title: Some aspects of loneliness in families.
abstract: Although awareness of the harmful effects of loneliness has increased in recent years, lonely persons continue to be viewed as family outsiders or nonfamily. Beginning with the general-systems concept of loneliness as having a healthy, adaptive function in families, this article explores the family context of different degrees of loneliness. It assumes that prolonged loneliness (in addition to its meaning for the individual system) is a manifestation of certain kinds of family processes. Five such processes involved in the prolonging of loneliness are suggested: unresolved grief, pathological certainty, synchronicity, family expansion, and parental abdication.
authors.affiliation: John Hopkins Medical Institution, Baltimore, MD.
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Large
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D005190:Family; D005196:Family Therapy; D005260:Female; D006117:Grief; D006801:Humans; D008019:Life Style; D008132:Loneliness; D008297:Male; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D012934:Social Isolation; D013240:Stereotyping