Chapter 4: Whose Shoes?: Intimacy in Self–Other–Culture Relationships

The goal of this chapter is to explore the possibilities of the notion of intimacy in James aiming to reflect about the self–other–culture relationships. To do so, in the first place, I will briefly indicate some of the aspects of the relation between pure experience and intimacy in James. The notion of intimacy is central in the discussion that goes through the whole Jamesian work, that is, the question of monism versus pluralism, involving antagonist relations among materialism, idealism, and spiritualism, therefore, regarding the metaphysics of the relations between the empiric world and the ideal world. Aware of the multiple and relevant philosophical implications of this discussion, I will stick, in this chapter, to focusing on some of the implications of this notion to the semiotic-cultural psychology. Next, I will illustrate the points here focused with the analysis of information publicly made available by people who participated in an interactive experience. Eventually, I will propose relevant aspects the Jamesian notion of intimacy can bring for deepening the understanding of the relations I–other–culture, in the framing of recent propositions of the semiotic-cultural constructivism in psychology.

“The very place behind me is in front of you.”

—James, 1909, p. 270