ABSTRACT
UP UNTIL now, I have described a somewhat ideal state of affairs. Many people do not experience all, if any, of the forms of intimacy described earlier. Few spend the time to develop qualities of presence and flow. Life seems to run smoothly without any special awareness of temporal qualities (e.g., routine, pacing) and the deep experience of intimacy may be rare. Indeed, in their review of research on intimacy, Berscheid and Reis (1998) concluded: ". . .most relationships never become highly intimate, even when the participants are initially attracted to each other and are not particularly averse to intimacy" (p. 225). Relationships have their "dark sides" of jealousy, envy, sexual coercion, violence, and obsessive love (see Cupach & Spitzberg, 1 994, for research on these phenomena). So, the current view of intimacy and wholeness may be just
* An earl ier version of this chapter was presented at the 1 993 International Association of Transactional Analysis (Minneapolis, MN).
