ABSTRACT
Most often the capacity to be alone and the ability to relate are considered separately. In this chapter, they are discussed as different aspects of the same strength. How can we understand this strength, and how is it cultivated, in treatment and elsewhere? How does this strength provide ballast when potentially disruptive aloneness or relationships threaten our psychic equilibrium? This chapter examines some of the values that are implicit (and often unformulated) in our assumptions about “healthy” aloneness and relating.
