An old priest was asked what he had learned about human nature after years of confessing his flock.
People are far less happy than they seem and everyone feels guilty and alone.
This host of cynical opinions seems as dusty and dug-in as that army of terra cotta soldiers unearthed in China. In Dr. Robert Firestone and Joyce Catlett's new book, Fear of Intimacy, the authors mount a determined frontal assault on the trenches. They wheel up the heavy guns of psychoanalytic, existential and cognitive-behavioral theory for a powerful bombardment, right on target, after forty years of action in the field. The fear of intimacy pivots around resistance, the fear that makes us jib at happiness and love, skillfully engage others to frost our growth and keeps us in thrall to a corrosive self-image blistered by ancient slanders. A key to understanding this fear is Firestone's concept of the fantasy bond, the infant's core or primary defense against separation anxiety, really the terror of annihilation.