The Handbook of Solitude: Psychological Perspectives on Social Isolation, Social Withdrawal, and Being Alone

Over the course of a lifespan, humans experience solitude for a wide variety of reasons and subjectively respond to seclusion with a wide range of reactions and consequences. A Handbook of Solitude: Psychological Perspectives on Social Isolation, Social Withdrawal, and Being Alone presents a comprehensive compilation of the most cutting edge psychological research related to the construct of solitude.   Featuring contributions from  international experts in the field, readings explore aspects of solitary behavior from myriad psychological perspectives, including developmental, neuropsychological, social, personality, and clinical; during different developmental periods across the lifespan; and across a broad range of contexts, including various natural environments, college campuses, singlehood, meditation, and cyberspace. Other insights into solitude are garnered through extra–disciplinary researchers in fields such as biology, anthropology, sociology, political science, religious studies, and philosophy. Innovative and illuminating, this handbook represents the definitive treatment of the psychological concept of solitude as an area of study.

Robert J. Coplan is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at Carleton University and Director of the Pickering Centre for Research in Human Development. Dr. Coplan is co–editor of The Development of Shyness and Social Withdrawal (2010), and Social Development in Childhood and Adolescence: A Contemporary Reader (2011), and a former editor of the journal, Social Development .   Julie C. Bowker is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. Her research program focuses on the roles that close interpersonal relationships play in socio–emotional development and psychopathology during late childhood and early adolescence.