Intimacy in Psychoanalysis

Abstract

In a similar context (Billow & Mendelsohn, Chapter 23), I have defined intimacy as a cognitive state that relates to knowledge of one's psychic reality. I have also suggested that one's emotional attitude towards this knowledge is the affective component of intimacy. Whereas intimacy is thus an intrapsychic process, it is an interpersonal process as well. One must first be intimate with oneself before one can be intimate with others. Psychoanalysis is a technique in which the major goal is increasing knowledge of one's psychic reality, that is, where the major goal is intimacy.