Aloneness in psychoanalysis and spirituality

Religion, Alfred North Whitehead (1926) wrote, is what the individual does with his own solitariness (p.16). In this passage Whitehead is giving a particularly profound reading of religion, that is, he is not speaking of ritualized and/or dogma driven experiences but of what many, today, would describe as spirituality. Accepting Whitehead’s reflections we can define spirituality as that area of human experience interested in exploring individual solitariness. Such a definition has the benefit of focusing on each individual’s task to find what is most real and consequently true for him or her; it does not, in itself, entail any necessary presupposition or definition of a Transcendent Other (God), over against us, so to speak. Finding what is most real has to do with how we interact both with others as well as ourselves; spirituality, although grounded in our essential alones is, paradoxically, not a solitary activity. If Donald Winnicott (1958) is right when he speaks of religion and culture, psychoanalysis and play as having their seedbeds in what he categorizes as the transitional space of childhood, then it is obvious that psychoanalysis is also concerned with the solitariness of the individual. How to understand such solitariness, as a ground for our human experience, will be the primary focus of this essay. Winnicott (1965) writes of a quiet alone space that each individual possesses and which no one, particularly a psychoanalyst, should attempt to invade. His thoughts on the capacity to be alone, albeit in the presence of the other, reflect not just a developmental achievement but also an existential