issues by carrying out “activity for the sake of activity” together with other people. True loneliness comes from the awareness of the "reality of a lonely existence." Like Yalom, he believes that this awareness can be facilitated by encounters with borderline life situations (birth, death, life changes, tragedy) that a person experiences alone.
Considering the characteristics of people who avoid the awareness of loneliness as a given of being, Kaiser identified three tendencies that are characteristic of clients with existential neurosis:
1 "Alloy" - the desire to lose one's own personality, the desire to merge with another, because the desire to be an individual is linked to the courage to be alone, and loneliness is often unbearable for the individual.
2 "Universal symptom" - a merger that has taken place, an attempt to merge (or its illusion) with another and the feeling of duality experienced during this.
3 "Universal conflict" is an unwelcome feeling of loneliness experienced as suffering.
These tendencies allow the client to avoid experiencing feelings of loneliness. The neurotic does everything to get away from loneliness, while the authentic person accepts the state of loneliness as the authenticity of human existence, as the possibility of free formation and self-realization, as the fullness of responsibility for oneself.
In fact, Sartre writes about the same thing: “Man exists only insofar as he realizes himself. He is, therefore, nothing more than the totality of his actions, nothing more than his own life.
Relationships are a means to help share loneliness.
1.3 Types and types of loneliness
According to the results of the study by D. Raadschelders, three types of lonely people were identified.
The first type is “hopelessly lonely”, people who are completely dissatisfied with their relationships. These people did not have a sexual partner or spouse.
They rarely connected with anyone (for example, with neighbors). They have a strong sense of dissatisfaction with their relationships with peers, abandonment, emptiness. They, more than others, tend to blame other people for their loneliness.
The second type is "periodically and temporarily lonely." They are sufficiently connected with their friends, acquaintances, although they lack close affection or are not married. They are more likely than others to enter into social contacts in various places. Compared to other singles, they are the most socially active. These people consider their loneliness to be transient, they feel abandoned much less often than other lonely people.
The third type is “passive and persistently lonely”. Despite the fact that they lack an intimate partner and lack other connections, they do not express such dissatisfaction about this as the respondents belonging to the first and second types. These are people who have come to terms with their situation, accepting it as inevitable.
W. Kolbel distinguishes 4 types of loneliness:
1. A positive inner type of loneliness or "proud" loneliness, considered by an individual as a way to discover new forms of freedom, models of communication with other people.
2. A negative internal type of loneliness, subjectively experienced as alienation from one's own Self and other people, persisting even in the environment of other people.
3. A positive external type of loneliness that occurs in a situation of physical solitude, but at the same time the search for a new positive experience is actively carried out.
4. A negative external type of loneliness that occurs with the loss of familiar and close communication partners (for example, the death of loved ones, friends).
Thus, it is useful to distinguish between several types of loneliness. The experience of loneliness is not the same in different social groups, and it is most pronounced in widowed and divorced people. The least prone to loneliness, according to the results of a study by D. Raadshelders, are people who are married. According to S. Johnson, loneliness is a form of self-consciousness, which indicates a break in the main network of relationships and connections that make up the life world of the individual. On this basis, the following types of loneliness are distinguished: cosmic, associated with a sense of the uniqueness of one's destiny, is the most difficult experience; cultural, associated with traditions, culture, for example, the experiences of migrants; social, connected with the environment and manifested in isolation, exile, ostracism; interpersonal - the most manifested, associated with the upbringing of a person with whom a “I - you” relationship is established, which can develop into “we” (for example, a former convict).
There are two types of loneliness:
Situational loneliness is a sometimes experienced feeling of loneliness that most men and women experience from time to time. Situational loneliness may be the result of the collapse of the existing model of interpersonal relationships.
Chronic loneliness is a consequence of a person's long-term inability to establish relationships with women and men.
Chronically lonely people can benefit most from their condition by developing immunity to social anxieties and developing social communication and interaction skills.
There is another opinion where loneliness is divided into three types: chronic, situational and transient.
Chronic loneliness occurs when an individual cannot establish satisfactory relationships with significant people for a long period of life.
Situational loneliness usually appears as a result of some stressful event in a person's life, such as death. loved one. After a short time of distress, the situationally lonely individual comes to terms with his loss and partially or completely overcomes the feeling of loneliness that has arisen.
Transient loneliness expresses feelings of loneliness in short-term bouts of loneliness, which completely and without a trace pass, leaving no traces behind.
The loss of a parent through divorce or a lack of emotional closeness, trust, and parental support during childhood can make an individual more sensitive to loneliness in adulthood. An emotional wound received in childhood turns into a characterological personal vulnerability of an adult and persists for a long time, sometimes for a lifetime, forcing such people to react more sharply than others to separation and social isolation.
S.G. Korchagina distinguishes 3 types of loneliness: diffuse, alienating and dissociated.
People experiencing diffuse loneliness are distinguished by suspicion in interpersonal relationships and a combination of conflicting personal and behavioral characteristics: resistance and adaptation in conflicts; the presence of all levels of empathy; excitability, anxiety and emotivity of character, communicative orientation. In many ways, this contradiction is explained by the identification of a person with different objects (people), which naturally have different psychological characteristics. Such people react very sharply to stress, choosing a strategy for seeking sympathy and support. Intuitively anticipating his true, existential loneliness, a person experiences tremendous fear. He tries to "escape" from this horror to people and chooses the strategy of interaction with them, which, in his opinion, will provide him with at least a temporary acceptance - identification. He demonstrates absolute agreement with the opinions, principles, morals, interests of the one with whom he communicates.
Alienating loneliness is manifested in excitability, anxiety, cyclothymic character, low empathy, confrontation in conflicts, pronounced inability to cooperate, suspicion and dependence in interpersonal relationships.
The next type of loneliness - dissociated - is the most complex state, both in terms of experiences, and in terms of origin and manifestations. Its genesis is determined by pronounced processes of identification and alienation and their abrupt change in relation even to the same people.
1.4 The problem of loneliness in youth
“The period of the emergence of the conscious “I,” writes I.S. Kon, “no matter how gradually its individual components are formed, adolescence and youthful age has long been considered.” The development of self-awareness is central mental process transitional age. Almost all domestic psychologists call this age the "critical period of the formation of self-awareness."
Early adolescence is the second stage of a phase of a person's life, called growing up or transitional age, the content of which is the transition from childhood to adulthood. In connection with the phenomenon of acceleration (accelerated physical development of children), the boundaries of adolescence have shifted downward and at present this period of development covers approximately the age from 10-11 to 14-15 years. Accordingly, youth begins earlier. Early adolescence (15-17 years) is only the beginning of this complex stage of development, which ends at about 20-21 years of age.
The development of self-awareness in adolescence and early adolescence is so vivid and obvious that its characteristics and assessment of the significance for the formation of personality during these periods are practically the same among researchers from different schools and directions. The authors are quite unanimous in describing how the process of development of self-consciousness proceeds during this period: at about 11 years old, a teenager develops an interest in his own inner world, then a gradual complication and deepening of self-knowledge is noted, at the same time, its differentiation and generalization increase, which leads to early youthfulness. age (15-16 years) to the formation of a relatively stable idea of oneself, I - concepts; by the age of 16-17, a special personality neoplasm appears, which in the psychological literature is denoted by the term "self-determination".
The growth of self-awareness and interest in one's own "I" in adolescents follows directly from the processes of puberty, physical development, which is both social symbols, signs of growing up and maturity, which are paid attention and closely watched by others, adults and peers. The contradictory position of a teenager and a young man, a change in the structure of his social roles and the level of claims - these factors actualize the question: "Who am I?"
The posing of this question is a natural result of the entire previous development of the psyche. The growth of independence means nothing more than a transition from a system of external control to self-government. But any self-management requires information about the object. In self-management, this should be the object's information about itself, i.e. self-awareness.
The most valuable psychological acquisition of early youth is the discovery of one's inner world. For a child, the only conscious reality is the external world, where he projects his fantasy as well. While fully aware of his actions, the child is usually not yet aware of his own mental states. On the contrary, for a teenager and a young man, external, physical world only one of the possibilities of subjective experience, the focus of which is itself. Gaining the ability to immerse himself in and enjoy his experiences, the teenager discovers the whole world new feelings, the beauty of nature, the sounds of music, the feeling of one's own body. A young man of 14-15 years old begins to perceive and comprehend his emotions no longer as derivatives of some external events, but as a state of his own "I". Youth is especially sensitive to "internal", psychological problems. The older the teenager in terms of development, the more he is concerned about the psychological content of the ongoing action, reality, and the less the “external” event context means to him.
The discovery of one's inner world is a very important, joyful and exciting event, but it also causes a lot of disturbing and dramatic experiences. Together with the consciousness of one's uniqueness, uniqueness, unlikeness to others, a feeling of loneliness comes. Until adolescence, their differences from others attracted the attention of the child only in exceptional, conflicting circumstances. His "I" is practically reduced to the sum of his identifications with various significant other people. In adolescents and young men, the situation changes. Orientation at the same time to several significant others makes his psychological situation uncertain, internally conflicting. The unconscious desire to get rid of previous identifications activates the feeling of one's own peculiarity, dissimilarity to others, which causes a feeling of loneliness or fear of loneliness, which is very characteristic of early youth.
The state of loneliness during this period is associated with the actualization of the expanding social needs inherent in adolescence. Among them: the need to establish meaningful interpersonal relationships; the need to expand friendships, to get to know people of different social orientations and social experience; the need for belonging, recognition and familiarity with different social experiences, the desire to be accepted by different social groups. I.S. Kohn wrote that in adolescence, ideas about the content of such concepts as loneliness and solitude change. Children usually interpret them as something the physical state(“there is no one around”), adolescents fill these words with psychological content, attributing to them not only a negative, but also a positive meaning. It turned out that from adolescence to adolescence, the number of positive judgments increases, while negative ones decrease. If a teenager is afraid to be alone, then a young man appreciates solitude.
However, in addition to calm, peaceful solitude, there is painful and intense loneliness - melancholy, a subjective state of spiritual and mental isolation, incomprehensibility, a feeling of an unsatisfied need for communication, human closeness.
As the data of foreign mass surveys (T. Brenan, 1980; E. Ostrov and D. Offer, 1980) and clinical studies show, adolescents and young men feel lonely and misunderstood much more often than older people. The feeling of loneliness and restlessness associated with age-related difficulties in the formation of a personality gives rise to an insatiable thirst in adolescents for communication with peers, in whose society they find or hope to find what adults deny them: spontaneity, emotional warmth, salvation from boredom and recognition of their own significance. The intense need for communication turns for many guys into an invincible herd feeling: they cannot not only spend a day, but even an hour outside their company, and if they don’t have their own, any other.
With the similarity of external contours social behavior the underlying motives behind the youthful need for affiliation are individual and varied. One seeks reinforcement of self-respect, recognition of his human value in the society of his peers. Another important sense of emotional belonging, unity with the group. The third draws the missing information and communication skills in the company of peers. The fourth satisfies the need to rule, to command. For the most part, these motives are intertwined and are not recognized. A typical feature of adolescents and youth groups is extremely high conformity (compliance with some recognized or required standard). Fiercely defending their independence from their elders, adolescents are often completely uncritical about the opinions of members of their own group and its leaders. The weak “I” needs a strong “We”, which, in turn, is affirmed as opposed to some “They”.
The passionate desire to be “like everyone else” (and “everyone” is exclusively “ours”) extends to clothing, aesthetic tastes, and behavioral style.
Such a contradiction - when individuality is affirmed through uniformity - can disturb young men. Nevertheless, this uniformity is carefully maintained, and those who dare to challenge it must endure a hard struggle. The more primitive the community, the more intolerant it is of individual differences, dissent, and otherness in general.
Based on the foregoing, we can conclude that each person is prone to loneliness. However, since we are all different, it also has an individual character. Naturally, the classification used in the work is conditional. However, it helps to understand what loneliness can entail and how to overcome it. And yet, this problem is far from being solved, there are still many unresolved issues, paths not found. But, nevertheless, the main conclusion from this work can be that although the loneliness of different social groups is different, it must always be treated with due understanding, because there is no person more unhappy than a person living alone. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule, and there are people who are quite happy in their loneliness, using it to their advantage. Sometimes it helps to discover some completely unexpected talents in oneself. However, do not forget that exceptions to the rules most often only confirm these rules.
2 Review of empirical research on loneliness in the current scientific literature
2.1 Overview of dissertation research on the problem of loneliness
In the work of Tikhonov G.M. "The phenomenon of loneliness: the experience of philosophical and sociological analysis" a philosophical and sociological analysis of the category of loneliness is carried out, the meaningfulness of loneliness as an important and internally contradictory component spiritual world person.
In the work of Puzanova Zh.V. "Loneliness: the experience of socio-philosophical analysis" is given critical analysis various conceptual and methodological approaches to the study of the problem of loneliness, the development of its own methodological approach and methodological tools that provide an adequate study of the phenomenon of loneliness at the empirical level from the standpoint of modern sociological science.
In the work of Kurtian S.V. “Loneliness as a social phenomenon”, a generalized characteristic of loneliness is created and the features of its manifestation in a small town of the Russian Federation are determined.
In the work of Aleinikova O.S. « Loneliness: philosophical and cultural analysis"a philosophical and cultural study of the phenomenon of loneliness is being carried out, revealing its many-sided nature and content as an important, contradictory spiritual state of a person and a social phenomenon.
In work Rumyantseva M. V. "Socio-philosophical analysis of the phenomenon of loneliness" is carried outsocio-philosophical analysis of the phenomenon of loneliness.
In the work Cherepukhin Yu. M. "Social problems of male loneliness in the conditions of a large city" held a comprehensive analysis of the problem of male loneliness as a complex phenomenon affecting the interests of society, the institution of the family and individuals.
In work Trubnikova S. G. "Psychology of loneliness: genesis, types, manifestations" examines the psychological phenomenology, types and mechanisms of loneliness.
In work Peresheina N. V. "Psychology of loneliness in law-abiding and criminal adolescents" reveals the content, causes, conditions, mechanism of occurrence of loneliness, traces its influence on the illegal behavior of adolescents and develops a corrective program to overcome the state of loneliness in conditions secondary school and special institutions of a closed type.
In the work of Nikolaev N. A. "Understanding and experiencing isolation in adolescence"ideas about isolation in adolescents and older schoolchildren are being studied; the connection of isolation as an indicator of the sociometric position in the group with the features of " image of me ' in adolescence.
In work Slobodchikova I. M."Socio-pedagogical prediction of loneliness as a means of preventing maladaptive behavior of adolescents" is revealed,socio-pedagogical prediction of loneliness is defined and substantiated as a means of preventing maladaptive behavior in adolescence.
In the work of A. R. Kirpikov “Positive aspects of experiencing loneliness in adolescence”, positive aspects of experiencing loneliness in adolescence are revealed.
Dissertation research was by no means the only direction in which the problem of loneliness was covered. Issues directly related to the problems of loneliness were discussed in articles and books: V. V. Abramenkova (1990), Yu. M. Shvabla, O. V. Doncheva (1990, 1991), K. A. Abulkhanova-Slavskaya (1993) , H. Alieva (1993), V.A. Andrusenko (1993, 1995), E. P. Krupnik (1994, 1995), I. Yu. Malisova (1995), A.D. Spirin (1995), N. V. Khamitova (1995), A. A. Asmolova (1996), R. K. Karneeva (1996), N. I. Konyukhova (1996), V. T. Lobodina (1996), G. V. Adamovich (1996), Zh. V. Puzanova (1996), A. S. Markon (1997), T. S. Chuikova (1998) and others.
3 Experimental and psychological methods for studying loneliness
3.1 D. Russell and M. Ferguson's method of subjective feeling of loneliness
This diagnostic questionnaire is aimed at determining the level of loneliness, how much a person feels lonely.
Results processing:
The number of each answer is counted.
The sum of answers "often" is multiplied by 3, "sometimes" by 2, "rarely" by 1 and "never" by 0.
The results obtained are added up. The maximum possible score for loneliness is 60 points.
Interpretation:
High degree loneliness show from 40 to 60 points, from 20 to 40 points - average level loneliness, from 0 to 20 points - low level of loneliness.
3.2 "Loneliness" questionnaire S.G. Korchagina
The questionnaire allows you to diagnose the depth of the experience of loneliness.
Scales: depth of loneliness
Results processing and interpretation
The following points are assigned to the answers of the subject: always - 4, often - 3, sometimes - 2, never - 1.
Key to measure the severity of loneliness:
12-16 points - a person does not experience loneliness now;
17-27 points - shallow experience of possible loneliness;
28-38 - a deep experience of actual loneliness;
39-48 - a very deep experience of loneliness, immersion in this state.
3.3 Questionnaire for determining the type of loneliness S.G. Korchagin
The questionnaire is designed to determine both the depth of the experience of loneliness, and its type.
Scales: diffuse, alienating, dissociated loneliness.
Processing and interpretation of test results
Processing is done in accordance with the key, a simple summation of points.
Table 1
|
The state of loneliness (no species definition) |
diffuse |
alienating |
dissociated |
||||
|
«+» |
«-» |
«+» |
«-» |
«+» |
«-» |
«+» |
«-» |
|
1, 2, 3,4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 22, 29 |
4, 6, 11, 12, 13, 14, 21, 23, 25, 26 |
1, 2, 5, 16, 22, 24, 27, 29 |
11, 13, 14, 23, 25, 26, 30 |
1, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15, 19, 28 |
|||
People experiencing diffuse loneliness are distinguished by suspicion in interpersonal relationships and a combination of conflicting personal and behavioral characteristics: resistance and adaptation in conflicts; the presence of all levels of empathy; excitability, anxiety and emotivity of character, communicative orientation. In many ways, this contradiction is explained by the identification of a person with different objects (people), which naturally have different psychological characteristics. Recall that in a state of acute experience of diffuse loneliness, a person strives for other people, hoping to find confirmation of his own existence, his significance in communication with them. This fails, because a person does not communicate in the proper sense, does not share his own, does not exchange, but only tries on the guise of another, that is, he is identified with him, becoming, as it were, a living mirror. Such people react very sharply to stress, choosing a strategy for seeking sympathy and support. Intuitively anticipating his true, existential loneliness, a person experiences tremendous fear. He tries to "escape" from this horror to people and chooses the strategy of interaction with them, which, in his opinion, will provide him with at least a temporary acceptance - identification. He demonstrates absolute agreement with the opinions, principles, morals, interests of the one with whom he communicates. In fact, a person begins to live by the mental resources of the object of identification, that is, to exist at the expense of another. Striving for true human communication, he acts in such a way that he does not leave himself the slightest chance to fulfill this desire. The consequence of this, of course, is the most severe experience of loneliness, filled with fear, disappointment and a sense of the meaninglessness of one's existence. With successful treatment of this condition, the personal characteristics of clients change towards harmonization and consistency.
Alienating loneliness is manifested in excitability, anxiety, cyclothymic character, low empathy, confrontation in conflicts, pronounced inability to cooperate, suspicion and dependence in interpersonal relationships. Let us briefly repeat the features of this state of loneliness.
The next type of loneliness - dissociated - is the most complex state, both in terms of experiences, and in terms of origin and manifestations. Its genesis is determined by pronounced processes of identification and alienation and their abrupt change in relation even to the same people. First, a person identifies himself with another, accepting his way of life and following it, infinitely trusting "as himself." It is this “as oneself” that forms the basis for understanding the psychological genesis of this state. After complete identification, a sharp alienation from the same object follows, which reflects the true attitude of a person towards himself. Some aspects of his personality are accepted by a person, others are categorically rejected. As soon as the projection of these rejected qualities is reflected in the object of identification, the latter is immediately rejected in its entirety, that is, a sharp and unconditional alienation occurs. The feeling of loneliness at the same time is acute, clear, conscious, painful.
Dissociated loneliness is expressed in anxiety, excitability and demonstrative nature, confrontation in conflicts, personal orientation, a combination of high and low empathy (in the absence of an average level), selfishness and subordination in interpersonal relationships, which, of course, are opposite tendencies.
A subjectively positive type of loneliness - controlled loneliness, or solitude, is a variant of experiencing psychological separation, one's own individuality, which is personally conditioned by the optimal ratio of the results of the identification and isolation processes. This dynamic balance can be considered as one of the manifestations of the psychological stability of the individual in relation to the influences of society.
Conclusion
Loneliness is dangerous in that you very often do not notice it until you are left alone with yourself at night in an empty apartment. People do not feel their loneliness until the working day is over, but as soon as the streets are empty, friends-friends scatter to their homes, the phone goes silent - then, willy-nilly, you will have to face loneliness ...
But loneliness is not always evil. There are situations when people just need to be alone with themselves. And we can talk about the problem of loneliness when a person begins to suffer from loneliness. In psychology, there is the concept of "sensory deprivation" (or emotional-informational hunger). If a person is deprived of the amount of communication necessary for him according to the structure of his personality, the necessary life impressions, he may have problems of a psychological, psychiatric, and somatic nature.
It is better not to trigger a state of sensory deprivation, not to exacerbate the feeling of loneliness. Indeed, in a state of neglect, any problem is more difficult to solve.
List of sources used
- Dolginova O.B. The study of loneliness as a psychological phenomenon / O.B. Dolginov. - Applied psychology, 2000. - No. 4. - S. 28-36.
- Kon I.S. Many-sided loneliness / I.S. Kon - Knowledge is power, 1986 - No. 12. – pp. 15-42
- Labyrinths of loneliness: trans. from English / comp., total. ed. and foreword. NOT. Pokrovsky. – M.: Progress, 1989. – 624 p.
- Minoskovich B. Loneliness - an interdisciplinary approach / B. Minoskovich - Labyrinths of loneliness. - M.: Progress, 1989
- Perlman D., Peplo L. E. Theoretical approaches to loneliness // Labyrinths of loneliness (compiled, general ed. and foreword Pokrovsky N. E.) M., 1989
- Petrovskaya L.A. Theoretical and methodological problems of socio-psychological training / L. A. Petrovskaya. - M.: 1982. - S. 30-37
- Puzko V. I. Existential neurosis as an escape from loneliness / V. I. Puzko - Proceedings of the scientific conference "Theology, philosophy and psychology of loneliness." - Vladivostok: 1995.
- Sartre J.-P. Twilight of the gods / J.-P. Sartre. - M.: 1991. - S. 319-344.
- Trubnikova S.G. The problem of psychology - loneliness in philosophical and psychological literature XX century / S.G. Trubnikov. – M.: 1998. – 20 p.
- Fromm E. Escape from freedom: Per. from English / E. Fromm. – M.: Progress, 1989. – 272 p.
- Shvalb Yu.M., Dancheva O.V. Loneliness: socio-psychological problems / Yu.M. Schwalb, O.V. Danchev. - Kyiv: 1991. - 270 p.
- Yalom I. Existential psychotherapy / I. Yalom. - M.: 2000. - 576s.
Annex A
The method of subjective feeling of loneliness D. Russell and M. Ferguson
Instruction. You are presented with a series of statements. Consider each one in turn and rate in terms of frequency of their occurrence in relation to your life using four response options: "often", "sometimes", "rarely", "never". Mark the selected option.
Questionnaire
|
Statement |
Often |
Sometimes |
Seldom |
Never |
|
|
I'm unhappy doing so many things alone |
|||||
|
I have no one to talk to |
|||||
|
It's unbearable for me to be so alone |
|||||
|
I miss communication |
|||||
|
I feel like no one understands me |
|||||
|
I find myself waiting for people to call, text me |
|||||
|
There is no one I can turn to |
|||||
|
I'm not close to anyone anymore |
|||||
|
Those around me do not share my interests and ideas. |
|||||
|
I feel abandoned |
|||||
|
I am not able to relax and communicate with those around me. |
|||||
|
I feel completely alone |
|||||
|
My social relationships and connections are superficial |
|||||
|
I'm dying of longing for company |
|||||
|
No one really knows me well |
|||||
|
I feel isolated from others |
|||||
|
I'm unhappy being so rejected |
|||||
|
I find it hard to make friends |
|||||
|
I feel excluded and isolated by others |
|||||
|
People around me but not with me |
"Loneliness" questionnaire S.G. Korchagina
Instruction. You are offered 12 questions and 4 possible answers to them. Choose the one that best matches your idea of yourself.
a) always;
b) often;
c) sometimes;
d) never.
Questionnaire
1. Does it happen that you do not find understanding among relatives (friends)?
2. Do you ever think that no one really needs you?
3. Do you ever have a feeling of being abandoned, abandoned in the world?
4. Do you lack companionship?
5. Do you ever have a feeling of acute longing for something irretrievably gone, lost forever?
6. Do you feel overwhelmed by superficial social contacts that do not allow for true human communication?
7. Do you have a feeling of being dependent on other people?
8. Are you now able to truly empathize with the grief of another person?
9. Can you express your empathy, understanding, sympathy to a person?
10. Does it happen that the success or luck of another person makes you feel hurt, sorry about your own failures?
11. Do you show your independence in solving difficult life situations?
12. Do you feel that you have a sufficient reserve of opportunities to solve life's problems on your own?
Questionnaire for determining the type of loneliness S.G. Korchagin
Instruction. You are offered 30 questions or statements and two answers to them (yes or no), choose the one that best matches your idea of yourself.
Questionnaire
1. Do you think that no one really knows you?
2. Have you experienced a lack of companionship lately?
3. Do you think that relatives and friends are not very worried about you?
4. Do you have the idea that no one really needs you? (can they easily manage without you)?
5. Are you afraid of appearing intrusive with your revelations?
6. Do you think that your death will not bring much suffering to your relatives and friends?
7. Are there people in your life with whom you feel like "their"?
8. Do you sometimes have opposite feelings towards the same person?
9. Are your feelings sometimes extreme?
10. Do you ever have the feeling that you are “not of this world”, everything is different for you, like for others?
11. Are you more interested in your friends than they are in you?
12. Do you feel like you give more to people than you get from them?
13. Do you have the mental strength to truly deeply empathize with another person?
14. Do you find the means to fully express your empathy for the sufferer?
15. Do you experience (longing, regret, pain, repentance) about something that has gone forever?
16. Do you notice that people avoid you for some reason?
17. Do you find it difficult to forgive yourself for weakness, mistake, oversight?
18. Would you like to change yourself somehow?
19. Do you consider it necessary to change something in your life?
20. Do you feel a sufficient reserve of strength to independently change your life for the better?
21. Do you feel overloaded with superficial social contacts?
22. Do you feel that other people understand that you are different from them and, in general, “foreign”?
23. Does your mood, state depend on the mood, state, behavior of other people?
24. Do you like to be alone with yourself?
25. When you feel that someone does not like you, do you seek to change your opinion about yourself?
26. Do you strive to ensure that everyone always understands you correctly?
27. Do you think that you know your habits, features, inclinations well?
28. Does it happen that you surprise yourself with an unexpected act (reaction, word)?
29. Does it happen that you cannot establish a relationship that suits you?
30. Have you ever felt completely accepted, understood?
PAGE \* MERGEFORMAT 1
Questionnaire for determining the type of loneliness S.G. Korchagin
Results processing and interpretation
This questionnaire is processed quite simply. The following points are assigned to the answers of the subject: always - 4, often - 3, sometimes - 2, never - 1.
The key to measuring the severity of loneliness is:
12-16 points - the person does not experience loneliness now;
17-27 points - shallow experience of possible loneliness;
28-38 - deep experience of actual loneliness;
39-48 - a very deep experience of loneliness, immersion in this state.
The test is aimed at determining both the depth of the experience of loneliness, and its type (diffuse, alienating, dissociated).
Instruction. You are offered 30 questions or statements and two answers to them (yes or no), choose the one that best matches your idea of yourself.
1. Do you think that no one really knows you?
2. Have you experienced a lack of companionship lately?
3. Do you think that relatives and friends are not very worried about you?
4. Do you have the idea that no one really needs you? (can they easily manage without you)?
5. Are you afraid of appearing intrusive with your revelations?
6. Do you think that your death will not bring much suffering to your relatives and friends?
7. Are there people in your life with whom you feel like "their"?
8. Do you sometimes have opposite feelings towards the same person?
9. Are your feelings sometimes extreme?
10. Do you ever have the feeling that you are “not of this world”, everything is different for you, like for others?
11. Are you more interested in your friends than they are in you?
12. Do you feel like you give more to people than you get from them?
13. Do you have the mental strength to truly deeply empathize with another person?
14. Do you find the means to fully express your empathy for the sufferer?
15. Do you experience (longing, regret, pain, repentance) about something that has gone forever?
16. Do you notice that people avoid you for some reason?
17. Do you find it difficult to forgive yourself for weakness, mistake, oversight?
18. Would you like to change yourself somehow?
19. Do you consider it necessary to change something in your life?
20. Do you feel a sufficient reserve of strength to independently change your life for the better?
21. Do you feel overloaded with superficial social contacts?
22. Do you feel that other people understand that you are different from them and, in general, “foreign”?
23. Does your mood, state depend on the mood, state, behavior of other people?
24. Do you like to be alone with yourself?
25. When you feel that someone does not like you, do you seek to change your opinion about yourself?
26. Do you strive to ensure that everyone always understands you correctly?
27. Do you think that you know your habits, features, inclinations well?
28. Does it happen that you surprise yourself with an unexpected act (reaction, word)?
29. Does it happen that you cannot establish a relationship that suits you?
30. Have you ever felt completely accepted, understood?