Riesman arrives at this conclusion by suggesting that the outer-directed person is fundamentally quite fearful of being left alone without external direction or support. Loneliness might frequently accompany an inner-directed person, but it is feared by those who are accustomed to being with other people. He proposes that is particularly difficult for the outer-directed person to identify and appreciate their own distinctive strengths and perspectives.
As we find also in the 1950s studies of organizational conformity—such as those articulated in The Man in the Gray-Flannel Suit (Wilson, 1955/2002) and The Organization Man (Whyte, 1956) —the outer-directed person has made a pact with the Devil. They give up (and continue to give up) their personal identity and “soul” (Brisken, 1996) on behalf of the collective identity of their organization or society. When they are alone, the outer-directed person finds no identity and a soul that is hollow. It is no wonder that they fear being alone.
Riesman exemplifies this outcome of an extreme outer-directed orientation in the life of gangsters (at least as portrayed in movies and novels) who become cut off from the law-abiding community and eventually their own gang (Riesman, 1950/1961, p. 155). In his later collection of essays, Individualism Reconsidered (Riesman, 1954), Riesman also reflects on the alienated and lonely life of many tyrannical American business leaders of the late 19th Century. While some of them were guided by a moral compass embedded in church and societal traditions (a mixture of transactional and autotelic relationships), others were motivated entirely by greed and status. They made full use of abusive (top/down) transactional relationships on behalf of these immoral goals. In contemporary times, we can witness the closing scenes of the last Godfather movie, with Michael Corleone (the gangster and businessman) sitting alone and alienated at his palatial lakeside estate.
On the concluding page of The Lonely Crowd, Riesman (1950/1961, p. 307) offers these final words of guidance and encouragement to those he identifies as outer-directed—who are standing lonely in a crowd:
“If the other-directed people should discover how much needless work they do, discover that their own thoughts and their own lives are quite as interesting as other people’s, that, indeed, they no more assuage their loneliness in a crowd or peers than one can assuage one’s third by drinking sea water, then we might expect them to become more attentive to their own feeling and aspirations.”
For Riesman, the goal is to recognize that one can find their personal identity and integrity when seeking to separate from the crowd and mindless conformity to collective thought and behavior.
