The body is the most basic structure of our awareness of the world—its first person character. It is always an awareness from a particular point of view, a "here" that no one else shares. Its non-disclosable, non-expressible aspect comes from the fact that on a certain basic level, each body constitutes a sphere of the private that escapes linguistic expression, escapes being known.

People in their self-making live in the tension of the private and the public, the non-communicable and the communicable, the true-for-me and the true-for-all-of-us. To be human is to be constantly engaged in the double perspective of public and private; regarding each side from the vantage of the other; grasping each in the claims it imposes on the other, continuously negotiating between the demands of both.

The relationship between what is private and what is public needs to continuously be redefined. It is less necessary to give answers, but rather ask new questions—for example, the questions of what is private and what is public.

What is intimate differs from what is private in that the concept of privacy is related to a social structure, whereas the intimate is an anarchic component of the self. In contrast to privacy, which is both a social-psychological and social-political issue, intimacy will not be regulated by social systems of control.

Accordingly, intimacy contains a powerful critical capacity.
It also offers the possibility of catharsis.