Touching Moments

By Anonymous -
"Language is steeped in metaphors of touch... call our emotions feelings, we care most deeply when something 'touches' us. Problems can be thorny, sticky... [there are] touchy people... get on our nerves" (70)

Longing Hands touching 


Touch is something most of us take for granted - most of us can touch, or in Ackerman's interpretation of touch above, have the ability to be touched in some way. Upon reading Ackerman's explanation of the relationship between touch and language - through the way people talk or act we get 'feelings' about them. Touch is intertwined in everything we do - in either an emotional or physical context.

There is a small number of people, in fact, who were born with the inability to feel physical touch - both positive and negative. This is called anhidrosis. Analyzing what it means to not feel touch, gives an insight into what it's like to feel. Yes, from a typical perspective of a person who can touch, being able to not feel pain may seem like an advantage, however, take away any positive sensations. Even the negative come with advances. Pain is necessary to live. Without pain we wouldn't know we were in danger or that we were injured.

Pain is an interesting concept. It has a duality to it's meaning. When someone is "in pain" it can mean either an emotional dilemma or physical pain. Much like what Ackerman was talking about but the premise of pain is a facet of language that can actually have internal physical implications. Broken Heart Syndrome is a prime example of this occurrence.

As Ackerman, discusses the importance of touch to infants, with the use of the experiment between maternal attachment and cortical development. This can also be shown in another experiment involving monkeys but of an older age. In this experiment, a monkey's finger would under stimulated while the others were normally stimulated, this showed that the cortical area associated with that finger that wasn't stimulated, over time,  was overgrown by the other fingers, and when it's reversed, it grows larger.


This interplay of touch and the brain as well as how we feel is an important prospect that should be explored more. Frederick Sachs said it best with: “‘ The first sense to ignite, touch is often the last to burn out: long after our eyes betray us, our hands remain faithful to the world… in describing such final departures, we often talk of losing touch’” (71) 

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