ABSTRACT
In a 1959 article in the journal Mental Hygiene, Sidney M. Jourard set forth the ideas, propositions, and beliefs that subsequently came to be recognized, and vilified, as an “ideology of intimacy” (Bochner, 1982; Parks, 1982, 1995). Jourard argued that self-disclosure both signified and provided a means of achieving a “healthy personality.” The importance of self-disclosure could not be overestimated:
Activities such as loving, psychotherapy, counseling, teaching, and nursing all are impossible of achievement without the disclosure of the client. It is through self-disclosure that an individual reveals to himself and to the other party just exactly who, what and where he is. Just as thermometers, sphygmomanometers, etc. disclose information about the real state of the body, self-disclosure reveals the real nature of the soul of the self. Such information is vital in order to conduct intelligent evaluations. All I mean by evaluation is comparing how a person is with some concept of optimum. You never really discover how truly sick your psychotherapy patient is until he discloses himself utterly to you. You cannot help your client in vocational guidance until he has disclosed to you something of the impasse in which he finds himself. You cannot love your spouse, your child or your friend unless he has permitted you to know him and to know what he needs to move toward greater health and well-being. Nurses cannot nurse patients in any meaningful way unless they have permitted patients to disclose their needs, wants, worries, anxieties, and doubts. Teachers cannot be very helpful to their students until they have permitted the students to disclose how utterly ignorant and misinformed they are. Teachers cannot provide helpful information to the students until they have permitted the students to disclose exactly what they are interested in. (p. 505)
Over the next 20 years these ideas, although not necessarily these words, spawned hundreds of empirical studies and influenced much of the writing about interpersonal communication and relationships. From 1969 to 1974, the First five years of the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Jourard’s articles were cited an average of 110 times a year. In 1973, 187 articles cited his research. Although much less prominent, Jourard was still cited by an average of 44 articles a year from 1991 to 1997. Clearly, Jourard’s legacy endures more than 20 years following his death.