Anselmo R. Paolone: Ph.D. at the European University Institute in Florence, has been Visiting Global Fellow at New York University; Visiting Researcher at the London School of Economics and member of the équipe ERASME of CNRS. He is currently tenured researcher at the University of Udine, Italy. He is Board Member of the Italian Comparative Education Association (SICESE). Some of his recent works are: Accademica o applicata? Educazione comparata, convergenze-divergenze globali e etnografia nella comtemporaneità (2016); Comparative education in an age of crisis. Challenges and opportunities in contemporary Italy (2016), Prospettive sul jazz. Tradizioni stilistiche e formazione dei musicisti. (2019, forthcoming)

From the perspective of an educator, loneliness is a problem of special interest. One of the tasks of education is to enhance a good social self-regulation in people. But loneliness can hamper this in many ways. The painful feeling produced by loneliness can cause a closure in persons, and can encourage a negative perception of the others. Lonely people can develop a sort of “altered social cognition. The educator fears especially when, in the person, interpretations of this kind tend to become “expectations”.Moreover, when loneliness continues over time, this form of deteriorated regulation, combined with altered social cognition, can make the person less able to recognize the point of view of the others, which hampers her/his ability to interact empathically and in a socially constructive manner with them.In turn, these poorly regulated behaviors often provoke further marginalization.Educators can use, among other things,biography-inspired and narrative tools to counter these negative trends andre-establish a good balance, freeing the “lonely” persons from the prison ofdistorted social cognition and helping them to prevent or modify counterproductiveinteractions. The contrast of lonelinessand of its negative effects on the person is one of the emerging fields ofapplication of narrative educational tools.