One more thing:
Can you see how devastating it was for me? Let me explain why:
As I was growing up, I obviously had no idea that my parents were not normal. The longing for my mother, together with her distance, were 'normal' to me. When I was 9 I saw a little intimate incident between a family member and her daughter. I felt absolutely sick - it made me see what I always wanted with my mother, and that other people had that (we were an extremely isolated family, so I never saw intimacy or closeness). And so I created a fantasy world. I imagined what physical contact would feel like. When I was fourteen another family member held my hand while I was upset about something - I was so shocked by the contact that I forgot my emotional distress: it was softer, warmer and more immediate than I could ever imagine. It made the discrepancy between fantasy and reality stand out so sharply.
I had no further contact until the vice principal at my school (a girls' school) made me her sex toy when I was 17. (She had one every year - she was eventually kicked out.) I traded sex for warmth. Blah blah. I eventually felt that my fantasy world was sick and tried not to go there. I had one amazing therapist (hands-off) and thereafter a few awful ones. I gave up on therapy, thinking I was to sick and twisted to benefit. I tried the postural integration woman, mainly because of chronic back ache, but also because I thought it would sort out my sick needs - and ended up in a really bad state psychologically. I completely gave up on therapy and people. I ignored any emotional needs.
And so, 9 months ago my structured, contained, limited life crashed when all of my 'sick' needs overwhelmed me. I staggered from T1 to T2 to T3 to T4 - and thought that at last something could be sorted out.
Alas.
And in the mean time I read on the internet about therapists doling out exactly what I always needed but thought was utterly unacceptable. I always thought that I had gone to psychologists for all the wrong reasons. For me to read the following was like .... ah shit, I don't even have words for it:
Much has been written on touch in psychotherapy and it comes around as a theme for conferences every few years. It is a popular subject for student dissertations within the humanistic and integrative psychotherapy field (see for example, Ball, 2002), but touch remains an uncomfortable issue to deepen into, and the professional debate moves relatively slowly given the evidence for its benefits. I was trained to touch and how to discuss it in psychotherapy. Touch was an integral part of my first individual psychotherapy, but not my second. I am comfortable with touch in the therapeutic endeavour, and include it fluidly as part of communication with clients. This article considers the reasons why the discussion of touch is so difficult and confusing and why the debate about whether to touch or not develops comparatively slowly. It discusses anxieties about touch in psychotherapy and society, why touch is so difficult, and the benefits of touch. Using vignettes from clients to illustrate how touch is essential for some clients, the author explains how she understands touch and offers guidelines on touching in psychotherapy.
At conferences discussions about touch can be confused, even for body psychotherapists, as well as for humanistic psychotherapists and psychoanalysts. Often it is not clear whether we are thinking about touch as a symbol – perhaps of the mother and nurture, or something to be included for clients with developmental deficits, or as a tool for physiological calming with a goal like reducing anxiety or lifting depression, or a way of gratifying impulses, or as a tool to provoke catharsis. All of these are possibilities, but depend on different ways of viewing touch in the therapeutic endeavour. Often the discussion is adversarial with discussants defending their positions. These are often polarised as “to touch or not” to add interest, but this does nothing to engender a safe dialogue, where it could be truly possible to find some new insights about a difficult topic.
One way to cut through some of the muddle would be to map out the territory and the different ways that touch is used in each domain. Weber (1990) proposes one such model and identifies three perspectives from which to discuss touch. These are the physical-sensory, the psychological-humanistic, and the field. The physical-sensory view is reductive, mechanistic and medical. Discussion is dualistic, tends to look at the physiology and anatomy of touch, and techniques. The source of the touch is irrelevant i.e. who or what is touching. The psychological-humanistic perspective is closest to phenomenology and existentialism. It is concerned with subjectivity, and human feelings such as love and empathy. Interaction between individuals is purposive and self conscious. “I-Thou” relating is whole person relating and communing with another (Buber, 1947/2002). “I-Thou” touch involves one’s whole being touching another whole being. Touch is reciprocal. The field perspective fits with Eastern philosophy and incorporates the other two perspectives. Individuals are regarded as “localised expressions” of the energetic field. Intentionality is fundamental to relating; and the intention of the giver makes a difference to the touch, and how it is received. Intention is energy, which impacts on the other, and may be experienced before the actual physical touch occurs. This is because organisms resonate and attune with each other via non-sensory means. This is both literal and metaphorical. Touch as “reaching” the other, meets the other at deeper levels than the observable. In field theory everything is connected and meaning comes from the context. Structure and function are not separate and in therapeutic work the client and therapist co-create the field together. The contact between them organises the field and the relationship takes its particular shape (Parlett, 1991).
One way of filling the touch experience gap is to have massage or a body therapy such as craniosacral therapy alongside analysis or psychotherapy, or after completing initial training. When touch is split off in this way from the psychotherapeutic relationship it creates its own problems, and is quite a different experience from the possibility of having a range of ways of communicating in one relationship. So this leaves discussants speaking from everyday experiences, combined with theoretical ideas and rules. For the discussion on touch to progress, I believe that touch has to be experienced to enable talking from an informed position.
Assumptions about who touches therapeutically
The common assumption is that psychoanalysts do not touch, and indeed, are supposed not to touch – the rule of abstinence. The rule of abstinence appears to be more prominent amongst Freudians, but is also found amongst Jungians, although Bosanquet (2006) has observed that Jung made no clear prohibition on touching. .. Nevertheless, with the developments in neuroscience, trauma studies and research into child development, psychoanalysis has been required to reassess the abstinence rule and discussion on touch is coming out of the closet somewhat tentatively (For example, Orbach, 2003; Galton, 2006)....
• For traumatised clients
Containment, facilitation of safety, holding, reorienting and reality testing in anxiety (Mintz, 1969; Hunter and Struve, 1998). Fear reduction (Liss, 1974). Dissipation of the transference and to make the symbolic concrete (author’s view). To learn to stay present and take charge and not dissociate (Showell, 2002). Reaching frozen clients (Jacoby, 1986).
• For those who are emotionally and physiologically dysregulated
To soothe or enliven, and balance the autonomic nervous system. (Eiden, 1998). To restore the psycho-physiological repair systems of the organism as in Biodynamic Body Psychotherapy (Heller, 2007). Creation of a non-verbal form of safety and relationship where the client can make a stronger contact with themselves and their inner sensations and allow internal movement. (Eiden, 1998).
• For those emotionally defended
To provoke catharsis, emotional expression and release. To reduce resistance and armouring (Reich, 1961, 1970; Lowen, 1975; Smith, 1985).
• For those with childhood developmental deficits and traumas
Symbolic mothering when the client is incapable of verbal communication, perhaps where there has been a deficit in childhood (Mintz, 1969; Bosanquet, 1970; Toronto, 2006). Mirroring, (McNeely, 1987). Connection with the “child within” and its suffering (Jacoby, 1986). Nourishment of the physical connection to experience the presence of the therapist in non-developed patients (Goodman and Teicher, 1988). To explore, amplify and to give feedback (McNeely, 1987), and connect body sensations with touch, and to bridge physiological awareness with feelings (Eiden, 1998). To develop a stronger sense of the skin boundary to foster differentiation and separation (Cornell, 1998). To facilitate the client’s capacity for organisation and sustaining emotional and interpersonal structure (Cornell, 1998).
• Embodiment of aggression and pleasure.
Controlled exploration of aggression as in arm wrestling (Mintz, 1969). Bringing energy into the body to experience pleasurable streamings (Boyesen, 1976); Liss, 1974, Southwell, 1988). Exploration and re-awakening of pleasurable sensations in the body and re-connection with the sensual and sexual self; or the exploration of the revulsion of pleasurable body sensations (Staunton, 2000; Cornell, 1998). To deepen the level of intimacy and to differentiate emotional and sexual intimacy (Cornell, 1998).
• Increasing energy flow
To free energy flow and to allow breathing to deepen (Older, 1982; Totton, 2005). To revitalise a client cut off from feelings (Tune, 2005). Putting information into the organism and creating energy flow throughout the body and increasing self sensation (Davis, 2001). Connecting energetically with the spiritual as described by Carroll (2002).
• Deepening experience in relationship
To focus attention (Older, 1982). To emphasise a verbal statement (Older, 1982), and increase self exploration (Pattison, 1973). To explore relatedness and closeness and to discover that this does not have to be sacrificed for autonomy; To deepen the client’s experience and relational needs (Cornell, 1998).
• Real relationship
Conveying a sense of self worth and communicating acceptance (Mintz, 1969; Eiden, 1998). Relating to the client as an adult in post-oedipal states (Asheri, 2008). Spontaneous and natural expression of the therapist’s feelings (Mintz, 1969; Smith, 1998)"
To have come all the way up to that point (with T4), only to walk into another brick wall was more than I needed or could deal with easily.
I'm beginning to see that she was not the right therapist for me. Sigh. I do have attachment difficulties, and with the situation as a replication of the one with my mother, which is at the root of those difficulties, it is no wonder I found it so disturbing.
