Joanna McHugh Power

The loneliness one there not sound and would as soon surmise, as in its grave go plumbing to ascertain the size. The loneliness whose worst alarm is less than self should see and perish from before itself for just a scrutiny. The horror not to be surveyed but skirted in the dark with consciousness suspended and being under luck. I fear me this is loneliness, the maker of the soul, its caverns and its corridors illuminate or seal. I lie and welcome to loneliness and ye, the podcast in which we hope to illuminate rather than seal the experience of loneliness and the question of whether it is indeed the maker of the soul. I'm your host, Axel Sieman. In each episode I have a conversation with someone who has something to say about loneliness from an academic, artistic or indeed any other perspective. My guess today is Joanna McHugh Power. Joanna, could you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about who you are and what you do? Thanks, Axel. Yeah, of course. So my name is Joanna, I'm an associate professor in psychology in the Newt University, which is about 20 miles outside of Dublin in Ireland and I from working in the field of gerontology within psychology for a number of years, 13 years to be precise and my area of interest really in passion is social isolation and loneliness. Not just their impacts on us as we age, but also what predicts them as we age and the more I get into it and I'm sure you're the same, Axel, the more I realize that what's really interesting is what it is. So yeah, I've really got a lot from Emily's home there as well, I'm excited to talk a bit. Yes, so let's dive right in so she has a very particular view of what loneliness is. What you make of it, what can you do with it? Can you do anything with it? I have a confession to make. I have a tool that might expose all that probably many people don't, which is that my husband is an American literature academic. So I asked him about this poem. I had a stab myself at interpreting it and I got to say I have not, you know, critically evaluated a poem since first year university, which was a while ago and so I had a stab and then he sort of talked me through my interpretation. So I guess what I get from this poem is that it's really about, you know, what constitutes the self, right? So I mean, I think loneliness is that sort of that's that thing within that we're avoiding and in avoiding it, we create this self. So my understanding of what Emily Dickinson is saying here is that selfhood isn't essence actually created by an avoidance of the self, which is a horrifying pause when you think about it. You know, she talks, she she calls loneliness the maker of the soul. She talks a lot about denial here and that, you know, we'd rather do almost anything than look inside and see how very alone we are and it is in, you know, that motivation, that motivation turns us towards the outside social world and pushes us towards other people. So that's my ham fisted understanding of the poem. I ran it past my husband and he said top marks. So I have a bit of confidence in it, but yeah, that's wonderful, I mean, this is the first, you know, because usually we just double in this poem and we don't really know what we're talking about. So, you know, we leave to hear that for the first time ever we've got, you know, some sort of official academic backing through, you know, your husband. So that's right, you know, I also think that she talks about the self here and on the face of it, you know, this is quite strange, because, you know, when we talk about loneliness academically and in particular in psychology, right, we always talk about other people, right, we talk about, you know, the other person who's not there, their absence, right, and, you know, then that somehow, you know, gives rise to, to loneliness and then you can have, you know, very series about, you know, how that actually relates, but she says it's about the self really. So, can you try to and you don't have to, but you just said that, you know, there's a sort of avoidance in there, right? And can you tell us a bit more about what you think is being avoided here on Dickinson's View? Yeah, it's, it's a really evocative image that she has here in the first, in the first answer that, you know, that she talks about sounding and plumbing that loneliness is this incredibly deep thing. And I think that that, you know, that really sort of sends me thinking about, you know, is it that we are so scared of what's inside that we avoided and in avoiding it, we sort of link with the outside world that we seek others to sort of distract us from whatever it is that's going on inside those caverns that are so scary. So I think that's the avoidance that she talks about, you know, and she talks about parish from before itself or just a scrutiny, the horror not to be surveyed. So it's all about sort of, you know, what we're not looking at. And I wonder whether, you know, to me, it sounds like Emily Dickinson is talking here specifically about existential loneliness rather than, you know, emotional or social loneliness, but just the loneliness that we could say maybe derives from realizing that you're alive and realizing that you're not always going to be alive and that you are sort of by definition alone in the world? Yes, what also strikes me about the poem is this, you know, striking connection with death that's somehow there, right? You know, to me, it sounds like, you know, she has this image of the lonely self wandering about in catacombs really, right? It's not really amongst the living. And this is actually in, you know, the conversations that I've had so far and also in the literature, it's striking how little there is on the connection between the sense of loneliness and the fear of death, the knowledge of mortality. And I think there's a really interesting connection there. Do you want to talk about this a bit? Do you have any views on that or not? Yeah, yeah, absolutely, because I am growing more interested in existential loneliness. We've done a little bit of, you know, data collection on us. And so this is the idea that I suppose it's the loneliness that ought to be, I suppose, most closely connected with fear of mortality, because it's the one that makes you realize that you're alone in the world, in the context of the world. But the problem is that most of their literature on existential loneliness comes from patients or patient groups that are sort of the factor end of life, and, you know, so people with HIV and a few other limited other groups. And so, you know, we don't know much about, you know, just sort of general, let's say, middle lifespan, horizon, time to death is not, you know, imminent. We don't know a lot about about what that person, at that point in their lifespan, feels about their loneliness in the context of their mortality. And I think that that's a really interesting idea to press on. But I think as Dickinson says herself, we probably put so much energy into avoiding it, that it's probably unlikely to arise until we're at the point where it sort of has to arise, you know, where we're coming to terms with, you know, we're facing ourselves at end of life. And those difficult conversations that people report having at that point. So I think probably it is from a developmental, from a lifespan perspective, something that probably happens more so when that sort of time to death arise and is short, rather than when it's long. Yeah. I mean, there's different ways of, you know, thinking about this. So some, you know, philosophers argue that existential loneliness is really a precondition of being a self at all, you know, sort of you can only be a self if you experience yourself as in principle separated from others. And that is necessarily a painful experience is one family of you is. So then, you know, existential loneliness wouldn't really come from, you know, the knowledge of your own mortality, but from the experience of necessarily being separated from others in your selfhood. Right? So that's one view of thinking about it. And on that view, there isn't really anything you can do about existential loneliness because otherwise, you know, you're not yourself if that goes away, you know. On the other hand, you could also think that, you know, existential loneliness, and that sounds a bit more like, you know, what you've just been talking about is connected to the, you know, knowledge of your mortality, the fear and the pain that, you know, is associated with that. And then, the fact that in our culture at any rate, this is something that we don't look at. You know, we're not comfortable contemplating our own death and we just pretend to the very last breath that we're going to live forever if we can. Right? And then when we can't, you know, in the final stages, then it really, you know, this is deeply scary. And so the question then is, so if it's like that, you know, if existential loneliness is of the latter kind, then it seems that we could do something about it, right? If we had a different kind of culture where we were more comfortable talking about and contemplating death, then we needn't feel so lonely in that sense when confronted with our mortality. Do you think that's right? I wonder about that because I remember a while ago coming across, I'm sure you've come across the death cafe concept, which was brought to my attention a number of years ago because I was involved in the sort of social support initiative called the Alzheimer Cafe, which is, you know, a Dutch concept originally, which is international now, and it involves, you know, providing very informal, taffy-like environment for people affected by dementia, healthcare, and talk about their experiences. And from this grew a sort of sister concept called the death cafe, which invited people to come and talk about death. And it wasn't necessarily aimed at people who were end of life. It was aimed at general public and actually kind of, you know, one aimed at stimulating that conversation around, around our fear of discussion of death. And I floated the idea with some colleagues about starting one. And overwhelming. And I had to laugh at this because I work at the time, particularly, was working predominantly, you know, doing research engaged with geriatricians and psychiatrists and people working largely with older people. And overall, the response was almost too warm, but we don't, you know, why would we want to do that to people at that point in life? And that seems to be the sort of general at least here. The general sort of response was that, you know, why I think, I think it, you know, why I think about it until you have to, and it's a very study utilitarian approach to thinking about death as well. You don't have to think about that right now, so let's not. Which I think is remarkably unhelpful because when it comes to loneliness, what we do know is that loneliness is likely to be something to do with empathy, you know, the sense that we are giving and receiving empathy and that we have a shared sort of empathy towards each other and understanding of what the other is going through. And without that, it's very difficult to feel connected and I guess that goes for existential loneliness too. I mean, it's, it's certainly an issue and other types of loneliness. So I think this relates to one soapbox that I have is that when we talk about loneliness, all of the rhetoric around loneliness is fight loneliness, you know, loneliness is the killer. It's an enemy and I would counter that by saying, I think loneliness is part of the human condition and it's a necessary, you know, necessary consequence of interacting with others, having a self, as you say. So why should existential loneliness be any different and maybe we should be a bit more welcoming about it, you know, and about discussing it rather than sort of saying, let's not think about that maskiness, the horror, until we have to. Yeah, I couldn't agree more with that. You know, at the moment, we very strongly have this, as it just said, you know, have this description of loneliness as something that has to be made to go away, right? But it's, it's like, you know, a bit like saying grief is a bad thing. Let's try to make grief go away, right? And then, you know, but for grief, it's sort of fairly obvious that, you know, if you think that through, you think that should be killers, right, because grief, you know, is just a part of an experience of, you know, living a full life, right? You know, we aren't always happy and people die and then, you know, we agree, and that's part of who we are. And, you know, then there's, of course, you know, more constructive and less constructive ways of confronting one's grief, right? And that would can talk about it, but, you know, let's make grief go away, nobody would say that, right? Yeah. But about loneliness we do, right? Right. You know, many people do. Right. You know, so this is all for us to be in a campaign against loneliness. Let's end it. Yeah. And that seems to be it. That's right. That seems a bit unhelpful. I agree with that. Yeah. And I've used that grief comparison myself as well in the past that, you know, I think because grief has a specific object, we're more understanding of the need for grief and the value of grief where it's loneliness, the object of loneliness is a bit more vague, a bit more sort of disparish and ambiguous. So we were probably a little bit more comfortable with saying, let's just, let's just get rid of it. Right. Yeah. You could also think of course that, you know, the discussion about loneliness at any rate in philosophy that may not absolutely be trained in psychology, but in philosophy, it's still in its relatively early stages. And, you know, as you look at sort of discourses quite generally, they start with an extreme position and then you acquire more knowledge, which you have to have to stake out the field and then you acquire more knowledge and more insight and then it gets, gets more nuanced and turned down and, you know, sort of you reconcile the differences. I think that's sort of a general fact about the logic of any kind of informed discourse. And so you could think that, you know, these extreme claims arise about ending loneliness and the need to end it. I'm a rise because we're at the beginning of the debate. So you could think, you know, that that's, you know, true to you and that, you know, sort of makes it, you know, more charitable towards, you know, these positions. Let's talk about loneliness a bit more generally. You said earlier on that, you know, you get more and more interested in what it is. So do I? Really tricky to actually, you know, spell that out, right? Surprisingly. Can you talk about a little bit about that and the diffuse object that it has that you just mentioned, what do you think? Yeah, of course. Yeah. I think, you know, there's a number of different definitions floating around in psychology, slash, public health, slash, I guess sociology, you know, and since the sort of 70s or 80s. And the one that I'm most drawn to, I suppose, is is one from the anthropological literature, which is at two thousand and ten, not very well, particularly well cited definition. But it defines loneliness as the absence of a shared empathic understanding between people. And I think that this definition explains to me why so many public health interventions fail because the majority of public health interventions for loneliness are trying to target a very different definition, which is the much more common, you know, within psychology, neuroscience, sociology, public health medicine, definition of perceived social isolation, which I think is about as useful as, you know, chocolate tea public. I think it's problematic such that it defines loneliness as social isolation. And I think when you're working with that definition, all you've got to do is change either somebody's social network, or for sure, they're perception of that social network. And, you know, it's related to sort of similar, but not really that different definitions, which are a little bit more algebraic in their, in their formula, like down Herman's definition, but it's perceived discrepancy in the quality or quantity of one's social relationships, which almost makes you feel like you could put a number on it, you know, it almost makes you feel like this person has four people in their lives. And if they only had five, they would magically shift categorically into not being lonely. And I think if those definitions were legit, if they were, if they were true, then all we would need to do is sort of plop somebody into a social network, um, sign them up for some classes and, you know, tada, they're not lonely, but of course, we know from our research and the research of others that those, those interventions tend to be fairly limited in their effectiveness and that there are certain conditions under which they're more successful than others. And I suspect it's the conditions which promote an empathic connection, you know, they're the ones that promote maybe some, some real sense of connecting, not necessarily to another person, but, you know, to an organization or to a movement or to, you know, a broader sense of meaning, you know, that it can take different shapes for different people. But I would like to see loneliness, public health research go more so in that direction of looking at, you know, okay, how fruitful can this shared empathic understanding definition be relative to the, the definitions that we have which are really well-sighted and have fielded decades of research, but, you know, essentially, maybe it's time for a paradigm shift and maybe we need to acknowledge that, you know, they're not leading to, to effective interventions. Yeah, that sounds right. The problem is, of course, that shared empathic understanding that notion is a lot harder to pin down than social isolation, right? And certainly, it isn't quantifiable and so, you know, it's much harder to do anything approaching science with it, right? Can you talk about, like, what does that mean to you shared empathic understanding? I mean, this is, you know, something where my field, philosophy, you know, comes in. But what does that mean? What does that amount to for you? I guess for me, I often wonder whether, you know, having a, and so some of the success that we've seen in interventions has been around those which use some third thing, you know, so that you're not meeting, you know, you're not sort of saying, "I'm lonely, I'm going to go down and, you know, accept a befriending intervention," or, "I'm going to put down and join a women's club," or something like that. But the ones that actually have some ulterior motive, I guess, you know, like book clubs, or there's a very popular network of groups, two groups and one is men's sheds. And sort of carpentry oriented activities, and all voluntary, very successful, very popular. Another one is the Irish Country Women's Association, which sounds about as archaic as it is. And, but, you know, is thriving, and, you know, very, very popular as well. And these types of groups where there is some, there's some object, there's some other reason. So, I think it does two things for people, one, it doesn't sort of challenge their confidence. Because, obviously, we know that loneliness is stigmatized and signing up to a group because you are ostensibly lonely might be kind of bad for your mental health, whereas if you're signing up to a group because you have an interest in a thing, I think that's a little bit more palatable. And the other side of it is that, you know, if you have a shared interest with somebody, it's almost, I suspect, like a quick route into that shared empathic understanding. Like, if you have a piece of literature at home or a book or something like that, it can help you to connect with somebody on a level that's a little bit more, let's say, maybe immediate than the time it takes to form, you know, real lasting relationships. And I suspect that that's where we might have some success. But as, you know, you're dead right, like, it's a very tricky topic to pin down, and also highly personalized and highly individual. But I'd love to hear, I'm really interested to hear what you feel philosophy has to say about this, because this is my conjecture. Yeah, so philosophers have long thought about, you know, the question of how to understand empathy, right? And, you know, in the big, you know, debate about mind reading, reading about, you know, other minds about how to understand others, you know, one big strand of thought, you know, that comes out of phenomenology, says that, you know, understanding others, knowing what is going on in another's mind, doesn't happen through some sort of, you know, quasi-computational, quasi-scientific or simulationist procedure where, you know, you somehow calculate, there's this behavior, and therefore, through some inference, you know, you come to know. But it's sort of through a fellow feeling, right? It's through some sort of being with the other. And so, you know, connecting to others, making sense of others on this view, you know, is a deeply emotional thing. And it happens through, you know, a certain kind of attachment, if you want, to the other felt interest. So, this sounds very appealing, but of course, like, anything that's interesting, it's not without its problems. So, the question that I always have is because you feel with another, so either, you know, that means that you have the same feeling or emotion. But then, you know, if it's just that, then that doesn't really tell you anything about your relation to the other, unless you stipulate some sort of cognitive concept. I know that the other's feeling with me, right? But then the whole thing becomes far too cognitive, right? You know, we don't want that. Like, it has to be something that's simple. But if it's not that sort of cognitive approach, then it's not easy to explain how the sharing of, you know, some sort of emotional attitude amounts to knowing and understanding the other. So, there's a theoretical problem here that, you know, I think is not trivial. And so, this is a little bit tiny little bit of, you know, the philosophical sort of background on this. And it matters for, you know, the question of loneliness because it's about the question, you know, on what level, so given that you, you know, if you take the shared empathic understanding to be basic, then the question is, you know, on what level does the loneliness arise? Is it really on the level of the empathy, the feeling, or the knowledge of the empathy, right? And it's connected to that problem I just talked about, right? Is it just emotional? Is it cognitiveist somehow? Yeah. And so, that's the thing, you know, that we should fruitfully talk about. I think that's where, you know, the conceptual progress, you know, is as possible, needs to be made. Yeah, I think so. And actually, you know, I come from, my background was experimental psychology. And I did my PhD on sort of perception of emotional cues from others. And, and coming from that kind of experimental background, there is a very clear, you know, debate there about what constitutes perception. And when we're talking specifically about affect perception, are we talking about something that that translates, or are we talking about something sort of a little bit later, you know, the partly and the rest come in. And, and I think, you know, this, this debate is, is really useful for loneliness researchers, because we, we are very nascent in our theoretical development. And as you say, there's been really exciting kind of papers coming out, but I, I think, you know, I started out, as I say, I started out in experimental psychology. Then I, I moved more towards sort of epidemiology, actually, of sort of social, social epidemiology and, and, and predictors of, of well-being in later life. And once I started doing a little bit more of that, I realized that I didn't really know what loneliness was. And then when I, so I resolved that temporarily for myself by sort of moving more qualitative in my explorations, and started doing a little bit more research where I, you know, spoke to people. And, and tried to establish what they felt they meant by loneliness. And that wasn't doing it either. So I, then I moved more into sort of theoretical synthesis and, and conceptual understanding of loneliness. And realized we really are building castles, you know, in, in the sky, here like we, we don't really understand what we're talking about when we talk about loneliness. And I think that's why it's, that's why it's such an exciting field, I think. And, you know, and I think that's why it's so attractive to people. We so need philosophy in that context, because, you know, I think that's where really, innovative interdisciplinarity happens when research is in a discipline sort of largely realized that, hey, we've, we've done what we can with our tools here, but we might be lacking the expertise to, to go any further. And I think that's really where the kind of quite exciting engagement can come. Yeah, I mean, I couldn't agree more, right. You know, you were together with your colleague, Luna and Don Azel, right? You were the one of the first people to guide our attention to that empirical research in this field has to be accompanied by, you know, a thorough sort of conceptual analysis, right? Because otherwise, you know, of the kind that perhaps philosophy can contribute. Because otherwise, we don't really know what we're researching here, right? And, you know, the standard definitions that you meant earlier, you know, they, they clearly fall short, right? And we need to understand better. But of course, you know, it goes the other way, round two. So, you know, philosophers in this field also need to know what's going on empirically, because otherwise, you know, philosophers are very prone to buildings and castles. So absolutely, I couldn't agree more. Yeah. We've got a few minutes left only, and I wanted to hear, does this, I always ask that, and you know, it's absolutely fine to just say, you know, don't want to talk about it. But how does all of this connect to personal experience? You know, loneliness is so fascinating. Also, when you do research about it, because for almost all of us, this is something that's familiar, right? I think it's, it's very hard to go through life without ever feeling lonely. I don't think I've ever met anybody who said, you know, what, I've never felt lonely in my life, something I don't know. So it's a deeply, you know, human experience. And they're the first of all, is that true for you? I mean, perhaps you are one of these right people, but if it's not true, what's it like to do research on something that, you know, you're also personally connected to? Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I did have a research participant once who said, I've never felt lonely. And then a few minutes later, I said, well, sure, when I get lonely, I just pop over to the neighbor's house. Which is it here? And I couldn't agree more. And I think really what we can benefit from is looking at a lifespan perspective on loneliness, because I think for all of us, we look back through our lives, there are times when we were lonely. And maybe, you know, I think childhood, for instance, is a fantastically lonely time for most of us, actually. It's just that we don't have the language to talk about it, you know, but I remember, and this might be a problem of retrospection, but I distinctly remember times in my childhood feeling lonely. And I think that it's sort of taboo because we're lonely when we're kids, it's probably something to do with what's happening in our families, right? But I think it's also, you know, it happens. I didn't think kids feel lonely in the context of school, in the context of family, in the context of a world that I think is pressuring them quite highly to adapt and, you know, to sort of engage socially all the time. And I think I, personally, I'm quite an extroverted person, and I think I have fairly high social needs. So I've experienced loneliness at many times in my life. It is painful, I think, sometimes to, especially when you're collecting data, I would say it's pain, it can be painful. And because, you know, it's a very human experience feeling lonely, it's a universal experience. And so when somebody is talking about their loneliness, I think it's quite easy to start reflecting on your own loneliness too. But at the same time, I think that's true of most concepts in psychology. I mean, I don't, you know, I think that for most of us working with these sort of thorny, depressing concepts, you know, we're always aware that, you know, there are people at there who are working with animals, you know, that they're, they're, they're welcome dogs, they're doing happy things. But, you know, we're, we're sort of, you know, I suppose in the, in the emotional trenches. And thinking about these topics all day long, but I think it's enormously valuable. And I think that it's, it has contributed to my personal growth in ways that I probably couldn't have expected. And people don't always want to talk to you parties, but what you do when you're alone in this researcher. I usually tell them I work in aging research. But again, people somehow are not really that interested in that topic either. But yeah, I think it's, I think it's a very fascinating topic. I think it's very fruitful. And, and I do love talking to loneliness researchers as a result because, you know, you really don't get that many opportunities to talk about it on a daily basis. Great. Well, time's up. But, you know, thank you so much. Let's talk more, you know, let's write more. Let's keep a conversation going. It's a huge pleasure talking to you today. Thank you so much. And yeah, best of luck with, you know, your work. I look to, you know, hearing what they'll be up to next. Thanks, Axel, you too. I guess today was Joanna McHugh Power. She's associate professor of psychology at Manuth University. Her new co-authored paper, Freedom and Loneliness, Dimension Caregiver Experiences of the Nursing Home Transition, is now published in the journal, Age and Aging. Thanks for listening to Loneliness and You, a podcast on the research and experience of loneliness.