This post is part of a new series exploring philosophical perspectives on loneliness. If you are interested in contributing to this series, please submit a pitch.
“If you didn’t care what happened to me
And I didn’t care for you
We would zigzag our way through the boredom and pain
Occasionally glancing up through the rain
Wondering which of the buggers to blame
And watching for pigs on the wing”
– Pigs on the Wing by Pink Floyd
Pigs on the Wing strikes me as one of the most startlingly tender songs ever written. The lyrics, though admittedly on the nose, stand in sharp contrast to an otherwise bleak and cynical album about the opportunism, insincerity, and hypocrisy that mark our relations under capitalism. The thrust of the song is that our genuine concern for one another, unmoored from the trappings of financial considerations and self-absorption, serves as a kind of haven in an otherwise rampantly individualistic society. The song carves out a small world in which authentic connection sates the loneliness, “boredom and pain” that otherwise characterize our broader world.
The increasingly popular service of therapy, however, straddles these two worlds. On the one hand, therapy serves as an ostensible antidote to loneliness, allowing clients to express themselves more freely than they might with even friends or family, owing to the uniquely non-judgmental, structured, and professional nature of the relationship between client and therapist. Moreover, while the stability and quantity of our personal relationships is contingent in part on the whims of those who voluntarily engage with us, therapy remains accessible to anyone capable of affording it. On the other hand, however, these very features give rise to a kind of surrogate relationship that is transactional and, in a deep sense, necessarily inauthentic. The ugly fact that our therapist is being paid to engage with us looms in the background of any interaction, no matter how productive or emotionally gratifying. Moreover, one wonders how freely the therapist can express their genuine thoughts; how often might they have considered us self-absorbed, morally reprehensible, hypocritical, and borderline cliché, and how often, owing to the demands of their profession, did they need to stifle any corresponding reprobation? To what extent does connection require sincerity on the parts of those involved, and contingently, to what extent can the therapeutic relationship serve as an adequate basis for connection? While therapists can sincerely support us, encourage us, and clarify our values and perspectives, it isn’t clear that they can sincerely do much else.
This commodified emotional support can sometimes also inadvertently foster greater loneliness by encouraging individuals to sever challenging but ultimately authentic and personal relationships in favor of greater reliance on the therapeutic relationship and on shallow or insincere relationships characterized by a lack of conflict and disagreement. Whether the dissolution of such relationships ultimately constitutes a good thing cannot be answered objectively, either. If, for instance, an outcome of therapy is the dissolution of a tumultuous marriage, did the patient’s life ultimately improve? We cannot know this without knowing how their character, self-efficacy, and social relations would have been affected had they continued their marriage; outcomes now permanently closed to them.
The notion that therapists, owing to their professional status and training, are immune from making statements that can undermine relationships and lead to poorer relationship outcomes for patients is ultimately naïve, unsubstantiated, and overlooks the inherent power dynamics underlying an ultimately deeply value-laden practice. The very nature of therapy involves a person in a position of authority exploring the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of another, often more emotionally vulnerable, individual. This dynamic inherently opens the practice to the influence of the therapist’s values and perspectives, which can, intentionally or inadvertently, be imposed on the patient not just to their detriment but sometimes to the detriment of those involved in their social network, as the patient’s decisions can affect those connected to them. As an area of medical practice concerned with such intimate features of our lives as our relationships and our emotions within them, therapy’s connection to loneliness and impacts on our social connections warrants closer examination. While the practice might open us up to more fruitful relationships with others by highlighting the ways in which our existing relationships are suboptimal, when it prompts us to disengage with them, it might close us off to opportunities for growth and reconciliation and serve instead to further isolate us.
The paradoxical relationship between therapy and loneliness, I argue, traces ultimately to the practice’s relationship with disagreement. Therapists are routinely taught to avoid imposing moral judgment and corresponding disagreement on their clients. Abstaining from doing so ostensibly preserves the client’s sense of safety and sense of self, allows them to proceed at a pace with which they’re comfortable, allows them to speak freely, and minimizes unnecessary conflict that might make them reluctant to continue the practice. The transactional nature of therapy is conducive to the setting of very clear, predictable boundaries, and the commodification of the relationship offers us a kind of security and predictability. When we pay for a product, we ostensibly know what to expect; we know our therapist will meet us on our schedules; we know our therapist will challenge us at a pace with which we are comfortable, if at all; we can control how much space we take up in the relationship; we have no obligation to reciprocally return the kind of support we receive; we have no obligation to compromise with our therapist or to balance our needs with theirs; we know our therapist will sympathize with us; and we know our therapist will gently coax us, rather than outright disagree with us. In offering us this sense of security and control, we can feel validated and, accordingly, express ourselves sincerely and authentically.
However, is there a price to this one-sided sense of control and consequent artificiality in the relationship? Hannah Arendt’s observations on the plurality of our perspectives suggest so. Arendt notes that ‘plurality is the condition of human action because we are all the same…in such a way that nobody is ever the same as anyone else.’ For Arendt, disagreements, ultimately, are the natural by-product of our interactions with others; thinking, feeling beings with different perspectives than our own. She holds that meaningful dialogue requires the expression of disagreement and that, crucially, these disagreements are ultimately sourced from our naturally differing perspectives. It is for this reason that Arendt resists the imposition of homogeneity. While therapists are allowed to sometimes disagree with their clients, the ways in which they do so are heavily regulated by the standardizations and demands of their profession; accordingly, the nature of the connection on offer suffers from a kind of homogeneity that runs counter to the sort of meaningful dialogue Arendt advocates. Whether disagreements are fully voiced, ultimately, depends on the extent to which those around us feel inclined to disclose what they actually think, and how those disagreements are received depends in part on a kind of maturity that can be cultivated only by regularly contending with them. For Arendt, authentic connections arise from the ability to encounter and navigate differences; an ability that can be honed only in the face of actually encountering judgments and perspectives counter to our own. Exposure to a plurality of perspectives can challenge us, shape us, reflect our blind spots back to us, and snap us out of myopic self-absorption and we cannot reap the full range of these benefits from connections that are conditioned by kind of homogeneity and predictability characteristic of commodified services.
Moreover, the expression of disagreement requires vulnerability on the part of the other person. In disagreeing with us, others show us true sides of themselves and their perspectives, despite the fact that doing so might render us less amiable towards them. Rather than forcing us to engage with a simulacrum of a person who conveniently espouses our own perspectives in disagreeing with us, our interlocutors afford us the opportunity to interact with who they really are and, in doing so, offer us the bedrock for real, authentic, connection. While disagreements can be expressed with varying degrees of civility, and while not all modes of inquiry need be adversarial in nature, contending with the unfiltered thoughts and imperfect communication of real people is precisely how we deepen and sustain our existing relationships with those whose interactions with us aren’t circumscribed by a one-hour time limit and insurance plan.
Loneliness, ultimately, cannot be substantively mitigated by the professional boundaries and structured interactions characteristic of therapy, nor can it be mitigated by the careful curation of a network of associates that stiltedly express to us only the palatable sides of their personalities. Authentic human connection, with its inherent messiness, disagreements, and vulnerabilities, is indispensable for truly alleviating the deep-seated sense of isolation that many experience. While therapy can provide crucial support and guidance, it is the spontaneous, unfiltered interactions with friends, family, and even acquaintances that afford us the opportunity to connect with people as they really are.
Madhavi Mohan
Madhavi Mohan is a recent PhD graduate from the University of Western Ontario. Her research interests lie at the intersection of philosophy of language, metaphysics of gender, and animal ethics. Her dissertation, titled "Conceptual Engineering & Contextualism," explores the relationship between conceptual engineering and contextualism in the philosophy of language.
