Nonphysical touch: Modes of containment and communication within the analytic process

Psychoanalysis has struggled with issues of touching and being touched, and of holding and being held, since Freud's early Essays toward "taking. hold " of elusive thoughts through various means. More recently, observations of early dyadic interchanges between caretaker and child have illuminated how facets of the analytic process, such as the quality of gaze, tone, or empa thic resonance, affect feelings of "being held" within the object world. Th ese studies interplay with other analytic depictions and the work of affect theorists to show how meanings become represented and manifested over time through verbal versus nonverbal means. The author uses this literature to explore how our capacity to receive and transmit information cross-modally creates an interpenetration of meanings between self and other in the absen ce of actual physical contact. Clinical illustrations explore some of the m eanings and uses of nonphysical modes of touch within the analytic environm ent.