Intimacy

For many people sex has become the new gymnastics, the new technology, the new marriage of sport and science, the new exhibitionism. Yet in all this there is something schizophrenic, the authors argue. Sex cannot be celebrated as a thing apart; rather, it is an integral part of our lives.

Sex is the adult's spontaneous play in which one gives oneself to another in abandoned vulnerability and accepts the other's unquestioning trust. Though these activities facilitate the physical act of sex they are not themselves physical. They are deeply emotional. The emotional need for physical closeness that also cherishes and nurtures–for, in a word, intimacy–is as basic and real as the need for sex.

Intimacy is a guide to meaningful intimate contact, the missing link between love and sex. Without it, love is merely obsession, selfish infatuation, or destructive hang-up; sex, nothing more than a pleasure balloon, popping when the moment passes. Well-fed babies and animals can die without intimacy–emotionally starved to death.

In this book the authors attempt to show how lack of intimacy constricts relationships and circumscribes lives. More important, they explore the ways in which a person can relearn the art of intimacy, which he once knew instinctively but which has been leached out of him in childhood. In doing so they draw heavily on methods developed by Encounter Groups, as well as on the work of Masters and Johnson. They also explain the use of the 'bioloop' –the recently developed method of controlling mentally what had previously been thought of as autonomous bodily functions.

In addition, the authors have prepared a guide for determining one's intimacy potential, thus equipping the reader with the self-knowledge required to achieve the ultimate pleasure of a truly intimate relationship.

Gina Allen (1916-1993) and Clement G. Martin. Intimacy: Sensitivity Sex and the Art of Love.First Edition Chicago, IL: Cowles Book Company, Inc., 1/1/1971. x+305pp.