Culture and Pathology: Flathead Loneliness Revisited

My earlier considerations of Flathead loneliness and depressive disorder yielded an interpretation that emphasized the lack of necessary pathology in the Flathead experience of loneliness. In this paper I detail a shift in my thinking about the pathological character of loneliness, a shift traceable to a set of interactions that have led me away from illness experience and diagnosis to questions of treatment, intervention, and healing. I explore how this new set of questions refocused my attention—away from an exclusive preoccupation with the lonesome individual. I conclude with a reimagination of the pathological dimensions of Flathead loneliness as aspects of both group and individual health.