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Reflections on Invisible Connections

Echoing a prominent theme in this volume, Christopher Masi highlights once again the centrality of social connectedness for human well-being and the function of loneliness in signaling a rupture in a sense of social connectedness. One might reasonably expect that a social species like Homo sapiens would have a sufficiently large behavioral repertoire to be able to resolve feelings of isolation and restore a sense of social connectedness. Although resolution is accomplished readily in some instances for some people some of the time, the reality is that at times people are at a chronic loss for how to satisfy their need for social connection. Unfortunately, the invisible bonds of social connection are not easily repaired. We see others’ social activity, but we do not see how they feel about their social lives and sense of connection. Despite our inability to recognize loneliness in others, or, as Nick Epley and Jean Decety argued earlier in this volume, because of this handicap in seeing into the minds of others, we tend to attribute to others what we ourselves have felt or would expect to feel in particular circumstances. Is it any surprise that we target for intervention those circumstances where we observe few opportunities for social interaction, inadequate social skills, and poor social support? On the other hand, because loneliness is in the mind of the sufferer, it is perhaps surprising that we would expect changes in objective social circumstances to be sufficient to alleviate loneliness in all its sufferers. Masi provides a quantitative review of strategies employed to alleviate loneliness to show that interventions to date have been only modestly successful in reducing feelings of loneliness,

attesting to the challenge of effectively addressing the problem of ruptured social connections.

Invisibility should not thwart attempts to alleviate distress, however. Biological causes of disease were no more visible or evident in the 18th century than psychological causes are today. Yet significant scientific advances during the 19th and 20th centuries completely revolutionized medical practice, life expectancy, and quality of life. Farr Curlin is less interested in the invisible causes of disease than in the primordial need for social connection that John Cacioppo introduced and that Curlin regards as a preexistent condition for medicine. If science can be viewed as a cognitive system that steps us back so that we can deal more objectively with another person’s distress, then religion can be viewed as a cognitive system that steps us forward to connect and care for others. Curlin argues that the practice of medicine requires a balance of these forces, and that the resulting tension between the two produces better care for the patient than does the practice of medicine using either alone.

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