ABSTRACT
The taboo against touch in psychotherapy originated with psychoanalysis, the therapeutic system founded by Sigmund Freud. Nineteenth-century Vienna, Freud’s birthplace, was beset with touch-negating precepts, such as the puritanism promoted by contemporary Christian doctrine, the ‘mind-body duality’ inherent in Western thought and the valuing of intellect over body and emotion. Freud was embedded in the culture of his time and these precepts were woven into his formulation of psychoanalysis.
The North American and English cultures that subsequently adopted and influenced psychoanalysis share the non-tactile traditions of Austria/Germany. In addition, psychoanalytically-trained therapists form a subculture that has strictly maintained non-tactility. The touch taboo in psychoanalysis is held in place by these dual national and subcultural forces.
As the first and for a time the only talking therapy in the West, the psychoanalytic approach became so powerful within therapeutic discourse that some of its tenets — including those respecting touch — spread beyond its own confines and became integrated into many non-psychoanalytic talking therapies.
Although the cultural forces that fostered the touch taboo are today somewhat diminished, they are still sufficiently in place in Anglo society to buttress the touch taboo in therapy.
