ABSTRACT
The compelling literature on touch in psychotherapy corroborates the statements of both non-clients and clients in my own research — investigators have found that touch strengthens the therapeutic relationship; and it eases the accomplishment of therapeutic tasks by lowering resistance/defences, promoting self-disclosure, dissolving impasses, ‘containing’ clients who are distressed, eliciting buried memories and emotions some of which cannot be accessed through verbal interaction, and establishing contact with reality in clients who are dissociating or acutely anxious.
As a result of these properties, touch facilitates the achievement of therapeutic goals; it can reduce trauma symptoms and the impact of abuse, redress developmental deficits by providing ‘corrective emotional experiences’ for those whose tactile-emotional histories have been wanting, enhance self-awareness and insight, strengthen the sense of self, and progress clients along their developmental path.
A minority of clients have found touch negative. Sexual interaction between therapist and client is particularly harmful, and non-sexual touch in therapy also can be detrimental if used without regard for clients’ needs and wishes — as can lack of touch which can cause clients to feel unlovable, untouchable, and ashamed of the natural wish for touch-comfort.
