Posted by allisonross on October 27, 2005, at 10:46:59
I had always thought some of the prohibitions in therapy were weird/silly, etc.
I read something that i believe should be required reading for every therapist.
www.drozur.com/touchintherapy.html
I will quote some of the good stuff, and hope you will all read it. I am having my t read it (although he won't agree with some/all of it)
"Touch has been marginalized, forbidden, called taboo, often sexualized and even criminalized by many schools of psychotherapy."
Not touching has powerful effects and this aspect of treatment is ignored by mainstream psychotherapy literature.
To disregard all physical contact between therapist and client may deter psychological growth.
The deepest oldest messages are stored and must be accessed through the body. Your body is your unconscious mind, and you can't heal it by talk alone.
The power differential between therapists and clients has almost become interchangeable with exploitation. What is forgotten is that many relationships with a significant differential of power, such as parent-child, teacher-student, or coach-athlete, are not inherently exploitive. Few, if any, marriage, business, friendship or therapy relationships are truly equal. The disparity in power is regarded as extreme, which is disempowering to the client.
The fear campaign waged by insurance companies, attorneys, ethicists and risk management experts has too often succeeded in paralyzing therapists and forcing them to restrict themselves to rigid and constipated ways of reating to clients.
We cannot think of any more effective ways to enhance therapeutic alliance than a reassuring or comforting hug, or hand holding. All of this may not be effective risk management, but it is basic good therapy.
Clinical interventions should be constructed and implemented according to the clients idiosyncratic situation, condition, problems. The unduly restrictive analytic risk-management emphasis on clear, rigid and inflexible boundaries and the mandate to avoid touch interferes with human relatedness, which ought to be flexible and tailored to the clients' needs rather than to the therapist's dogma or fear. (I say right on!! )
If a client wants and needs refuelng touch and holding across their lifetime, then I will provide it, as I would provide replacement enzyme therapy in someone who had lost their pancreas (this last paragraph is from www.paulvereshack.com/helpme/ppp/chapt25
Hope this was helpful. I have printed off the whole article and highlighted most of it! In short, touch (judiciious inclusion) SHOULD be a part of the therapeutic process.
Another wonderful informative website: www.themovingcycle.com/_articles4.html
This is entitled: The Ethics of Touch
poster:allisonross
thread:572378
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20051025/msgs/572378.html