Solitude a Return to the Self

by Anthony Storr

The creative person is constantly seeking to discover himself, to remodel his own identity, and to find meaning in the universe through what he creates. He finds this a valuable integrating process which, like meditation or prayer, has little to do with other people, but which has its own separate validity. His most significant moments are those in which he attains some new insight, or makes some new discovery; and these moments are chiefly, if not invariably, those in which he is alone.

The period from birth to sexual maturity constitutes nearly a quarter of the total lifespan, which itself is longer than that of any other mammal. Our early helplessness and extended childhood provide opportunity for learning from our elders, which is generally supposed to be the biological reason for the prolongation of immaturity in the human species.

Gellner’s contention, referred to above, that modern society is so mobile and fluid that it has made many people feel disorientated and insecure, is to some extent countered by the fact that many workers are reluctant to abandon a familiar setting even if offered more rewarding opportunities. The fact that a man is part of a hierarchy, and that he has a particular job to carry out, gives his life significance. It also provides a frame of reference through which he perceives his relation with others.

Modern psychotherapists, including myself, have taken as their criterion of emotional maturity the capacity of the individual to make mature relationships on equal terms. With few exceptions, psychotherapists have omitted to consider the fact that the capacity to be alone is also an aspect of emotional maturity.

It is only when the child has experienced a contented, relaxed sense of being alone with, and then without, the mother, that he can be sure of being able to discover what he really needs or wants, irrespective of what others may expect or try to foist upon him. The capacity to be alone thus becomes linked with self-discovery and self-realization; with becoming aware of one’s deepest needs, feelings, and impulses.

Prayer and meditation facilitate integration by allowing time for previously unrelated thoughts and feelings to interact. Being able to get in touch with one’s deepest thoughts and feelings, and providing time for them to regroup themselves into new formations and combinations, are important aspects of the creative process, as well as a way of relieving tension and promoting mental health.

It appears, therefore, that some development of the capacity to be alone is necessary if the brain is to function at its best, and if the individual is to fulfil his highest potential. Human beings easily become alienated from their own deepest needs and feelings. Learning, thinking, innovation, and maintaining contact with one’s own inner world are all facilitated by solitude.

In a culture in which interpersonal relationships are generally considered to provide the answer to every form of distress, it is sometimes difficult to persuade well-meaning helpers that solitude can be as therapeutic as emotional support.

Whether in young or old, changes of attitude are facilitated by solitude and often by change of environment as well. This is because habitual attitudes and behaviour often receive reinforcement from external circumstances.

Some car drivers describe driving as relaxing, simply because they are alone and temporarily unavailable to others. But the popularity of car radios and cassette players attests the widespread desire for constant auditory input; and the invention of the car telephone has ensured that drivers who install it are never out of touch with those who want to talk to them.

Removing oneself voluntarily from one’s habitual environment promotes self-understanding and contact with those inner depths of being which elude one in the hurly-burly of day-to-day life.

Throughout these and other ordeals, Dr Bone treated her captors with contempt, and never ceased to protest her innocence. She is not only a shining example of courage which few could match, but also illustrates the point that a well-stocked, disciplined mind can prevent its own disruption.

In addition, he noted the vital importance for prisoners of keeping some area of decision, however small, which is entirely their own. Even the prisoner who agrees to be totally at the mercy of his captors can retain some degree of autonomy: by for example deciding whether to eat the bread he is given, or to save it for future consumption. On such apparendy trivial decisions may depend whether or not the prisoner retains any sense of being an independent entity.

‘Were it not for imagination, Sir, a man would be as happy in the arms of a chambermaid as of a Duchess.’ Samuel Johnson

What Johnson calls that ‘hunger of imagination’ is also a necessary feature of human adaptation. Man’s extraordinary success as a species springs from his discontent, which compels him to employ his imagination. The type of modern man who exhibits more discontent than any other, Western man, has been the most successful.

Creative people not infrequently experience periods of despair in which their ability to create anything new seems to have deserted them. This is often because a particular piece of work has become invested with such overwhelming importance that it is no longer possible to play with it. What Gibbon referred to as ‘the vanity of authors’ sometimes makes them regard their work with such desperate seriousness that ‘playing around’ with it becomes impossible.

The act of drawing sharpens the perceptions of the draughtsman; an idea passionately advanced by Ruskin, who believed that it was only by trying to capture the external world in form and colour that the artist learns to apprehend it.

In recounting the circumstances of his life from childhood onward, the autobiographer sought to define the influences which had shaped his character, to portray the relationships which had most affected him, to reveal the motives which had impelled him. In other words, the autobiographer became a writer who was attempting to make a coherent narrative out of his life, and, in the process of doing so, hoping perhaps to discover its meaning.

The author goes on to ask: What about developing independence in children? We shall answer; if a child does not obey and does not consider others, then his independence invariably takes ugly forms.14 Soviet children are reported to be, on the whole, better behaved, less aggressive, and less delinquent than their Western counterparts.

Confidence that one is of value and significance as a unique individual is one of the most precious possessions which anyone can have.

People of this temperament, or possessing this psychopathology, usually adopt a placatory attitude toward others because they cannot afford to disagree or risk anything which might cause offence or incur disapproval. Because the price of approval is compliance, which must involve some degree of dissimulation, this type of individual needs to get away from other people in order to be himself unimpeded by the need to please.

It is easier to facilitate self-assertion in the timid than it is to induce humility in the overweening.

avoidance may permit the infant to maintain control over, flexibility in, and organization of, its own behaviour.

Although Kafka, during his brief life, made a number of friends who were deeply fond of him and who sometimes idealized him, he said that, even with his closest friend and later biographer, Max Brod, he had never been able to hold a prolonged conversation in which he had really revealed himself. Strangers always constituted a threat.

Kafka’s fear was that close involvement would threaten the one thing that kept him sane; his ability to keep the conflicting parts of his personality together by means of his writing. Without this, Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.’17 The person whom Kafka most needed was also a perpetual threat.

Snow is surely right in attributing Trollope’s capacity for empathy to his early unhappiness. Feeling rejected, as we shall see in other instances, often leads to watchfulness; to a wary appraisal of the feelings and behaviour of others who may inflict further pain if one does not learn to please them. In this way, the budding novelist learns to observe human beings and to gauge their motives.

Fear of punishment is not the only reason for this kind of watchful anxiety. Children with depressed mothers, or with mothers whose physical health is a matter for concern, develop the same kind of over-anxious awareness. Such children keep their own feelings to themselves, whilst at the same time taking special note of the feelings of the other person. They are less able than most children to turn to the mother or other care-taker as a resource. In adult life, the watchful, over-anxious child becomes a listener to whom others turn, but who does not make reciprocal relationships on equal terms of mutual self-revelation.

Research indicates that undesirable changes in a person’s life like death of a spouse, divorce, loss of a job, personal injury, or a prison sentence are correlated with subsequent illness to a significant extent if they are perceived by the subject as uncontrollable. It has also been shown that people who feel that their lives are mainly controlled by external forces suffer more from illness in response to stressful events than do those who have a strong sense of control over their lives.

Writing and other creative activities can be ways of actively coping with loss, whether this be the loss of current bereavement or the feeling of loss and emptiness which accompanies severe depression originating from other causes.

We have seen that creative people are used to solitude, and we have explored some of the reasons for this. Instead of seeking friends in whom to confide, or counsellors to whom to tell their troubles, they use their gifts to come to terms with, and to make sense of, their sufferings. Once a work is completed, it can be shared with others; but the initial response to depression is to turn inward rather than outward.

The great introverted creators are able to define identity and achieve self-realization by self-reference; that is, by interacting with their own past work rather than by interacting with other people.

One might compare Kohut’s conception with looking in a mirror. A clear, clean, polished mirror will repeatedly reflect the developing person as he actually is, and thus give him a firm and true sense of his own identity. A cracked, dirty, smeared mirror will reflect an incomplete, obscured image which provides the child with an inaccurate and distorted picture of himself.

Henry James seems archetypally an ambiguous figure; sympathetic, and deeply concerned with human feelings, yet somehow always detached from them.

by William James: The transition from tenseness, self-responsibility, and worry, to equanimity, receptivity, and peace, is the most wonderful of all those shiftings of inner equilibrium, those changes of the personal centre of energy, which I have analyzed so often; and the chief wonder of it is that it so often comes about, not by doing, but by simply relaxing and throwing the burden down.

My feeling is that the concept of creativeness and the concept of the healthy, self-actualizing, fully human person seem to be coming closer and closer together and may perhaps turn out to be the same thing.25 Maslow continues

Moreover, Maslow realizes that the creative attitude and the ability to have peak experiences depends upon being free of other people; free, especially, from neurotic involvements, from ‘historical hangovers from childhood’, but also free of obligations, duties, fears and hopes.

When from our better selves we have too long Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop, Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired, How gracious, how benign, is Solitude.