Fear of intimacy can be understood from the viewpoint of a failure to mourn the primal parental objects and to internalise them symbolically, and to thus psychologically benefit from the resources of relatedness that they provide, while simultaneously separating from them as external objects, so that one can relate to others as true differentiated others in the present. This chapter first outlines the concepts of major British and American object relations theorists who speak in their own particular ways of the developmental arrests due to primal trauma, and of the higher level intrapsychic dilemmas and conflicts that forestall intimacy in relationships. It then gives clinical examples from the author's own psychoanalytic object relations private practice of almost forty years. The theories described initially are highlighted within the case examples. In this way abstract concepts, such as "resourceless dependency", the "in and out" solution, "developmental mourning", and the "demon-lover complex" can all come alive.