The Role of Touch in Interpersonal Relations Implications for Psychotherapy

Abstract

In western culture the use of touch in interpersonal relations has, as far as possible, been avoided. Partly this was because the touching of infants and children was believed to encourage dependency and weakness, and partly because touch between adults was seen as almost exclusively a sexual matter. This view of touch has now been re-evaluated and the fundamental nature of touch as a nurturant response is now more fully understood. It is suggested that there are nine types of touch in interpersonal relations: information pick-up, movement facilitation, prompting, aggressive, nurturant, celebratory, sexual, cathartic and ludic. In the context of psychotherapy touch was avoided in the development of classical psychoanalysis but is used in many contemporary forms of therapy. It is argued that there are appropriate applications of most of the types of touch referred to above, with the exception of sexual in psychotherapy, but it is pointed out that many of these applications are powerful therapeutic techniques which require judgement, sensitivity and skill on the part of the therapist.