In my understanding of therapy, one of the clear rules is the focus, which is different than intimacy, is on the client and not the therapist. So therapy doesn't promise mutual disclosure or mutual focus, and for me that kind of mutuality wouldn't work.

But in this second round of therapy, fifteen years after my first round ended and I thought I was done with therapy forever, my therapist does a lot of self disclosure. I could probably collate the facts he's told me and write a reasonable biography. And while I don't feel he's ever crossed the line and made my therapy about him, if his self disclosure is a technique it is neutral at best. Outside the therapy room the level of self disclosure by a friend does relate but isn't everything to my overall sense of intimacy, but inside it doesn't.

For me intimacy is long range and short range, understood by both my feelings and my behavior. The long range of intimacy is in how comfortable and safe I feel talking about what's on my mind; the space itself, symbolic and "holding" the intimacy of my therapy. I still chicken out and avoid some things some of the time, but in general I can sit down now after almost a decade and get to the issue that is on my mind. This kind of intimacy is like the background.

Short range intimacy is more complicated, too many factors to really define. I think about that famous quote by Supreme Court justice Stewart (I think) about pornography, "I know it when I see it." But feeling like my T really "sees" me is a thread of intimacy, but I think most of what intimacy in therapy is like for me is when the dialog between us pushes me towards some new way of understanding about myself, my choices, the way I see myself. The value of articulating things that sometimes come from a more sub conscious place, seeing their connection to my past, or expanding my understanding of some of the core things I have difficult with. These are rarely about my T and what he says but more about how he keeps clearing a path for me in the emotional, murky jungle so I can see myself and what I'm struggling with more clearly.