Time and Intimacy : A New Science of Personal Relationships (LEA's Series on Personal Relationships) [Paperback]

Joel B. Bennett (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0805836802 | ISBN-13: 978-0805836806 | Publication Date: August 2000 | Edition: 1

There is a mysterious connection between our experiences of intimacy--of love, the longing to feel connected, and sexual embrace--and the human sense of time--eternity, impermanence, and rhythm. In this critical analysis of the time-intimacy equation, Bennett shows how the scientific study of personal relationships can address this mystery. As a study of transpersonal science, this book points to the possible evolution of intimacy and of our consciousness of time, and how the two evolutionary paths weave together.

Dr. Bennett draws from a wide array of resources to advance and marry two compelling themes: first, the social and clinical science of personal relationships should integrate the spiritual or transpersonal dimension of intimacy, and second, science can contribute to lay understandings by describing the richly temporal aspects of relationships. In blending popular literature, transpersonal psychology, and scientific research and theory, this work also attempts to address the lack of dialogue between academics who study personal intimacy and those writers in the popular press who give advice and guidelines for building intimacy.

Time and Intimacy is written for a broad audience, intended for those with a general interest in relationships, as well as for students, counselors, and psychologists. It can be used as a text in courses on personal relationships, as well as to supplement courses in humanistic psychology, transpersonal psychology, interpersonal communication, relationships, marital and family counseling, human relations, and related areas. Because it advances an interdisciplinary understanding of personal relationships, this book is certain to challenge prevailing views about the meaning of intimacy in both the academic and popular literatures.

Editorial Reviews

Review

This book delves deeply and reveals to the reader a rich and new way to look at the realm of relationships. Simultaneously exploring time and intimacy creates a profound shift in our understanding of how people relate. In a modern era that views time as a commodity, intimacy is often lost as relationship suffers. Joel Bennett provides a brilliant approach to a very important subject--well worth any reader's time.

—Stephan Rechtschaffen, MD
Author, Time Shifting: Creating More Time to Enjoy Your Life; Cofounder and CEO,

Bennett has done an extraordinary job of combining three forms of reflection to treat the topic of intimacy. The integration of three themes--quantitative psychology research, transpersonal depth psychology, and temporality/transcendence--constitutes the unique contribution of this book. Time and Intimacy: A New Science of Personal Relationships presents a hypothesis for further reflection in psychology, and it organizes a whole field of research for study. Most important, it deals sensitively with a very important topic.
—Robert Cummings Neville
Dean, School of Theology, Boston University

Joel Bennett's Time and Intimacy talks about intimacy in a way that recreates the feeling of intimacy, and recapitulates his vision of an intimate interaction through the structure of the book itself. Just as intimate interactions provide a sense of transcending time even as they can only be understood within a temporary trajectory, Bennett's prose, by refusing linearity and traditional scientific discourse, recapitulates the felt sense of an intimate interaction through its poetic style. Time and Intimacy is a book that can be opened anywhere and enjoyed, as it is composed of many loosely woven strands pulled together graphically and sometimes metaphorically. When it is opened spontaneously and absorbed in bursts, with full attention given to the language itself, it can be appreciated like poetry. Unlike poetry, however, Bennett's work has woven within it references to the latest research on close relationships. For readers who believe that the structure of the text should speak to the subject matter of that text, there is much experimentation with textual structure to be discovered in Time and Intimacy. Language alternates in unpredictable ways between the poetic and the philosophical, between the scientific and the transpersonal, between the objective and the subjective. Much as an intimate conversation itself might, the book invites the reader to transcend the ordinary boundaries of academic disciplines and to think about intimate experience in language that goes beyond ordinary discourse.

—Karen Prager
University of Texas, Dallas

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

[FROM THE PREFACE] Since the 1970s, there has been a marked flourish of writing and research on the topics of personal relationships and intimacy. In addition to the thousands of magazine articles and popular books on love and intimacy, scientists have examined a broad array of phenomena, ranging from analysis of love and styles of romantic attachment to genetic influences on marital success. I believe that all this activity represents humanity's search for a new way of living in and understanding—a new model of—close relationships....

Because it deals with time, this book may help those who wish to recapture the meaning of intimacy in a hurried world. In fact, recent social trends suggest that those of us who are the most starved for intimacy are also likely to be those most starved for time. As a society, we have been taught, and have bought the wholesale illusion, that time is scarce (Rechtschaffen, 1996). We have fallen into a consensual trance,

fascinated by information and the "media"; that is, the digitized, video-graphic, telemediated, and virtual world. Gradually and without much notice, we have cultivated an insatiable hunger for as much information as possible in the shortest possible amount of time. A central point of this book is that such hunger belies a deeply thwarted need for intimacy.... --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 376 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (August 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805836802
• ISBN-13: 978-0805836806
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,868,800 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Quite insightful into types of intimacy and their association with time, January 11, 2007

By 

S. J. Snyder "De gustibus non disputandum" (Various, United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Time and Intimacy : A New Science of Personal Relationships (LEA's Series on Personal Relationships) (Paperback)

This book has valuable insight for anyone wishing to explore the varieties of intimacy that make up the fabric of human life and how these intimacies can be developed on a personal, intrapersonal and interpersonal level.

With exercises and checklists, this is the type of book that lends itself to careful reading, journaling, reflection, meditation or other insight.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Graduate Student Perspective, October 28, 2001

By 

Richard C. Ortloff (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Time and Intimacy : A New Science of Personal Relationships (LEA's Series on Personal Relationships) (Paperback)

I found the book Time and Intimacy to be a surprising combination of scholarly research, practical relationship advice, and an uncommon sharing of personal insight and disclosure. As a graduate student I found the volume valuable to me as a research text. As human being I found the book life affirming, remarkably encouraging and personally instructive. Thank you Dr. Bennett for your contribution not only to science, but also to the common good.