Fromm-Reichmann’s Wake-Up Call Long Ago on Loneliness

Abstract

Published posthumously in 1959, Freida Fromm-Reichmann’s paper Loneliness was a pioneering work on a debilitating psychological condition which many health professionals today view as a global epidemic. Nevertheless, despite Fromm-Reichmann’s high reputation among the founders of humanistic psychology, they ignored both the pernicious impact of loneliness on personal well-being and its wider roots in societal dysfunction: namely, what the political philosopher Hannah Arendt called atomization. This article places this indifference to loneliness within the zeitgeist of post-World War II America, in which the issue of social conformity, rather than the value of interpersonal ties, captured the attention of humanistic social thinkers.