Intimacy means open sharing of feelings and wants between you and another person. In intimacy, feelings expressed are appropriate to finish the situation.
2. Prepared By
Manu Melwin Joy
Research Scholar
School of Management Studies
CUSAT, Kerala, India.
Phone – 9744551114
Mail – manu_melwinjoy@yahoo.com
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3. Intimacy
• In intimacy, there are no
secret messages.
• The social level and
psychological levels are
congruent.
• This is an important
difference between
intimacy and games.
4. Intimacy
• Intimacy means open
sharing of feelings and
wants between you and
another person.
• It is expressing the natural
child feeling of warmth,
tenderness and closeness
to others.
• Many people suffer from
an inability to express
such closeness.
5. “…Americans need so many more therapist
than the rest of the world need because they
just don’t know how to be intimate – that they
have no intimate friendships, by comparison
with the Europeans and that, therefore, they
really have no deep friends to unburden
themselves.”
Abraham Maslow
6. Intimacy
• In intimacy, feelings
expressed are appropriate
to finish the situation.
• By contrast, feelings
experienced at the end of
a game do nothing to
resolve the situation of
the players.
• This is why games are
played over and over
again.
7. Intimacy
• Berne’s choice of the
word intimacy should be
understood as a
specialized technical
usage.
• Intimacy in time
structuring may or may
not have much to do
with intimacy in the
usual dictionary sense.
8. Intimacy
• When people are being
sexually or personally
intimate, they may perhaps
also be sharing their feelings
and wants openly with each
other.
• In that case, they are
structuring their time in
intimacy.
• But, it is common also for
intense emotional
relationships to be founded
mainly in game playing.
9. Intimacy
• Games are sometimes used
as substitute for intimacy.
• They involve a similar
intensity of stroking but
without the same degree of
perceived risk.
• In a game, each person
shifts the responsibility for
the outcome to the other.
• In intimacy, each accepts
his own responsibility.
10. Intimacy
“Intimacy is a candid Child to Child relationship
with no games and no mutual exploitation. It is
set up by the Adult ego states of the parties
concerned, so that they understand very well
their contracts and commitments with each
other. “
Eric Berne
11. Intimacy
• To relate in intimacy, we first
need to establish the
relationship with our full
adult powers of thinking,
behaving and feeling.
• Within this protective
framework, we can go back
into child if we want to,
sharing and satisfying some
of the unmet needs we
carry from our early years.
12. Intimacy
• Intimacy entails mutual
caring and protection from
parent.
• The message from this ego
state is : “ I won’t discount
you and I won’t allow you
to discount me.”
• Stroking in intimacy is more
intense that in any other
form of time structuring.
13. Intimacy
• Since intimacy is not pre
programmed, it is the
most unpredictable of all
the ways of time
structuring.
• Thus from child, intimacy
is perceived as the most
risky way to relate to
another person.
14. Intimacy
• Autonomous people risk
friendships and intimacy
when they decide it is
appropriate.
• This does not come easy to
people who have restricted
their affectionate feelings
and are not in the habit of
expressing them.
• In fact, they may feel
awkward, even phony, when
they first try to go against old
programming.
15. Intimacy
• In the process of
developing the capacity
for intimacy, a person
becomes more open –
learns to let go,
becomes more self
revealing by dropping
some of the masks – but
always with the
awareness of the Adult.
16. Intimacy
• Autonomous people
are concerned with
being.
• They allow their own
capacities to unfold
and encourage
others to do the
same.
• They are not
concerned with
getting more, but
with being more.