APsaA Discussion Group # 101: Towards an Understanding of Loneliness and Aloneness
Thursday Jan. 13, 7-9 PM
Please Note we have revised our program for the evening: See below for our new program
Co-Chairs: Dr. Arlene Kramer Richards
Lucille Spira, LCSW/Ph.D.
Presenter: Victor Brombert, Ph. D. ( Professor Emeritus Princeton University)
Longing and nostalgia are attributes of loneliness. Old people, people lienated from their origins, people who feel themselves to be outsiders, people who have experienced exclusion because of racial, sexual or religious prejudice are especially prone to loneliness.
One of America’s preeminent literary scholars will visit us to talk about the role of his memoir in recapturing the experiences of childhood, the horrors of war and his discovery of a sustaining passion for literature in enabling him to make new connections in his new country. His recapturing memories gave him a Proustian recreation of a lost time and place.
Recommended reading for this discussion is: Trains of Thought: From
Paris to Omaha Beach, Memories of a Wartime Youth by Victor Brombert:
New York; Anchor Books, 2004.
Professor Brombert will be our presenter. He is a Professor Emeritus, Princeton University, former Chair of the Council of Humanities and
President of the Modern Languages Association. The Wall Street Journal
wrote his memoir is “a literary masterpiece. Not only is it beautifully written, but it has a deeply moving story to tell.”
Objectives are: (1) To flesh out some of the dynamics of loneliness.
(2) To recognize the role of memory in alleviating loneliness.
(3) To discuss the similarities between writing memoir and talking it in
psychoanalysis.
Register: www.apsa.org: You can register for the meetings, for the
day or for the group.