Solitude Quotes

“It is true that many creative people fail to make mature personal relationships, and some are extremely isolated. It is also true that, in some instances, trauma, in the shape of early separation or bereavement, has steered the potentially creative person toward developing aspects of his personality which can find fulfillment in comparative isolation. But this does not mean that solitary, creative pursuits are themselves pathological....
[A]voidance behavior is a response designed to protect the infant from behavioural disorganization. If we transfer this concept to adult life, we can see that an avoidant infant might very well develop into a person whose principal need was to find some kind of meaning and order in life which was not entirely, or even chiefly, dependent upon interpersonal relationships.”
― Anthony Storr, Solitude: A Return to the Self

“The human spirit is not indestructible; but a courageous few discover that, when in hell, they are granted a glimpse of heaven.”
― Anthony Storr, Solitude: A Return to the Self

“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.”
― Anthony Storr, Solitude: A Return to the Self

“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.”
― Anthony Storr, Solitude: A Return to the Self

“It is widely believed that interpersonal relationships of an intimate kind are the chief, if not the only, source of human happiness. Yet the lives of creative individuals often seem to run counter to this assumption.”
― Anthony Storr, Solitude: A Return to the Self

“The capacity to form attachments on equal terms is considered evidence of emotional maturity. It is the absence of this capacity which is pathological. Whether there may be other criteria of emotional maturity, like the capacity to be alone, is seldom taken into account.”
― Anthony Storr, Solitude: A Return to the Self

“It is true that many creative people fail to make mature personal relationships, and soem are extremely isolated. It is also true that, in some instances, trauma, in the shape of early separation or bereavement, has steered the potentially creative person toward developing aspects of his personality which can find fulfillment in comparative isolation. But this does not mean that solitary, creative pursuits are themselves pathological....
[A]voidance behavior is a response designed to protect the infant from behavioural disorganization. If we transfer this concept to adult life, we can see that an avoidant infant might very well develop into a person whose principal need was to find some kind of meaning and order in life was not entirely, or even cheifly, dependent upon interpersonal relationships.
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― Anthony Storr, Solitude: A Return to the Self

“[A]voidance behavior is a response designed to protect the infant from behavioural disorganization. If we transfer this concept to adult life, we can see that an avoidant infant might very well develop into a person whose principal need was to find some kind of meaning and order in life which was not entirely, or even chiefly, dependent upon interpersonal relationships.”
― Anthony Storr, Solitude: A Return to the Self

“Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius; and the uniformity of a work denotes the hand of a single artist.’ Edward Gibbon”
― Anthony Storr, Solitude a Return to the Self

“The ecstatic state of wholeness is bound to be transient because it has no part in the total pattern of ‘adaptation through maladaptation’ which is characteristic of our species…the hunger of imagination, the desire and pursuit of the whole, take origin from the realization that something is missing, from awareness of incompleteness.”
― Anthony Storr, Solitude: A Return to the Self

“With few exceptions, psychotherapists have omitted to consider the fact that the capacity to be alone is also an aspect of emotional maturity.”
― Anthony Storr, Solitude a Return to the Self

“On the other hand, less rigorous conditions of imprisonment have sometimes proved fruitful. Being cut off from the distractions of ordinary life encourages the prisoner with creative potential to call upon the resources of his imagination. As we shall see, a variety of authors have begun writing in prison, where this has been allowed; or have passed through periods of spiritual and mental turmoil which have later found expression in their works.”
― Anthony Storr, Solitude a Return to the Self

“Human infants begin to develop specific attachments to particular people around the third quarter of their first year of life. This is the time at which the infant begins to protest if handed to a stranger and tends to cling to the mother or other adults with whom he is familiar. The mother usually provides a secure base to which the infant can return, and, when she is present, the infant is bolder in both exploration and play than when she is absent. If the attachment figure removes herself, even briefly, the infant usually protests. Longer separations, as when children have been admitted to hospital, cause a regular sequence of responses first described by Bowlby. Angry protest is succeeded by a period of despair in which the infant is quietly miserable and apathetic. After a further period, the infant becomes detached and appears no longer to care about the absent attachment”
― Anthony Storr, Solitude a Return to the Self

“Avoidance is connected with the fear of being damaged or destroyed by hostility. Compliance is concerned with the fear of love being withdrawn. Avoidance suggests doubt as to whether love has ever been proffered. Compliance implies recognition that love is available, but doubts whether it will last. These patterns of behaviour are most obviously manifested in the pathological types of personality which warrant the labels ‘schizoid’ or ‘depressive’, but can also be detected as underlying factors in the attitudes of ‘normal’ people toward others.”
― Anthony Storr, Solitude a Return to the Self

“Other individuals find it difficult to be authentically themselves even in the presence of their spouses, lovers, or closest friends and relatives. Such individuals, whilst not going so far as to construct a false self which entirely replaces the true self at a conscious level, have an especial need to be alone which goes beyond the occasional demand for solitude referred to above. One possibility, plausible but as yet unproven, is that this especial need to be alone in adult life is derived from, or has been enhanced by, some degree of insecure attachment in early childhood. The child who has not, in infancy, formed secure bonds of trust with attachment figures, may react to parents, and later to other people, in a variety of ways; but I suggest that these variants are founded upon two basic themes. The first is placation; the second, avoidance. I shall try to show that placation is associated with the development of a depressive personality, whilst avoidance is associated with the development of a schizoid personality.”
― Anthony Storr, Solitude a Return to the Self

“But the price of flexibility, of being released from the tyranny of rigid, inbuilt patterns of behaviour, is that ‘happiness’, in the sense of perfect adaptation to the environment or complete fulfilment of needs, is only briefly experienced. ‘Call no man happy till he dies,’ said Solon. When individuals fall in love, or cry ‘Eureka’ at making a new discovery, or have the kind of transcendental emotion described by Wordsworth as being ‘surprised by joy’, they feel blissfully at one with the universe: but, as everyone knows, such experiences are transient.”
― Anthony Storr, Solitude a Return to the Self

“Imagination, it is safe to say, is more highly developed in human beings than in any other creature. Although animals dream, and sub-human primates certainly show some capacity for invention, the range of human imagination far outstrips that exhibited by even the cleverest ape. It is clear that the development of human imagination is biologically adaptive; but it is also the case that we have had to pay a certain price for this development. Imagination has given man flexibility; but in doing so, has robbed him of contentment.”
― Anthony Storr, Solitude a Return to the Self

“Dr Bone was over sixty when she was arrested in Hungary in 1949. A notable linguist, she had been invited to Hungary to translate English scientific books into Hungarian. She herself had joined the Communist Party in 1919. She was accused of being a British agent, but refused to make a false confession or in any way to collaborate with her interrogators. This elderly lady spent seven years in prison before she was finally released in November 1956. For three of those years she was denied access to books or writing materials. The cell in which she was first confined was bitterly cold and had no window. Worse was to come. For five months she was kept in a cellar in total darkness. The walls ran with water or were covered with fungus; the floor was deep in excrement. There was no ventilation. Dr Bone invented various techniques for keeping herself sane. She recited and translated poetry, and herself composed verses. She completed a mental inventory of her vocabulary in the six languages in which she was fluent, and went for imaginary walks through the streets of the many cities which she knew well. 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.”
― Anthony Storr, Solitude a Return to the Self

“Keats captures both ecstasy and its link with death in his ‘Ode to a Nightingale’. Darkling I listen; and for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath; Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain, While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad In such an ecstasy!16 The association of ecstatic states of mind with death is understandable. These rare moments are of such perfection that it is hard to return to the commonplace, and tempting to end life before tensions, anxieties, sorrows, and irritations intrude once more. For Freud, dissolution of the ego is nothing but a backward look at an infantile condition which may indeed have been blissful, but which represents a paradise lost which no adult can, or should wish to, regain. For Jung, the attainment of such states are high achievements; numinous experiences which may be the fruit of long struggles to understand oneself and to make sense out of existence. At a later point in this book, Jung’s concept of individuation, of the union of opposites within the circle of the individual psyche, will be further explored.”
― Anthony Storr, Solitude a Return to the Self

“The mind must make its own happiness; any troubles can be endured if the sufferer has resources of his own to sustain him.”
― Anthony Storr, Solitude: A Return to the Self

“Our expectation that satisfying intimate relationships should, ideally, provide happiness and that, if they do not, there must be something wrong with those relationships, seems to be exaggerated. . . It may be our idealization of interpersonal relationships in the West that causes marriage, supposedly the most intimate tie, to be so unstable. If we did not look to marriage as the principal source of happiness, fewer marriages would end in tears.”
― Anthony Storr, Solitude: A Return to the Self

“What he also records is his delight in discovering that, if only adults left him alone, he could, through reading, escape into a world of his own.”
― Anthony Storr, Solitude a Return to the Self

“Social pretences are temporary and deliberate examples of the device of the false self, based upon compliance, which Winnicott described, and which was discussed in Chapter 2. Winnicott was concerned with patients who had habitually adopted this mask from early childhood; who had lost touch with their true, inner feelings, and who were therefore unaware that they were living lives which were inauthentic. But most well-behaved adults feel that, on some social occasions, they need to be more than usually compliant, and remain well aware that the persona which they are presenting does not reflect their true feelings. There is always some discrepancy between an individual’s public face and what he is in private.”
― Anthony Storr, Solitude a Return to the Self

“The Victorian lady used regularly to retire for a ‘rest’ in the afternoon. She needed to do so because convention demanded that she should constantly be empathically alert to the needs of others without regard to any needs of her own. Her afternoon rest allowed her to recuperate from the social role of dutiful listener and ministering angel; a role which allowed no scope for self-expression. Even Florence Nightingale, who was far from being merely a ministering angel, found that the only way in which she could study and write was to develop a neurotic illness which released her from the burden of household duties and enabled her to retire to the solitude of the bedroom.”
― Anthony Storr, Solitude a Return to the Self

“Hobbies and interests are often aspects of a human being which most clearly define his individuality, and make him the person he is.”
― Anthony Storr, Solitude a Return to the Self

“Freud’s somewhat puritanical vision was that proper, mature adaptation to the world was governed by deliberate thought and rational planning. He would not have countenanced our present proposition: that an inner world of phantasy is part of man’s biological endowment, and that it is the inevitable discrepancy between this inner world and the outer world that compels men to become inventive and imaginative.”
― Anthony Storr, Solitude a Return to the Self

“When a person is receiving very little information, what he does receive makes a more powerful impression; a fact well appreciated by totalitarian regimes which control the Press.”
― Anthony Storr, Solitude a Return to the Self

“But Freud, perhaps because he himself denies ever having had such an experience, treats it as illusory; whilst those who describe ecstatic feelings of unity usually portray them as more intensely real than any other feelings which they can recall.”
― Anthony Storr, Solitude a Return to the Self

“Although we are all subject to self-deception and to a variety of wish-fulfilling illusions, Freud’s account of the oceanic feeling and its meaning is less than satisfactory. It seems a more important experience than he admits. Defensive strategies and escapist wish-fulfilments generally appear superficial and partially inauthentic even to those who are employing them. But those who have experienced the states of mind recorded by Byrd and by William James record them as having had a permanent effect upon their perception of themselves and of the world; as being the profoundest moments of their existence. This is true both of those who have felt the sense of unity with the universe and of those who have felt the sense of unity with a beloved person. Freud was right in seeing a close similarity between these two varieties of unity, but wrong in dismissing them as merely regressive. Such feelings are intensely subjective, and are hardly susceptible of measurement or scientific scrutiny. But to feel totally at one with another person, or totally at one with the universe, are such deep experiences that, although they may be transient, they cannot be dismissed as mere evasions or defences against unwelcome truths.”
― Anthony Storr, Solitude a Return to the Self

“But observers have generally noted that such people are greatly absorbed with their own thoughts even when in company. Winnicott’s paradoxical description of ‘being alone in the presence of others may be relevant not only to the infant with its mother, but also to those who are capable of intense concentration and preoccupation with their own inner processes even when surrounded by other people.”
― Anthony Storr, Solitude a Return to the Self