On the Evolution of Intimacy

An essential book by one of today's most innovative social thinkers:

From the book's back cover—

"In no aspect of life today do we confront more rapid and easily confusing change than in the worlds of gender and intimacy. Men and women equally are left without clear guideposts for their choices. In this short book, one of our time's most innovative social scientists and futurists offers big-picture perspective for making sense of why we see what we do and what lies ahead. He describes an essential new chapter in identity and love, one that takes us beyond the battle of the sexes and brings new depth and maturity to both how we understand ourselves and our capacity for closeness with another."

In On the Evolution of Intimacy, psychiatrist and futurist Charles Johnston addresses how our times are making possible a critical "growing up" in how we think about intimacy and gender. With intimacy, the changes he describes are as significant as those which brought us Romeo and Juliet–style romantic love. With gender, they take us beyond both the polarizing assumptions of traditional gender roles and the simplistic conclusions of a postmodern unisex ideal. On both fronts, the greater maturity he describes offers that we might understand with a new kind of completeness and sophistication.

The book's last paragraph summarizes where On the Evolution of Intimacy takes us: "The rewards for even just making a start with this needed new chapter in how we understand are immense. We discover the possibility of deeper and more solid identities as men and as women. We also discover the paradoxical fact that engaging identity and love in needed new ways, while more demanding than what we have known, is also in important ways simpler. We can think of it as part of a needed "new common sense."

From the author—

"This book had its origins in rich conversations sparked by the #MeToo movement and the like. In my role as a psychiatrist and futurist, I respond to potentially polarizing front-page-news issues by attempting to write about them from a more systemic vantage. When I tried to address current gender- and sexuality-related concerns in this way, I quickly realized that more than a short article would be necessary. I saw that these were questions that would require big-picture, historical perspective. This book was the result.

In the book's last chapter, I observe that efforts like the current #MeToo movement could result in two quite opposite outcomes. We could see important new levels of communication and steps toward a reconciling history's battle of the sexes. And just as easily the result could be escalating polarization and acrimony not unlike we see today in the political arena. I wrote On The Evolution of Intimacy to support the kind of maturity of perspective needed for the former to be the case."

—On the Evolution of Intimacy has it roots in the thinking of Creative Systems Theory, a comprehensive framework for addressing purpose, change, and interrelationship in human systems developed by Charles Johnston and colleagues at the Institute for Creative Development over the last forty years.