01 March, 6.00pm.

Topic: Loneliness and absence in psychopathology

Speaker: Professor Joel Krueger

Professor Joel Krueger speaks on: “Loneliness and absence in psychopathology”. This talk is based upon an upcoming paper, in collaboration with Dr Lucy Osler and Dr Tom Roberts.

Loneliness is a near-universal experience. It’s particularly common for individuals with (so-called) psychopathological conditions. In this talk, we explore the experiential character of loneliness, with a specific emphasis on how social goods are experienced as absent in ways which involve a diminished sense of social agency and recognition. We explore the role and experience of loneliness in three case studies: depression, anorexia nervosa, and autism. We demonstrate that even though experiences of loneliness might be common to many psychopathologies, these experiences nevertheless have distinctive profiles. Specifically, we suggest that: 1. loneliness is often a core characteristic of depressive experience; 2. loneliness can drive, and even cement, disordered eating practices and anorectic identity; 3. loneliness is not a core characteristic of autism but is rather commonly experienced as stemming from social worlds, environments, and norms that fail to accommodate autistic bodies and their distinctive forms of life. We aim to do justice to the pervasiveness of loneliness in many — if not all — psychopathologies, while also highlighting the need to attend to psychopathology-specific experiences of loneliness, social agency, and (non-)recognition.