Fractures in the Living Human Web

On the Challenge of Loneliness and Social Isolation in Individual Life, Society and Pastoral Care

Abstract

This paper introduces the challenge of unwanted loneliness to the theory of pastoral care. It does so by first exploring the phenomenon of loneliness in close dialogue with the social sciences, particularly the psychology of loneliness, and then discussing the role that religiosity and pastoral care can play in addressing the complex challenge of contemporary loneliness. Social loneliness is portrayed as a painful gap in social relationships, defined as a discrepancy between existing and desired relationships as subjectively perceived by the individual. Its intense and chronic form has significant negative effects on well-being and health. Loneliness results from individual circumstances of biography, social cognition and behavior, as well as from structural exclusion through socio-cultural marginalization. In many cases, individual circumstances and structural factors interact to produce persistent loneliness. In responding to the complex challenge of loneliness, pastoral care must take into account this dual nature of loneliness as well as the resources and risks associated with religion. A multi-level approach to pastoral care—which integrates interventions at the micro level of individual care, the meso level of community and culture, and the macro level of public discourse and policy—in response to loneliness is proposed. In addition to a synthesis of the interdisciplinary loneliness research literature, the argumentation is based on original statistical analyses of diachronic loneliness trajectories in the Swiss population. Using representative data from the Swiss Household Panel, the empirical part of the paper identifies a typology of loneliness trajectories in individual biographies as well as risks and resources in coping with loneliness situations.