The psychological significance of touch in manual therapy

A literature review and philosophical argument to be published in full by Churchill Livingstone in October 1998 as the book; Touch and Emotion in Manual Therapy.

The subject of touch in itself has received scant attention in traditional osteopathic literature because of the exclusively mechanical rationales traditionally given for diagnosis and treatment. As a result, its full significance has not been researched. The author gives an examination of the evidence pointing to the emotional significance of touch, drawn from a consideration of many disciplines; child development, anthropology, psychology and psychotherapy, language, philosophy and the physiological rationales underlying manual therapy. The weight of this evidence calls seriously into question the scope and limitations of the standard explanations underlying manual therapy, and suggests that primarily psychological and emotional processes are involved in much of manipulative and other manual therapeutics.

Such a conclusion, if valid, in proportion as it implies a psychotherapeutic dimension to manual therapy, threatens certain strongholds of osteopathic and chiropractic theory, and blurs the notion of limitation of expertise.

Without a consideration of this subject, however, practitioners of manual therapy probably cannot gain a truly comprehensive insight into the nature of patients’ problems, and the explanations underlying manual therapy.