Emotional Caresses Are the Best Food for the Soul
The art of emotional caresses goes beyond simple physical contact. It implies caressing the soul with a glance, it means talking to a child tenderly in order to say “I’m proud of you”. It’s an “I’m thinking about you, I respect you and love you”. These caresses are the music which gives our emotional brain the air it needs to learn how to value another person.
Eric Berne is a psychiatrist and the founder of the Transactional Analysis. He defined emotional caresses as the basic units of acknowledgement that seek to, above all, provide individuals with stimulation. We’re talking about a type of transaction. A wise exchange where a type of language is used that acts as authentic food for that delicate psychoemotional universe which defines and sustains us.
“And I have reached the decision that if scars teach, so do caresses.”
-Mario Benedetti-
No matter how much we may defend our independence or that occasional pleasure provided by solitude, human beings are social by nature. In order to survive, in order to be happy and secure, we need this kind of stimulus: emotional caresses. However, and here is where the real problem lies, to this day we continue to be humble apprentices of the emotional world.
