The loneliness pandemic?

Organised loneliness in the lonely century 1This special edition emerged from a call for papers to address the questions implied by the idea of the 'loneliness pandemic'.This term began to be used in the 1990s but took on more piquant meaning in the shadow cast by the COVID-19 crisis.Lengthy lockdowns drew the attention of many to the impact of taken for granted social conditions and connections (Posocco and Frosh, 2021).The impact of COVID-19 on how we might think about the pandemic of loneliness is addressed very directly in this edition (Carin-Levy et al, 2024).However, as Gerard's article (2024) reminds us, people have been worrying about 'loneliness' for a long time.The title of his article alludes to Blaise Pascal's famous 17th-century statement that 'all of ' humanity's problems were created by our lack of capacity to 'stay quietly' in our own room.Pascal's understanding of this state of affairs was that we sought anything (that would eventually lead to argument, violence and war) to distract us from the misery of contemplation on our 'feeble and mortal condition' (Pascal, 1958(Pascal, [1670]]: 140).The predicament raised by Pascal -that just although being alone is a problem, so too is being with others -is one that continues, as this volume suggests, to intrigue and tease us.Nevertheless, claims that a different quality of loneliness might have emerged in more recent times have become louder.Certainly, the idea that neoliberal capitalism has brought 'unprecedented inner loneliness' (Gerard, 2024) is an emotive and compelling one.Headlines about the experience have proliferated in the past two decades, driving anxiety, which, if we are to believe those headlines, is global.In the flurry of that panic this special edition of the Journal of Psychosocial Studies on loneliness attempts to do two things.It aims to help reinstate the granular, absent from many of the headlines and from some of the research from which they are derived.It does this primarily through applying a psychosocial understanding of 'the interwoven and co-constituting nature of the human psyche, the social world and the material environment', taking seriously that 'human beings are structurally "being-in-the-world"' (Pawlett-Jackson, 2024).Second, this special edition harnesses a skill particular to the psychosocial toolbox, that of simply slowing down -as Pascal Unauthenticated | Downloaded 03/12/24 04:37 AM UTC was perhaps hoping we might do -and thinking about our experience of ourselves and of the world.Slowing down the snappy chat, the rush to intervention, the flight from emotion, the leaps to assumption, the haste of conclusion.This collection of articles puts forward multidisciplinary voices, all of which encourage the reader to sit down with us.To just take stock.This is evidently much needed, as is clear after a brief survey of the loneliness terrain that we, loneliness researchers, have so far cultivated.