Intensity — the best enemy of intimacy
People seek intensity. In relationships, in experiences, in therapy itself — there is a pull towards the overwhelming, the dramatic, the all-consuming. Intensity feels like aliveness. It feels like proof that something real is happening.
Philippe Jacquet’s clinical observation, built over decades of practice, is the opposite: intensity is the best enemy of intimacy. The more intense the feeling, the less likely it is that you are actually seeing the person in front of you.