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In this article, the author examines the theoretical and clinical characteristics of intimacy, drawing upon several contemporary authors of the post-Freudian, post-Kleinian and post-Bionian schools. The psychobiological basis of the experience of intimacy starts with ‘utmost experience of inhabiting and sharing another body’ , which suffuses all of life, making ‘the human being an animal that depends on a partner’. Bion, Winnicott, Meltzer, Ogden and Civitarese are the main sources of inspiration for Levy’s exploration of intimacy. Drawing upon Meltzer, Levy proposes that, in contrast with occasional or contractual relationships, intimate relationships ‘involve emotional experience that may lead to expansion of the mind, to mental growth, through a prolonged effort of containment and symbolization of ongoing emotions’. This is further related to the concept of truth, the relational and analytic fields, the intersubjective third, and Bion’s observation that amorous and aggressive experiences will only expand the mind if they are subordinate to K (knowledge), which is rendered tantamount to a drive. Levy acknowledges the inevitable limitation of words in expressing the emotional subtleties of intimacy, indicating that a faculty other than mere rationality is involved in the enfolding of this experience, that is, the aesthetic dimension of psychoanalysis.
How can the ‘truth’ of the Other as a shared emotional experience emerge in the analytic relationship? ‘Because of its multiple implications, the description and conceptualization of the process of communicating raw emotions via projective identification, acceptance, and symbolic transformation thereof by the object has had a revolutionary effect on psychoanalysis.’ Bion’s notion of ‘becoming the other’ and Grotstein’s transformation of psychoanalysis in ‘the practice of obtaining and experiencing intimacy’ is integrated by the seminal transformation by Winnicott of the concept of projective identification (in terms of