Intimacy and Solitude: Finding New Closeness and Self-Trust in a Distanced World

by Stephanie Dowrick

Social distancing under COVID has thrown us more deeply into our intimate relationships and kept us achingly apart from family, friends, and others. Stephanie Dowrick's classic Intimacy and Solitude is the wise guide we need to help us find our personal ground, whatever challenges we face.

The quality of your personal relationships has never mattered more. It isn't enough to have lots of friends on social media. Or to give "everything" to work hoping that will validate your existence. When familiar certainties are dissolving, we need to give and receive closeness and understanding to feel fully alive. But how do we open to others in a world that can seem harsh, indifferent—and unpredictable in the extreme? Intimacy and Solitude starts with the most fundamental relationship of how you understand and care for your own self—knowing this will inevitably be reflected in your most essential relationships. Using her exceptional gifts as a storyteller, as well as decades of work with people of all ages, orientations, and cultures, Dr. Stephanie Dowrick brings to life profound and persuasive insights to transform self-trust—and your life with others. This edition includes a new introduction to bring the book up to date.

Genres: Self Help, Nonfiction

368 pages, Paperback

Published September 1, 2021

Reviews

[Hannah Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic work questioning how being alone makes us better together. I went into this book assuming it would be another self-help manifesto that was a single idea repeated in different ways, so I was pleasantly surprised to discover the rich and complex picture that Dowrick has painted.

While I’m not a huge fan of psychoanalytic theory, this book wove it in well to the concepts Dowrick was trying to explain. I found that her theories found a good balance between being academically sound and open to the possibilities of interpretation. Her profound reflections on the nature of selfhood, community, and relationships have started a deep evaluation of my own life and relationships to others.

A wonderful and complex work I would recommend.

[Teagan Mattick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyed this book greatly. I like how she used real-world situations and couples to describe each theory or point, it gave so much depth to what she was articulating. Her psychoanalysis of our behaviours in relationships was a great exploration of her theories. The gendered perspectives in the middle of the book, about how each childhood scenario/upbringing manifests differently in men and women was very interesting.

[Chelsey Zuiderwyk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Years of reflecting over a lifetime in this book. I found her perspective insightful and comforting.