Knowing If It's the Real Thing: Discovering the Roots of Intimacy

208 Pages·2003·9.34 MB·English

by  Gerald Alper

KNOWING
IF
IT’S THE
THING
Also by Gerald Alper
The Puppeteers: Studies of Obsessive Control
Power Games
Power Plays: Their Uses and Abuses in Human Relations
Minding the Other’s Mind:
The Factor of Control in ContemfioraryR elationshiljs
The Dark Side of the Analytic Moon
Blind Alleys
Portrait of the Artist as a rOung Patient
Control Games: Avoiding Intimacy on the Singles Scene
Narcissistic Giving: A Study of People Who
Cheat in Relationships
The Singles Scene: A Psychoanalytic Study of the
Breakdown of Intimacy
KNOWING
IFmL
IT’S THE
THING
DISCOVERING THE ROOTS
OF INTIMACY
GERALD ALPER
TAYLOR PUBLISHING
TRADE
Lanham New York Oxford
Copyright 0 2003 by Gerald Alper
First Taylor Trade Publishing edition 2003
This Taylor Trade Publishing hardcover edition of Knowing IfZt’s the Real
Thing is an original publication. It is published by arrangement with the author.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or
mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without
written permission.
Published by Taylor Trade Publishing
A Member of the Roman & Littlefield Publishing Group
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200
Lanham, Maryland 20706
Distributed by National Book Network
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-PublicationD ata Available
ISBN 0-87833-295-2
@
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO 239.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America.
To Sally Lamb
This Page Intentionally Left Blank
CONTENTS
Preface ix
1 In the Beginning 1
2 Everyday Examples 27
105
3 Obstacles
165
4 Therapy and Intimacy
185
References
189
About the Author
vii
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PREFACE
Fo r the past ten years I have been a practicing psychother-
apist who has attempted to explore in depth what I take to
be a paradigmatic conflict of our age: the avoidance of inti-
macy. Although obstacles to true encounters seem to be not
only endless but exponentially flourishing, my hope was that
the patient accumulation of pertinent examples would even-
tually provide a mosaic both rich and convincing.
My strategy now, as it was then, is to use an exclusionary de-
finition: By presenting a precise and multidimensional picture
of everything that intimacy is not, a core remainder of indis-
pensable attributes will, at least in theory, coalesce. Therefore,
it made more sense to begin with a phenomenological survey
of the kinds of relationships that are so prevalent today in what
Christopher Lasch (1979) once memorably called “the culture
of narcissism.”
What I did not realize was that what seemed startlingly obvi-
ous to me was less than transparent to patients who were both
demoralized and mystified by their repeated fadures to connect
in all but the most superficial sense with another person. Time
1x