J.W. Freiberg studies chronic loneliness through the unique lens of a social psychologist (PhD, UCLA) turned lawyer (JD, Harvard). A former assistant professor in the department of social psychology at Boston University, he served for decades as general counsel to more than a dozen mental health and social service agencies in Boston, including The Home for Little Wanderers, the nation’s oldest child-welfare organization. Dr. Freiberg is the author of Surrounded by Others and Yet So Alone: A Lawyer’s Case Stories of Love, Loneliness, and Litigation (June 2020), in which he explores the impact of faulty connections in failing relationships, through the telling of five case stories mined from his 30-years as an attorney.

 Dr. Freiberg twice organized scholarly symposia on childhood trauma; the papers from his 2018 symposium “Loneliness and the Power of Permanency,” held at The Kennedy Center in Boston and attended by more than 400 mental health professionals, are collected into his edited work Growing Up Lonely: Disconnection and Misconnection in the Lives of Our Children. Dr. Freiberg is the author of the award-winning book Four Seasons of Loneliness (2016), and of Critical Sociology: European Perspectives and The French Press. He a member of the MA state bar and the bar of the Supreme Court of the US.

 Two other books on loneliness by him are: Surrounded By Others And Yet So Alone and his study of children, Growing Up Lonely.