Touching and being touched: where knowing and feeling meet

Frontiers in Psychology

Psychology

Lawrence Fischman¹ 

[1] Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, Tufts University, Boston, MA, United States;Fluence, Woodstock, NY, United States;

关键词: transitional states;    absorption;    minimal and narrative self;    touch;    depersonalization;    psychedelic-induced ego dissolution;    mind-wandering;    empathy;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1097402

 received in 2022-11-13, accepted in 2023-06-05,  发布年份 2023

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Philosophers maintain that touch confers a sense of reality or grounding to perceptual experience. In touching oneself, one is simultaneously both subject and object of touch, a template for experiencing oneself as subject and object of intentions, feelings, and motivations, or intersubjectivity. Here, I explore a form of self-touch carefully documented by Winnicott in observing how the infant engages the transitional object. I compare the processes of self-loss in transitional states, including absorption in art, empathic immersion, drug-induced ego dissolution, and depersonalization. I use examples drawn from Rodin, Dante, and the Beatles; research correlating neurophysiological findings with aspects of self-representation; predictive processing-based models; Hohwy’s concepts of minimal and narrative self; Clark’s notion of the extended mind; and phenomenological perspectives on touch, to postulate a role for self-touch in the pre-reflective sense of mine-ness, or grounding, in transitional states.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
Copyright © 2023 Fischman.