Other websites:
Touch Research Institute - Tiffany Fields
ChildTrauma Academy - Bruce Perry
The Gesundheit Institute - Patch Adams
The ego "is the perception of the bodily self, and what one feels and knows of the body is the skin."
Dr. P. Lacombe, "Du Role de la Leau dans l'Attachment Mere-Enfant," Revue Francaise du Psychoanalyse, vol. 23 (1959): pg. 88
"As the most ancient and largest sense organ of the body, the skin enables the organism to learn about its environment."
Ashley Montegu, Touching: The Human Significance of the Skin, (2nd ed., 1971) pg. 3.l
Dr. James Prescott, development psychologist at the National Institute of Child Health, Bethesda, Maryland, believes the principle cause of human violence stems from a lack of bodily pleasure during the formative periods of life. He states that rage is not possible in the presence of pleasure. Dr. Prescott suggests that, during development, certain sensory experiences create a neuropsychological disposition for either violence-seeking or pleasure-seeking behavior later on in life. He believes that touch deprivation and contact are the basic causes of a number of emotional disturbances, including depressive and autistic behaviors, hyperactivity, sexual aberration, drug abuse, violence and aggression.
(Extracted from Ashley Montegu.)
"When physical touch is not experienced or shared, all forms of conscious and unconscious communication become unbalanced. Without the fullness of physical and spiritual communication, the body suffers and the mind becomes hollow. Physical touch develops both inward and outward connections, thereby opening each one of us to the flowing purpose of life." Denny Johnson, Touch Starvation in America, (1985), pg. 40.
"The body is the tree of life. From our roots in the earth -- our creative region -- we draw vitality. From our trunk -- the kinesthetic -- we receive strength and stability. And from our branches -- the intellect -- we find direction and purpose. When all parts of the tree are acting in harmony, we bear fruit, that he might enjoy its goodness in this life, and the next."
Denny Johnson, Touch Starvation in America, (1985), pg. 74.