Donald Winnicott
Alone in the Room
Being able to be alone is what being well accompanied leaves behind
Winnicott, 'The Capacity to Be Alone' (1958)
Two people sit in one room all afternoon and neither speaks. Has it gone cold, or has it grown comfortable? Winnicott gives you a way to tell.
What actually happened?
A child lies on the floor building with blocks while his mother sits nearby reading. For half an hour neither speaks. He plays deeply, almost forgetting she is there. Winnicott counts this among the healthiest pictures there is: a person alone, who knows someone is in the room. The ability to be alone is not something we are born with; it is grown in exactly this way.
To be alone, you must know someone is there
The child plays beside his mother, not interrupted and not left. In time that person is carried inside him, and being alone no longer frightens him. So the ability to be alone is not built by practising alone; it comes from early company that did not intrude.
Sit beside your child while she does her homework with your own book open. Do not watch her page, and she will often concentrate better.
Doing your own things need not mean growing cold
Two people in one room, each doing their own thing and neither obliged to please the other, can be closeness so settled it needs no talk. The difference is whether, when something real comes up, the other can turn round. Waiting for the other to speak first is the cold version.
On a Saturday afternoon one mends a bicycle and one reads, they swap a few words and drift apart again. That is not the same as sitting in a room waiting to be approached.
Panic at silence often means never being well accompanied
Some people cannot be alone without panic: they need noise, messages, someone replying. On his view this is rarely weakness. More often being accompanied was never reliable: someone there in body but not in mind, or someone there who always needed an answer.
You reach for your phone the moment it goes quiet. Try ten minutes a day with it out of reach, and see what the panic is made of.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: you and the person beside you have grown quiet, and you cannot tell whether it is comfort or distance.
Ask first: when I really need to talk, can he turn round? When I am alone, is my mind uneasy or loose?
Where it goes wrong: using this page to excuse coldness. Being there does not mean being in the house; it means being there when you are needed.
Lines to keep
Alone, yet knowing someone is there, is a skill that was taught.
Doing your own things is fine. Being unable to turn round is not.
Dread of being alone often means company was never steady.
Same situation, other people are asking
We've been together years and I feel nothing.We don't fight and we aren't close. I don't know what this is.We're together every day and further apart every month.Two years apart and we've run out of things to say.Years in, nothing left between us · all 8 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.