Notes on loneliness

Loneliness in this article is discussed in order to make it more discernable. Psychoanalytic literature has been surveyed relevant to loneliness and related issues. Noted is the importance of individualism in America, citing Thoreau as a model for individualism. Edgar Allan Poe's story "The Man of the Crowd" is discussed to illustrate desperate loneliness. The topic of loneliness connects to issues of empathy, loneliness in treatment, the countertransference response to loneliness, the study of self experience, and the problems created by the use of the term identity. The historical perspective indicates how we are time bound to the vocabulary, theories, ideas and myths of our era, to which, in our loneliness, we cling.