Touching Without Touch

Session Outline for Metaphorum2, 31^st March 2017

• Introduction
• Guided relaxation session for introduction to self-touch
• Demo and brief for breakout activity
• Breakout activity 1 with swap
• Quick feedback from activity and brief for second activity
• Breakout experimental activity 2 with swap
• Group discussion
• Closing

Suggested Questions for Breakout Activities:

• and are you where you need to be?
• and that place that would like to receive touch…and what kind of touch would that place like to receive?
• and can you touch that place with a touch like that? ( and if not….. can you imagine?)
• and what’s happening now?
• and as X, then what happens?
• and is there anything else about X?
• and what kind of X is that X?
• And as we’re bringing this session to a close, would that be an OK place to stop for now?

References for Discussion Input:

“The intersubjective process of psychotherapy is more important than the content.” Erskine, R. Eight Principles of Psychotherapy (2017)

“Transference in this sense is the predisposition to particular relational patterns that are carried from situation to situation. The other person is not freely met as if for the first time. It is more as if the other person is met through a screen on which the person is projecting his or her particular film. To the extent that such transference is ‘updated’ to the new situation, it can be seen as a functional adaptation.”   Clarkson (2003)

Counter-transference: Clarkson (2003)

• Complementary:  ‘response which would complete or be complementary to the real or fantasised projection of the patient’s …(x)’
• Concordant:  ‘Aeolian harp response’
• Proactive:  ‘what the therapist brings’
• Reactive:  ‘that to which the therapist reacts in the patient…not necessarily a version of the therapist’s issues.