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For Evidence of Emotional Maturity, Look at a Person’s Capacity to Be Alone
Why even the happiest romantic relationships can fail to provide the fulfilment we crave
In a culture obsessed with marriage and coupling, solitude gets short shrift. There is, though, one esteemed book on the topic that has maintained its lofty status more than three decades after its initial publication in 1988. I’m talking about the psychiatrist Anthony Storr’s “Solitude: A Return to Self.”
The back cover of a recent printing of Solitude poses this question: “In the supreme importance that we place on intimate relationships, have we overlooked the deep, sustaining power of solitude in human life?” Of course, Anthony Storr’s answer is yes.
He reminds us that “the capacity to form attachments…is considered evidence of emotional maturity.” Yet, he adds, “Whether there may be other criteria of emotional maturity, like the capacity to be alone, is seldom taken into account.”
“Even those who have the happiest relationships with others,” Storr maintains, “need something other than those relationships to complete their fulfillment.”
Beyond Intimate Relationships: What We Need to Be Fulfilled
What else is it that we need? Here are a few of Storr’s answers:
The capacity to be alone: “…some development of the capacity to be alone is necessary if the brain is to function at its best, and if the individual is to fulfill his highest potential. Human beings easily become alienated from their own deepest needs and feelings. Learning, thinking, innovation, and maintaining contact with one’s own inner world are all facilitated by solitude.”
Work: “In the present climate, there is a danger that love is being idealized as the only path to salvation. When Freud was asked what constituted psychological health, he gave as his answer the ability to love and work. We have over-emphasized the former, and paid too little attention to the latter.”
The life of the mind: Attachment theory “does less than justice to the importance of work, to the emotional significance of what goes on in the mind of the individual when he is…
