Breaking out of loneliness

by Jerry Greenwald

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• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0892561203
• ISBN13: 9780892561209
• Release Date: January 1980
• Publisher: Rawson, Wade Publishers
• Length: 228 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A deep, thoughtful book on loneliness

I discovered a copy of this out of print book at the library. Having been published around 1980, I had an inital predudice that it would be a lot of "self help" fluff, you know? But it was not. Greenwald clearly had plenty of clinical experience in dealing with loneliness, and very deep insights into the true nature of it as a personal condition. I found myself copying down large chunks verbatim, because the way he cuts to the essenence of loneliness spoke very personally to me."The pain of loneliness is the language of our body demanding that we respond to our emotional needs."He discusses how fear of rejection can put the lonely person into a vicious circle, where the person can become phobic of rejection, and thus stay away from the nourhsiment they need.A major theme in the book is the incightful idea that the key to healing loneliness is to gain _nourishment_. Thus, it is not just about being around people--if those relationships are too cursory to provide nourishment, they can make us feel more lonely. He stresses bringing ourselves into the present moment, which is the only place we can receieve that nourishment.The only area where I would have liked to see Greenwald expand, would be to examine the ways in which loneliness is not just a _personal_ phenomenon, but a societal and structural one--which we all share. But that would have been some pretty radical thinking, especially for the time.I learned a great deal from this deeply thoughtful book. I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in addressing loneliness directly in their own lives.