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ANTHROPOLOGICAL EVIDENCE SUGGESTS THAT EXCHANGE is a central feature of human existence. Exchanges may involve goods, people (as in marriage) or non-physical commodities, such as confidences and secrets. As Tiger and Fox put it: "The exchange of property (real or incorporeal) is the basic act of truly human social relationships" (1974, p. 181).
Anthropological studies show exchanges typically occurring across and between territories. In the exchange of confidences, as in intimate relationships, that which is told crosses the boundaries of different experiential zones. In this paper, we explore this phenomenon. We suggest that exchange has a developmental history which is disrupted in those with personality disorder. We present a case in which a patient's evolution towards health involved the capacity for mature exchange, manifest in a particular form of gift giving. The discussion begins with a consideration of experiential space.
Karl Jaspers wrote that "everything in the world that is presented to us comes to us in space and time and we experience it in these terms" (1962, p. 79). An awareness of its space underpins our ordinary lived experience. Despite its fundamental nature, relatively little attention has been paid to the sense of personal spatiality, at least since the era of existential psychiatry. This neglect is due, in part, to the abstract and difficult nature of the subject. The English philosopher, Gilbert Ryle, identified one of the main problems in our attempts to conceive a personal spatiality. In his influential book, The Concept of Mind, he set about exploding what he saw as myths about "the nature and place of minds" (1963, p. 13). The notion of mind, he pointed out, implied an