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Presented as a kind of conversation between Leo Bersani and Adam Phillips, Intimacies is a book about couples. Three couples, in particular, animate the conversation: the Socratic couple in the Phaedrus, Freud's analytic couple, and the mother-infant couple. Bersani is particularly interested in the first of these three couples; Phillips introduces mothers and babies into the conversation; and they both share an interest in the analytic couple, albeit for different reasons. The nursing couple may be seen here as a prototype of the talking couples, who, in turn, represent two contrasting paradigms of intimacy. Like most things said in conversation, the book is not well argued; things tend to be left up in the air, and, as Phillips himself says in his opening remarks, the book is ‘neither diligent, thorough, researched, nor finished’ (p. viii). Readers expecting to find an index, a bibliography, or referenced citations will be frustrated. Moreover, the inevitable gaps and uncertainties are allowed to stand as the conversation unfolds, making no sacrifice à la Freud (1933) ‘to an appearance of being simple, complete or rounded-off’ (p. 6).
That the authors each focus only on what interests them consolidates Intimacies' rough-and-ready, freewheeling quality; it is also the reason why I think the book is worth reading. There is a spontaneous feel throughout that extends from the conversational style to the main themes of the book. Bersani and Phillips are trying to feel their way toward what I would call an improvised sense of intimacy. In a characteristically pointed phrase, Phillips defines psychoanalysis as talk without sex. Bersani begins by elaborating on this idea from a different angle, approaching the analytic dialogue as more than simply a non-sex contract. Essentially, Bersani treats psychoanalysis as as a problem of knowledge. And he is indebted here to Foucault's (1971) critique of ‘knowledge’ (connaissance) in terms of ‘the will to knowledge’ (la volonté de s