What do you think?
Rate this book
Intimate Terrorism: The Deterioration of Erotic Life
Stating that intimate relationships are irrevocably intertwined with power struggles, a cultural criticism identifies the harmful and unrealistic ways in which sexual values are taught to children. National ad/promo.
- GenresPsychologyNonfiction
256 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 1995
4 people are currently reading
246 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
November 29, 2007
lucid though extremely dense. revolutionary insights that are fantastically depressing but make you appreciate those you love and make you want to treat them with more kindness. Highly recommend for anyone in or out of a love relationship.
Excerpt:
"Traditional romantic love, when it is offered as the basis for serious intimacy, such as marriage, in effect promises resolution through intensity as a permanent condition. But in reality this is a premature resolution that glosses over what has been left unfinished in the lovers' personalities. It sets them up for a profound fall into disillusionment when they enter the everyday world of making a life together.
Disappointment, however, is another of those emotions that blends both love and hate, and it can be a particularly fruitful one. It has the potential to create a new mood between people if they can find an ironical stance toward it, which prevents it from curdling into disillusionment. Disappointment combines sorrow and anger, and it reaches with a kind of yearning toward the other person. At the same time, it keeps the other at bay by treating him or her as a diminished figure, one that failed to live up to expectations. In therapy, when you talk openly with a fighting couple about each antagonist's disappointment, it helps soften the rigid idealizations each of them continues to cling to through holding on to feelings of betrayal. Unlike jealousy, cruelty, or boredom, disappointment contains secret hints of mutuality. It can interrupt what New Yorker drama critic John Lahr, reviewing an Arthur Miller play about a tortured marriage, called 'the cycle of blame that has infected and seems to have stalemated modern life...with irrational, often righteous fury that is at once a mask and an admission of fear.' It is not such a long stretch from disappointment to empathy" (229).
Excerpt:
"Traditional romantic love, when it is offered as the basis for serious intimacy, such as marriage, in effect promises resolution through intensity as a permanent condition. But in reality this is a premature resolution that glosses over what has been left unfinished in the lovers' personalities. It sets them up for a profound fall into disillusionment when they enter the everyday world of making a life together.
Disappointment, however, is another of those emotions that blends both love and hate, and it can be a particularly fruitful one. It has the potential to create a new mood between people if they can find an ironical stance toward it, which prevents it from curdling into disillusionment. Disappointment combines sorrow and anger, and it reaches with a kind of yearning toward the other person. At the same time, it keeps the other at bay by treating him or her as a diminished figure, one that failed to live up to expectations. In therapy, when you talk openly with a fighting couple about each antagonist's disappointment, it helps soften the rigid idealizations each of them continues to cling to through holding on to feelings of betrayal. Unlike jealousy, cruelty, or boredom, disappointment contains secret hints of mutuality. It can interrupt what New Yorker drama critic John Lahr, reviewing an Arthur Miller play about a tortured marriage, called 'the cycle of blame that has infected and seems to have stalemated modern life...with irrational, often righteous fury that is at once a mask and an admission of fear.' It is not such a long stretch from disappointment to empathy" (229).
Read
December 13, 2018This book feels uneven to me. I think this is in large part due to how old it is—23 or so years, which means that certain sentences or attitudes feel outdated or tone deaf now. One example is equating sexual abuse with charges of sexual abuse, which is particularly painful in the #metoo era. There are definitely parts which are very insightful and which I find myself wanting to share with friends, but his discussions of the historical trends suffer from being no longer up to date and from focusing on the loss of the stay at home wife ideal, while many poor and lower class families have never had the luxury of a stay at home wife and mother figure, etc.
He definitely suffers from a lot of white male nostalgia and unexamined privilege. (“One used to walk the streets of our great cities with a sense of warmth, excitement, belonging, and the adventurous prospect of making larger connections. Now one barely ventured out the door without a pang of fear.” Barf. That was only ever true for the privileged subset and even then in a particular period of time.)
He seems to think sexual and emotional abuse only began recently rather than being unhidden recently and makes sweeping historical generalizations without proof he actually knows anything about history.
He definitely suffers from a lot of white male nostalgia and unexamined privilege. (“One used to walk the streets of our great cities with a sense of warmth, excitement, belonging, and the adventurous prospect of making larger connections. Now one barely ventured out the door without a pang of fear.” Barf. That was only ever true for the privileged subset and even then in a particular period of time.)
He seems to think sexual and emotional abuse only began recently rather than being unhidden recently and makes sweeping historical generalizations without proof he actually knows anything about history.
December 29, 2009
I got this book out of the library after it was quoted in a NY Times article. I liked the quote and there are some very intriguing observations about the "state of marriage" in this country. Miller writes about some of the underlying factors that undermine couples and romantic love in a way that is very interesting and frequently very distressing. (He is also way too in love with Freudian theory and literary analogies.) When you reach the end of this book you wonder how anyone stays married ever. But it is a very useful book in causing you to examine your relationships in a new way and seeing some of the underlying anxieties that influence them.
February 13, 2018
I'll start with the negative: I found the book long-winded and repetitive, with far too many weak analogies to books the author considers of interest as context. It is also pretty dated by now, with the author seemingly struggling against the difference between sex and gender, and constant mention of the "battle of the sexes", a concept that has generally been on its way out, despite small comebacks every now and then.
Somehow though, it was still sprinkled throughout with really interesting insights: how social fabric has been deteriorating to the point where institutions like marriage and even relationships become an individual struggle rather than a two-person prospect - or even a community-wide affair, in which people come together to provide support, insight and understanding. There is a fairly strong sense that the author believes American individualism is partly to blame in this, which is a theme with which I find myself in agreement.
A caveat is that always find myself struggling to connect with books that deal with catastrophic relationships (as is often the case for the author's psychotherapy clients), and that definitely influences how interesting I find the book. I just want to recognize that folks with different experiences than mine may find this more useful and insightful than it was for me.
Somehow though, it was still sprinkled throughout with really interesting insights: how social fabric has been deteriorating to the point where institutions like marriage and even relationships become an individual struggle rather than a two-person prospect - or even a community-wide affair, in which people come together to provide support, insight and understanding. There is a fairly strong sense that the author believes American individualism is partly to blame in this, which is a theme with which I find myself in agreement.
A caveat is that always find myself struggling to connect with books that deal with catastrophic relationships (as is often the case for the author's psychotherapy clients), and that definitely influences how interesting I find the book. I just want to recognize that folks with different experiences than mine may find this more useful and insightful than it was for me.
February 8, 2021
The best book for relationships today, i would like to add that anxiety really is our power. In today's culture surrpressed anxiety with medication leads to many problems. Culture really is a problem and solution. Romantic love shall bloom in a different way, than before. It will transform to a new level of mature love, and violence vs boundaries is just a step in this developement, evolution. Great for integrating with gestalt therapy developement. Anxiety, vulnerability = power
November 21, 2007
Very interesting book. I liked the way the author used examples from literature to point out the way that romantic love in our culture is stuck at an adolescent stage. There's a lot of food for thought in this book for anyone in a romantic relationship.
September 24, 2020
An eye-opener to the inner workings or lack of workings in intimate relationships.
January 24, 2016
psychology
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews