Introduction
The term extimacy, an English translation of the French neologism (extimité) coined by the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1959–1960), may be used in critical psychology for the purpose of problematizing, questioning, challenging, and even rejecting and going beyond the traditional psychological distinction between exteriority and psychic interiority or intimacy. Instead of this fundamental distinction and the resultant fixed conceptual dualities that cross and constitute psychology, extimacy indicates the nondistinction and essential identity between the dual terms of the outside and the deepest inside, the exterior and the most interior of the psyche, the outer world and the inner world of the subject, culture and the core of personality, the social and the mental, surface and depth, behavior and thoughts or feelings. All expressions of the duality exteriority-intimacy would be hypothetically replaceable by the notion of extimacy, which precisely joins ex-teriority with in-timacy...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Deleuze, G. (1986). Foucault. Paris: Minuit.
Foucault, M. (1969). L’archéologie du savoir. Paris: Gallimard.
Hook, D. (2011). Psychoanalytic contributions to the political analysis of affect and identification. Ethnicities, 11(1), 107–115.
Lacan, J. (1959–1960). Le séminaire. Livre VII. L’éthique de la psychanalyse. Paris: Seuil, 1986.
Lacan, J. (1968–1969). Le séminaire. Livre XVI. D’un autre à l’Autre. Paris: Seuil, 2006.
Malone, K. R., & Kelly, S. D. (2012). Beyond objectivity to Extimité. Feminist epistemology and psychoanalysis. In A. Gülerce (Ed.), Re(con)figuring psychoanalysis. Critical juxtapositions of the philosophical, the sociohistorical and the political (pp. 93–113). New York: Palgrave.
Mateus, D. S. (2010). Public intimacy. Sphera Pública, 10, 57–70.
Miller, J.-A. (1994). Extimité. In M. Bracher, M. W. Alcorn Jr., R. J. Corthell, & F. Massardier-Kenney (Eds.), Lacanian theory of discourse: Subject, structure and society (pp. 74–87). New York: NYU Press.
Parker, I. (2004). Psychoanalysis and critical psychology. In D. Hook (Ed.), Critical psychology (pp. 138–161). Cape Town: UCT Press.
Parker, I. (2005). Lacanian discourse analysis in psychology: Seven theoretical elements. Theory and Psychology, 15(2), 163–182.
Puyuelo, R. (2010). Journaux «extimes» et communauté de l’anonyme. Empan, 4, 30–36.
Tisseron, S. (2001). L’intimité surexposée. Paris: Ramsay.
Tisseron, S. (2003). Le désir « d’extimité » mis à nu. Le Divan familial, 11, 53–62.
Watson, E. (2009). Queering psychoanalysis/psychoanalysing queer. Annual Review of Critical Psychology, 7, 114–139.
Online Resources
Extimité. (2011). Le Garde-mots. Retrieved February 3, 2013, from http://blog.legardemots.fr/post/2011/03/28/Extimité
Taubes, I. (2012). Entretien avec Serge Tisseron: cet obscur désir de s’exposer. Psychologies.com. Retrieved February 3, 2013, from http://www.psychologies.com/Planete/Societe/Articles-et-Dossiers/Entretien-avec-Serge-Tisseron-cet-obscur-desir-de-s-exposer
Tisseron, S. (2013). Personal website of Serge Tisseron. Retrieved February 3, 2013, from http://www.sergetisseron.com/
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this entry
Cite this entry
Pavón-Cuéllar, D. (2014). Extimacy. In: Teo, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5583-7_106
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5583-7_106
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-5582-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-5583-7
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Behavioral Sciences