Let Biden be Bygones — Goodbye “Good Touch,” Hello “No Touch”

I am not here to be an apologist for Joe Biden’s uninvited touching towards women.

What I am here to say is that in an effort to protect everyone against “bad touch,” we’re throwing out the “good touch” with the bathwater.

In my more than forty years as a psychotherapist and observer of human behavior and human nature, I have come to believe that our skin has a memory separate from our minds of “good touch,” “bad touch,” and “no touch.”

With regard to “bad touch,” I have certainly witnessed how nearly impossible it is for people to feel relaxed or comfortable with anyone touching their skin or even be comfortable in their own skin after being raped or molested earlier in life.

At the polar opposite of such “bad touch” is “good touch.”

One example of the good touch I am referring to was when a nurse I once observed gently stroked the back of a terminally ill man’s hand with the back of her hand as a morphine drip was being started. I’ll never forget how when she said softly to him, stroking his hand with hers, “Just breathe slowly and all the pain will go away.” As soon as her skin touched his, he relaxed, even before the morphine entered his body.

Another example of good touch is when I remember a Gay male nursery school teacher consoling a distraught little boy who wouldn’t stop screaming for his mother by bending down on his knees and cradling that boy in his arms who uncontrollable sobbing gradually quieted.

As the mores of contemporary society shift, that dying patient will now just have to wait for the morphine to do its job and that distressed little boy will just have to sit by himself waiting for his mother to come. In the first instance, that man will eventually die on his own and in the second instance, the little boy’s mother will eventually arrive.

To make an additional case for the power of “good touch” vs. “no touch” (in order to avoid “bad touch”), check out this “touching” video where therapist Naomi Feil brings Gladys Wilson back to life. Would it have happened with just the soothing sound of Naomi’s voice alone and without any touch? You be the judge:

BTW that video with Russian subtitles was what I showed to an audience of members of the Russian Federation in Moscow early on in my presentation.

Now granted, I didn’t physically touch any members of my audience, but after that video “touched” them emotionally, I had them at hello.

It looks as if Joe Biden is recognizing that times are changing and we may have control over how we reach out and touch or don’t touch others, but we don’t have any control how it is felt.

I guess it is better safe than sorry, but don’t you agree that something is getting lost in transition?