Touching: The Human Significance of the Skin

514 Pages·1986·10.356 MB·English

by  Ashley Montagu

TOUCHING
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Ashley
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CONTENTS
Prefatcote hF ei rEsdti tion ix
Prefatcote hS ee coEnddi tion xi
Prefatcote hTh ei rEdd ition xiii
Acknowledgments xvii
1T hMei nodft hSeki n 3
2T hWeo mobfT ime 47
3B reastfeeding 69
4T endLeorvi,Cn agr e 96
ST hPeh ysioElffoeogcfiTt cosau lc hing 198
6S kiann Sde x 204
7G rowatnDhde velopment 237
8C ultaunCrdoe n tact 292
9T ouacnhAd g e 393
Envoi 401
AppenId ix
TherapTeouutcihc 404
Appe2n dix
TheE ffeucptostn hM eo thoefRr e moval
oft hIen fIamnmte diaaftteBerily r th 412
References 415
Index 479

PREFACE
to the First Edition
This book is about the skin as a tactile organ very much in
volved, not alone physically but also behaviorally, in the
growth and development of the organism. The central referent
is man, and what happens or fails to happen to him as an infant
by way of tactile experience, as affecting his sut;,sequent behav
ioral development, is my principal concern here. When I first
started thinking about this subject in 1944 there was very little
experimental evidence available bearing upon these matters.
Today a considerable amount of such evidence has been made
available by a large variety of investigators, and my lonely
paper of 1953, "The Sensory Influences of the Skin" (Texas
Reports on Biology and Medicine, 2, 1953, pp. 291-301), is no
longer alone. This book draws upon many sources of informa
tion, and notes citing these sources have been gathered in the
Reference section, where they are identified by the numbers of
the pages and the line or lines on the pages where references or
quotations occur. (This system seemed preferable to using note
. numbers which interrupt the text. When notes are amplifica
tions, suggestions, or comments, however, rather than simple
source citations, they are keyed to asterisks and appear on the
same pages as the passages to which they refer.).
The skin as an organ, the largest organ of the body, was
very much neglected until quite recently. But it is not as an
organ as such that I am here concerned with the skin; rather, in
contrast to the psychosomatic or centrifugal approach, I am in
terested in what may be called the somatopsychic or centripetal