ABSTRACT
In my work as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist there has only been one occasion when I have had deliberate physical contact with a patient—except for sometimes shaking hands—and it is this occasion that I explore in this chapter. I will try to make clear some of the issues that I think were relevant to the situation with this patient, a woman who had suffered severe and ongoing sexual, physical, and psychological abuse when she was a child and adolescent and whose body still carried serious injuries from these experiences. I will also try to assess the effect of this touching on our subsequent work together.
