Intimacy, Power, and the Permeable Boundaries of the Self

Kissing is not universal among human beings and, even today, there are some cultures that have no place for it. This suggests that the behaviour is not purely innate or intuitive, as it may seem to us, but culturally shaped and historically variable—one of the ways in which human beings negotiate the boundary between self and other.

It could be that kissing is a learnt behaviour that developed from ‘kiss feeding’, the process by which mothers in some cultures feed their infants by passing masticated food from mouth to mouth. Yet, there are some present-day indigenous cultures that practise kiss feeding but not social kissing. Another possibility is that kissing is a culturally determined form of grooming behaviour, or, in the case of deep or erotic kissing, a representation of, substitute for, and complement to penetrative intercourse.

Whatever the case, kissing behaviour is not specific or unique to human beings. Primates such as Bonobo apes frequently kiss one another; dogs and cats lick and nuzzle one another and members of other species; even snails and insects engage in antennal play. It could be that, rather than kissing, these animals are in fact grooming, smelling, or communicating with one another, but even so, their behaviour implies and strengthens trust and bonding.

Ancient Kisses

Vedic texts from Ancient India seem to talk about kissing, and the Kama Sutra, which probably dates back to the second century CE, devotes an entire chapter to modes of kissing. Certain anthropologists have suggested that the Greeks learnt about erotic kissing from the Indians after Alexander the Great invaded India in 326 BCE. But even if true, this need not mean that erotic kissing originated in India, or that it does not predate the oral roots of the Vedas.

In Homer’s Iliad, which dates back to the ninth century BCE, King Priam of Troy memorably kisses the hand of Achilles in pleading for the return of Hector’s defiled corpse:

Fear, O Achilles, the wrath of heaven; think on your own father and have compassion upon me, who am the more pitiable, for I have steeled myself as no man yet has ever steeled himself before me, and have raised to my lips the hand of him who slew my son.

In the Histories (fifth century BCE), Herodotus speaks of kissing among the Persians, who greeted men of equal rank with a kiss on the mouth and those of slightly lower rank with a kiss on the cheek. Herodotus reports that, because the Greeks ate of the cow, which was sacred to the Egyptians, the Egyptians objected to kissing them on the mouth.

Biblical Kisses

Kissing also features in the Old Testament. Disguised as Esau, Jacob deceives his blind father Isaac and steals his brother Esau’s blessing, sealing the deception with a kiss. When Jacob returns after years of exile, Esau runs to him, embraces him, falls on his neck, kisses him, and they weep. Naomi, insisting that her Moabite daughters-in-law Ruth and Orpah remain in Moab to make new lives for themselves, kisses them farewell, and they weep. Absalom wins the hearts of Israel by kissing all who come to him seeking justice. In the Song of Songs, which celebrates sexual love, a lover implores, ‘Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for thy love is better than wine.’

The Roman Art of Kissing

Under the Romans, kissing became much more commonplace. Romans kissed their partners or lovers, family and friends, and rulers. They distinguished a kiss on the hand or cheek (osculum) from a kiss on the lips (basium) and a deep or passionate kiss (suavium).

Roman kisses fulfilled a range of purposes, from the political and legal to the social and sexual. The status of a Roman citizen determined the part of the body—ranging from cheek to foot—on which he or she would be allowed to kiss the emperor. In an age of widespread illiteracy, kisses served to seal agreements—hence the ‘X’ on the dotted line, and the expression ‘to seal with a kiss.’ Couples were wed by kissing before a gathering, a practice that carries on to this day.

Kissing and Desire

Roman poets such as Catullus and Martial treat erotic kissing as something far removed from sentimental delicacy. Kissing is intensely physical, emotionally charged, and often unsettling in its implications.

In Catullus, kisses emerge within the turbulence of erotic attachment and jealousy, where intimacy is inseparable from fear of loss and replacement. ‘Who will you kiss? Whose lips will you bite?’ is not celebratory, but a bitter imagining of desire redirected elsewhere.

In Martial, kissing becomes more explicitly corporeal and public in character, sometimes figured as excessive or intrusive—an act that overwhelms the boundaries of the self and edges into domination or comic excess.

Across both poets, kissing is less a gentle emblem of love than an occasion in which desire becomes unstable, contested, and materially insistent. In short, in Roman poetry, kissing is not a symbol of love so much as one of its problems.

The Holy Kiss

Customs changed with the decline of Rome. Early Christians often greeted one another with a ‘holy kiss’, which was believed to lead to a transfer of spirit. The Latin anima means both ‘breath of air’ and ‘soul’, and, like animus [mind], comes down from the Proto-Indo-European root ane- [to breathe, blow]. Although St Peter had spoken of the ‘kiss of charity’, and St Paul of the ‘holy kiss’, early Christian sects omitted kissing on Maundy Thursday, the day of the year on which Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss. Outside of the Church, kissing was used to cement rank and social order, for instance, subjects and vassals kissed the robe of the king, or the slippers or ring of the pope.

The Rise of Romantic Love

After the fall of Rome, the romantic kiss (as distinct from other types of kiss) becomes less prominent in surviving literature for several centuries, before re-emerging in new forms with the rise of courtly love from the late eleventh century. The kiss in Romeo and Juliet is emblematic of this long cultural trajectory, which sought to remove courtship from the purview of family and broader society and celebrate romantic love as a liberating, self-determining, and potentially subversive force.

Crossing Between Selves

The fate of the star-crossed lovers reminds us that such carefree abandon is not without risk, and it may be that vampirism evolved as a representation of the dangers—to health, rank, reputation, prospects, and happiness—of crossing too easily between selves.

Neel Burton is author of Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions.