Loneliness and Longing

Brent Willock is President of the Toronto Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis, a Board member of the Toronto Child Psychoanalytic Program and a faculty member of the Institute for the Advancement of Self Psychology.Lori C. Bohm is a Supervising Analyst, faculty member, and Director at the Center for Applied Psychoanalysis and Intensive Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Program at the William Alanson White Institute.Rebecca Coleman Curtis is a member of the faculty and Supervisor at William Alanson White Institute, Supervisor at the National Institute for the Psychotherapies and Professor of Psychology at Adelphi University.

• Bohm, Introduction. Part I: Loneliness in Life and in Treatment: Psychoanalytic and Existential Perspectives. Buechler, Someone to Watch Over Me. Frie, The Lived Experience of Loneliness: An Existential-Phenomenological Perspective. Part II: New Forms of Loneliness in Cyberspace. Eisold, Loneliness and Love-making On-line. O'Leary, Less Lonely in A Second life? A Psychologist Goes "Under Cover" in Virtual Reality. Lombardi, Internal Space and (Dis)Connection in Cyberspace: Adolescent Longings in a Pseudo-connected Society. Part III: Yearning and its Vicissitudes. Simha-Alpern, "I Hate to Choose… You Choose": On Inhibition of Longing and Desire. Kramer Richards, Spira, Proust and the Lonely Pleasure of Longing. Hartman, Twins in Fantasy: Love and Loneliness. Part IV: Loneliness Through the Life Cycle. Tedeschi, Silence the Grinch: The Loneliness of a Boy who Yearned to Hear his Father's Voice. Ostrov Weisser, Loneliness, Emptiness, and Wordsworth's "Bliss of Solitude" in Life and Literature. Lavender, The Phenomenology of the Relational Void: Probabilities and Possibilities. Cresci, Challenges of Aging: The Impact of Loneliness. Part V: Treating the Difficult Lonely Patient. Taylor, Loneliness in the Disaffected (Alexithymic) Patient. Sapountzis, "Tell Me How to Bear Myself": On Borderline Desire, Emptiness, and Evocative Dreaming. Part VI: Healing the Traumatized Analyst’s Loneliness. Kaufmann, In the Shadow of Suicide. Herzog, The Loneliness of the Traumatized Analyst and the Self-righting Function of His Private Practice. Sloane, The Loneliness of the Analyst and its Alleviation through Faith in "O". Part VII: Loneliness and Yearnings in the Sociocultural Surround. Caspary, Yearning and Loss in No Country for Old Men. Classen, A Dialogue Between Psychoanalysis and Religion Regarding Loneliness and Yearning. O’Loughlin, Trauma Trails from Ireland's Great Hunger: A Psychoanalytic Inquiry. Part VIII: Yearning for Non-human Connections. Allured, Lonely for the Other Mother: Nature and the Relational Fourth. Seiden, On the Longing for Home. Part IX: Expanding our Theories to Understand and Treat Loneliness and Yearnings. Eisold, The Threat of Exile – and Abandonment. Willock, Loneliness, Longing, and Limiting Theoretical Frameworks. Part X: Reflections. Curtis, Looking Back on Loneliness and Longing. Willock, Loneliness and Longing: Crucial Aspects of the Human Experience.

"A fascinating, original contribution to a neglected area in the psychoanalytic literature, with wide and deep ramifications. As a psychoanalytic treatment of an everyday human experience, it represents a genre of which I would like to see more. Psychoanalysis can only benefit by leaving the ivory tower of metapsychology and descending into the hurly burly of quotidian life in a way which enriches our understanding of familiar human dilemmas." Karl Loszak, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in private practice, Toronto, Canada"It is impossible to do justice to the book's riches in a brief review... Psychotherapy and counselling can be lonely activities but, through reading this book, I feel less lonely and more connected to a community oflike-minded colleagues. The book is a valuable resource for psychodynamic practitioners, those who include psychodynamic elements within their integration, and all those interested in a relational way of working and who are not afraid to go into the depths both of their own and their clients' experience. I will return to this book again and again." - Els van Ooijen, Therapy Today, April 2012