Stern (1995) further argued that when we are alone, “something is always happening” (p. 109), such as intentionally prolonging a peaceful moment in order to keep a state of equilibrium. This is a feeling shape. This moment of lived experience is “a‐way‐of‐being‐with‐the‐self” or, better, “a‐way‐of‐one‐part‐of‐the‐self’s‐being‐with‐another‐part‐of‐the‐self.” It is as if the individual observes his/her complex mental operations from a distance, without interfering, without the need to complete a task and offer a product. The moment is interpersonal in two ways: (i) it is “a‐negative‐way‐of‐being‐with‐someone,” because it reduces consciousness and intrusions and (ii) it is a way for a part of the self to be with another part of the self.
The schema‐of‐being‐with‐the‐self has the same structure as the schema‐of‐being‐with‐an‐other (Stern, 1995). Both schemas use the same kinds of constants, are built around feeling shapes, acquire a narrative form, and are characterized by interpersonal motives and functions. “These experiences structure subjective time, much as music can. Such structuring not only organizes but heightens the sense of existing” (Stern, 1995, p. 108).
Stern’s (1985/2000) conception of intersubjectivity includes the acceptance (influenced by Winnicott) that some experiences are non‐shareable, perhaps because they are never attuned with by the mother. Total psychic transparency leads to psychopathology, as much as the inability to share experiences leads to alienation and loneliness. From infancy, we live in between these two poles. Being‐with‐a‐self‐regulating‐other means co‐discovering a balance between self‐disclosure and privacy. In ill health, the lack of attunement by the mother creates in the infant a feeling of uncanny aloneness. In Stern’s view, loneliness is felt only if sharing has taken place and then has been lost. Finally, with the emergence of language during the end of the first year of life (sense of a verbal self and other), the infant is more likely than before to experience the inability to share some experiences not only with others but also with the self. Paradoxically, language creates a split between the lived and the represented experience, thus contributing to estrangement, while simultaneously enabling the infant to share his/her state of “‘being‐with’ others in intimacy, isolation, loneliness, fear, awe, and love” (Stern, 1985, p. 182). With the advent of symbolic function, the domain of the private is established between the false self and the true self; it contains all experiences that are not shared, but are not disavowed, which means that they are accessible by language and changeable through experience.
In conclusion, it is remarkable that, although Stern formulated a theory for the interpersonal world of the infant and was a proponent of intersubjectivity, he also acknowledged the infant’s need for aloneness and linked it with adult experiences of beneficial aloneness. Schema‐of‐being‐with‐the‐self – a notion combining cognitive and psychoanalytic traditions – implies that from early on the individual is capable of a rather stable representation of a non‐shareable self, complemented by the representation of a self‐in‐a‐relationship. Of major importance for the understanding of the creative use of aloneness is Stern’s view about the paradox of language. The emergence of language, early in life, marks the end of the possibility for a complete understanding, through all senses, of oneself by a significant other, because of the chasm it produces between the real and the symbolized experience. However, only with language can the individual fill and enjoy this empty space as well as share, as far as this is possible, his/her aloneness experiences with the other.
Idiom
Following Winnicott, Christopher Bollas (1989) posited that each human being has a true self, which may be called idiom, “an inherited set of dispositions” (p. 10), a “unique nucleus” (p. 212), which is present before object relating. The idiom meets culture and, through their dialectic, the psychic life of the individual develops. It is a form of knowledge that Bollas (1989) named the unthought known, in the sense of knowledge that exists from the beginning of life but has not been thought out.
It depends on the familial environment how much of this thought will be employed in a child’s life. When the environment facilitates the expression of the idiom, it has a transformational effect on the infant who experiences a kind of pleasure, which Bollas (1989, p. 19) describes with the Lacanian term jouissance, “the subject’s inalienable right to ecstasy.” In other words, parents set the foundation for what Bollas (1992) called being as character, and is conceptualized as the child’s ability to let his/her idiom be expressed by getting absorbed in playing (the process of play), even if this expression is not without risks (i.e., “what will happen to me if I surrender myself in playing?”).
The idiom reflects the fundamental and primary aloneness of the individual; “solitude is the container of self” (Bollas, 1989, p. 20). Bollas (1989) defined this inevitable and authentic aloneness as follows:
In our true self we are essentially alone. Though we negotiate our ego with the other and though we people our internal world with selves and others, and though we are spoken to and for by the Other that is speech (Lacan’s theory of the Symbolic) the absolute core of one’s being is a wordless, imageless solitude. We cannot reach this true self through insight or introspection. Only by living from this authorizing idiom do we know something of that person sample that we are. (p. 21)
By creatively combining the ideas of Winnicott and Lacan, Bollas describes aloneness as a (genetic) predisposition and fundamental condition, out of which the individual’s character emerges. Aloneness is regarded, therefore, as a unique nucleus of self, called idiom, which will always remain in a solitary state, that is, unthought, unknown, unspoken, and non‐shareable. This means that the human being, although “individual,” will always remain internally “divided” between the unconscious and the conscious aspects of self. However, from the beginning of life this solitary nucleus is destined to encounter the outer world and be in a dialectical tension with it. It is only when family acknowledges and respects the child’s uniqueness, allowing it to be “lived” in everyday interactions, that the child becomes able to develop his/her psychic life, based on mutual enrichment between the idiom and the environment.
The Capacity to Be Alone
Fort‐da
The wooden reel or fort‐da game, which is the famous developmental observation made by Freud (1920/1955a) on his 18‐month‐old grandson, clearly demonstrates the child’s ability to deal with solitude caused by the inevitable brief separation from his mother. In the game, the child repeatedly held the reel by the string that was tied around it and threw it in such a way that it disappeared into his cot; then, he pulled the reel again until it reappeared. This act was accompanied by the utterance o‐o‐o‐o (from the German word fort, which means gone) upon disappearance, and da (which means there) upon reappearance. The same child also used to look at a mirror, then fall on the floor and utter the words Baby o‐o‐o‐o, which means that he could make his image gone. In an earlier version of this game, he had the habit of throwing several small objects away, a game accompanied again by o‐o‐o‐o (here only disappearance was enacted).
Freud’s (1920/1955a) interpretation of the game was that the child, “during this long period of solitude” (p. 15), was able to renunciate the instinctual satisfaction caused by the mother’s presence, an ability that constitutes a major cultural achievement for the human being. In addition, by constructively repeating and working through disappearance and reappearance, the child transformed his passive experience of separation and solitude into an active one; he became master of the situation through binding. Thus, the distressing experience of separation from the mother can be a great source of gratification and pleasure if it is expressed in the symbolic level (i.e., words, playing), already from the second year of life. Indeed, Freud (1920/1955a) notices that this game may have been beneficial for the