| Abstract: | This article addressed the meaning and significance of minor physical contact (e.g., a hug or handshake) within the psychoanalytic dyad. Although undoubtedly a controversial topic, the plain fact that it is occurring makes touch an important and necessary subject of discourse. Furthermore, as psychoanalysts come to define the role of the more human analyst within the 2-person field and come to regard so-called extra-analytic techniques as necessary and even highly therapeutic, there is no logical basis from which to exclude the judicious use of actual physical contact as one of the tools of the more "human" analyst. The author presented clinical material in which touch seemed ill-advised as well as that in which it proved efficacious. She thus endeavored to clarify and bring into conscious awareness those factors by which decisions are made to touch or not to touch as well as how, when, and with what types of patients psychoanalysts decide to have physical contact. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
