What's Your Intimacy Quotient?

Psychologists have variously and gloomily diagnosed our society as neurotic, emotionally plagued, armored, flattened, one-dimensional, contactless, repressed, robotic and addicted to game playing. These are ways of saying that intimacy is lacking in human relationships--that it is the missing link between our rationality and our emotions, between men and women, between love and sex. Without a sense of intimacy, interpersonal contact becomes a worrisome job of guarding our psychic territory against invaders: Any stranger undergoes a lengthy interrogation through the bars of a high iron gate before he gains entrance, and few pass the test. Both male supremacy and women's lib are products of this rupture in our consciousness, which can turn love into an infantile dependency trip and sex into a track-and-field event (in which either contestant could be replaced by a copulating machine and the partner would never notice the difference).

Intimacy is the venturous, unarmed encounter between two equally vulnerable people. It is so soft that many men fear it as a threat to their masculinity, yet it is incredibly hard in the quantity of sheer courage required to risk the possibility of a surprise attack with one's defenses down. Beyond ideas of softness or hardness, intimacy is--psychologists are beginning to suspect--a biological necessity. Behavioral scientists have discovered that without close emotional contact, even well-fed babies and animals can die--from sensory starvation. The parade of neurotic and psychosomatic problems in our adult population (and a majority have at least one symptom of major stress, according to a U. S. Public Health survey) suggests that while lack of intimacy may not kill grown men and women as quickly as it can kill infants, it deprives them of the learning experiences needed to mature in personality and to cope with emotional stresses that slowly grind them down--death on the installment plan.

This quiz measures your capacity for intimacy--how well you have fared in (and what you have learned from) your interpersonal relationships from infancy through adulthood. In a general way, it also measures your sense of security and self-acceptance, which gives you the courage to expose yourself to the ego hazards of intimacy--to risk the embarrassment of proffering love or friendship or respect and getting no response. Some are blessed with this ability; some acquire it through experience and maturity; others, not even comprehending it, or too fearful of it, survive behind a facade they continually seek to strengthen but can never quite make shatterproof. The insight this test should provide can be useful in two ways. It can alert you to weaknesses that may be reducing your performance in bed or in business or in any other area of life. It can also help predict the kind of person with whom you are potentially compatible, socially or sexually, for this is one area of interpersonal relationships where opposites do not necessarily attract. A person of high intimacy capacity can discomfort someone of low capacity who is fearful to respond. The farther the first advances, the farther the other retreats. But those of similar capacities, whether high or low, will tend to make no excessive demands on each other and, for that reason, will find themselves capable of an increasingly intimate and mutually fulfilling relationship.

Consider this a bonus: When two people take the test and afterward compare their answers, the quiz provides not only a comparison of intimacy potentials but the chance to know each other better --which automatically increases the intimacy of a relationship.

The questions can be answered easily. If your response is yes or mostly yes, place a plus (+) in the box following the question. If your response is no or mostly no, place a minus (-) in the box. If you honestly can't decide, place a zero in the box. But try to enter as few zeros as possible. Even if a particular question doesn't apply to you, try to imagine yourself in the situation described and answer accordingly. Don't look for any significance in the number or the frequency of your plus and minus answers, because the test has been set up so that they do not mean good and bad.

At the end of the quiz, each of its sections will be discussed in terms of the different areas of attitudes and behavior and of how the answers provide an index to your potential for intimacy.

1. Do you have more than your share of colds? ?2. Do you believe that emotions have very little to do with physical ills? ?3. Do you often have indigestion? ?4. Do you frequently worry about your health? ?5. Would a nutritionist be appalled by your diet? ?6. Do you usually watch sports rather than participate in them? ?7. Do you often feel depressed or in a bad mood? ?8. Are you irritable when things go wrong? ?9. Were you happier in the past than you are right now? ?10. Do you believe it possible that a person's character can be read or his future foretold by means of astrology, I Ching, tarot cards or some other means? ?11. Do you worry about the future? ?12. Do you try to hold in your anger as long as possible and then sometimes explode in a rage? ?13. Do people you care about often make you feel jealous? ?14. If your intimate partner were unfaithful one time, would you be unable to forgive and forget? ?15. Do you have difficulty making important decisions? ?16. Would you abandon a goal rather than take risks to reach it? ?17. When you go on a vacation, do you take some work along? ?18. Do you usually wear clothes that are dark or neutral in color? ?19. Do you usually do what you feel like doing, regardless of social pressures or criticism? ?20. Does a beautiful speaking voice turn you on? ?21. Do you always take an interest in where you are and what's happening around you? ?22. Do you find most odors interesting rather than offensive? ?23. Do you enjoy trying new and different foods? ?24. Do you like to touch and be touched? ?25. Are you easily amused? ?26. Do you often do things spontaneously or impulsively? ?27. Can you sit still through a long committee meeting or lecture without twiddling your thumbs or wriggling in your chair? ?28. Can you usually fall asleep and stay asleep without the use of sleeping pills or tranquilizers? ?29. Are you a moderate drinker rather than either a heavy drinker or a teetotaler? ?30. Do you smoke not at all or very little? ?31. Can you put yourself in another person's place and experience his emotions? ?32. Are you seriously concerned about social problems even when they don't affect you personally? ?33. Do you think most people can be trusted? ?34. Can you talk to a celebrity or a stranger as easily as you talk to your neighbor? ?35. Do you get along well with sales-clerks, waiters, service-station attendants and cabdrivers? ?36. Can you easily discuss sex in mixed company without feeling uncomfortable? ?37. Can you express appreciation for a gift or a favor without feeling uneasy? ?38. When you feel affection for someone, can you express it physically as well as verbally? ?39. Do you sometimes feel that you have extrasensory perception? ?40. Do you like yourself? ?41. Do you like others of your own sex? ?42. Do you enjoy an evening alone? ?43. Do you vary your schedule to avoid doing the same things at the same times each day? ?44. Is love more important to you than money or status? ?45. Do you place a higher premium on kindness than on truthfulness? ?46. Do you think it is possible to be too rational? ?47. Have you attended or would you like to attend a sensitivity or encounter-group session? ?48. Do you discourage friends from dropping in unannounced? ?49. Would you feel it a sign of weakness to seek help for a sexual problem? ?50. Are you upset when a homosexual seems attracted to you? ?51. Do you have difficulty communicating with someone of the opposite sex? ?52. Do you believe that men who write poetry are less masculine than men who drive trucks? ?53. Do most women prefer men with well-developed muscles to men with well-developed emotions? ?54. Are you generally indifferent to the kind of place in which you live? ?55. Do you consider it a waste of money to buy flowers for yourself or for others? ?56. When you see an art object you like, do you pass it up if the cost would mean cutting back on your food budget? ?57. Do you think it pretentious and extravagant to have an elegant dinner when alone or with members of your immediate family? ?58. Are you often bored? ?59. Do Sundays depress you? ?60. Do you frequently feel nervous? ?61. Do you dislike the work you do to earn a living? ?62. Do you think a carefree hippie life style would have no delights for you? ?63. Do you watch Tv selectively rather than simply to kill time? ?64. Have you read any good books recently? ?65. Do you often daydream? ?66. Do you like to fondle pets? ?67. Do you like many different forms and styles of art? ?68. Do you enjoy watching an attractive person of the opposite sex? ?69. Can you describe how your date or mate looked the last time you went out together? ?70. Do you find it easy to talk to new acquaintances? ?71. Do you communicate with others through touch as well as through words? ?72. Do you enjoy pleasing members of your family? ?73. Do you avoid joining clubs or organizations? ?74. Do you worry more about how you present yourself to prospective dates than about how you treat them? ?75. Are you afraid that if people knew you too well they wouldn't like you? ?76. Do you fall in love at first sight? ?77. Do you always fall in love with some-one who reminds you of your parent of the opposite sex? ?78. Do you think love is all you presently need to be happy? ?79. Do you feel a sense of rejection if a person you love tries to preserve his or her independence? ?80. Can you accept your loved one's anger and still believe in his or her love? ?81. Can you express your innermost thoughts and feelings to the person you love? ?82. Do you talk over disagreements with your partner rather than silently worry about them? ?83. Can you easily accept the fact that your partner has loved others before you and not worry about how you compare with them? ?84. Can you accept a partner's disinterest in sex without feeling rejected? ?85. Can you accept occasional sessions of unsatisfactory sex without blaming yourself or your partner? ?86. Should unmarried adolescents be denied contraceptives? ?87. Do you believe that even for adults in private, there are some sexual acts that should remain illegal? ?88. Do you think that hippie communes and Israeli kibbutzim have nothing useful to teach the average American? ?89. Should a couple put up with an unhappy marriage for the sake of their children? ?90. Do you think that mate swappers necessarily have unhappy marriages? ?91. Should older men and women be content not to have sex? ?92. Do you believe that pornography contributes to sex crimes? ?93. Is sexual abstinence beneficial to a person's health, strength, wisdom or character? ?94. Can a truly loving wife or husband sometimes be sexually unreceptive? ?95. Can intercourse during a woman's menstrual period be as appealing or as appropriate as at any other time? ?96. Should a woman concentrate on her own sensual pleasure during intercourse rather than pretend enjoyment to increase her partner's pleasure? ?97. Can a man's efforts to bring his partner to orgasm reduce his own pleasure? ?98. Should fun and sensual pleasure be the principal goals in sexual relations? ?99. Is pressure to perform well a common cause of sexual incapacity? ?100. Is sexual intercourse for you an uninhibited romp rather than a demonstration of your sexual ability? ?(continued on page 134)Intimacy Quotient(continued from page 100)

Mood And Psychosomatics

(Questions 1-8)

Because the mind is part of the body, anything that affects one also affects the other. Signals are exchanged between the two not only via the central nervous system but also by chemical messages carried through the blood stream. So just as a headache can affect a person's mood, emotional problems can manifest themselves as a headache or make him more susceptible to colds or even more serious illnesses, such as heart disease or cancer, in subtle psychosomatic ways that science does not yet fully understand. Questions 1 through 8 deal with those aspects of your feelings and physiology that most reflect your degree of emotional adjustment and your ability to cope with stress. In this section, the more minus answers, the better.

The physical system most closely tuned to the emotions is the alimentary, because a child's first gratifications and frustrations are centered on eating, digesting and eliminating. Therefore, digestive problems, from heartburn to hyperacidity to ulcers, are frequently psychosomatic in origin. Studies carried out at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis found that these afflictions occur most often in people whose dependencies and ego needs come into conflict with their adult desire to be independent and self-sufficient. These psychosomatic symptoms or ailments demonstrate an inability to express emotions and to willingly accept certain needs and conflicts as normal and inevitable.

Even when illnesses are genuinely organic in origin or the result of bad nutrition and health habits, the effect still is to dull a person's ability to cope with stress, to interact with others and to enjoy his surroundings. Sometimes these "real" health problems are themselves a defense against intimacy. A person who has little love for himself may use health neglect as a form of self-punishment; the consequent health problems--being chronically run-down, overweight or whatever--make him unattractive to others and thereby spare him the anxieties of close interpersonal interaction. Not only can he blame his insularity on the fact that he feels bad or is unappealing to others but he can, like a hypochondriac who incessantly complains about his health, secure from others a certain amount of attention and sympathy that he identifies as love.

The interdependence of mental and physical well-being is experienced by everyone during periods of depression. The best cure for the blues is activity. A brisk walk or a game of tennis or handball gives the body and, with it, the mind a quick pick-me-up. But the blues can also produce such physical lethargy that a depressed person can't even force himself to physical exertion. In some, a mild, unrecognized depression, with its accompanying sluggishness, becomes a way of life.

If the depressed person tends to retreat into a lethargic melancholy that depresses those around him, the irritable person, or the one with a trigger temper, tries to manipulate others by threat of emotional or even physical outbursts. Both types are difficult, sometimes impossible, to live with.

The Burden Of Being Independent

(Questions 9-19)

In the same way that many of our psychosomatic and physical ailments arise from the conflict between the wish to remain a dependent child with no responsibilities and the need to mature into a self-sufficient, responsible, independent adult, so do many of our other physical and psychological needs. Questions 9 through 19 deal with these competing adult-child needs and, except for question 19, minus answers suggest a favorable resolution of the conflict.

The person who has not adequately resolved his adult-child conflict often sees the past as a happier time than the present; he also tries to derive a sense of strength and security from any number of sources outside himself--booze, drugs, astrology, religion, a spouse, sympathetic friends. By indulging his dependencies, he also evades assuming personal responsibility when things go wrong--as they invariably do, simply because those people or things he has put in charge of his life can't really run it for him. When his crutches let him down, he probably doesn't openly express his anger, however, for that could cost him his support. He can't lash out at his wife or his friends; they might withdraw. He can't even blame alcohol or drugs for the problems these may be creating; logic would dictate that he give them up. So he bottles up his feelings of hostility and frustration until he explodes in anger, usually over some trifle.

A person so dependent on others tends toward jealousy and possessiveness, denying others any expression of individuality or personal interests that can be construed as competing with his own needs or causing neglect of them. Such smothering often causes the smothered one to seek relief through solitude or even infidelity, which is never forgiven nor forgotten but used to stoke the fires of resentment that the betrayed calls love. Though he constantly professes love, he has not enough even for him-self, much less for anyone else, and his possessiveness eventually strangles any love that others have for him.

The independent, coping adult takes responsibility for his own life, accepts his fallibility and possesses the self-confidence to make a mistake--even a serious one--and not write himself off as a failure. He does not overly worry that he may make a bad decision and will even gamble in reaching toward his goals. Yet he is not so future oriented that he can't enjoy the present. He works hard when he works, then leaves his job at the office, or wherever, when it's time to play.

In general, the truly independent person is secure enough to dress as he likes, live as he likes and shrug off criticism that his own code or conscience tells him is unwarranted. Most important, he is secure enough to respect the rights and differences of others and not feel threatened.

Awareness: Those Who Have

Eyes To See

(Questions 20-30)

"Lose your mind--come to your senses," Fritz Perls used to tell his students. And that's what should happen when two people make love--perceive feelings, ideas and sensations that cannot be communicated visually nor verbally. Unfortunately, too many people are sensually blind and deaf and cannot, like truly intimate beings, readily exchange those subtle feelings and emotions for which there are no words. Questions 20 through 30 explore your capacity to not just see and hear but to perceive and feel and respond to others as well as to your surroundings. Here, hopefully, your answers are pluses.

If you turn on to all kinds of sights, sounds, feels, tastes, odors and places, you probably have a high capacity for intimacy simply because your senses are so highly tuned. Or, to put it another way, your senses are highly tuned because you're not afraid to be intimate. You respond to the tone of a person's voice knowing, intuitively, that it usually communicates his inner feelings of either calm or stress more faithfully than does his outward appearance or composure. You utilize your other senses likewise to experience and "get close to" things, familiar or unfamiliar, because your curiosity level sufficiently exceeds your anxiety level that you're not afraid a new sensation will be unpleasant.

Take, for example, the sense of smell. Most humans left it behind when our species stopped navigating on all fours, using our noses to warn us of danger or lead us to food and water and sex. Uptight people may have a highly developed sense of smell, but it's likely to be one that rejects most human and organic odors because of personal (continued on page 248)Intimacy Quotient(continued from page 134) inhibitions against the intimacy these suggest. And if the sense of smell is deficient, the sense of taste usually suffers: either from disuse of that sense or from suppression of it through inhibitions. People who find Indian food "smelly" or oral sex "dirty" are usually those who associate the distinctive tastes and odors with activities forbidden in childhood. Such people are rarely adventurous either in bed or in life and find it difficult to engage in intimate relationships that may expose their inhibitions to sensory stimuli that cause them anxiety.

Also unadventurous, and certainly not sensual, are people who abhor being touched. They probably become the museum curators who put Do Not Touch signs on every piece of sculpture or artwork. Touchers are the people who disobey the signs; they want to experience something more fully than sight alone allows. They also, within reasonable limits, don't take anything too seriously--especially themselves. They are amused by unexpected happenings that would be threatening to others. They can laugh when a joke is on them. They consider an unexpected adventure more fun than proceeding according to some well-defined plan and, because they find it so easy to relate to the moment in which they are living, they can turn boredom into relaxation and fatigue into pleasant drowsiness the minute they fall into bed.

The kind of people who sense subtle things easily and eagerly are almost never heavy drug users, drinkers or smokers. At the same time, they aren't teetotalers, either--people so rigid and so fearful of even slightly altering their state of consciousness that they can't allow themselves to take a smoke or a toke or a social drink if the occasion seems to warrant. Sensuous people distinguish themselves by their lack of need for artificial stimulants or drugs to free them of their inhibitions. They are stimulated by reality; they are by nature uninhibited. And this capacity to enjoy other people, things and themselves gives them a high potential for intimacy.

Empathy Versus Sympathy

(Questions 31-39)

Sympathy is cheap. Anyone who drives past a serious car accident and sees injured people being cared for can sympathize with their misfortune: At the very least, you think, "Those unfortunate people--thank God it's not me." But the far greater accomplishment is to encounter another human being under less spectacular circumstances and be able to literally feel his distress in such a way that you are genuinely able to understand what he's saying, what he's doing, how he is trying to cope with some emotional crisis that doesn't have the institutionalized quality of a car wreck. Questions 31 through 39 test your ability to put yourself in another person's place--emotionally, not just intellectually--and honestly share whatever feelings are affecting him at a given moment. Here, the plus answers count.

Ordinary sympathy includes strong elements of superiority or judgment on the part of the sympathizer. Empathy does not; it is simple understanding and sharing. It is, moreover, a prerequisite to intimacy, creating the ability to accept strangers trustingly, to understand problems one has never personally faced and to withhold judgment out of simple respect for other people's differences and weaknesses. This has nothing to do with extrasensory perception--if anything, it should be called supersensory perception--but the person capable of deep empathy may wonder at times if he is picking up some kind of telepathic communications, because he's so perceptive to the unexpressed thoughts, feelings and needs of family, friends and lovers.

Self-Image and Self-Esteem

(Questions 40-42)

These three questions should provide good clues to your real feelings about yourself and the way you view life in general. Hopefully, the view is positive--and your answers are pluses.

If you find yourself unlovable, you can expect others to find you that way, too. For the most part, people will accept your evaluation of yourself and react to you accordingly. That may make them unloving in your eyes, so you build more barriers against them--an activity they view as hostile. Perceiving their reactions, you likewise find them hostile and decide the world is a cold, unfriendly place. An entirely different cycle of interactions is set in motion if you are able to love yourself. Then others see you as lovable and offer you affection. Surrounded by love instead of barriers, you find the world a warm, accepting place.

Some people understand this in theory but apply it too narrowly. They like themselves, they insist. But if at the same time a man says he doesn't enjoy other men and a woman declares that she can't abide the company of females, there is reason to suspect that they don't really accept themselves, either.

Another test of how well you really like yourself is whether or not you enjoy spending time in your own company. The person who can't spend a pleasant evening alone doesn't really care much for himself. "The ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love," says Erich Fromm. It's not love but dependency when someone needs another simply to escape feelings of loneliness.

Child, Parent and Adult

(Questions 43-50)

The transactional analysts divide the self into three major components--the child, the parent and the adult--in a useful way that helps people understand the emotional conflicts that everyone experiences and must try to reconcile. For practical purposes, the distinctions are probably more valid and comprehensible than Freud's id, ego and superego and are more easily applied to the day-to-day reality of living and interacting with other people. Questions 43 through 50 give some indication of whether an individual is primarily controlled by his inhibited, critical "parent," who represents parental and social conditioning; by his insecure but satisfaction-seeking "child," who demands both pleasure and support; or by his "adult," the sensibly rational element in his personality that tries to mediate between his immediate desires and his long-range best interests. Ideally, the adult, mature by virtue of experience and good judgment, dominates the other elements of personality most of the time but still gives each other element its due. Your degree of maturity, or "adultness," is indicated in this section by the number of plus answers to questions 43 through 47 and minus answers to questions 48 through 50.

When the parent is in charge, a person may appear to be functioning efficiently, but there is little joy or spontaneity in his life. The parent continually cautions the unruly child to reason and to think and to ignore his cravings and emotions. The rise in popularity of sensitivity or encounter groups in recent years is a sign that we realize this and that we're looking for ways to strengthen the adult-oriented child within us. At his best, the child in our natures is spontaneous, feeling and outgoing. At his worst, he is dedicated to instant gratification, regardless of the effects on other people or of the long-range consequences to himself.

Most of the time, the child within us is a little frightened. He sees the unexpected, even the unexpected arrival of friends, as a threat to his safely ordered world. He panics easily. This reaction reinforces his fears and also the fears of the child-dominated adult, who then concludes that he is inadequate and unable to cope.

Since the child, conditioned by the parent, may feel that sex is a forbidden pleasure, people are often beset by sexual problems; it is the adult in a person that recognizes these for what they are and seeks professional help, since the child may think that unsatisfactory sex, or none at all, is an appropriate punishment for unquenchable sexuality.

Nowhere is the child in our sexual attitudes more evident than in a fear of homosexuals, for few of us have learned to handle our own personality components that we associate with the other sex--and with homosexuality. Women are frightened of their aggressive impulses, men of their desires for dependence. Both wonder if these secret, hidden feelings are abnormal and can be detected by other people they've been taught to believe are abnormal also. To keep such fears controlled, we ostracize those who arouse them--and thereby diminish our capacity to love.

Games People Play

(Questions 51-53)

We shortchange our love lives when we try to relate to each other as actors playing traditional masculine and feminine roles instead of interacting as real, live, distinctive individuals. Questions 51 through 53 attempt to gauge the extent to which you communicate openly and honestly without either assuming or assigning protective roles that can only prevent intimacy in relationships. Here, the more minus answers, the better.

Roles are not conducive to communication and without communication, there can be no intimacy. "The aggressive male and the dependent woman relationship is bound to explode or erode," warns sex therapist Dr. Alex Runciman of Santa Monica, California. The trouble, in the words of Cool Hand Luke, is the failure to communicate. This is the chief complaint unhappily married wives most often present to marriage counselors, and it is also a frequent factor in sexual incapacity. For sex is a type of communication, and partners who can't talk or touch or express their fears and feelings to each other are almost certain to experience sexual difficulties sooner or later. For this reason, the first effort by most sex therapists is to re-establish, or strengthen, a couple's capacity to communicate. Dr. Runciman tells of one couple who returned in frustration after flunking their first assignment--to simply get reacquainted. "No wonder we can't fuck!" the husband cried. "We can't even shake hands!" That insight alone was an important first step toward sexual recovery.

Fortunately, there are indications, verified by surveys, that the traditional sex roles are on their way out. Men now often tell researchers that they are looking for women who are intelligent, athletic, adventurous and independent--qualities that weren't considered very feminine just a few years ago. And women, more and more, are looking for men who are communicative, sensitive, educated and intelligent--not the aggressive "strong, silent type" of olden days.

What You Do is What You Are

(Questions 54-62)

A person's day-to-day behavior is largely predetermined by childhood training, psychological experiences and acquired attitudes. It is the you that other people know. But behavior also works the other way--it can shape a person's feelings and attitudes, a fact that the behavioral psychologists have used with some success in the treatment of personality problems, emotional disorders, even serious mental illness and drug addiction. They've found that when an irrational person is coached to act rational, he actually becomes more rational; that when a person acts as if he had no dependency on drugs, the dependency is reduced. The fearful person loses much of his anxiety merely by putting on a brave front, and the depressed person can suddenly find himself happy by acting happy. Questions 54 through 62 give some indication of how uptight you are in certain areas that later portions of this analysis will deal with more specifically. Plus answers here suggest that your behavior is not working very well as a problem-solving device but is being dictated by your problems.

Behavior manipulation and behavioral response are major elements in daily living. Parents manipulate children by rewarding desired behavior to reinforce it and by withholding rewards to discourage behavior they consider bad. Adults use similar tactics on each other, but usually in an unconscious way that too often backfires. When a woman suspects her husband of infidelity, actual or only wishful, she may shower him with attention in an effort to keep his love--and find that she has only aggravated the problem. He probably feels a sense of guilt already and her increased affection increases his guilt. Because he doesn't like feeling guilty, he resents all the more her implicit demands for a response that he will not or cannot provide voluntarily. Or we have the woman who simply feels neglected, gives up trying to win love and approval with constructive behavior and settles for the angry attention elicited by nagging. If her husband tries to deal with this phenomenon by ignoring it, the nagging increases in volume and duration until a response--any response--has been obtained.

We also reinforce our own behavior, sometimes consciously, sometimes not. At the end of the day, we take a drink because we've worked hard and earned it or because everything has gone wrong and we deserve it. In this way, habits are built, day by day, that both reflect and affect the personality of the individual. For instance, if a person lives in disorder, it can mean he habitually ignores his surroundings by way of surviving in them--to the point where this has become his style of life.

Quite different is the person who guiltlessly pampers himself. He buys flowers, or whatever, because they delight him; occasionally he treats himself to luxuries at the expense of necessities, and he will likely accord the same treatment to others simply to please them--not to impress them. The key word here is guiltlessly; it distinguishes between self-pampering for pleasure and self-indulgence out of need.

A person can escape boredom even when alone for long periods if he has developed the habit of pleasing himself. He's not dependent on others to amuse him nor to structure his time. He looks forward to Sundays, not as dull days when he has difficulty finding something to do but as weekly gifts of time to spend for his own satisfaction. He is the opposite of the Sunday neurotic who works weekends at home mainly to escape the guilt of relaxation, which he equates with sloth and laziness.

The typical Sunday neurotic doesn't enjoy his work any more than he enjoys his free time, but he absolutely loathes those people who seem to live without working and obviously do not share his value system nor sense of priorities. He is wrathful toward welfare recipients and angry toward ambitionless street people and hippies. Far from occasionally envying those who enjoy an apparently carefree life, he is psychologically threatened by their very existence. Compulsive workers who cannot enjoy periods of complete nonproductivity feel like martyrs to their careers, families or other obligations. The chief difference is that their kind of martyrdom demands equivalent suffering from everyone else. To say the least, such people are not sufficiently satisfied with themselves to make good intimate partners, except, possibly, for other masochists.

Playfulness and Creativity

(Questions 63-69)

"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," as the old saying goes. But it's probably more accurate to say that Jack was a dull boy to begin with and, lacking imagination and creativity, he finds it easier to work than to let himself go in what his work ethic tells him would be a wasteful orgy of conversation, creativity and imaginative flights of fancy. If he is to permit himself any relaxation, it must be passive receptivity to some form of entertainment that demands no active participation and permits him, temporarily, to simply turn his mind off for the purposes of recharging his physical and mental batteries. Questions 63 through 69 measure your ability to indulge in things that should, at least, be pleasurable relaxation and pleasantly intimate encounters. In this section, plus answers are good signs.

Television, many have noted, is one of our more effective methods of birth control. It can provide as many new ideas as a book or a newspaper or provide topics of lively conversation. But for too many people, it merely substitutes for interpersonal intimacy and dialog by providing a source of passive concentration until the eyelids grow heavy and the long day ends. Again, TV itself is not the villain. It just works out that creative, imaginative people tend to find as much or more in books and magazines to satisfy their appetite for new knowledge that, to them, is as entertaining as a situation comedy or the late-night talk shows.

The point is that communicative people are usually creative people (and vice versa) who search for new information they can assimilate and then use in conversation with others. They even find daydreaming pleasantly productive: They use their fantasies not only to generate new ideas but to plan things and alter their moods.

In general, creative people are curious, cognizant and adventurous. They fondle pets, touch statuary, marvel at the ordinary and accept the unusual. In short, they explore and search for novelty and uniqueness and refuse to categorize people simply as rich, poor, liberal, conservative, male, female. As a result, they have a wide variety of enthusiasms as well as friends, and their success with the opposite sex often astounds their associates. "What does she see in him?" envious males ask one another as he leaves with the girl the rest were watching. But it wasn't what she saw in him, it was what he saw in her that made the difference. For he didn't see her as "a cute chick" or "a great bod" but as a unique and appealing person, and this feeling was successfully communicated. This is such an unusual and flattering way for a woman to be approached that her response is almost always warm. The same goes for men, whom most women treat initially as just another representative of the male sex.

But it's not just at the first meeting that the sensitive person appreciates being appreciated as an individual. This kind of creative seeing is even more important after 20 years of looking at each other. That's because partners imprint each other when they fall in love, and if a couple never bothers to update the original impression, except critically, the original imprint is lost over the years. As the silver wedding anniversary approaches, he looks at her and wonders what he is doing married to a girdled, graying mother of three who is always too tired to go to the club. And she looks at this balding, paunchy, plodding businessman and wonders what became of the gallant who once made her shiver with romantic excitement.

Such disillusionment doesn't occur between creative, intimate partners. In the beginning, their imprints on each other were more than skin-deep. And because they never expected themselves to stay the same forever, they kept seeing and communicating with each other and renewing the imprint. They never wake up to find themselves well-acquainted strangers. Rather, for them, the original intimacy and love remain and serve to continuously strengthen their relationship.

Good-Neighbor Policies

(Questions 70-75)

Because life, at least a full life, requires close and frequent contact with other human beings, the ability to comfortably interact with casual acquaintances and total strangers is an important trait in anyone's character. Questions 70 through 75 provide clues to the positive or negative behavior patterns you have cultivated in dealing with others. The first three answers are, hopefully, pluses; the second three, minuses.

The person who feels he has no talent for playing the piano usually doesn't try; he can still enjoy music by listening to records or attending a concert. But the person who feels he has no talent for interpersonal relationships doesn't have such options, because the quality of his life depends heavily on his ability to interact with others. Too many individuals experience difficulty meeting new people or feel uncomfortable around strangers and conclude that sociality is a gift bestowed on some people but not on others. They make the best of the situation by adopting standardized and safe (which usually means agreeable but distant) behavior responses toward others. Situation A calls for one response, situation B another, and so on, until some novel and unexpected type of encounter leaves them helplessly lacking a safe, preprogramed plan of behavior. So they avoid meeting new people, dislike shaking hands--touching or being touched--and keep interpersonal contacts to a minimum simply to minimize the chance of being caught with their responses down.

This is the wrong policy. What the socially inept person most needs is practice. That's what the socially adept person has been doing, intentionally or not, all his life. He began learning to please members of the opposite sex by pleasing those in his own family. He has practiced relating to store clerks, people at bus stops, cabdrivers and waitresses, observing that they may be having a particularly harried day and allowing for this, or that they seem in unusually good spirits and would welcome letting someone know. He collects their smiles, laughter and casual flirting as signs of his progress. In short, he works at interpersonal relationships, rejecting the propaganda that advises him constantly that all he needs to be popular is the right deodorant, mouthwash, automobile or clothing. He knows that he can't compensate for personality deficiencies with either chemicals or possessions, but he can overcome them with personal insight put into constant practice.

Love versus need

(Questions 76-85)

That pleasant tingling sensation and feeling of warmth and euphoria that rushes through the body when one receives an enthusiastically romantic response may be love; but too often it is nothing more than a feeling of great psychological relief that a strong need is being or is about to be satisfied. Thus, the feeling of love is easily confused with the need for love. Questions 76 through 85 attempt to determine your real motives when you feel that you love someone. The first four questions should have minus answers; on the others, plus answers are a good sign that your feelings are expressive, not exploitative.

People who fall in love at first sight are rarely interested in establishing an emotionally intimate relationship. More likely, they have just laid eyes on a person who conforms closely enough to their physical ideal and who seems malleable enough to be changed, with a little effort, into Miss or Mr. Right. In many cases, Miss or Mr. Right reminds this person of a childhood love--an older sister or brother or a parent--someone so thoroughly known and predictable that he or she represents no threat of displaying individuality for which one might have to make allowances. In almost every case, however, Miss or Mr. Right will not and cannot make the changes this kind of love demands; and if, to retain affection or secure a wedding band, the loved one tries to fake it, soon enough the facade will collapse of its own weight and leave standing there Miss or Mr. Wrong.

People without parental hang-ups or illusions of changing someone, who marry out of a genuine mutual attraction, can still come to grief if they expect too much of love and of their loved one and abdicate responsibility for their own happiness. Any two people who think that love conquers all are in for an unpleasant surprise: They can become too close to allow each other breathing room, too mutually dependent to allow each other bad moods, depressions or expressions of personal weakness. And when one or the other turns out to be a little claustrophobic and reverses the struggle in a lifesaving maneuver toward independence, the other only clings more tightly. The result is hostility on both sides, an emotion that the lovers often consider the antithesis of love. It isn't. Love is a complex combination of emotions that includes hostility, hate, envy, anger and other feelings we've been taught to deplore. Only when we understand that all these feelings are components of love can we handle the situation when a stress symptom surfaces. If we don't understand this, then we leap to the conclusion that love is dead in the face of anger or rejection and either bury it prematurely or repress the unacceptable emotion. In either case, love loses, for a relationship that ignores honest antagonisms only generates the explosive components of a time bomb that will eventually explode with great destructiveness.

Partners who never fight aren't really intimate; those who are intimate constantly make adjustments and only the most minor of these are made without some conflict and compromise. But they resolve these conflicts immediately and honestly, without silently waiting for one or the other to capitulate or for time to simply bury the problem. On the flip side of this relationship are those love partners who make conflict a way of life. If there is nothing to quarrel about at a particular moment, they can always dig up former loves or grudges, so that each can exhume an old jealousy or complaint. (Best of all is the one-time infidelity that can be flaunted to trigger a hostile reaction and a resentful response.)

Sex is always fertile ground for conflict. Even with the best-matched partners, desire for sex doesn't always coincide, any more than does desire for food, recreation or sleep. Differences in the latter threaten no one's ego, but differences in sexual appetite are frequently taken as rejection by the one who makes the advance. More often sexual disinterest represents inhibitions or fears on the part of the partner or simple, old-fashioned fatigue that hasn't the slightest interpersonal significance unless one insecure partner has his or her antennae out to pick up signals of rejection. In a secure relationship, neither feels the need to project blame for sexual disappointments on the other nor feels that occasional sexual incapacity or disinterest means anything more than tiredness, too much partying or too many emotional distractions left over from the day. These are problems only when chronic, because sex. like everything else in life, has its routine ups and downs. Indeed, it's when sex seems unappealing that the truly intimate couple can give each other the psychological support and nondemanding physical caresses that permit sex to blossom again.

sex behavior: good and bad (Questions 86-100)

In some ways, this is the most important section of the quiz, for personality strengths and weaknesses tend to reveal themselves more acutely in sexual attitudes than in any other area of life. This is because sex demands so much personal involvement and because we place so much importance on it in passing judgment on others and on ourselves. Questions 80 through 100 measure your sexual inhibitions and the extent to which you allow your sexuality to give you (and others) pleasure, not just fulfillment of physiological and psychological needs. Minus answers to questions 86 through 93 mean your sexual attitudes are liberal; plus answers from question 94 on indicate that you use sex in a productive way not only to enjoy yourself but to enhance the intimacy of a mature and loving relationship.

Significantly, sex is the only natural physiological function surrounded by legal taboos, which illustrates the extent to which our culture has viewed sexuality as something dangerous and menacing. Not only do our laws generally deny sexual expression to all but the married, they often reinforce this policy by legally restricting the distribution of contraceptive information and devices. Implicit in these laws is the idea that the danger of pregnancy will deter people from engaging in sexual relations, as though sex, in itself, were a national peril. The same premise is reflected in most of our state sex laws, which try--unsuccessfully, to be sure--to dictate the sexual activities even of married people in the privacy of their own bedrooms. Most states not only prescribe severe penalties for "unnatural" sex acts but deny women the right to terminate unwanted pregnancies that result from "natural" copulation.

So the divorce rate soars as we struggle to preserve, by law and by social pressure, an ancient concept of the patriarchal nuclear family that quite possibly could stand some updating. For instance, various experiments in communal living show the traditional nuclear family to be more of an old rural and agrarian survival device than a modern-day necessity. Desirable? Possibly, especially when it serves the needs and interests of those committed to the nuclear family as an ideal. But, at the same time, the evidence is virtually indisputable that children fare better either in a communal environment or with a single parent than when unhappy partners in an unworkable marriage attempt to preserve their union at all costs because they think they owe it to their offspring.

In its present form, marriage leaves increasingly large numbers of people with no approved sexual outlets, thus promoting jealousy and friction. Even for the congenially married, advancing age can be a frustrating time because of the myth that people should--and usually do--retire from sex the minute they go on Social Security. Some defy this rule by going on a promiscuous rampage in their middle years in an effort to have all the fun they can before it's too late. The myth of a sexless old age is one reason divorce after 20 years or more of marriage is so common and so often inspired by anxieties rather than actual incompatibility.

Of course, disrupting a marriage in the middle years of life can make the myth a reality; people without partners (whether old or young or in between) simply have less opportunity for sexual fulfillment and often find themselves--women, especially--suppressing their own natural and virtually lifelong sex drives merely for lack of an alternative. Other harmful myths are that pornography leads to sex crimes, that sexual self-restraint either is healthful or preserves sexual ability longer, that intercourse during menstruation is either unhealthy or inappropriate.

This last notion is an unfortunate prejudice stemming from ancient superstitions. There is nothing "unclean" about a menstruating woman, and some not only want an orgasmic experience at this time but need it for physical comfort. Many of the causes of distress that are labeled premenstrual tension are duplicates of the female pelvic state during sexual arousal immediately before climax. Just as orgasm can accommodate pelvic needs in the one instance, so it sometimes can in the other.

But if orgasm is considered a necessity for men, it continues to be regarded by many people as a luxury for women, whose greatest pleasure is supposed to come from giving pleasure to their partners. Even "J" advises "the sensuous woman" to play Sarah Bernhardt in bed and fake orgasm. Such selflessness may seem commendable, but Masters and Johnson learned in their research that the woman who tries to give pleasure "by the numbers" cannot become immersed in the mounting sensuous stimuli that should also bring her to orgasm. This not only limits her own sexual pleasure but can be disturbing to her partner if he happens to be likewise acting the part of a noninvolved spectator. At least it is disturbing to Dr. David Reuben, the man who knows "everything you always wanted to know about sex," for he goes to a good deal of trouble telling men how to detect a counterfeit climax.

Why would a woman try to fake an orgasm and a man try to find her out? Because for too many people, performance means more than pleasure. The man's role in sexual athletics demands that he bring her to orgasm; and if she fakes it, he must conclude he wasn't "good" enough and the show was hers. Similarly, if a man doesn't become wildly aroused and reach a stupefying climax, some women regard this as evidence that they lack sexual virtuosity.

Rather a competitive picture of what should be the most intimate of human involvements, isn't it? She pretending a pleasure she doesn't experience, he performing valiantly, and then playing detective to find out whether or not he has truly earned another gold star for manliness. Orgasm that happens as a part of physical communication between intimate partners is an ecstatic experience, but it loses much of its magic and luster, and sometimes becomes impossible to achieve, when it is the sole goal of sexual activity.

The pressure to perform well is a factor in almost every case of sexual inadequacy. It is such an important factor that Masters and Johnson find the elimination of this pressure an important first step in treating all sexual incapacity.

Couples who would avoid sexual troubles and keep the joy in their lovemaking would do well to concentrate on pleasure rather than performance--the moment-by-moment sensual delights that their physical closeness brings. Orgasm can be a high point in that pleasure. But since orgasm cannot be forced nor willed, it can become an elusive goal. Wiser to heed the words of Dallas therapist Dr. Emma Lee Doyle, who advises: "Take down your sexual goal posts and enjoy the whole ball game, for time-outs, water breaks and even penetrations can be fun."

Now for the scoring.

Questions 1-18, count your minuses ___

Questions 19-47, count your pluses ___

Questions 48-62, count your minuses ___

Questions 63-72, count your pluses ___

Questions 73-79, count your minuses ___

Questions 80-85, count your pluses ___

Questions 86-93, count your minuses ___

Questions 94-100, count your pluses ___

Total ___

Subtract from this total half the number of zero answers to obtain your corrected total.

If your corrected total score is under 30, you have a shell like a tortoise and tend to draw your head in at the first sign of psychological danger. Probably life handed you some bad blows when you were too young to fight back, so you've erected strong defenses against the kind of intimacy that could leave you vulnerable to ego injury. If you scored between 30 and 60, you're about average, which shows you have potential. You've erected some strong defenses, but you've matured enough, and have had enough good experiences, that you're willing to take a few chances with other human beings, confident that you'll survive regardless. Any score over 60 means you possess the self-confidence and sense of security not only to run the risks of intimacy but to enjoy it. This could be a little discomforting to another person who doesn't have your capacity or potential for close interpersonal relationships, but you're definitely ahead in the game and you can make the right person extremely happy just by being yourself. If your score approaches 100, you're either an intimate Superman or you are worried too much about giving right answers, which puts you back in the under-30 category.