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The subject of this conference, intimacy and communication, lies at the very heart of the analytic experience. If the patient is to learn to communicate effectively and intimately with people in the out-side world, then he must begin to do so in the analytic situation.
Rather than dwell on philosophical and social models of intimacy along the lines of Fromm and Horney, or discuss the juxtaposition of intimacy with isolation as does Erikson, let us rather focus on an operational definition of what constitutes an intimate relationship between patient and analyst.
For our purposes today let us define intimacy for the patient as the experience of feeling emotionally understood by the analyst via the analyst's sharing, withholding or expressing communications to the patient selectively at the right time, in the proper degree. This feeling of being emotionally understood, and thus psychologically loved by the transference object creates in the patient a sense of joy, pleasure, and trust in the analytic relationship. Once this intimacy is experienced by the patient with the emotionally significant analyst, the heretofore perhaps barren world can become fertile ground where close relationships can be cultivated, nurtured, and harvested; a new mode of communication and trust has been established.
As we know, communication between analyst and patient starts