Loneliness and ressentiment are not merely individual emotional disturbances but socially and politically charged affective formations that acquire heightened relevance in what Arendt called “dark times.” In contemporary individualized and globalized societies, loneliness reflects a withdrawal of social resonance, while ressentiment represents the moralized expression of unresolved injury, humiliation and perceived powerlessness. As Kersten, Neu und Vogel (2024) argue, ressentiment arises precisely when experiences of social injury cannot be directed toward their real causes. Instead, emotional wounds become internalized and transformed through projection, value falsification, reality distortion, victimization. These mechanisms convert a personal experience of injury into a worldview of pervasive bitterness and antagonism — a transformation that not only affects subjective experience but also threatens democratic coexistence.

Loneliness functions differently yet converges with ressentiment in crucial ways. It is not simply the absence of social contact but a state of emotional disconnection intensified by digital mediation, social fragmentation and the erosion of shared lifeworlds. Kersten et al. emphasize that loneliness and ressentiment form a “correlative, though not causal” relationship (Kersten et al., 2024, p. 87): loneliness sediments feelings of exclusion and insignificance, while ressentiment can emerge as a compensatory moral response — turning deprivation into indignation and antagonistic affect. In this sense, loneliness provides the ground upon which ressentiment can crystallize, particularly when social bonds weaken and individuals lack meaningful recognition.

Contemporary psychology often treats emotions as internal states to be regulated, controlled or optimized. Yet emotions must not be reduced to internal states to be regulated. Critical psychology — especially in Holzkamp’s (1983) subject-scientific tradition — conceptualizes emotions as meaningful articulations of a subject’s inner state (Befindlichkeit) as an evaluation of the environment/social situation. Difficult feelings are not failures of self-management; they are experiential indicators of restricted possibilities for action. This perspective reframes loneliness and ressentiment as expressions of structural contradictions rather than personal deficiencies. The central question thus becomes: What does it mean to rationally investigate one’s own difficult feelings under conditions of neoliberal individualization?

The psychodynamic tradition suggests that defense mechanisms transform unbearable feelings into socially acceptable rationalizations. The dynamic unconsciousness therefore does not simply suppress feelings — it reorganizes them, aligning private suffering with socially available narratives. Ressentiment thus becomes not merely an emotional reaction but an ideological form.

Hochschild’s research on the American Right illustrates this dynamic empirically. In Strangers in Their Own Land, she describes how “empathy walls” inhibit mutual understanding and how a “deep story” of betrayal, effort and moral deservedness organizes affective experience among white working-class conservatives (2016). Her informants express loneliness as abandonment by political elites and ressentiment toward those perceived as receiving unfair advantages. Crucially, this affective constellation persists even when objective evidence contradicts these beliefs — an observation mirroring Kersten et al.’s description of value falsification and projection. Hochschild notes that the emotional logic of ressentiment can override rational analysis and becomes a political identity anchored in shared grievance.

Schäfer und Zürn (2021) describe a similar dynamic in the context of democratic regression. They argue that affective polarization, loss of trust, and the perception of cultural displacement create fertile ground for anti-democratic tendencies. Loneliness appears here as a structural condition of atomized societies; ressentiment as its political crystallization. Both are intensified by global economic inequalities, cultural anxieties and rapid social transformations. These analyses underline that loneliness and ressentiment are not merely psychological; they are political emotions shaped by transformations in the social fabric.

Applebaum (2020) likewise shows how authoritarian movements mobilize ressentiment by framing social change as existential threat, and by converting diffuse anxiety into moralized blame. Authoritarian leaders promise relief from loneliness by offering belonging within a tightly bounded collective identity, and relief from ressentiment by providing symbolic enemies. In dark times, such affective strategies can be more powerful than rational argumentation.

Against this background, the psychological question deepens: How do subjects relate to their own difficult feelings — loneliness, resentment, fear, shame — when these feelings are embedded in structures they cannot easily change? This is where Holzkamp’s concept of action potency (Handlungsfähigkeit) becomes crucial (1983). The struggle for agency under conditions of uncertainty, overload and contradictory demands expresses itself as fear of contingency and the desire to maintain control. Freud would describe the transformation of these difficult emotions into cultural productivity as sublimation, though such productivity can also reinforce a split between thinking and feeling, leaving embodied affect unaddressed. Through their integration into social accepted action, they reproduce exactly the same oppressive societal structures that affect emotional suffering.

Meta-subjectivity, in Holzkamp’s (1983) formulation, denotes the capacity to take a reflective distance from one’s immediate experience. Osterkamp (2008) further conceptualizes this shift as a movement toward a “Metaperspectivity,” (Metastandpunkt) enabling subjects to understand emotions as socially mediated rather than purely personal reactions. This resonates with Husserl’s epoché, Heidegger’s ekstasis, and Foucault’s decentering of the subject, each marking a methodological suspension that allows experience to be seen anew. Translating meta-subjectivity into practice reframing difficult emotions—shame, anger, hurt, and fear—not as deficits but as potential starting points for agency. Within critical psychology, emotions articulate a subject’s evaluative relation to their world (Holzkamp, 1983), meaning that difficult feelings reflect constrained possibilities for action rather than individual shortcomings. When explored collectively, these emotions become epistemic resources that illuminate how people experience structural limitations and openings.

Meta-subjectivity allows to move from statements like “I am angry” to the decentered formulation: “There is anger present—what does this reveal about my position in this situation?” This shift initiates what Osterkamp and Huck (2006) describe as social self-clarification (soziale Selbstverständigung): a collective clarification of situations, meanings, and interests that enables shared agency. Such reflective distancing does not diminish the reality of difficult emotions; instead, it transforms them into resources for understanding one’s embeddedness in social relations and for expanding action horizons. Meta-subjectivity therefore functions as both a psychological and political practice—opening spaces in which emotions can support rather than hinder the struggle for greater action potency.

This decentering can transform emotions from reflexive reactions into shared objects of inquiry, opening a “standpoint of trans-determination” from which new forms of agency can emerge. In participatory settings, this ecstasy can take the form of utopian imagination and collective action — not escapism, but anticipatory politics. Empowerment here is not a technocratic tool for strengthening individuals; it is a process of understanding and transforming the structural constraints on action.

In dark times, when loneliness isolates and ressentiment polarizes, gaining meta-subjectivity can guide practices cultivate the emotional and epistemic conditions for democratic life and social change.