“Loneliness Is Good When One Does Not Suffer From It”

Catherine Millot is a psychoanalyst and professor of Psychology at the University of Paris VIII.

Disciple of Jacques Lacan, she combines her vocation for writing with her work as a teacher. In his work, Oh, loneliness! (NED Ediciones), reflects on the facets of loneliness.

From melancholic loneliness, which is felt by the absence of something or someone, to loneliness sought: which according to Millot is beyond the abyss of anguish and can be positive for those who experience it.

In his book, halfway between the essay and the autobiographical novel, loneliness is metaphorically represented as a journey through the desert. A journey that always accompanies literature, which has helped the author so much to deal with this state of mind that, well managed, can lead to serenity.

Why does loneliness have such a bad reputation?

I think loneliness would be the equivalent, as we say in French, to being put aside, abandoned, as if we were being pushed aside. This is your dimension. I think the bad reputation of loneliness is because it has this meaning: being abandoned, rejected, not being part of the group, which is what people aspire to.

You link loneliness to love disenchantment …

Yes, I link it to heartbreak. For me, loneliness is not sharing a bed with anyone. In fact, my first awareness of loneliness came after a love breakup. As I explain in the book, a fringe of anguish formed out of it that I have tried to tame all my life. The anguish only subsided with a presence at my side.

But as a child, because of the profession of your father, who was a diplomat, you have already experienced many ups and downs. How did he fit it in?

Every change of house, of country, meant for me that there was no turning back, a path of no return. It was one loss after another; from my friends, from my house … And when you’re little, that scares you. When I returned to France at the age of fourteen I did not want to leave again! I like to travel, but not to go live elsewhere. I suffered a kind of loneliness; but when I was living it, I did not know that it existed. It was later that I realized that I had grown up very isolated.

Because children are sociable by nature, right?

Yes, and as a result of that childhood, in my adult life I have never endured group life for long. Being a psychoanalyst is good because you have an individual relationship with the patient. I have no hierarchies or bosses to whom I am accountable; I’m alone.

Love, but not only of the couple, but also the love of friends, family …, is it the best antidote for loneliness?

Love cannot be sought, or it comes or it does not come. I believe that in life you have to be available both for love and for solitude.

Accept one thing or the other according to the vicissitudes of life, because often one does not decide: in life there are moments when one is accompanied and others when not. And yes, if we do not live as a couple, in general everyone manages to have a life with friends, family … There is not only the couple.

Can one feel alone being in company?

Yes, of course, although it is harder to realize that you are alone when you are surrounded by people. Anyway, it is not the same to suffer loneliness than to be lonely: there are nuances in this word that do not deserve the bad reputation it has.

What is loneliness good for when it is positive?

Loneliness is good from the moment in which one does not suffer for it. In addition, there are people who have more or less need for solitude, it all depends on how we define it. During our day, having time to be alone is very important. It is indispensable, in any case, when one creates or produces something, as when one writes: writing is necessarily solitary and takes a long time without anyone. The same thing happens with reading: during my day I always need time with myself.

Should we learn to be alone?

I think you have to let children get a little bored, precisely because if they get bored they will find something to do.

That’s part of learning loneliness – going through the boredom test as a child.

Children don’t know how to get bored partly because their parents won’t let them?

Yes, it really is. On the other hand, as a child I had this experience because due to the frequent transfers of my parents I did not go to school. Besides, she was an only child. I knew this boredom from childhood … until I discovered books and they became my companions for the rest of my life.

With all this baggage, do you consider yourself a lonely person?

I have a certain need for solitude, but I don’t consider myself a lonely person. No. I’d rather live with someone. And I believe that I am capable of living with others in a quite fusional way, but, at the same time, respecting my own space.

The desire to be alone, when does it become a pathology?

In young people, withdrawing on oneself can be a sign of an emerging schizophrenia, but closing in on oneself to work alone is not the same as isolating schizophrenics. In the case of agoraphobia, people who do not leave the house because they are afraid, anxious and want to be alone, that can be a symptom. There’s also clinophilia: people who don’t get out of bed. I love being in bed, at home, in my office … but I have never been afraid to go out, to see and be in contact with people. What I like is having the possibility of not leaving my house if I want to, if nothing attracts me abroad.

Today it seems that people are terrified of being alone and tend to share what they do in their life, however futile, on social networks, mobile messages … Is it symptomatic of our time?

It is certainly a symptom of isolation and fear of loneliness. From fear of being left alone with oneself. Not a good sign, not at all. I don’t have Facebook or Twitter … I get emails and that’s enough for me.

There is also a growing fear of silence, both outside and inside.

Yes, in the book I talk a lot about the search for silence, even from within. Of the inner speech, of the need to stop, to calm down.

When loneliness is not perceived as something positive, what things help us to live with it?

In my case, in the periods in which I have not lived with someone, friendship, without a doubt, has been something very important. And work, which links you to others, especially in my profession, in which I am linked to my patients. Somehow, I am never alone because I am always with visitors.

Who copes better with loneliness, men or women?

I believe that women. In general, women manage it better.