Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink: Despair on the singles scene

Abstract

Because the singles scene is a microcosm of kaleidoscopically shifting relationships, it can offer an interpersonal window for the study of loss. Drawing on the results of his recently published The Singles Scene: A Psychoanalytic Study of the Breakdown of Intimacy (Alper, 1994), the author identifies four primary interpersonal losses regularly experienced by those who venture onto the singles scene. The first is the loss of the paradigm for intimacy, the central model for relating between men and women. The second is the loss of relational meaning and process. The third is the loss of intimacy. And the fourth is the existential loss of autonomy. After a brief introduction attempting to place the singles scene of the past two decades into a relevant contemporary context, the article provides a clinical consideration of the psychodynamics of each of these interpersonal losses.