Abstract

LEVY, Ruggero. Intimacy: the drama and the beauty in the match and mismatch with the other person. Rev. bras. psicanál [online]. 2017, vol.51, n.3, pp. 111-132. ISSN 0486-641X.

The author starts from the idea that intimacy is an emotional experience. His purposes are to define the meaning of intimacy in the psychoanalytic practice, the way intimacy is built in the psychoanalytical relationship, and to identify the factors that either facilitate or impede intimacy. The author begins with general considerations about intimacy in life, life cycle, and relationships in general. Living intimacy, he defines, is an emotional experience of being in touch with oneself and with another subject. He focuses on describing the experience of intimacy in the analytic relationship. According to him, the meeting between two subjects and their subjectivities creates an area of emotional turbulence. If this “turbulence” is tolerated, symbolically transformed, and therefore thought out, it may lead to know the intimacy of one's and the other person's emotions. This emotion, which one has experienced in being in contact with the other person, embodies the bond between the two of them. This emotion enables them to know what is happening within both oneself and the person with whom one is in contact. The author proposes a gradient of intimate experiences, which ranges from extremes of autistic isolation to narcissistic fusion. In both extremes, the experience of intimacy is impossible. Different degrees of potential intimacy may be found in the intermediate zone. In the following part of his study, the author describes the timing of intimacy. He closely examines, for theoretical purposes, the process of building intimacy in the psychoanalytic relationship and he identifies the obstacles to be overcome. Finally, clinical vignettes are presented to illustrate the way the author would characterize experiences of intimacy in the psychoanalytic relationship, the anxieties they trigger, and certain defenses against intimacy.

Keywords : intimacy; psychoanalytic relationship; symbolization; psychoanalytic field.

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