Touch and Emotion in Manual Therapy

"In this astonishingly original and thoughtful book, Bevis Nathan, a practising osteopath, studies the therapeutic and psychological meanings of touch. He explores touch as communicative and expressive, and proposes a 'more ethical, realistic, empathic, human' approach to manual therapy based on a holistic concept of the body. He opposes the orthodox medical rationale that types of touches are procedures and techniques, based on a concept of the body as essentially mechanical.

He first explores the existential meaning of touch, and its potent effects. Touch is the ground of all our other senses. It is not limited to a single organ: the whole body is the organ of touch. He emphasises the mother's key role in infant development: her touch is "supremely important in influencing the existential, psychological and physical development of the fetus and newborn infant." Touch deprivation leads to poor physical, social and emotional development, failure to thrive and even death. Flesh is both subjective and objective; it is lived, "but it is also of the earth and therefore willingly succumbs to a certain degree of material analysis."

He then explores what happens when the manual therapist touches the patient. He asks us to "realise the extent to which my body reliably reflects my attempts to integrate my environment, my relationships, my thoughts and feelings." Mind and body form a unity; psychology is indissolubly intertwined with physiology. He shows how over-emphasising either element of this unity leads to a polarised duality, of a disembodied psychotherapy and a mindless body therapy.

Touch contains the potential for the most powerful blend of physical and emotional healing processes; manual therapists can help to resolve psychologically and emotionally generated bodily disorders. He concludes that shattering the belief that manual therapy is only a mechano-physiological discipline opens up extraordinarily creative possibilities. This book presents a powerful and well-grounded rationale for osteopathy, but it should also prove most valuable to all who use manual therapy to care for people."
~ Written on 2000-06-06