Solitude The Science

Having grown up in a hyperconnected world, millennials are pressured by a lingering feeling that no matter their achievements, they can always do more. Conventional wisdom suggests that individuals should create and maintain their “personal brands” and continuously improve themselves, so that they can compete in a world that favors the most entrepreneurial and networked.

Highly regarded philosopher and psychoanalyst, Massimo Recalcati has penned a gripping, erudite meditation on suffering, doubt, betrayal, and the potential for renewal that dwells in our most painful moments. For Recalcati, Jesus's reckoning in the Garden of Gethsemane is at once an instance of human weakness and an encounter with the Divine. It is the story where the Divine and the Human meet most forcefully, first in company, then in solitude, and where agony and doubt mingle with potential rebirth and revitalization.

This book focuses on the emotional experience of imprisonment. In no uncertain terms: prisons seethe with emotions and feelings. Based on two empirically rigorous studies, this book analyses how prisoners attempt to adapt and control their emotions. It begins with an account of male and female prisoners held in medium-security prisons and then moves to the particular case of emotions in solitary confinement.

I love this book. It's full of exactly the kind of soulful wisdom the world is crying out for right now.' - Magda Szubanski