The person who is lonely
3.5 million Dutch people feel more or less lonely. Care providers in the Netherlands often see loneliness as a social problem that must be combated. Too one-sided an approach, says Ton Jorna, senior lecturer in Spiritual or Existential Guidance at the University of Humanistic Studies.
What do feelings of loneliness have to do with fear, one’s personality and life story, loss, longing or shame? In the book ‘Can a person be lonely?’ Ton Jorna, together with six other scientific authors, investigates the existential aspects of loneliness and what it has to do with meaning. Loneliness is approached as a personal and existential issue and not so much as a social problem.
Condition human
Jorna: “Loneliness can be accompanied by great mental pain and people need help with this. But at the same time it is also the ‘human condition’ that you have to deal with and through which you can get to know yourself better. It can therefore be fruitful, it has potential that allows you to grow as a person.”
Too one-sided
Jorna sees this ‘growth approach’ almost not reflected in the current discourse, which is dominated by social scientists. “It is good that there is widespread attention to loneliness, but the underlying view of loneliness is too one-sided and too negative.” This definition comes from social scientists such as De Jong Gierveld and Van Tilburg and reads: “the subjective experience of an unpleasant or intolerable lack of (quality of) certain social relationships.”
This definition is the framework within which ‘Coalitie Erbij’ works. This is a partnership of 13 organizations, including Humanitas . Last week the coalition organized ‘The Week against Loneliness’.
Solving versus living through
Care providers too often want to solve loneliness by bringing people into contact with each other through organized activities. If only it were that simple, Jorna thinks. Because someone who is alone does not have to be lonely, and vice versa, people with many contacts can also be lonely. “A woman told me that she was lonely, and that it did not have to do with too few social relationships but rather with her own existence. The existential loneliness she has experienced makes her more conscious, personal and cordial in life.”
Social approach and individual experience
The social approach to loneliness mainly thinks in terms of target groups. Research has shown that the elderly, people with disabilities, little education and psychological problems are lonelier than other people.
But at the same time, loneliness is also a personal experience and is related to existence and meaning, and much social care does not reflect this. Jorna: “Many intervention programs do not work well because too much focus is placed on target groups and general solutions are devised for often drastic personal experiences.” “And precisely because it is so often about personal experience, the quality of the contact is crucial,” says Jorna. “Attention must be paid to someone’s biography, to someone’s life story.”
