Autonomy and Intimacy: Compatible or Incompatible States of Being?

In the November 2011 issue of The Atlantic, Kate Bolick writes about the complexities of the institution of marriage, including the idea that we should "acknowledge the end of 'traditional' marriage as society's highest ideal." (All the Single Ladies)

This incredibly rich paper, which deserves careful study, reviews a variety of sociological ideas related to the state of marriage, friendship, and sexuality in contrast to emotional intimacy. I was struck by Bolick's assertion that autonomy and intimacy were "two incompatible states of being."

Are they always incompatible? In fact, only in our culture, do we have, in theory, if not in fact, the potential to choose how to live our lives—how much autonomy, how much intimacy, and with whom. In other cultures and in other eras, both men and women have predestined roles which are more rigidly defined.

The greater freedom in our culture allows our individual psychology to play a greater role in determining our choices (whether we make those choices consciously or unconsciously). Thus, studying and understanding individual psychology can help us decipher the complex factors which lead people to feel that these two states of being, autonomy and intimacy, are either compatible, incompatible, or most often, a mixture of the two.

From the time an infant is born until the time we die, we all try to achieve a balance between our wish for connections with other people and our wish to feel that we are independent beings, making autonomous choices.

Conflicted expressions of manifest autonomous behavior can be seen throughout the life cycle: in the infant who turns away from his/her mother who wants to feed him/her, yet cannot be away from her; in the 12 month old child who is beginning to take steps away from the mother, yet scoots back to her if he/she is too far away; in the toddler who repeatedly says "no" to assert his/her own desires in contrast to the mother's desires, yet very much wants to please her; in the pre-school child who insists on wearing particular clothes despite the inclement weather, and then gets angry with the mother because she/he is too cold; in the school age child who insists on walking to school alone and in the adolescent who rails against the parents' rules, which are perceived as an interference, yet clearly communicate that they want the parents to be more controlling and protective caretakers; in married men or women who leave their spouse because they experience marriage as a hindrance to their autonomy, yet feel lonely at the loss; and in the aged who insist on living by themselves despite a variety of serious infirmities, yet are very demanding of attention from their children.

Since Sigmund Freud developed his revolutionary ideas over a century ago, innumerable psychonalysts have studied the conflicts all of us experience trying to balance our desires for intimacy with another person and our independent personal fulfillment. From the earliest days of life, the mother's connection and her ministrations to the infant have an effect on the infant's later capacity for pleasure, attachment to others, capacities to assert him or herself, and capacity to deal appropriately with the aggressive feelings that normally occur as a result of life's inevitable frustrations. (We would not mature and develop if we lived in a frustration-free environment.)

For example, early in life, some parents may have difficulties dealing with a child's wishes for doing things on his or her own and may attribute aggressive motivations to their toddlers (http://www.theparentchildcenter.org/parenting-resources/tantrums). The end result may be a child who becomes overly aggressive or the opposite, overly-inhibited, unable to achieve his or her drive for autonomy.

Another example can be seen in the school-aged child or adolescent who experiences assertive wishes as an unconscious aggressive wish to outdo his or her parents. The competitive fantasies provoke guilt and, thus, accomplishments are inhibited and underachievement in school occurs.

If an adolescent is terrified by his or her closeness to the parents, he or she may constantly want to get away from them and if the adolescent is afraid of being independent and all that it entails, he or she may become overly-close and overly-dependent on his or her parents.

Yet, all of us have a mixture of these various desires: to be autonomous, to be connected, to achieve pleasure, and to hurt those who interfere with the achievement of our various goals. Our inner emotional lives are filled with such complex wishes, fears, and conflicts, including inevitable guilty feelings. Finding a compromise among all of these feelings and fantasies is a difficult task for all of us. The ideal aim, of course, is to find a compromise solution that works for each of us as individuals. Each of us has to find the balance between autonomy and intimacy that works for us in as adaptive a way as possible. When that balancing act does not work, whether for the under-achieving youngster or for the turmoil-filled adult, exploration of our inner lives may help us find a more adaptive solution (psychoanalysis.org).