Aspects Of Intimacy Research Articles

Changes in Spousal Intimacy in Women Suffering Trauma Symptoms from Domestic Abuse: A Culturally Embedded Intervention Study in Pakistan.

While emerging research is highlighting the significant effects of culture on marital and family relationships, studies investigating relationship intimacy and abuse in non-Western cultures are non-existent. This investigation assessed relationship intimacy in Pakistani women experiencing trauma symptoms (PTSD) from domestic abuse (DA) who received a culturally informed trauma intervention in a context that differs greatly in values and assumptions about marital relationships relative to Western traditions. Forty women meeting inclusion criteria were assessed on domestic violence type and characteristics (both victim and perpetrator characteristics), PTSD symptomology, and three aspects of relationship intimacy: engagement, communication, and shared friendships. PTSD symptomology and relationship intimacy were reassessed post-intervention. Results indicated significant changes in engagement and communication intimacy following the intervention, with engagement decreasing and communication increasing. The third aspect of intimacy, namely, shared friendships, showed no change. Engagement and overall intimacy showed significant negative correlations with physical abuse, though not with sexual or psychological/emotional abuse. These findings are interpreted within a cultural context where women have few options for leaving an abusive relationship. As such, the results highlight the importance of culture when studying facets of intimate relationships and the need to use culturally informed assessments to better understand the experience of intimacy within abusive relationships.

Asked to be a sperm donor: disclosure dilemmas of gay men living with HIV

Previous research has documented the various challenges people living with HIV face as they navigate intimate relationships, including what is often referred to as disclosure. In studies of gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men, the issue of telling or not telling others about an HIV-positive status has been examined primarily in relation to communication with sexual partners, with few studies focusing on other aspects of intimacy. Drawing on interviews with gay men living with HIV, conducted in four clinics in London, this article explores the narratives of men who have been asked by female friends about the possibility of being a sperm donor. The narratives highlight layers of complexity which have received little attention, not only in research on HIV but also in studies of sperm donation and co-parenting. The article advances dialogue between these two largely separate bodies of work. Our data suggest that reluctance to share an HIV-positive status with others can be an important factor in deciding how to answer the ‘sperm donor question’. Examining reproductive relationships of a specific kind – those based on friendships between women and gay men – the article develops the understanding of how secrecy about HIV shapes intimate lives.

Dermatological diseases, sexuality and intimate relationships: A qualitative meta-synthesis.

To conduct a systematic review and meta-synthesis of findings from qualitative research about sexuality and intimate relationship among patients with dermatological diseases. Over the last few decades, there has been an increase in clinical research investigating aspects related to sex and sexuality in patients living with dermatological diseases. In fact, studies recognise a negative impact on various aspects of intimacy, such as sexual function, self-esteem and romantic relationships. The body of qualitative literature about sexuality in the context of dermatological diseases is emerging but consists mainly of small studies that would benefit from aggregation, synthesis and interpretation to highlight and summarise the overarching dimensions to this clinical issue. A systematic review and meta-synthesis of qualitative studies. BioMed Central, Cochrane Library, MEDLINE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, PsycARTICLES, ERIC, Scopus, and Web of Science were searched between June-November 2017 with no publication date limits. Screening and selection of studies was performed according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines (PRISMA). After retrieval, the qualitative data were subject to meta-synthesis to identify overarching themes. Ten qualitative studies were found. We identified four themes: (a) Embarrassment and shame; (b) Impaired sense of attractiveness and sexual avoidance; (c) Relationship issues; and (d) Lack of professional support. The patients in these studies adopted negative coping styles, such as avoidance and hiding their bodies. When assessing and evaluating patient care in dermatology, it is important that sexuality and the impact the disease could have on relationships is included. An important part of nursing care is ensuring that patients are helped to develop positive coping strategies rather than negative ones. Patients with dermatological conditions also need advice and treatment to address any physically related sexual problems. Nurses need to be the initiators of these sensitive conversations to put patients at ease and work together to implement positive measures to reduce the sexuality-related issues patients face.

Seat Choice in a Crowded Café: Effects of Eye Contact, Distance, and Anchoring.

According to theories of interpersonal distance people choose to position themselves in relation to nearby others in a way that optimizes intimacy and privacy. In two studies we investigated the influence of intimacy and privacy on seating behavior in a café (coffee house) setting. In Study 1 (N = 71) we manipulated two aspects of intimacy (eye contact and distance to others), and one aspect of privacy (architectural anchoring) in separate scenario’s and registered participants’ seat choice on floor plans of the three hypothetical cafés. We found that more often participants chose a seat that was at a larger distance to other café-goers. Study 2 (N = 121) replicated the design of the first study, but included affective and cognitive appraisal measures concerning both available seats in each scenario. This time we found that participants more often chose low-eye contact and anchored seats. Choices in line with hypotheses as well as those that were against hypotheses co-occurred with strong beliefs about the pleasure and arousal that each choice might provide and related to the expectations of interaction with others present. Results qualify expectations about protection and violation of intimacy and privacy, at least for café settings.

Mental health, self-esteem, and influences on sexual values and attitudes among black South African adolescent males

This study investigated the relationships between sexual values and attitudes, self-esteem, and mental health among black South African adolescents. Adolescent males (n = 522) aged between 13 and 21 years participated in the study. They completed the Mathteck Sexuality Questionnaire for Adolescents: Attitude and Value Inventory, the Rosenburg Self-esteem Scale, and the Mental Health Continuum. Structural Equation Modelling (Mplus 7.31) was computed to identify an explanatory model for sexual values and attitudes as correlated to self-esteem and mental health of black adolescent males. Results suggest the youth's self-esteem significantly mediate the relationship between mental health and sexual values and attitudes. Specifically, mental health had indirect effects on values about sexuality and on healthy attitudes towards aspects of intimacy, through the teenagers’ self-esteem.

English

Both parents and adolescents have adopted a wide range of technologies in their daily lives. Most scholars are interested in the consequences of individuals’ technology addiction and relational development while little attention is given to their family relationships through the communication of new media. Drawing from the perspectives of media uses and gratifications, this study develops an empirical model by investigating the connections between adolescents’ communication motives and their perceptions of relational maintenance and intimacy with their parents. The uses of media technologies, family communication patterns and parents’ gender are also included to examine the multiplicity of their relationships. A group of 400 parents with adolescents at home are recruited in the survey and research variables are analyzed by statistical methods. The results show parents initiate communications with their adolescents derived from various motives, facilitated by relational maintenance and achieved different aspects of intimacy. Parents’ communication motives and intimacy are also shaped by the effects of family communication patterns (FCPs) and parents’ family role (e.g. Father or Mother). The research implications may provide opportunities for further exploration toward parent-adolescent communication and dyads relationship. Key words: Examination, parent-adolescent communication motives, relational maintenance, intimacy, communication technologies.

Real sex, real lives – excesso, desejo e as promessas do real

Este artigo reflete sobre os diálogos possíveis entre o documentário e a pornografia partindo da ideia de mobilização de desejos e saberes presentes em ambos os domínios. Nesse sentido, trabalharemos a noção de excesso como mobilizador de desejos de saber e de ver que se articulam na série Real People, Real Life, Real Sex do realizador Tony Comstock. Os filmes alternam as tradições do documentário e da pornografia numa promessa de apresentação ao olhar público da intimidade dos seus personagens, performada a partir de falas e números sexuais. Argumentamos que tais filmes estão consonantes com a moral contemporânea marcada por uma subjetividade alter-dirigida que se sustenta nas performances de fala e de sexo dirigidas ao olhar público do aparato cinematográfico. Nesse sentido, a ideia de um real associado ao excesso de visibilidade é reafirmada enquanto commodity e enquanto fonte de prazer visual e voyeurístico.

Sexuality in patients undergoing haematopoietic stem cell transplantation

McKee and Schover have suggested that sexuality is an aspect of intimacy that is frequently compromised by cancer and its treatments. Cancer, both in terms of diagnosis and treatments, may have a dramatic impact on both intimacy and sexuality. There is a body of published research addressing sexual concerns among patients with prostatic, testicular, breast, and rectal cancers. This issue seems to be less well documented in patients who have undergone haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). In this review, we seek to elaborate different points regarding sexuality and how it is affected in patients undergoing HSCT, with the aim of identifying optimum solutions for such patients in confronting such problems in the course of cancer treatment.

Beyond Home: Forging the Domestic in Shared Housing

ABSTRACTThis article examines how connections between intimacy and the realm of the domestic are propelled by conditions of shared residence. Informed by research among low-income families in Buenos Aires who organize to attain collectively owned housing, I depict how the propinquity provided by common social activism and co-residence creates both a political and an affective community. The groups in question organize their cohabitation and everyday life according to a set of explicit and collectively sanctioned rules and regulations concerning distribution and uses of space, maintenance, etc. However, living together also implies embracing a myriad of norms regarding aspects of intimacy and the body—particularly those related to sexuality—which, although alluded to by written rules, can only gain voice in the more nuanced, semi-public idioms of gossip and rumor. The article explores these assertions by considering several instances where rules and gossip intersected in deliberations about (im)proper attire in common areas, and the making of decisions about kinship and care. I describe the emotional undertones that emerge around these issues—such as jealousy, modesty, or suspicion—in order to examine how they articulate a domestic domain.These reflections are based on extended interviews. In order to preserve my informants' anonymity I used pseudonyms in all cases.

A medida da gordura: O interno e o íntimo na academia de ginástica

A partir de pesquisa etnográfica e bibliográfica, o presente artigo trata da gordura nas academias de ginástica, enfocando questões relativas ao corpo e à pessoa. A análise da avaliação corporal evidencia os termos de uma produção científica que elabora o corpo como um metabolismo caracterizado pelo risco e pela maleabilidade. São os conteúdos corporais que estão em jogo, de modo que o ideal estético não é a magreza, mas a "definição" do corpo, fruto da sobreposição da gordura pelo músculo. A busca da saúde caracteriza-se pela gerência constante do risco inerente ao balanço destes componentes. Beleza e saúde são formas de cuidar de si - imperativo caro ao individualismo contemporâneo - através do manejo dos conteúdos corporais. Assim, a avaliação corporal delineia os elementos internos e os aspectos da intimidade, e dota as práticas corporais da capacidade de empreender um engajamento entre eles.

Mobile Intimacy

Mobile Intimacy

Personal Inadequacy and Intimacy Predictors of Men's Hostility Toward Women

In this study we examined social/personality and intimacy predictors of men's hostility toward women (HTW). The study was framed in terms of a projection model that suggests that men's feelings of inadequacy contribute to hostility toward women. The sample consisted of 172 college men. The strongest attitudinal predictors were measures of locus of control. These data support the feminist analysis of sexual violence as an issue of power and lend support to the proposed projection model in terms of perceived powerlessness. In addition, based on the projection model, intimacy predictors for best male friend and female romantic partner were examined. The strongest correlate of men's HTW was intellectual intimacy, which conceptually is more related to the idea of an egalitarian relationship than other aspects of intimacy and may be most inhibited in men who are hostile toward women's intimate relationships.

Intelligent space and human centered robotics

The robot has emerged as a factor in the daily lives of humans, taking the form of a mechanical pet or similar source of entertainment. A robot system that is designed to coexist with humans, i.e., a coexistence-type robot system, is important. "It exists in various environments together with the humans: the robot system which interacts with a physical, informational emotion with the humans, etc., must be valued." When studying the impact of intimacy on the human/robot relationship, we have to examine the problems that can arise as a result of physical intimacy (coordination of safety on the hardware side and a software side). Furthermore, we should also consider the informational aspects of intimacy (recognition technology and information transport and sharing). This paper reports the interim results of the research of a system configuration that enhances the physical intimacy relationship in the symbiosis of the human and the robot.

Some Aspects of Intimacy in an Analytic Therapy Group

Abstract Failure to establish or sustain intimacy is a major reason most patients give for entering therapy, and this is especially so for group therapy. Their hope is that through the here-and-now nature of the group, the peer feedback from the group, and the development of interpersonal dynamics withinthe group, an atmosphere will be created in which issues of trust and intimacy can be safely explored and worked through. After a brief review of theliterature on the subject, case material will be used from the presenter's practice, notably excerpts from a session of a long-term (25 years) analytic therapy group illustrating members' attempts to establish and foster intimacy on the one hand, and to defend against and avoid it, on the other. Discussion will focus on the identification of mechanisms that encourage or deter the development of intimacy.

Factor analysis of the Personal Assessment of Intimacy in Relationships Scale (PAIR): Engagement, communication and shared friendships

The Personal Assessment of Intimacy in Relationships (PAIR) was developed by Schaefer & Olson (1981) to assess both the actual and ideal levels of intimacy in relationships. Attempts to replicate the original factor structure have not been reported. In Stage 1 of the present study, 157 volunteers (34 males, 123 females; mean age 27.76 years) who were currently in committed relationships completed the PAIR. Factor analysis failed to replicate the original structure but yielded a reliable, independent three-factor solution: engagement, communication and shared friendships. There were no gender differences on these factors. Confirmatory factor analysis failed to confirm this three-factor solution in a group of 145 clients (77 males, 68 females; mean age 35.79 years) presenting to a clinic for the treatment of sexual dysfunction. Principal components analysis yielded a unifactorial solution. These results suggest that people from the general population demonstrate three independent but increasingly involved aspects of intimacy, ranging from engagement to communication to shared friendships. People with sexual dysfunction seem to experience a decrement in all aspects of intimacy. The implications of these findings for the treatment of sexual dysfunction are discussed.

Intimacy and quality of life among sexually dysfunctional men and women

This study evaluated the associations between intimacy, quality of lqe, and sexual dysfunction in men and women. Participants were 145 sexually functional (43 men, 102 women) adults drawn from the general population and 198 sexually dysfunctional (114 men, 84 women) adults who came to a university sexual behavior clinic. All respondents were currently involved in a heterosexualrelationship. Respondents completed a series of questionnaires to evaluate the level of intimacyin their relationships, their quality of life, and their level of sexual dysfunction. All aspects of intimacy were lower among sexually dysfunctional men than among sexually functional men forall subgroups of dysfunctionality (premature ejaculation, erectile failure, and lack of sexualdesire). Levels of intimacy were less likely to discriminate between functional and dysfunctional women, with functional women only obtaining higher intimacy scores than each of the dysfunctional groups of women (inorgasmia, lack of arousal, lack of sexual desire) for social intimacy and recreational intimacy and, to a lesser extent, for sexual intimacy. Objective levels of quality of life as well as the satisfaction and importance of the quality of life domains were more likely to be lower when sexually dysfunctional women were compared with their functional counteqarts than when sexually dysfunctional men were compared with their functional counterparts. The implications of these Jindingsfor an understanding of factors that contribute to sexual dysfunction, and the treatment of these disorders, is discussed.

A developmental model of intimacy and date request explicitness

This article presents a perspective emphasizing developmental changes in explicitness that assimilates contradictory findings in prior research regarding the association between intimacy and the explicitness of requests. Affection for a partner and social closeness are distinguished as unique aspects of intimacy, and the impact of affection for a partner on explicitness is argued to vary with the development of closeness within a relationship. In addition, a curvilinear association between intimacy and explicitness is derived. The results of a study of date request behaviors were consistent with the predicted associations between intimacy and the overall explicitness of date request conversations. Intimacy was not related to the use of particular explicit or implicit request utterances. The discussion highlights issues relevant to continued research on intimacy, explicit communication, and the development of dating relationships.

Exploring Intimacy in Therapy

Summary Case material is used to explore the idea that ambiguous autonomic arousal may be “overtranslated” as sexual arousal, both by therapists and by clients. As a result, other important aspects of intimacy in relationships do not get taught or discussed in supervision/therapy.

Perspectives on Marital Love and Satisfaction in Mexican American and Anglo‐American Couples

Aspects of intimacy and satisfaction were explored for a volunteer sample of 54 Mexican American (classified as either Hispanic‐oriented or bicultural) and 30 Anglo‐American married couples. Data were collected by questionnaire through network sampling. Measures included the Acculturation Rating Scale for Mexican Americans, a background inventory, the Love Attitudes Scale, and the Dyadic Adjustment Scale. Ethnic differences occurred for 3 love attitudes and 2 sex attitudes (e.g. Hispanic‐oriented respondents were more pragmatic about love and less idealistic about sex). Passionate love was correlated with marital satisfaction for Anglo‐Americans and both groups of Mexican Americans. Partner similarity was evident in all 3 groups, and marital satisfaction was best predicted for all groups by passionate love scores. Implications for counseling are discussed.

The quality and quantity of marital intimacy in the marriages of psychiatric patients.

Lack of intimacy in the marital relationship is hypothesized to be associated with the presence of symptoms of nonpsychotic emotional illness in one or both spouses. The development of the Waring Intimacy Questionnaire (WIQ) has furthered the understanding of the relationship between intimacy and illness. A clinical sample (n = 184) was compared to a nonclinical sample (n = 188) on both the quality and quantity of intimacy. The clinical sample reports significantly lower intimacy [F (1, 370) = 37.5, p less than .001] and is deficient on almost all aspects of intimacy described, except sexuality. The results suggest that the WIQ is a useful assessment tool which may identify marital relationships that are not close, marital assessment may be useful in formulating a comprehensive treatment plan, and the sexual quality of marriage may operate independently of marital intimacy.