From the author: Abstract of my thesis Intimophobia is a fashionable disease of our time. Currently, the term “intimophobe” is very popular. We often come across the fact that this is what they call anyone who has not started a family by a certain age. It is this term that covers up many sexually mature men and women who do not want and are unable to build close relationships. Intimophobia in the psychiatric sense is really a phobia of sexual relationships as such, a fear of physiological intimacy. This phenomenon has been described by psychiatrists almost since the 19th century. Subsequently, the word “intimophobia” acquired an expanded interpretation. This word “went to the people” and acquired a social meaning: today it means any “fear of close relationships in general.” This happens to both men and women. You can, using journalistic cliches, say that a woman is “looking for a prince,” “she hasn’t had her fill yet,” “there are only weaklings all around.” However, these are different masks of the same problem: Intimophobia. A woman is afraid of close relationships and marriage with a man. Because for some reason, this relationship has so far brought her nothing but trouble. Or due to the fact that for her close, family relationships pose some conscious or unconscious danger. You can start a relationship with a married man and suffer for years. Compete with another woman. Find more and more new “flaws”, as in Gogol’s story. Or refuse to take a step towards a man, using anticipatory rejection. No matter what bizarre masks intimate phobia puts on, the essence remains the same. Society may develop a misunderstanding of the problems that women face. This is, first of all, the lack of female fulfillment. At the same time, the woman herself often suffers from the fact that she is lonely, from the lack of warmth and tenderness, not knowing that she herself is scaring away all potential partners. In addition, the causes of such problems may be disguised as one another. Therefore, each situation must be analyzed individually and certain forms of psychotherapeutic work must be selected in each specific case. And here you can very often see how unfulfillment in relationships results in masculine forms of fulfillment. And this “under-femininity” sounds very strongly. And the society is replenished with directors, business women, and top managers. By choosing not trust and relationships, but control and power. Raising your children in the same model. Psychotherapy for female intimate phobia is possible. And the goal is to give a woman the opportunity to learn how to build fulfilling relationships. It is important to see and accept reality with all fears and make life plans based on this. But first of all, of course, to alleviate a woman’s emotional experiences, mitigate or relieve stress and depression, and pay attention to the stages of personality formation. Half a century ago, Karen Horney said: “It is well known that our culture is a masculine culture and therefore generally unfavorable for the development of female individuality... No matter that a woman may be highly valued as a mother or lover, nevertheless in spiritual and In a universal human sense, a man will always be rated higher. A little girl develops and grows with just such an impression.” It seems that not much has changed since the days of Karen Horney. I would like for women to occupy an equal place to men in the 21st century, without chauvinistic biases in either direction. In the psychotherapeutic process of female intimate phobia, deprivation theories of neurosis are a good help. Which state that deprivation that has crossed a certain threshold causes correspondingly irreversible consequences, either slowing down development or provoking defenses. According to one of the possible schemes, the sequence is as follows: deprivation – frustration – aggression – anxiety – defense –.