LONELINESS: PSYCHOLOGICAL CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES

Abstract

The peculiarities of the development of feeling of loneliness in the context of personal formation and social historical development are analyzed in the article. Positive and negative aspects of the experience of loneliness and the factors that cause them are highlighted. Personal characteristics that catalyze the formation of negative emotions and impede adaptation in society are revealed. Loneliness evolved and changed in the process of social development, from the primitive society in which the phenomenon of loneliness as such did not exist, to the modern stage, where the tendency to loneliness is regarded as a stable personality trait. In the course of the study, a number of factors have been identified that have a catalytic effect on the process of forming a sense of loneliness in the negative aspect. One of these factors is the violation of the mechanism of identification-separation, which in extreme manifestations manifests itself in the pathological need for closeness to another and self-isolation, which makes it impossible to become one’s self. Other factors that contribute to the appearance of loneliness are also the psychological characteristics and personal traits of the person. Among them, scientists distinguish such psychological characteristics as low levels of self-esteem, anxiety, uncertainty, lack of initiative, seclusion. The emergence of the tendency to loneliness as a personality trait is also determined by the style of education. The lack of parental care and attention provokes the formation of emotional anxiety, which in its extreme manifestation is experienced as a fear of isolation that can accompany a person all his life. Over-care, attachment, especially of the boy to the mother, are also negative. This method of education significantly shackles the child, deprives her of the initiative to make contact with peers.