ABSTRACT
Our culture currently assigns great importance to intimacy as an essential ingredient of love, friendship, and family relations. The mass media constantly portray the human longing for intimacy. Encounter groups, marriage enrichment groups, workshops, and self-help literature promise help in developing intimacy with others. There is also an abundant professional literature on the subject, only a handful of which will be referenced in this chapter. As economics provides less of the rationale for maintaining marriages and having families, personal factors become more important.
