ABSTRACT
It is a fact of human nature that most of us, at times, are limited in our availability for contact and our willingness to receive another. Sometimes this is because we have burdens of our own that responding to the needs of another would seem to increase so it is easier, even on the face of it necessary, to screen others out, for example, when we are tired or ill or immersed in our own psychological or emotional processes. Sometimes it is about being unaccepting of another’s way of being, deciding that they are mad, bad or sad and that we want nothing to do with them. We may (for example) block contact or at least limit its depth when we are confronted by behaviour of which we disapprove, when the person before us provokes fear or connects us with our prejudices or when we are afraid that being seen will lead us to being rejected. All of these things limit availability for what Cameron (in Tolan 2003: 87–92) calls ‘basic contact’.
