ABSTRACT
As we saw in the last chapter, while the economic status of the family was greatly improved by the earnings of the absentee, that is their economic status was raised; this was balanced by a degradation of the emotional status. Time and again we had the response ‘I miss him’ or ‘I miss the family’. This ‘missing’ is expressed in a different way as loneliness. Linda Wood (in Harre, 1986) has this to say about loneliness:
Loneliness is both individual and social. It is individual because it refers to the person as separated; it is social because what the person is separated from is other people. It is social because it concerns, indeed derives from, our capacity for inter-subjectivity; it is individual because it involves expe rience which is not shared, the failure of intersubjectivity, (p. 191)
In the case of our families this duality is that individual loneliness occurs because the person is separated from the person or people with whom they feel safe and at home. Social loneliness occurs because the resident partner is separated from, and consequently can be building differing constructs from, the absentee. The feelings which this generates are what we, in our ambient society, call loneliness; but which in terms of PP theory I would call emotional status degradation. Even though the feelings are defined by our society as being lonely, the feelings are nevertheless very strong, and different people react to them in different ways. Some try to smother them, others try to sublimate them. What is also interesting is the times when people feel the loneliness worst. They too reflect the actor’s view of our ambient environment.
Mrs 6.1
