The Phenomenon of “I Am Like a Stranger” in Accommodation Relation to Others: the Possibility or Impossibility of Intimacy

Have you experienced yourself once a "stranger"? Maybe it happened to you when you were at a party with strangers, or at home with your loved ones? Maybe you discovered the “stranger” in yourself? In this paper, we study the phenomenological picture of the experience of “I am like a stranger” in the context of a person’s life relations. In the course of a descriptive phenomenological analysis according to A. Georgie, preliminary informative components of the experience of the “stranger” were revealed in four modes of relationship: with oneself, with a significant other, with others, with the world. The preliminary structure of this phenomenon in the form of invariant and variable components is highlighted. “Strangeness”, as a phenomenon, is considered from its limiting sides, as well as from the point of view of the resource, as the possibility of transition to intimacy. It is quite possible that the surest way to hear the voice of one’s “strangeness” and recognize its value is to turn to it, enter into dialogical relations with oneself and others. The study of the potentials of the experience of “strangeness”, the peculiarities of building a personal dialogue in the presence of this experience in a person’s life, as well as the connectedness of “strangeness” with other phenomena of psychological life is a prospect for further study of the topic.