Digging through old saved emails I found this one:
Touch Deprivation
Herewith a link to article related to the necessity of touch for health and development.
‘In short, Prescott found that those societies that lavish affectionate touch on their infants and children, and also are tolerant or encouraging of adolescent sexual/affectional behaviors were the least violent societies on Earth; with the converse also being true.’
‘That is, the quality of our relationships throughout our lives is massively effected by the quality of our attachments in infancy and early childhood. And, specific aspects of the communication and touch relationship between child and primary caretakers primarily influence the quality of these early attachments.’
‘It has been discovered that pleasurable touch is associated with enhanced learning, improved IQ, language acquisition, reading achievement, memory, general neonate development, preterm infant development, reduced self-mutilating behavior in the severely mentally
retarded, expanded external awareness of autistic patients, improved geriatric health,
decreased childhood clinginess and fears of exploring their environment, the elimination inappropriate self-stimulation and public masturbation behavior in children, and improved visual-spatial problem solving…’
‘In its most rigid and fundamentalist form, the Judeo-Christian philosophy is staunchly anti-touch, anti-body, anti-pleasure, and anti-sexual. To our not so distant ancestors the formula “Touch=Sex=Sin” was a bromide to live by.’
‘One of the outcomes of prolonged touch deprivation and the resulting neurological deterioration, is a hypersensitivity to touch.’
