A Harvard-trained psychiatrist reveals the crucial connection between a capacity for playfulness--for intimate and spontaneous fun--and falling and staying in love.
"Lynn Nottage's work explores depths of humanness, the overlapping complexities of race, gender, culture and history-and the startling simplicity of desire-with a clear tenderness, with humor, with compassion." -Paula Vogel, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Intimate Apparel: "Thoughtful, affecting new play . . . with seamless elegance."-Charles Isherwood, Variety Fabulation: "Robustly entertaining comedy . . . with punchy social insights and the firecracker snap of unexpected humor."-Ben Brantley, The New York Times With her two latest plays, "exceptionally gifted playwright" (New York Observer) Lynn Nottage has created companion pieces that span 100 years in the lives of African American women. Intimate Apparel is about the empowerment of Esther, a proud and shy seamstress in 1905 New York who creates exquisite lingerie for both Fifth Avenue boudoirs and Tenderloin bordellos. In Fabulation Nottage re-imagines Esther as Undine, the PR-diva of today, who spirals down from her swanky Manhattan office to her roots back in Brooklyn. Through opposite journeys, Esther and Undine achieve the same satisfying end, one of self-discovery. Lynn Nottage's plays include Crumbs from the Table of Joy; Mud, River, Stone; Por' Knockers; Las Menias; Fabulation and Intimate Apparel, for which she was awarded the Francesca Primus Prize and the American Theatre Critics/Steinberg New Play Award in 2004. Her plays have been produced at theatres throughout the country, with Intimate Apparel slated for 16 productions during the 2005a__2006 season.
This book explores the formative period of British television drama, concentrating on the years 1936-55. It examines the continuities and changes of early television drama, and the impact this had upon the subsequent 'golden age'. In particular, it questions the caricature of early television drama as 'photographed stage plays' and argues that early television pioneers in fact produced a diverse range of innovative drama productions, using a wide range of techniques.
Explains what happened to music—for both artists and fans—when music went online. Playing to the Crowd explores and explains how the rise of digital communication platforms has transformed artist-fan relationships into something closer to friendship or family. Through in-depth interviews with musicians such as Billy Bragg and Richie Hawtin, as well as members of the Cure, UB40, and Throwing Muses, Baym reveals how new media has facilitated these connections through the active, and often required, participation of the artists and their devoted, digital fan base. Before the rise of social sharing and user-generated content, fans were mostly seen as an undifferentiated and unidentifiable mass, often mediated through record labels and the press. However, in today’s networked era, musicians and fans have built more active relationships through social media, fan sites, and artist sites, giving fans a new sense of intimacy and offering artists unparalleled information about their audiences. However, this comes at a price. For audiences, meeting their heroes can kill the mystique. And for artists, maintaining active relationships with so many people can be both personally and financially draining, as well as extremely labor intensive. Drawing on her own rich history as an active and deeply connected music fan, Baym offers an entirely new approach to media culture, arguing that the work musicians put in to create and maintain these intimate relationships reflect the demands of the gig economy, one which requires resources and strategies that we must all come to recognize and appreciate.
This insightful new volume explores the many and varied aspects of the process of intimacy as it relates to autonomy in couples therapy. The nature of intimacy in relationships is explored from a variety of vantage points by experienced therapists with a wide range of backgrounds. This thought-provoking book will provide all therapists and mental health/counseling professionals with insight into the subject of intimacy and the problems involved in attaining access to the intimacy process in therapy with couples. Given that a large portion of the population of our culture suffers from various forms of intimacy disorder, Intimate Autonomy: Autonomous Intimacy brings a variety of viewpoints of utmost importance to all who are involved in couples therapy. In-depth coverage of various factors related to intimacy and autonomy is provided by this intriguing book. Some of the topics examined include the myth and reality of intimate autonomy in couples relationships, narcissistic vulnerability in marriage, the fear of loneliness as the basic and universal drive motivating intimacy, intimate autonomy as it relates to the Gestalt therapy concept of the "I-Thou" relationship, a comparison of transference in therapy to falling in love, the use of existential reflection with Vietnam veterans in marital therapy to increase meaning awareness, and a clinical guide to the use of a conceptualization of marital intimacy based on the idea of a matrix of four basic characteristics of intimacy. Mental health professionals, pastoral counsellors, clergy, and psychotherapists will find plenty of food-for-thought on the subject of intimacy and autonomy in couples relationships in this fascinating volume.
On Intimate Terms looks at the internal logic of lesbian relationships, arguing that they are not patterned after heterosexual ones but rely on the interplay of psychosexual differences between women. The book suggests that everyone seeks psychic complementarity with an Other in intimate relationships as a way of supporting personal growth and development. A complementary partner is one who is different in some individually meaningful way, not necessarily in terms of gender. Drawing upon interviews with individuals and lesbian couples, literature on lesbian psychology, and contemporary psychoanalytic theory, Beverly Burch observes a special attraction between primary lesbians - women who have been attracted to other women from an early age - and lesbians who formerly were heterosexual. This difference may be a source of tension for lovers, but it also attracts and bonds them in conscious and unconscious ways. The intimacy between lesbian partners permits interpersonal exchanges that foster the continuing development of each, according to Burch. This development can occur in three areas, with the significance of each varying from couple to couple. It can be a source of both conscious and unconscious psychosexual exchanges, a way in which each partner can experience "the road not taken" through her relationship with the other. The partners' different histories can reflect different ways of negotiating difference itself, a pivotal theme in the development of adult women. And gender role identities related to different developmental experiences can be played with, expanding the experience of being female in a way that can challenge gender categories.
Intimate Metropolis explores connections between the modern city, its architecture, and its citizens, by questioning traditional conceptualizations of public and private. Rather than focusing purely on public spaces—such as streets, cafés, gardens, or department stores—or on the domestic sphere, the book investigates those spaces and practices that engage both the urban and the domestic, the public and the private. The legal, political and administrative frameworks of urban life are seen as constituting private individuals’ sense of self, in a wide range of European and world cities from Amsterdam and Barcelona to London and Chicago. Providing authoritative new perspectives on individual citizenship as it relates to both public and private space, in-depth case studies of major European, American and other world cities and written by an international set of contributors, this volume is key reading for all students of architecture.
The title says it all! Klismaphilia - enema play - is one of the last taboos of kinky sex, yet this style of play can be erotic, intense and safe. M.R. Strict, an experienced practitioner whose expertise and enthusiasm have been shared by hundreds of thousands of devotees on his website, shares some of his hottest and most outrageous personal enema experiences (with men and women, gay and straight). Between the anecdotes, he explains the psychology, physiology and safety issues of using enemas as a disciplinary scenario, part of a medical roleplay, preparation for other forms of play or simply as exciting foreplay. The first book that explains how to bring the thrilling yet forbidden practice of klismaphilia to your own bedroom!
As globalization and transnational encounters intensify, people’s mobility is increasingly conditioned by intimacy, ranging from love, desire, and sexual liaisons to broader family, kinship, and conjugal matters. This book explores the entanglement of mobility and intimacy in various configurations throughout the world. It argues that rather than being distinct and unrelated phenomena, intimacy-related mobilities constitute variations of cross-border movements shaped by and deeply entwined with issues of gender, kinship, race, and sexuality, as well as local and global powers and border restrictions in a disparate world.