Friday, August 15, 2008

DEFINITION OF LONELINESS (50s to 80s)

  1. Sullivan (1953) describes loneliness as the exceedingly unpleasant and driving experience connected with inadequate discharge of the need for human intimacy.
  2. Von Witzleben (1958) believes it is important to have a defintion of loneliness which provides distinctions.

a) He refers to one kind of loneliness as an essential human characteristic not a symptom his belief that this kind of loneliness could not be analyzed in the usual way. This loneliness is sometimes referred to as solitude.

b) The second definition is the feeling caused by loss of object, a feeling of being abandoned or deserted and this is called secondary loneliness.

3. Moustakas (1961) describes loneliness in two ways: the existential loneliness which is an inevitable part of the human experience an dthe kind of loneliness which is vague and disturbing anxiety.

4. Weiss (1973) identfies two dimensions of loneliness: social isolation and emotional isolation.

a) Social isolation results from being or feeling detached from social network or community.

b) Emotional isolation stems from the loss or absence of an attachment figure.

5. Sermat (1978) explains loneliness is an experienced discrepancy between the kinds of interpersonal relationships the indidvidual perceives himself as having at the time, and the kinds of relationships he would like to have either in terms of his past experiences or some ideal state that he has actually never experienced.

6. Young (1982) defines loneliness as the absence or perceived absence of satisfying social relationships, accompanied by symptoms of psychological distress that related to the actual or perceived absence relationships.

7. Peplau and Perlman (1982) describes loneliness is the psychological state which results from discrepancies between one's desired and one's actual relationship. This objective and clinical and does not indicate how painful and all consuming such a condition can be. Do not forget to watch this...link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCMa8MLM_Ds

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