The Call Of Solitude: Alonetime In A World Of Attachment - Softcover

Buchholz, Ester Schaler

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0684872803 ISBN 13: 9780684872803

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1999

Synopsis

Achieving inner calm while feeling centered is a human goal that is never easy to master. But why of late do serenity and peace of mind seem further from reach than ever before? The world appears very busy, and finding moments to catch up with ourselves looks to be almost impossible. Something has occurred to change life's circumstances, to make peaceful, restorative time terribly elusive.

Alonetime is a great protector of the self and the human spirit. Many in society have railed against it. Some have overused its healing potential. Others have kept it as a special resource both knowingly and unknowingly. ... (Yet) the only way we shall achieve ... ideal love is if we are allowed to flower in the due course and pace of our inner life. Whether or not we were fortunate in our growing up to blossom this way, plenty of time -- alone-times -- awaits us now to make the necessary readjustments.

About this title

About the Author

Ester Schaler Buchholz is a professor of applied psychology at the New York University School of Education as well as clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst.

From Kirkus Reviews

A wide-ranging study of solitude, presenting it as a basic human need, one as necessary to psychic health and creativity as the social interactions emphasized by psychology's many ``attachment'' theorists. Buchholz, who directs New York University's Master's Program in the Psychology of Parenthood, wants to ``unshackle aloneness from its negative position as kith and kin to loneliness. Remove it from battles with bonding, attachment, and relationships. Make its message part of the social norm! Then uplift it from its lonely place on the mental health shelf.'' She succeeds admirably by examining the role of ``alonetime'' (a neologism she feels is needed, given the negative connotations many social scientists assign to ``solitude'') in everything from anthropological studies of other cultures to embryology, from pediatric medicine and child psychology to existentialist philosophy. Included are some fascinating observations on individuals who manage to survive, and even to thrive, during periods of extreme solitude, from the experiences of autistic children to those of hostages who have endured long periods of being blindfolded and isolated. She laments many of her patients' inability to grow inwardly by fostering their self-reflective and imaginative lives. Buchholz stumbles on occasion in romanticizing solitude, as in her claim that the autistic child possesses ``an exquisite ability to self-regulate,'' an unsupported claim at best. And while she properly warns of contemporary Americans' growing addiction to E-mail, computer culture in general, and other forms of external stimuli, she carries it to a neo-Luddite extreme in claiming that ``we are paying the price for the current frenetic demands in today's culture through being unwittingly led by technology into stupors.'' And the book could have used tightening. Her study, however, is on balance immensely interesting and informative, and accessible to the nonprofessional. Buchholz demonstrates irrefutably that ``without solitude existing as a safe place, a place for long sojourns and self- discovery, we lose an important sense of being self-regulating individuals.'' -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0684872803
• ISBN 13: 9780684872803
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 368