LIVING TOGETHER, FEELING ALONE: Healing Your Hidden Loneliness

Another self-help book from the author of the enormously popular The Peter Pan Syndrome and The Wendy Dilemma. As evidenced by his previous books, Kiley likes labels; to the complex of feelings and behavior described here, he attaches the label LTL, for Living Together Loneliness. It is a syndrome most common to women low in self-esteem, afraid of anger, tending to feel powerless--although men can experience LTL too and for similar reasons. Those suffering LTL feel unfulfilled and empty even as a member of a busy and ostensibly happy family--and are guilty because of it. They blame the mate for their unhappiness and often fantasize his or her death. Kiley's solution: Spiritial Behaviorism, which seems to be a belief system bounded by Truth, Hope, and Love, and based partially on the sayings of a Cherokee Indian wise man. Kiley's five-step treatment plan for LTL is reminiscent of the A.A. 12-step plan, and the lists of causes and symptoms echo Kiley's earlier work and the help-yourself treatises of other popular therapists. That is not necessarily negative: if people learn by repetition, then books like Kiley's reinforce the guideposts along the difficult road to self, reliance without alienation. NoVa book that wrestles with existential loneliness; but Kiley does emphasize spiritual awareness, and the importance of a connection between mind and soul.