Touching our Humanity
(A redacted version of this article was first published in The Furrow, November, 2011)
Throughout history humankind has treated the body with suspicion and ambiguity. How we understand our body which is the place where we first come to know ourselves as well as others is intricately linked to who we perceive ourselves to be. How we come to care for body is implicit in how we can care for the body of another.
A positive sense of body has not been a natural heritage for many of us. Often we have had to fight to reclaim this. The battle ground,for want of a better word, is both cultural/societal as well as religious. It can be quite a struggle to recover a sense of the human as a whole being. Yet anything less than this perpetuates the split of body from spirit, fragmenting who we are out of wholeness and into pieces. Touch and body are intricately woven together. Implicit in body is touch, and implicit in touch is body.
When we are unable to experience ourselves as whole, as sacred, as integrated, equally our touch becomes so much more limited. Our bodies are not something we have but something we are. Our skin is our boundary with which and through which we experience other and self simultaneously; we feel and are being felt at the same time, the touching hand becomes the touched hand, the sense of touch is diffused into the body. Touch is different from all the other senses because it always involves the presence of the body that we touch and our own body with which we touch.
Touch is our first language and is always more than skin to skin contact. In the development of the senses, it’s the first of the senses to become functional. Touch helps us to know ourselves and our world. In touching another we learn both where we begin and where other is, it is close contact. Touching is our main non-verbal language of communication, yet we virtually exclude non-verbal language from our experience. To the extent that this is so, we are all diminished for we are limiting the dimensions of our reality. We have come to rely heavily on verbal communication, reducing our appreciation as well as our understanding of each other and the world in which we live.
Touching another is never neutral. Touch expresses presence. Touch expresses desire. Touch expresses intention. Touch is about connection and what is true for us humans is that we cannot live without touch. The same cannot be said of any of the other senses. Touch is as necessary as oxygen, water, food, rest.
Touch is always more than a physical sensation; feeling, affect and touch are inseparable from each other. Many of us know this to be true, having learned from our own experience how the caring touch of another can soothe ruffled feelings, can ease pain, can reassure….the caring touch of another can in fact make all the difference in the world.
Attentive, affectionate, intimate touch is needed for us to thrive as humans and the lack of touch effects the healthy progress of the individual through the stages of development. Deprivation of touch is not limited to very extreme cases, for lesser experiences of lack of touch also impact upon very significantly on each of us.
We have become in the Western world a touch deprived society, it is a reflection of how impersonal our society has become. Our society is starving, hungering for touch both of the skin and of the heart. This isn’t limited to any particular age group, nor is it gender influenced, it is however most evident with older people.
As our senses decline with age, the need for touch actually appears to increase, yet older women and men in our society have been described as the most untouched population in the Western world. Older people, men and women who have in their younger years been the care-givers, cradling, soothing, touching, holding…are now craving touch. Among hospitalized older people, the main and sometimes only form of touching is “instrumental” touch (as required to carry out a task) rather than “expressive” touch (to convey care, acceptance, nurture).
Lots of studies has been undertaken on touch; the research confirms that caring touch both decreases sensory deprivation as well as reduces feelings of isolation and vulnerability. Lack of caring touch has the opposite effect. Ashley Montagu through his extensive research over several decades urges us to develop an awareness of this basic human need to touch and to be touched. He states that learning to love and to be kind are profoundly interconnected and so closely connected with the sense of touch, that touch deprivation is equally an experience of the loss of love and kindness. He firmly believes (and I agree wholeheartedly) that an awarness of this basic human need to touch and be touched would greatly help our rehumanisation.
Tender caring touch can sweep away isolation with a single stroke of the hand. Touching another with respect and tenderness has a quality that only serves to give dignity to our humanity.