ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the way in which understanding the internal dynamics between people in intimate relationships, which are embedded in socio-cultural contexts, could provide a way of thinking about responsibility as a relational process. It uses a psychoanalytic understanding of intimacy as based in bonds of passionate attachment, rooted in childhood, that are considered to have founded and defined a person's self and, importantly, continue to do so. The resistance of intimacy to reflection has to do with the entanglement with fantasy and the impact that its associates, love and desire, are thought to have on our meaning-making process. The chapter argues that taking responsibility for another can indicate a recognition of oneself as always bound with others in particular ways that define what is felt as the person's core and can be characterized as non-transparent, multiple and meaning-making. Close, familial, and intimate relationships are embedded in socio-cultural frames and discourses that promote hierarchically organized normative identities and values.
