On loneliness, narcissism, and intimacy

The complex interplay between narcissistic vulnerability, adolescent development, and the capacity for intimate relatedness is viewed here from the perspective of two distinct but interrelated experiential modes of Being and Doing. I offer a view of loneliness that begins with a critical reappraisal of the concept of narcissistic relatedness in association with difficulties in establishing intimacy. These difficulties are due to failures in the developmentally prescribed intimacy. These difficulties are due to failures in the developmentally prescribed integration of the experiential modalities of Being and Doing during the course of late adolescence and young adulthood. The type of loneliness encountered in adult life, its particular cast and subjectively experienced nature, are determined by the specific modality around which it has become primarily organized. Clinical material is presented to illustrate the meaning of loneliness in the presence of the object, and the paradoxical inability to be both with the object and without it.