The need to touch

Source: Aeon.co/Essays
Touch is the first sense by which we encounter the world, and the final one
to leave us as we approach death’s edge. ‘Touch comes before sight,
before speech,’ writes Margaret Atwood in her novel The Blind Assassin
(2000). ‘It is the first language and the last, and it always tells the truth.’
Our biology bears this out. Human foetuses are covered in fine hairs known
as lanugo, which appear around 16 weeks of pregnancy. Some researchers
believe that these delicate filaments enhance the pleasant sensations of
our mother’s amniotic fluid gently washing over our skin, a precursor to the
warm and calming feeling that a child, once born, will derive from being
hugged.
Lately, though, touch has been going through a ‘prohibition era’: it’s been a
rough time for this most important of the senses. The 2020 pandemic
served to make touch the ultimate taboo, next to coughing and sneezing in
public. While people suffering from COVID-19 can lose the sense of smell
and taste, touch is the sense that has been diminished for almost all of us,
test-positive or not, symptomatic or not, hospitalised or not. Touch is the
sense that has paid the highest price.
But if physical distance is what protects us, it’s also what stands in the way
of care and nurturance. Looking after another human being almost
inevitably involves touching them – from the very basic needs of bathing,
dressing, lifting, assisting and medical treatment (usually referred to as
instrumental touch), to the more affective tactile exchanges that aim to
communicate, provide comfort and offer support (defined as expressive
touch). Research in osteopathy and manual therapy, where practitioners
have been working closely with neuroscientists on affective touch, suggests
that the beneficial effect of massage therapy goes well beyond the actual
manoeuvre performed by the therapist. Rather, there is something special
simply in the act of resting one’s hands on the skin of the client. There is no
care, there is no cure, without touch.
The present touch drought arrived after a period in which people were
already growing more afraid of touching one another. Technology has
enabled this distance, as social networking sites have become the primary
source of social interaction for children and adolescents. A recent survey
showed that 95 per cent of teens have access to a smartphone, and 45 per
cent say that they are online ‘almost constantly’.
Another reason for touch-scepticism is the growing global awareness of
how touch is a weapon that men use to impose their power over women.
The #MeToo movement exposed how women are expected to acquiesce to
inappropriate touch as the cost of gaining access to certain kinds of
opportunities. Meanwhile, doctors, nurses, teachers and salespeople are all
guided against being too ‘hands-on’. Yet studies suggest that touch actually
improves the quality of our encounters with any of these professionals, and
makes us evaluate the experience more positively. For example, we are
likely to give a more generous tip to a waiter who absently touches our
shoulder when taking the order than to those who keep their distance.
What’s unique about touch, when set against the other senses, is its
mutuality. While we can look without being looked back at, we can’t touch
without being touched in return. During the pandemic, nurses and doctors
have talked about how this unique characteristic of touch helped them
communicate with patients. When they couldn’t talk, smile or be seen
properly because of their protective equipment, medical professionals
could always rely on a pat on the shoulder, holding a hand or squeezing an
arm to reassure patients and let them know that they were not alone. In a
pandemic where touch is a proven vector, paradoxically it’s also a part of
the cure. Touch really is the ultimate tool for social connection, and the
good news is that we were born fully accessorised to make the most of it.
In the 1990s, there was a wave of research demonstrating the shocking
consequences of touch deprivation on human development. Several
studies showed that children from Romanian orphanages, who were barely
touched in the first years of life, had cognitive and behavioural deficits later
on, as well as significant differences in brain development. In adulthood,
people with reduced social contact have a higher risk of dying earlier
compared with people with strong social relationships. Touch is especially
important as we age: for instance, gentle touch has been shown to increase
the amount of food intake in a group of institutionalised elderly adults.
Even when we can’t see, hear or speak as we used to, we can almost
always rely on touch to explore the world around us, to communicate with
others, and to allow them to communicate with us. Touch is so vital that
even the language of digital communication is saturated with touch
metaphors. We ‘keep in touch’, and acknowledge that we are ‘touched by
your kind gesture’.
So, what happens to our tactile fluency when we make touch taboo? At the
times in our lives that we are most fragile, we need touch more than ever.
From everything we know about social touch, it needs to be promoted, not
inhibited. We need the nuance to recognise its perils, but avoiding touch
entirely would be a disaster. The pandemic has given us a glimpse of what
life would look like without touch. The fear of the other, of contamination,
of touch has allowed many of us to realise how much we miss those
spontaneous hugs, handshakes and taps on the shoulder. Physical
distancing leaves invisible scars on our skin. Tellingly, most people mention
‘hugging my loved ones’ as one of the first things they want to do once the
pandemic is over.
In the current environment, is the idea of a ‘renaissance of touch’ just for
the brave and the foolish? I don’t believe so, and scientific evidence speaks
loud and clear. We lose a lot by depriving ourselves of touch. We deprive
ourselves of one of the most sophisticated languages we speak; we lose
opportunities to build new relationships; we might even weaken existing
ones. Through deteriorating social relationships, we also detach from
ourselves. The need for people to be able to touch one another should be a
priority in defining the post-pandemic ‘new normal’. A better world is often
just a hug away. As a scientist, but also as a fellow human, I claim the right
to touch, and to dream of a reality where no one will be touchless.
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