The Evolution of Intimacy : A Personal Story


Book Description

Life is one small unexpected journey at a time moving us towards a destiny we could never imagine. The Evolution of Intimacy : A Personal Story is one such journey, The book is an account of taking a leap of faith, with a chance online meeting on a dating site in October, and moving in together in December having only met once. The book details the results of following one's intuition and heart, and moving over three hundred miles to create a new life. It's a story showing how, against all odds, faith and trust changed the fate of two unsuspecting people. It touches on difficult issues of love, marriages, divorces, death, adult children, his and hers, ex-spouses, couples counseling, health, finances and everything in between. The book offers hope, insights and inspiration for anyone struggling with or in a dysfunctional relationship, or was raised in an alcoholic environment, or is an alcoholic, an addict, a compulsive over-eater, or food addict , a sex and love addict, co-dependent, or in a relationship with anyone with an addictions or mental illness. I hope you find the story as inspirational as I did living it.




An Intimate History of Humanity


Book Description

'The book that changed my life... a constant companion' Bill Bailey 'Extraordinary and beautiful...the most exciting and ambitious work of non-fiction I have read in more than a decade' The Daily Telegraph This extraordinarily wide-ranging study looks at the dilemmas of life today and shows how they need not have arisen. Portraits of living people and historical figures are placed alongside each other as Zeldin discusses how men and women have lost and regained hope; how they have learnt to have interesting conversations; how some have acquired an immunity to loneliness; how new forms of love and desire have been invented; how respect has become more valued than power; how the art of escaping from one's troubles has developed; why even the privileged are often gloomy; and why parents and children are changing their minds about what they want from each other.




Time and Intimacy


Book Description

This volume examines the role of time in relationships, with a focus on the transpersonal dimension of intimacy and the temporal aspects of relationships. For scholars and students in personal relationships, psych of religion, family studies, intimacy.




An Intimate Life


Book Description

A riveting memoir from the woman behind the major motion picture The Sessions — and an intimate portrayal of sexuality in the 20th century. For the past 40 years, Cheryl Cohen Greene has worked as a surrogate partner, helping clients to form fulfilling sexual relationships. The men and women she works with have sexual phobias, disabilities, and problems with self-esteem. Often, her most important role as a surrogate is simply to show understanding. In this candid memoir, Cohen Greene shares some of her most memorable cases, including that of Berkeley-based poet and journalist Mark O'Brien, confined to an iron lung after contracting polio at age six. She also tells of her own sexual coming-of-age — from a rigid Catholic upbringing in the 1950s, where she was taught to think sex was unnatural and wrong, and then through the sexual revolution of 1960s and 1970s, an open marriage, an encounter with cancer, and a rich and rewarding career as a surrogate partner. An Intimate Life is more than the story of one woman's career as a sexual healer — it's a love story, a meditation on compassion and grief, and a tale of sexual and emotional awakening. Arresting and compelling, it gives an insight into this most unusual of professions, and those who take part in it.




Artificial Intimacy


Book Description

What happens when the human brain, which evolved over eons, collides with twenty-first-century technology? Machines can now push psychological buttons, stimulating and sometimes exploiting the ways people make friends, gossip with neighbors, and grow intimate with lovers. Sex robots present the humanoid face of this technological revolution—yet although it is easy to gawk at their uncanniness, more familiar technologies based in artificial intelligence and virtual reality are insinuating themselves into human interactions. Digital lovers, virtual friends, and algorithmic matchmakers help us manage our feelings in a world of cognitive overload. Will these machines, fueled by masses of user data and powered by algorithms that learn all the time, transform the quality of human life? Artificial Intimacy offers an innovative perspective on the possibilities of the present and near future. The evolutionary biologist Rob Brooks explores the latest research on intimacy and desire to consider the interaction of new technologies and fundamental human behaviors. He details how existing artificial intelligences can already learn and exploit human social needs—and are getting better at what they do. Brooks combines an understanding of core human traits from evolutionary biology with analysis of how cultural, economic, and technological contexts shape the ways people express them. Beyond the technology, he asks what the implications of artificial intimacy will be for how we understand ourselves.




Coming Home to Passion


Book Description

This book offers a detailed road map for overcoming sexual and relationship impasses originating from painful childhood experiences. Large numbers of adults with histories of childhood trauma and neglect suffer persistent relationship and sexual difficulties. Unfortunately, most have failed to receive adequate help with emerging from these deep and complex problems. Coming Home to Passion: Restoring Loving Sexuality in Couples with Histories of Childhood Trauma and Neglect explores the enduring impacts—physiological, psychological, and behavioral—of childhood trauma and neglect. Author Ruth Cohn, drawing on 25 years of experience working with trauma survivors and their partners and families, lays out a practical and actionable course for recovery in clear, accessible language. This book provides direction and hope to those with trauma backgrounds while also serving as a unique resource for professional readers. Integrating in-depth information on attachment and relationship, trauma and neglect, and sexuality, Cohn details a practical, hands-on treatment approach for revitalizing love, health, and passion.




Cultural Maturity: A Guidebook for the Future (with an Introduction to the Ideas of Creative Systems Theory)


Book Description

Cultural Maturity: A Guidebook for the Futureis the most detailed of three new future-related works by the author. It looks deeply at how the most important challenges ahead for the species will require not just better ideas, but new human capacities; in the end, an essential "growing up" as a species-a new Cultural Maturity. It is written for those inter- ested in acquiring the newly sophisticated leadership abilities that we will more and more need in all parts of our lives in times ahead. The concept of Cultural Maturity makes understandable how institutional structures and beliefs that in modern times have served us well can't be the ideals and end points that we have assumed them to be. It goes on to articulate a new guiding story for our time, one able to take us equally beyond denial, cynicism, and naïve wishful thinking. This book looks deeply at the changes the concept of Cultural Maturity describes-both how they make needed new capacities possible, and how we see their beginnings in many parts of our personal and collective lives. The concept of Cultural Maturity is based on the ideas of Creative Systems Theory, a comprehensive framework for understanding change, purpose, and interrelationship in human systems. Creative Systems Theory describes how Cultural Maturity's changes are as, or more, significant than those that brought us modern democratic governance 250 years ago. It also argues that if the concept of Cultural Maturity is not basically correct, it is hard to imagine a healthy and vital human future. In addition to introducing the concept of Cultural Maturity, Cultural Maturity: A Guidebook for the Future presents important related ideas from Creative Systems Theory. Creative Systems Theory represents an example of culturally mature conception and offers a rich array of conceptual tools able to guide us in making the future's increasingly complex choices.




Sex That Works


Book Description

Awaken Your Erotic Life “Making sex work—embracing your erotic soul and deepening the intimacy in your life—is both a consequence of deep presence and its gift. Healing our selves in our deepest erotic space can only be a deliberate act, and the doing of it miraculously seems to heal everything else. Tapping into the courage to know your own deepest sexual thoughts and feelings, and offering them with your whole being, is both a life work and lasting gift that will be long remembered.” —Wendy Strgar, Sex That Works If you and your partner have lost that special spark, here is a book with the power to save your sex life—and your relationship. Sex That Works invites you to experience a new level of feeling and a new level of freedom in your sexuality. Wendy Strgar offers healing insights, potent practices (for you alone and with your partner), and guidance drawn from her marriage of over 30 years and her work with thousands of people to encourage the full awakening and expression of your erotic life. Nine core topics include: Freedom Taking responsibility for your sexual evolution • Healing our harmful behaviors • Claiming erotic freedom • Overcoming silence • Giving yourself permission • Finding forgiveness Pleasure Pleasure as a medium of communication • Restoring our humanity • Orgasm • Relaxing our judgments about sexuality • The many benefits of self-pleasure • Owning the pleasure response • Calling pleasure by its true name • Transcendent orgasms • Broadening our sexual vocabulary • Pleasure as a fountain of youth Finding your normal The universal uncertainty • Bridging the erotic with the rational • Putting sexual health in context • The Sexual Identity Grid • The malady of sexual dysfunction • Trusting our erotic nature • Beyond right and wrong Courage The gift of choice • Growing up sexually • Living well with risks • Befriending our fear • The four attributes of courage • Desire as courage • Daily practice • Becoming who you really are • Healing erotic wounds • Letting our erotic self teach us Curiosity Overcoming sexual boredom • Filling in the gaps of our sexual education • Exploration as the leader • Sensory intrigue • Opening as a creative act • Awakening to life, sexual and otherwise Sensation Awakening the senses • Out of the head and into the body • Trusting erotic impulses • Building a vocabulary of scent and taste • The healing language of touch • Erotic connections • Making noise • Negotiating shared sensations • Mindfulness • Falling into the body Fantasy Eliciting arousal through stories • Witnessing your fantasies • Fantasies as charged erotic fuel • The space between witnessing and enacting • Inner erotic landscapes • Uncovering the subconscious source of pleasure • Expressing desire • Submission and domination Attention Listening • Making the time • A radical leap • Creating a love container • Sustaining an atmosphere conducive to intimacy • Showing up vs. coexisting • Compassion as a way to connect • Sourcing from our center • Committing to something bigger than our selves Gratitude Letting go and receiving • Grateful sex • Healing through kindness • Receiving abundance • The importance of sexual freedom, revisited • A simple gratitude practice • A passionate love affair with your fleeting life




Creative Systems Theory


Book Description

This book is the place to go for a deep dive into the forward-thinking, multi-faceted ideas of Creative Systems Theory. From the book's back cover: "Creative Systems Theory brings big-picture, long-term perspective to understanding who we are and why we think and act in the ways that we do. It is pertinent equally to appreciating the past, teasing apart current cultural challenges, and making sense of what a vital human future will require of us. This is the definitive work on Creative Systems Theory and its implications. "At a practical level, Creative Systems Theory provides powerful tools for making effective choices in both our personal and our collective lives. More conceptually, it makes a major contribution to the history of ideas. It clarifies how, while modern age institutions, values, and ways of thinking have served us well, they cannot be sufficient for the tasks ahead. And it offers a comprehensive approach to understanding that reflects the more mature and encompassing kind of thinking that will become more and more essential in times ahead. "This volume brings together fifty years of committed inquiry and practical application. It is part guidebook, part memoir, part compilation, and part an effort to extend Creative Systems Theory's thinking just as far into the future as is possible."




The Oxford Handbook of Close Relationships


Book Description

This book provides an in-depth and comprehensive summary of the psychology of close relationships, and showcases classic and contemporary theories, models, and empirical research that have been conducted in the field.