Conference | Paper

Intimacy and affiliation in infancy Intimacy develops in the womb and gets further calibrated after birth in the shared experience arising from dyadic exchanges with caretakers. Primary intersubjectivity shapes social preferences and infants’ early inclination to affiliate and get attached to selected others. A central question is what constitutes early intimacy and what drives the early propensity to affiliate? Based on empirical facts, I try to specify some of the constitutive elements of human intimacy and what might be the driving force behind the “We-experience” in early development.