The temporal transition from being together to being alone

the significance and structure of children's bedtime stories

Stuart Albert

William Jones

pp. 109-132

in: Bernard S. Gorman, Alden E. Wessman (eds), The personal experience of time, Berlin, Springer, 1977

Abstract

A focus on the temporal dimension of social life immediately reveals two fundamental categories—being together and being alone—and the fact that much of our life is spent in making the temporal transition between the two: between being alone and coming into contact with others, or being with others and leaving their presence to be either alone or with someone else. This paper focuses on the temporal transition from being together to being alone, in short, on the problems of ending social encounters. In other papers, we have developed the importance of the study of endings in general (Albert, 1973, 1975; Albert & Kessler, 1976a,b). Let us note here only that endings between individuals are frequent, that at times they are very difficult to achieve without intense anxiety and emotional turmoil, and finally, that they are central to the study of change that is conceptualized as a temporal partition between the end of one encounter, relationship, or process and the beginning of another.