4 Rollo May Quotes on Intimacy

Rollo May quotes on intimacy

28. In a world where numbers inexorably take over as our means of identification, like flowing lava threatening to suffocate and fosilize all breathing life in its path; in a world where 'normality' is defined as keeping your cool; where sex is so available that the only way to preserve any inner center is to have intercourse without committing yourself--in such a schizoid world, which young people experience more directly since they have not had time to build up the defenses which dull the senses of their elders, it is not surprising that will and love have become increasingly problematic and even, as some people believe, impossible of achievement.

35. Sex can be defined fairly adequately in physiological terms as consisting of the building up of bodily tensions and their release. Eros, in contrast, is the experiencing of the personal intentions and meaning of the act. Whereas sex is a rhythm of stimulus and response, eros is a state of being. The pleasure of sex is described by Freud and others as the reduction of tension; in eros, on the contrary, we wish not to be released from the excitement but rather to hang on to it, to bask in it, and even to increase it. The end toward which sex points is gratification and relaxation, whereas eros is a desiring, longing, a forever reaching out, seeking to expand.

66. Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing.

81. Tenderness emerges from the fact that the two persons, longing, as all individuals do, to overcome the separateness and isolation to which we are all heir because we are individuals, can participate in a relationship that, for the moment, is not of two isolated selves but a union.