ABSTRACT
Couples enter therapy with a variety of presenting problems. One of the most common is poor communication. Upon closer examination and assessment, however, one discovers that when couples complain about not being able to communicate eectively, they are actually saying they are unable to communicate intimately and meaningfully. e reasons for couples not identifying intimacy diculties as their major concern is that they oen think of intimacy as applying only to sexual relations. In order to help couples broaden their denition of intimacy to include more than sexual interactions and to pinpoint more accurately the sources of their dissatisfaction, therapists might consider using the Intimacy Needs Survey (Bagarozzi, 1990) as part of their pretreatment assessments. A brief discussion of this instrument and its development is presented below, followed by case illustrations selected to demonstrate its clinical uses.
