Intimate Couple Author:Jon Carlson As important as intimacy is in our personal and professional lives, intimacy as a theoretical and clinical factor still remains a phenomenon. Currently, there seems to be as many definitions of intimacy as there are individuals writing about intimacy. Random House Dictionary defines it as "a close, familiar, and usually affectionate or loving p... more »ersonal relationship with another person." While Robert Beavers, a psychiatrist and family therapy researcher defines intimacy as "the joy of being known and accepted by another who is loved." Needless to say, there is no consensus on either the definition of intimacy or clinical applications towards issues involving intimacy.
In The Intimate Couple, the contributors agree - despite their theoretical orientation - that individuals have a need for both belonging and autonomy, and that the challenge of balancing these two needs is the basic challenge in intimate relationships. Each chapter addresses this challenge both theoretically and clinically. In the first section, the contributors articulate the construct of intimacy within a number of contexts including a Marital Intimacy Questionnaire and seven strategies for assessing intimacy in the clinical context. The next section, entitled "Methods of Creating Intimacy" includes different approaches to treating couples such as a cognitive-behavioral approach, a post-modern collaborative approach and the use of reality therapy. Finally, the contributors address different issues that arise when dealing with intimacy issues such as the relationship between spirituality and intimacy or unique issues involving intimacy in bisexual couples or intimacy problems when one or both partners in the relationship have severe psychiatric disorders.
Overall, the editors and contributors provide the best possible clinical milieu for the couples they work with in therapy and in couples workshops, and present trainees with the most current, cutting-edge theory and research that is available. For this reason, the editors have assembled this group of expert clinicians, theorists, and researchers and challenged them to move the field of couples and marital therapy into its prime.« less