ABSTRACT
There was a time when the frame of the analytic encounter was so much a part of the culture that new patients already had a notion of what to expect and what not to expect. The relatively scant literature on touching in psychoanalysis has evolved from Freud’s turn away from the “pressure technique” to the opposition of language with action, and the wholly nondirective “free associative technique”, the latter comprising the fundamental rule of psychoanalysis. The paradox of touch means that it crosses the border between one person and the other. To touch is to give and receive sensation at once and we cannot deny one aspect of the process in order to rationalize or justify our own participation. Touching is different for terminally ill patients—that is the unusual circumstance.
