On Pandya’s Article “Touching Practice”: Exploring Relational Aspects of Clinical Touch Within Traumatized Ego States

Abstract

Abstract Anisha Pandya’s recent Transactional Analysis Journal article entitled “Touching Practice: An Exploration of Runanubandh, Touch, and Contact in Psychotherapy” offers a detailed overview of her work with physical touch in transactional analysis practice. In referencing the author’s (Novak’s) work with clinical touch, Pandya showed how she made use of his ideas while retaining her own unique ways of thinking about and working with touch. In this way, Pandya advances the profession’s need for multiple perspectives on working with clinical touch. Of particular interest to the author here is relational aspects of clinical touch, including transference and countertransference. This included emphasis on and recognition of how both client and therapist are experiencing touch rather than the therapist being seen as an unimpacted observer. Pandya’s informed and disciplined approach to touch can be witnessed in the clinical case she offered in her paper. Her work invites us to think more deeply about when and how to make use of clinical touch.