Frieda Fromm-Reichmann wrote her essay on “Loneliness” in 1959. She was one of the first to view loneliness as a debilitating illness in need of awareness. Inspired by a catatonic patient of hers, the determined psychiatrist decided to study an issue that had been largely ignored.
Fromm-Reichmann comments on the fact that not much is known about the subject. That many, including psychologists, deliberately avoid the topic for it is such a painful experience they would rather not discuss it.
The terror associated with loneliness is believed to rely in the fact that people often define themselves in terms of their overt relationships with others. One’s sense of self is dependent on how others view them, what others say to them, and how they compare to their peers
Another famous psychologist Rollo May is quoted saying; “Every human being gets much of his sense of his own reality out of what others say to him and think about him.”
By Susan K. Hochman (http://faculty.webster.edu/woolflm/frommreichman.gif) via Google Images