Presumably, everyone has, at some point in their lives, felt lonely. Loneliness is, in that particular sense, omnipresent. What it feels like to be lonely can, however, vary significantly. Loneliness is far from being a homogeneous phenomenon. Different kinds of loneliness need to be distinguished, considering its causes, contexts, a person’s capacities to cope with it, and many other factors. This paper introduces the notion of a specific kind of loneliness: experiential loneliness. Experiential loneliness, it will be argued, consists in (...) particular ways of experiencing the world, oneself, and others. Although feelings of being lonely in one way or another can emanate from one’s experience of the world being structured in a particular manner, such kinds of loneliness need not—at least, not always and the whole time—lead to emotional feelings that are concerned with one’s loneliness or the lack of meaningful social relationship. Loneliness can give rise to quite different emotional feelings that sometimes even cover up their provenience from underlying experiential loneliness. The notion of experiential loneliness, it is suggested, helps to tie back certain styles of thinking, desires, feelings, and behaviors to contexts of loneliness. Moreover, it will be argued that the notion can also elucidate the development of feelings of being lonely in contexts in which others are not only around but also available. To develop and enrich the notion of experiential loneliness as well as to exemplify its usefulness, a closer look will be taken at the case of borderline personality disorder, a condition in which sufferers are often plagued by loneliness. (shrink)

Borderline personality disorder is a complex psychopathological phenomenon. It is usually thought to consist in a vast instability of different aspects that are central to our experience of the world, and to manifest as “a pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image, and affects, and marked impulsivity” [American Psychiatric Association, 2013, p. 663]. Typically, of the instability triad—instability in self, affect and emotion, and interpersonal relationships—only the first two are described, examined, and conceptualized from an experiential point of view. (...) In this context, disorders of self have often motivated analyses of self-experience and the sense of self, affective disorders have been frequently considered in the light of emotional experience and its phenomenological structure. Patterns in the phenomenology of social experience have found comparatively little traction when it comes to the conceptualization of the interpersonal disturbances in borderline. In this paper, I argue that interpersonal instability in borderline consists in much more than fragile and shifting relationships but, most importantly, also involves certain styles in experiencing others. These styles, I suggest, may play an explanatory role for the borderline-typical patterns of interpersonal turmoil and so deserve more attention. To better describe and understand these styles, I explore the phenomenological structure of borderline affective instability and discuss the implications it might have for how a person experiences and relates to other people. Considering core aspects of borderline affective instability, such as alexithymia, emotional contagion, emotion dysregulation, and chronic emptiness, I propose borderline can be interpreted as a disturbance of interaffective exchange, which gives rise to certain ways of experiencing others that imply a social impairment. (shrink)