Solitude and Privacy

First Published in 1998. This is Volume IV of eighteen in the Sociology of Behaviour and Psychology series This is a study of social isolation, plus its causes. Written in 1952 rather than just ask what is wrong with the state of the world today, Dr Halmos turns to scientific analysis, constructive criticism and positive suggestion has he passes from study of basic social forces, through historical and empirical investigations, to the practical problems of reform and therapy. He has penetrated below the facile generalisations of common experience by distinguishing between neurotic types -the anxious, the depressed and the hysterical-and studying the different ways in which each is related to social isolation or participation.

Paul Halmos (Santa Clara University, California), Foreword by T. H. Marshall

Chapter 1 Some Metapsychological Considerations Preliminary to a Historical Survey of Gregariousness; Chapter 2 The History of Desocialisation, I (A) A Phylogenetic Process Illustrated by the Decline of the Choral Dance; Chapter 3 The History of Desocialisation, II (B) A Historical Process Illustrated by Some Changes which Have Taken Place Since the Feudal Era; Chapter 4 The Preponderance of the 'Social-Cultural' and 'Social-Historical' over the 'Individual-Genetic' the Concepts of 'Direct' and 'Mediated' Social Causation; Chapter 5 1The reader who is not accustomed to or is not interested in detailed, statistically documented research reports would do well to omit the reading of this Chapter in its entirety. Yet even to such a reader as this the perusal of the Summaries (pp. 91-92 and 101) and the reading of Section 3 of the Report (in this order) is recommended.Isolation and Anxiety Report on an Investigation into the Social Attitudes of College Students; Chapter 6 The Ideology of Privacy and Reserve; Chapter 7 Social Reform and Social Therapy; Chapter 8 Community Therapy: A Therapy of Isolation;