It Will Hurt More Than You've Ever Been Hurt — And You Will Have a Scar

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

A ritual is the enactment of a myth. 

By participating in a ritual, you are participating in a myth.

BILL MOYERS: 

And what does it mean, do you think, to young boys today. that we are absent these myths?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Well, the confirmation ritual is the counterpart today of these rites. 

As a little Catholic boy, you choose your confirmed name, the name you’re going to be confirmed by, and you go up. 

But instead of having them scarify you, knock your teeth out and all, the bishop gives you a mild slap on the cheek. 

It’s been reduced to that, and 

nothing’s happened to you. 

The Jewish counterpart is the bar mitzvah, and whether it works actually to effect a psychological transformation, I suppose, will depend on the individual case. 

There was no problem in these old days. 

The Boy came out with a different body, and 

He’d Gone Through Something.

INT. KITCHEN - NIGHT

Cornelius and Tyler each stir a boiling pot.

Cornelius (V.O.): 

Tyler was full of useful information.

TYLER : 

Ancient peoples found that clothes got clean when they washed them at certain points in the river. 

Do you know why?

CORNELIUS : 

No

Tyler gestures for Jack to come over

TYLER: 

Human sacrifices were once made on the hills above this river. 

Bodies burned, water seeped into ashes to make lye. This is lye, a crucial ingredient. 

Once it mixed with the melted fat of the bodies a thick, white soapy discharge crept into the river. 

Let me see your hand please.

Tyler licks his lips until they're gleaming wet. He takes Jack's hands and KISSES the back of it.

CORNELIUS : 

What is this?

TYLER: 

This, is a Chemical Burn.

The saliva shines in the shape of the kiss. 

Tyler pours a bit of the flaked lye onto CORNELIUS’ hand. CORNELIUS’ whole body JERKS. Tyler holds tight to CORNELIUS’ hand and arm. Tears well in CORNELIUS’ eyes; his face tightens.

TYLER: 

It will hurt more than you've ever been burned. And you will have a Scar.

CORNELIUS (V.O.): 

Guided meditation worked for cancer, it could work for this.

 

SHOT OF A FOREST, IN GENTLE SPRING RAINFALL. RESUME:

TYLER: 

Stay with The Pain, don’t block this out.

Tyler JERKS CORNELIUS’ hand, getting CORNELIUS’ attention…

TYLER: 

Look at your hand. 

The first soap was made from the ashes of heroes. 

Like the first monkeys shot into space. 

Without Pain, without Sacrifice, we would have NOTHING!

CORNELIUS (V.O.): 

I tried not to think of the words "searing" or "flesh."

SHOT OF A FOREST, IN GENTLE SPRING RAINFALL. RESUME:

TYLER: •STOP•. This is Your Pain, This is Your Burning Hand. It’s right here!

JACK: I’m going to My Cave. I’m going to My Cave, I’m going to find My Power Animal !! —

SHOT OF INSIDE THE ICE CAVE - ON MARLA, LYING NAKED UNDER A FUR COAT, TURNING HER HEAD TO LOOK TOWARDS US. RESUME:

TYLER: NO! Don’t deal with it like those dead people do. Come on!

CORNELIUS : I get The Point!

TYLER: No what you’re feeling is premature Enlightenment.

SHOT OF INSIDE ICE CAVE - NAKED MARLA PULLS CORNELIUS  DOWN ON TOP OF HER - CORNELIUS KISSES HER - CIGARETTE SMOKE COMES FROM HER MOUTH - CORNELIUS  COUGHS. RESUME:

 

Tyler SLAPS CORNELIUS’ face, regaining his attention…

TYLER: This is The Greatest Moment of Your Life, man! And you’re off somewhere missing it.

CORNELIUS,, snapping back, tries to jerk his hand away. Tyler keeps hold of it and their arms KNOCK UTENSILS off the table.

CORNELIUS : 

No I’m not!

TYLER: 

•SHUT UP• 

Our Fathers were our models for God — if Our Fathers bailed, WHAT DOES THAT TELL YOU ABOUT GOD....?

Tyler SLAPS CORNELIUS’ face again…

TYLER: 

•Listen to Me.• 

You have to consider the possibility that God DOES NOT LIKE YOU, he never WANTED You –– In all probability, He HATES You. 

This is Not The Worst Thing That Can Happen.....

JACK: It isn’t…?

TYLER: 

We don’t need him. 

Fuck damnation. Fuck redemption. We are God's Unwanted Children? 

¡¡ SO BE IT !!

CORNELIUS looks at Tyler -- they lock eyes. CORNELIUS does his best to stifle his spasms of pain, his body a quivering, coiled knot. He bolts toward the sink, but Tyler holds on.

TYLER: 

Listen. You can run water over your hand and make it worse, OR -- Look at Me! -- OR, you can use Vinegar and neutralize The Burn.

TYLER: First, you •HAVE• to give up —

First you have to KNOW, not fear, •KNOW• That Some Day You Will Die ––

CORNELIUS : 

You don’t know how this feels!

Tyler shows CORNELIUS  a LYE-BURNED KISS SCAR on his own hand. Tears begin to drip from CORNELIUS' eyes.

TYLER: 

It’s Only After We’ve Lost Everything, 

That We’re Free to Do Anything.

Tyler grabs a bottle of VINEGAR -- pours it over CORNELIUS' wound.

TYLER: 

Congratulations –– You’re one step closer to hitting Rock Bottom

BILL MOYERS: You visited some of the great painted caves in Europe.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Oh, yes.

BILL MOYERS: Tell me what you remember when first you looked upon those underground caves.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, you didn’t want to leave. Here you come into an enormous chamber, like a great cathedral, with these animals painted. And they’re painted with a life like the life of an ink on silk, the Japanese painting. And well, you realize the darkness is inconceivable. We’re there with electric lights, but in a couple of instances, the concierge, the man who was showing us through, turned off the lights and you were never in darker darkness in your life. It’s like a, I don’t know, just a complete knockout of, you don’t know where you are, whether you’re looking north, south, east or west. All orientation is gone, and you’re in a darkness that never saw the sun. Then they tum the lights on again, and you see these gloriously painted animals. A bull that will be 20 feet long, and painted so that the haunches will be represented by a swelling in the rock, you know, they take account of the whole thing. It’s incredible.

BILL MOYERS: Do you ever look at these primitive art objects, and think not of the art but of the man or woman standing there, painting or creating? I find that’s where I speculate.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Oh, this is what hits you when you go into those caves, I can tell you that. What was in their mind when they were doing that? And that’s not an easy thing to do. And how did they get up there? And how did they see anything? And what kind of light did they have the little flashing torches throwing flickering things on it, to get something of that grace and perfection? And with respect to the problem of beauty, is this beauty intended, or is this something that is the natural expression of a beautiful spirit. You know what I mean? When you hear a bird sing, the beauty of the bird’s song, is this intentional, in what sense is it intentional? But it’s the expression of the bird, the beauty of the bird’s spirit, you might almost say, and I think that way very often about

this art. To what degree was the intention of the artist, what we would call “aesthetic,” or to what degree expressive, you know, and to what degree something that they simply had learned to do that way? It’s a difficult point. When a spider makes a beautiful web, the beauty comes out of the spider’s nature, you know, it’s instinctive beauty. And how much of the beauty of our own lives is the beauty of being alive, and how much of it is conscious intention? That’s a big question.

BILL MOYERS: You call them temple caves.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Yes.

BILL MOYERS: Why temple?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Temple with images and stained glass windows, cathedrals, are a landscape of the soul. You move into a world of spiritual images, that’s what this is. When lean and I, my wife and I, drove down from Paris to this part of France, we stopped off at Chartres Cathedral. There is a cathedral. When you walk into the cathedral, it’s the mother, womb of your spiritual life Mother church All the forms around are significant of spiritual values, and the imagery is in anthropomorphic form God and Jesus and the saints and all, in human form.

BILL MOYERS: In human form.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Then we went down to the Lascaux. The images were in animal form. The form is secondary; the message is what’s important

BILL MOYERS: And the message of the cave?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: The message of the cave is of a relationship of time to eternal powers that is somehow to be experienced in that place. Now, I tell you, when you’re down in those caves, it’s a strange transformation of consciousness you have. You feel this is the womb, this is the place from which life comes, and that world up there in the sun with all those … that’s a secondary world: this is primary. I mean, this just overcomes you.

BILL MOYERS: You had that feeling when you were there?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: I had it every time. Now, what were these caves used for? The speculations that are most common of scholars interested in this, is that they had to do with the initiation of boys into the hunt. You go in there, it’s dangerous, it’s very dangerous. It’s completely dark. It’s cold and dank. You’re banging your head on projections all the time, and it was a place of fear. And the boys were to overcome all that, and go into the womb of the earth. And the shaman, or whoever it was that would be helping you through, would not be making it easy.

BILL MOYERS: And then there was a release, once you got into that vast, torchlit chamber down there. What was the tribe, what was the tradition trying to say to the boy?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: That is the womb land from which all the animals come.

BILL MOYERS: I see.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: And the rituals down there have to do with the generation of a situation that will be propitious for the hunt. And the boys were to learn not only to hunt, but how to respect the animals and what rituals to perform, and how in their own lives no longer to be little boys but to be men. Because those hunts were very, very dangerous hunts, believe me, and these are the Original men’s rile sanctuaries, when: the boys became no longer their mothers’ sons, but their fathers’ sons.

BILL MOYERS: Don’t you wonder what effect this had on a boy?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, you can go through it today, actually, in cultures that arc still having the initiations with young boys. They give them an ordeal, a terrifying ordeal, that the youngster has to survive, makes a man of him, you know.

BILL MOYERS: What would happen to me as a child, if I went through one of these rites, as far as we can…

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, we know what they do in Australia. Now, when a boy gets to be, you know, a little bit ungovernable, one fine day the men come in, and they’re naked except for stripes of white down that has been stuck on their bodies, and stripes with their men’s blood. They used their own blood for gluing this on. And they’re swinging the bull-roarers, which are the voice of the spirits, and they come as spirits. The boy will try to take refuge with his mother; she’ll pretend to try to protect him. The men just take him away, a mother’s no good from then on, you see, he’s no longer a little boy. He’s in the men’s group, and then they put him really through an ordeal. These are the rites, you know, of circumcision, subincision, and so forth.

BILL MOYERS: And the whole purpose is to…

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Tum him into a member of the tribe.

BILL MOYERS: And a hunter.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: And a hunter.

BILL MOYERS: Because that was the way of life.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Yeah, but most important is to live according to the needs and values of that tribe. He is initiated in a Short period of time into the whole culture context of his people.

BILL MOYERS: So myth relates directly to ceremony and tribal ritual, and the absence of myth can mean the end of ritual.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: A ritual is the enactment of a myth. By participating in a ritual, you are participating in a myth.

BILL MOYERS: And what does it mean, do you think, to young boys today. that we are absent these myths?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, the confirmation ritual is the counterpart today of these rites. As a little Catholic boy, you choose your confirmed name, the name you’re going to be confirmed by, and you go up. But instead of having them scarify you, knock your teeth out and all, the bishop gives you a mild slap on the cheek. It’s been reduced to that, and nothing’s happened to you. The Jewish counterpart is the bar mitzvah, and whether it works actually to effect a psychological transformation, I suppose, will depend on the individual case. There was no problem in these old days. The boy came out with a different body, and he’d gone through something.

BILL MOYERS: What about the female? I mean, most of the figures in the temple caves arc male. Was this a kind of secret society for males only?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: It wasn’t a secret society, it was that the boys had to go through it. Now, we don’t know exactly what happens with the female in this period, because we have very little evidence to tell us. In primary cultures today, the girl becomes a woman with her first menstruation. It happens to her; I mean, nature does it to her. And so she has undergone the transformation, and what is her initiation? Typically it is to sit in a little hut for a certain number of days, and realize what she is.

BILL MOYERS: How does she do that?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: She sits there. She’s now a woman. And what is a woman? A woman is a vehicle of life, and life has overtaken her. She is a vehicle now of life. A woman’s what it’s all about; the giving of birth and the giving of nourishment. She’s identical with the earth goddess in her powers, and she’s got to realize that about herself. The boy does not have a happening of that kind. He has to be turned into a man, and voluntarily become a servant of something greater than himself. The woman becomes the vehicle of nature; the man becomes the vehicle of the society, the social order and the social purpose.

BILL MOYERS: So what happens when a society no longer embraces powerful mythology?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: What we’ve got on our hands. As I say, if you want to find what it means not to have a society without any rituals, read The New York Times.

BILL MOYERS: And you’d find?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, the news of the day.

BILL MOYERS: Wars…

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Young people who don’t know how to behave in a civilized society. Half the…I imagine that 50% of the crime is by young people in their 20s and early 30s that just behave like barbarians.

BILL MOYERS: Society has provided them no rituals by which they become members.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: None. There’s been a reduction, a reduction, a reduction of ritual. Even in the Roman Catholic Church, my God, they’ve translated the Mass out of the ritual language into a language that has a lot of domestic associations. So that, I mean, every time now that I read tile Latin of the Mass, I get that pitch again that it’s supposed to give, a language that throws you out of the field of your domesticity, you know. The altar is turned so that the priest, his back is to you, and with him you address yourself outward like that. Now they’ve turned the altar around, looks like Julia Child giving a demonstration, and it’s all homey and cozy.

BILL MOYERS: And they play a guitar.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: They play a guitar. Listen, they’ve forgotten what the function of a ritual is, is to pitch you out, not to wrap you back in where you have been all the time.

BILL MOYERS: So ritual that once conveyed an inner reality is now merely form, and that’s true in the rituals of society, and the personal rituals of marriage and religion.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, with respect to ritual, it must be kept alive. And so much of our ritual is dead.

This is Not a Hug, Son – Howard, Tony and Peter

Attack EyeBrows: 

I, I don't think that I'm a hugging person now.

CLARA: 

I'm not sure you get a vote.

Attack EyeBrows: 

Whatever you say.

" In our world today, need is a dirty word. People love to deny, suppress and disown their needs as if that somehow makes them a better person. We are addicted to independence. But here’s the problem: No matter how much you may want it to be different, you have needs. Every being on earth has needs. A need is something that is required in order to live, succeed or be happy. And you cannot un-require something that is required. You cannot argue your way into seeing that it isn’t necessary. You have one option when it comes to your needs and that is to meet them. There are many needs we love to deny. But today I’m going to talk to you about one of them. It is the need for touch.

People are preoccupied and obsessed with the idea of overriding their biology. If you look around the world today, our modern society is an example of this. Religion looks to suppress all instinctive energies within us like sexuality, hunger, and desire. Our modern society has made it so that we are mentally and emotionally ready to have babies at age 30 to 40, when our bodies are in fact on the downswing of fertility at that age. We have become, as a society, obsessed with finding a way to be immortal. We want to transcend all that makes us human. But when it comes to connection, we find ourselves in real trouble when we try to override our biology.

We might like to think that we can physically exist without each other, but we can’t. Healthy autonomy cannot arise in a person who has no sense of safety or adequacy, which for a physical human is provided through the person’s learned sense of security of connection. For a physical human, the chemical cocktail that our body releases in response to touch and contact comfort connection is the exact opposite of the chemical cocktail that is released in response to fear and shame. And so we need to accept that connection is our antidote. The sooner we can accept this reality about ourselves, the better. We are a social species. And more than that, we are a social species that needs contact comfort. Yes, I am talking about human touch.

I’ve never forgotten about a series of experiments that were done by a man named Harry Harlow in the 1950s. He was seeking to understand the human need for love, and the critical role that it plays in both primate and human development, so he separated a group of baby rhesus monkeys from their mothers when they were born.

The baby monkeys were each caged alone in the lab and allowed no physical contact with the personnel in the lab or with each other even though they could see the other monkeys and personnel. They immediately began exhibiting signs of distress. They clutched themselves, began rocking, staring into space as if dissociating, biting themselves, and biting their cages. They did not play or groom themselves and they seemed vacillate between anxiety and depression.

The babies were then assigned to one of two fake surrogate mothers. One was a model made of chicken wire that was covered in soft terrycloth. It was made to look roughly like a monkey. This surrogate did not provide any food. The other surrogate mother was also made of chicken wire, but no terrycloth. It had a crocodile looking head and provided milk from an attached baby bottle.

To say that the babies favored the mother covered in terrycloth is an understatement. The comfort these babies received through touch contact was incomparably more important to them than even their physical hunger. They needed connection more than they needed nourishment. This is also the case for people, not just monkeys. If our need for nourishment was stronger than our need for connection with one another, we would not meet people who can’t eat or sleep when they experience a painful break-up with someone they loved.

There is another unforgettable research study that I learned about in my university courses. It was a study done in the United States in the 1940s and was conducted on 40 newborn infants. I clearly remember that the objective was to determine whether individuals could thrive on basic physiological needs alone, without physical affection.

Twenty of the newborn infants were housed in a special facility where caregivers would enter the facility to feed them, bathe them, and change their diapers, but they would do nothing else. The caregivers had been instructed not to look at or touch the babies more than what was necessary and never communicate with them. All their physical needs were attended to scrupulously and the environment was kept sterile so as to prevent any of the babies from becoming ill.

The experiment was stopped after four months because by that time, at least half of the babies had died. More babies subsequently died even after being rescued and brought into natural familial environment. There was no physiological cause found for the deaths of these babies. They were all physically very healthy.

I specifically remember that one of the most disturbing facts was that before each baby died, there was a period of time where they would stop verbalizing and stop trying to engage with their caregivers. They would stop moving, stop crying, and stop changing their expression and death would follow shortly after. It was as if the babies had given up living before they died. This was the case even for the babies who died after being removed from the experimental conditions.

In today’s world, we are obsessed with technology. It’s hard to go anywhere and find people who are genuinely engaged with one another. Most people are fully engaged instead with a technological device. Their noses are buried in their computers or cell phones. And while social media has provided incredible opportunities to be connected with each other around the world, no matter where we are, social media only provides connection up to a degree. Physical connection cannot be replaced and its importance can’t be underestimated. We can’t get physical contact through a screen or from a distance. We need touch. We need vicinity. We need the comfort of being in physical contact with one another. And we must consider this when we are developing connections in our life.

The reality is that as humans, we need touch. Even the people, who are the most afraid of and hurt by human connection, need it. This is why the loneliest and most deeply hurt people experience so much torment. If we didn’t absolutely need touch and we were hurt by people, we would simply go on our merry way and never touch other people again. But we can’t. Instead, if we’ve been hurt by others, we spend our life in a torturous tug of war between the side of us that needs other people and the side that wants to be able to have nothing to do with them.

It is obvious that there are many ways we can be physically injured when it comes to touch and that this sets up a poor relationship to touch in general. But by far the majority of the pain we experience as people around touch is because of the emotional meaning we add to touch. People cannot stop adding meaning to touch and so touch is not touch for the sake of touch in our world. Instead touch is a tool. This meaning we add to touch destroys the purity of touch and makes it rather unsafe to touch each other.

For example, if your parent made you serve them and/or honor them through physical touch and there were consequences for not doing so, physical touch now means subservience and slavery and is no longer an organic expression of love. Touch is often used as a tool for manipulation and so when you touch someone, it may mean to him or her that you want something from them. If touch only ever meant that someone wanted sex, then touch will be interpreted solely as an emotional communicator that the person wants to have sex with you.

Meaning is added to touch and also the different types of touch in every race, culture, religion, society and family. For example, in American culture, if a guy slaps another guys butt in sports, it means encouragement. If a guy slaps another guys butt outside sports, it means he is gay. In Scandinavian cultures, you can’t touch a person of the opposite sex without it meaning that you want to be with them sexually or romantically. In Brazil, you can expect to be hugged and kissed by everyone even if you are a stranger. There is no physical bubble. It doesn’t mean anything other than friendliness and welcome.

Even in one culture, the way a touch is given changes the entire meaning. A softer handshake for example can mean a warm greeting whereas a firm handshake can mean ‘take me seriously’. There are differences in the societal acceptance around boys touching and girls touching. The powerless thing is that we can’t control the meaning that other people add to us touching them. And we add meaning that makes it not easy to just receive touch ourselves. Because of the complexity of the language of touch, touch seems so complicated; most of us end up in pain about it. We all end up touch deprived.

Humans need SO much more touch than they are getting across the world. In fact, purely biologically speaking, there is no single person who could provide enough touch for another person. Imagine a baby. When the baby is born, everyone who comes into contact with that baby, caresses the baby. The child in this healthy environment can run up and get a hug from mom one minute and the next sit on dads lap and the next, sit down and have their arm lightly stroked by grandma and the next, run hand in hand with their friend. In a healthy world, this would be how adults could live with each other in community as well. Obviously there are healthier cultures, communities and individuals than others in this respect.

If touch has been something that has led to pain for us, we need to work touch back into our lives slowly and with someone that we trust. Somatic therapy is one example of something we may need to do first before we can let people in our social circle provide touch for us in our day-to-day lives. It is to be expected that we would need to be rehabilitated if unloving touch was part of our wounding, as is so typical with abuse. But we do need this rehabilitation if we want to live lives where we genuinely feel connected to other people, at peace with the world and emotionally satiated.

When we are trying to satiate the need for touch, we need to stop suppressing this need within ourselves. We need to begin to look at touch as something that we do for touch sake. For example, we love petting a dog or cat for the sake of the pleasure of that touch in and of itself. It is a pure form of touch because it nourishes both the one touching and the one being touched. This is why it feels so safe for many of us to caress and be physically affectionate to an animal, but not a person. The communication is clear.

See, sense or feel that your body needs touch. Your skin and muscles and organs are starving for it. You are also starving for that form of communication emotionally. Some examples of nourishing types of touch are: 

Sitting with someone so we can feel their body against ours, 

holding, 
 
patting, 
 
gripping, 
 
rubbing, 
 
hugging, 
 
holding hands, 

gentle and comforting stroking, 
 
tickling, 
 
cuddling, 
 
massage, 
 
squeezing, 
 
pulling, 
Forehead against Forehead 
and 
kisses 
to name a few.

When we want touch from someone or initiate touch with someone, we can keep ourselves safe by getting very clear on the meaning of the touch before we do it and communicating with the other person about it. Essentially we must aim to take the room for interpretation out of it. Touch is one of the most powerful forms of primal emotional communication. We need that communication; the emotional message being conveyed through touch. But we also need touch in and of itself separate from a communication tool.

For the sake of your awareness, really ask yourself what meaning you specifically add to the different forms of touch. Where did you learn that meaning from? How does the meaning you add to touch differ from the meaning other people add to touch? Take a day and on that day, just watch people and how they touch. Take note of every time they touch and the meaning or communication being conveyed by that touch. Make a study of this form of communication.

Whenever you are experiencing touch or giving touch, ask yourself: What does this touch emotionally mean and what do I want it to mean? In this way, we make sure we are on the same page. It may seem less organic this way, but it is a necessary part of the rehabilitation. This makes touch safe to give and receive. And when you find yourself in a partnership, you will have to communicate about the meaning of touch as well in order to be on the same page so that touching other people outside the partnership is done in ways that makes both people feel satiated but also safe. Touch is something that creates jealousy in relationships faster than almost anything else.

As long as we are physical, there will not be a day when we don’t need touch from each other. Our sense of well-being is dependent upon us meeting this need for one another. We need to find opportunities for contact comfort and then we need to allow these experiences into our life. And we need to accept that it’s futile to fight against this aspect of our biology. If we can separate out the meaning of touch from the touch itself so as to clearly agree upon it and begin to touch each other for the sake of touch itself, we will create a healthier and more emotionally secure world to live in."

CLARA: 

Yeah. (big sigh) 

Tell you what, seeing as it's goodbye, shall we break a habit?

DOCTOR: 

What? What habit?

CLARA: 

Hug.

DOCTOR: 

Why not. Within reason.

(He stands up.)

DOCTOR: 

Come on, you're on the clock.

CLARA: 

Fair enough.

(So she stands and puts her arms around his neck, and he slowly puts his arms around her.)

CLARA: 

Why don't you like hugging, Doctor?

DOCTOR: 

Never trust a hug. 

It's just a way to hide your face.

CLARA: 

Yeah.

TOUCH

RIMMER : 

I suppose you're right, Lister.  

I've got to pull myself together.  

But you've got to help me.  

You've got to be my hands, my touch.

LISTER : 

I know the sort of things you like to touch.  

No way, Rimmer. Forget it.

“The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. 

Every one of them wore chains like Marley’s Ghost; some few (they might be Guilty Governments) were linked together; none were free. 

Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. 

He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step. 

The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for Good, in Human Matters, and had lost the power for Ever.”

“Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed,” cried the phantom, 

“not to know, that ages of incessant labour by immortal creatures, for This Earth must pass into Eternity before The Good of which it is susceptible is all developed. 

Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness.

 Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused! 

Yet such was I! 

Oh! such was I!”

“But you were always a good Man of Business, Jacob,” 

faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.

“Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “Mankind was My Business. 

The Common Welfare was My Business; Charity, Mercy, Forbearance, and Benevolence, were, all, My Business. 

The Dealings of My Trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of My Business!”

It held up its chain at arm’s length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again.

“At this time of the rolling year,” the spectre said, “I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode! Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me!”

Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the spectre going on at this rate, and began to quake exceedingly.

“Hear me!” cried the Ghost. “My time is nearly gone.”

“I will,” said Scrooge. “But don’t be hard upon me! Don’t be flowery, Jacob! Pray!”

“How it is that I appear before you in a shape that you can see, I may not tell. 

I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day.”

It was not an agreeable idea. 

Scrooge shivered, and wiped the perspiration from his brow.

“That is no light part of my penance,” 

pursued the Ghost. 

“I am here to-night to warn you, that you have yet a Chance and Hope of escaping My Fate. 

A Chance and Hope of my procuring, Ebenezer.”

“You were always a good friend to me,” said Scrooge. 

“Thank’ee!”

“You will be haunted,” resumed the Ghost, “by Three Spirits.”

Scrooge’s countenance fell almost as low as the Ghost’s had done.

“Is that the Chance and Hope you mentioned, Jacob?” 

he demanded, in a faltering voice.

“It is.”

“I—I think I’d rather not,” said Scrooge.

“Without their visits,” said the Ghost, “you cannot hope to shun The Path I tread. 

Expect the first to-morrow, when the bell tolls One.”

“Couldn’t I take ’em all at once, and have it over, Jacob?” 

hinted Scrooge.

“Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third upon the next night when the last stroke of Twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more; and look that, for your own sake, you remember what has passed between us!”

When it had said these words, the spectre took its wrapper from the table, and bound it round its head, as before. Scrooge knew this, by the smart sound its teeth made, when the jaws were brought together by the bandage. 

He ventured to raise his eyes again, and found his supernatural visitor confronting him in an erect attitude, with its chain wound over and about its arm.

The Apparition walked backward from him; and at every step it took, the window raised itself a little, so that when the spectre reached it, it was wide open.

It beckoned Scrooge to approach, which he did. 

When they were within two paces of each other, Marley’s Ghost held up its hand, warning him to come no nearer. Scrooge stopped.

Not so much in obedience, as in Surprise and Fear: for on the raising of the hand, he became sensible of confused noises in the air; incoherent sounds of lamentation and regret; wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and self-accusatory. 

The spectre, after listening for a moment, joined in the mournful dirge; and floated out upon the bleak, dark night.

Scrooge followed to the window: desperate in his curiosity. 

He looked out.

The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley’s Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.

Whether these creatures faded into mist, or mist enshrouded them, he could not tell. But they and their spirit voices faded together; and the night became as it had been when he walked home.

Scrooge closed the window, and examined the door by which the Ghost had entered. It was double-locked, as he had locked it with his own hands, and the bolts were undisturbed. He tried to say “Humbug!” but stopped at the first syllable. And being, from the emotion he had undergone, or the fatigues of the day, or his glimpse of the Invisible World, or the dull conversation of the Ghost, or the lateness of the hour, much in need of repose; went straight to bed, without undressing, and fell asleep upon the instant. 

Was it Destiny?

I don't know yet

Was it just by chance?

Could this be kismet?

Something in my consciousness told me you'd appear

Now I'm always touched by your presence, dear

When we play at cards you use an extra sense

(it's really not cheating)

You can read my hand, I've got no defense

When you sent your messages whispered loud and clear

I am always touched by your presence, dear

Floating pass the evidence of possibilities

We could navigate together, psychic frequencies

Coming into contact with outer entities

We could entertain each one with our theosophies

Stay awake at night and count your r.e.m.'s when you're talking with your super friends

Levitating lovers in the secret stratosphere

I am still in touch with your presence, dear

I am still in touch with your presence, dear

I am still in touch with your presence, dear, dear, dear, dear, dear

Harlow’s Classic Studies Revealed the Importance of Maternal Contact

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Harry Harlow’s empirical work with primates is now considered a “classic” in behavioral science, revolutionizing our understanding of the role that social relationships play in early development. In the 1950s and 60s, psychological research in the United States was dominated by behaviorists and psychoanalysts, who supported the view that babies became attached to their mothers because they provided food. Harlow and other social and cognitive psychologists argued that this perspective overlooked the importance of comfort, companionship, and love in promoting healthy development.

Using methods of isolation and maternal deprivation, Harlow showed the impact of contact comfort on primate development. Infant rhesus monkeys were taken away from their mothers and raised in a laboratory setting, with some infants placed in separate cages away from peers. In social isolation, the monkeys showed disturbed behavior, staring blankly, circling their cages, and engaging in self-mutilation. When the isolated infants were re-introduced to the group, they were unsure of how to interact — many stayed separate from the group, and some even died after refusing to eat.

Even without complete isolation, the infant monkeys raised without mothers developed social deficits, showing reclusive tendencies and clinging to their cloth diapers. Harlow was interested in the infants’ attachment to the cloth diapers, speculating that the soft material may simulate the comfort provided by a mother’s touch. Based on this observation, Harlow designed his now-famous surrogate mother experiment.

In this study, Harlow took infant monkeys from their biological mothers and gave them two inanimate surrogate mothers: one was a simple construction of wire and wood, and the second was covered in foam rubber and soft terry cloth. The infants were assigned to one of two conditions. In the first, the wire mother had a milk bottle and the cloth mother did not; in the second, the cloth mother had the food while the wire mother had none.

In both conditions, Harlow found that the infant monkeys spent significantly more time with the terry cloth mother than they did with the wire mother. When only the wire mother had food, the babies came to the wire mother to feed and immediately returned to cling to the cloth surrogate.

Harlow’s work showed that infants also turned to inanimate surrogate mothers for comfort when they were faced with new and scary situations. When placed in a novel environment with a surrogate mother, infant monkeys would explore the area, run back to the surrogate mother when startled, and then venture out to explore again. Without a surrogate mother, the infants were paralyzed with fear, huddled in a ball sucking their thumbs. If an alarming noise-making toy was placed in the cage, an infant with a surrogate mother present would explore and attack the toy; without a surrogate mother, the infant would cower in fear.

Together, these studies produced groundbreaking empirical evidence for the primacy of the parent-child attachment relationship and the importance of maternal touch in infant development. More than 70 years later, Harlow’s discoveries continue to inform the scientific understanding of the fundamental building blocks of human behavior.

References

Harlow H. F., Dodsworth R. O., & Harlow M. K. (1965). Total social isolation in monkeys. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC285801/pdf/pnas00159-0105.pdf

Suomi, S. J., & Leroy, H. A. (1982). In memoriam: Harry F. Harlow (1905–1981). American Journal of Primatology, 2, 319–342. doi:10.1002/ajp.1350020402

Tavris, C. A. (2014). Teaching contentious classics. The Association for Psychological Science. Retrieved from https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/teaching-contentious-classics

”Observing the consequences of teasing and taunting enables chimp and child alike to discover the limits of what might otherwise be a too-unstructured and terrifying freedom. Such limits, when discovered, provide security, even if their detection causes momentary disappointment or frustration. 

I remember taking my daughter to the playground once when she was about two. She was playing on the monkey bars, hanging in mid-air. A particularly provocative little monster of about the same age was standing above her on the same bar she was gripping. I watched him move towards her. 

Our eyes locked. He slowly and deliberately stepped on her hands, with increasing force, over and over, as he stared me down. He knew exactly what he was doing. 

‘Up yours, Daddy-O’ —that was his philosophy. He had already concluded that adults were contemptible, and that he could safely defy them. (Too bad, then, that he was destined to become one.) 

That was the hopeless future his parents had saddled him with. To his great and salutary shock, I picked him bodily off the playground structure, and threw him thirty feet down the field. 

No, I didn’t. I just took my daughter somewhere else. But it would have been better for him if I had. 

Imagine a toddler repeatedly striking His Mother in the face. Why would he do such a thing? 

It’s a stupid question. 

It’s unacceptably naive. 

The answer is obvious. 

To dominate His Mother. 

To see if he can get away with it. 

Violence, after all, is no mystery. It’s Peace that’s The Mystery. 

Violence is The Default. It’s easy. 

It’s Peace that is difficult: learned, inculcated, earned. 

(People often get basic psychological questions backwards. Why do people take drugs? Not a mystery. It’s why they don’t take them all the time that’s the mystery. Why do people suffer from anxiety? That’s not a mystery. How is that people can ever be calm? There’s the mystery. We’re breakable and mortal. A million things can go wrong, in a million ways. We should be terrified out of our skulls at every second. But we’re not. The same can be said for depression, laziness and criminality.) 

If I can hurt and overpower you, then I can do exactly what I want, when I want, even when you’re around. 

I can torment you, to appease my curiosity. 

I can take the attention away from you, and dominate you. 

I can steal your toy. 

Children hit first because aggression is innate, although more dominant in some individuals and less in others, and, second, because aggression facilitates desire. 

It’s foolish to assume that such behaviour must be learned. 

A snake does not have to be taught to strike. It’s in the nature of the beast. 

Two-year-olds, statistically speaking, are the most violent of people. 

They kick, hit and bite, and they steal the property of others. 

They do so to explore, to express outrage and frustration, and to gratify their impulsive desires. 

More importantly, for our purposes, they do so to discover the true limits of permissible behaviour. 

How else are they ever going to puzzle out what is acceptable? Infants are like blind people, searching for a wall. 

They have to push forward, and test, to see where the actual boundaries lie (and those are too-seldom where they are said to be). 

Consistent CORRECTION of such action indicates the limits of acceptable aggression to the child. Its absence merely heightens curiosity—so the child will hit and bite and kick, if he is aggressive and dominant, until something indicates a limit. 

How hard can I hit Mommy? 

Until she objects. 

Given that, correction is better sooner than later (if the desired end result of the parent is not to be hit). 

Correction also helps the child learn that hitting others is a sub-optimal social strategy. 

Without that correction, no child is going to undergo the effortful process of organizing and regulating their impulses, so that those impulses can coexist, without conflict, within the psyche of the child, and in the broader social world. 

It is no simple matter to organize a mind. 

My son was particularly ornery when he was a toddler. When my daughter was little, I could paralyze her into immobility with an evil glance. Such an intervention had no effect at all on my son. He had my wife (who is no pushover) stymied at the dinner table by the time he was nine months of age. He fought her for control over the spoon. “Good!” we thought. We didn’t want to feed him one more minute than necessary anyway. But the little blighter would only eat three or four mouthfuls. Then he would play. He would stir his food around in his bowl. He would drop bits of it over the high chair table top, and watch as it fell on the floor below. No problem. He was exploring. 

But then he wasn’t eating enough. Then, because he wasn’t eating enough, he wasn’t sleeping enough. 

Then his midnight crying was waking his parents. 

Then they were getting grumpy and out of sorts. He was frustrating his mother, and she was taking it out on me. The trajectory wasn’t good. After a few days of this degeneration, I decided to take the spoon back. 

I prepared for war. 

I set aside sufficient time. 

A patient adult can defeat a two-year-old, hard as that is to believe. 

As the saying goes: “Old age and treachery can always overcome youth and skill.” 

This is partly because time lasts forever, when you’re two. Half an hour for me was a week for my son. I assured myself of victory. He was stubborn and horrible. But I could be worse. We sat down, face to face, bowl in front of him. 

It was High Noon. He knew it, and I knew it. 

He picked up the spoon. I took it from him, and spooned up a delicious mouthful of mush. I moved it deliberately towards his mouth. He eyed me in precisely the same manner as the playground foot monster. He curled his lips downward into a tight frown, rejecting all entry. I chased his mouth around with the spoon as he twisted his head around in tight circles. 

But I had more tricks up my sleeve. 

I poked him in the chest, with my free hand, in a manner calculated to annoy. He didn’t budge. I did it again. And again. And again. Not hard—but not in a manner to be ignored, either. 

Ten or so pokes letter, he opened his mouth, planning to emit a sound of outrage. 

Hah! His mistake. I deftly inserted the spoon. He tried, gamely, to force out the offending food with his tongue. But I know how to deal with that, too. I just placed my forefinger horizontally across his lips. Some came out. But some was swallowed, too. 

Score one for Dad. I gave him a pat on the head, and told him that he was a good boy. And I meant it. 

When someone does something you are trying to get them to do, reward them. No grudge after victory. An hour later, it was all over. 

There was outrage. There was some wailing. My wife had to leave the room. The stress was too much. 

But food was eaten by child. My son collapsed, exhausted, on my chest. We had a nap together. 

And he liked me a lot better when he woke up than he had before he was disciplined. 

This was something I commonly observed when we went head to head—and not only with him. 

A little later we entered into a babysitting swap with another couple. All the kids would get together at one house. Then one pair of parents would go out to dinner, or a movie, and leave the other pair to watch the children, who were all under three. One evening, another set of parents joined us. I was unfamiliar with their son, a large, strong boy of two. 

“He won’t sleep,” said his father. “After you put him to bed, he will crawl out of his bed, and come downstairs. We usually put on an Elmo video and let him watch it.” 

“There’s no damn way I’m rewarding a recalcitrant child for unacceptable behaviour,” I thought, “and I’m certainly not showing anyone any Elmo video.” 

I always hated that creepy, whiny puppet. He was a disgrace to Jim Henson’s legacy. So reward-by-Elmo was not on the table. 

I didn’t say anything, of course. There is just no talking to parents about their children—until they are ready to listen. 

Two hours later, we put the kids to bed. Four of the five went promptly to sleep—but not the Muppet aficionado. I had placed him in a crib, however, so he couldn’t escape. But he could still howl, and that’s exactly what he did. That was tricky. It was good strategy on his part. It was annoying, and it threatened to wake up all the other kids, who would then also start to howl. 

Score one for the kid. 

So, I journeyed into the bedroom. “Lie down,” I said. That produced no effect. “Lie down,” I said, “or I will lay you down.” 

Reasoning with kids isn’t often of too much use, particularly under such circumstances, but I believe in fair warning. Of course, he didn’t lie down. He howled again, for effect. Kids do this frequently. 

Scared parents think that a crying child is always sad or hurt. This is simply not true. 

Anger is one of the most common reasons for crying. Careful analysis of the musculature patterns of crying children has confirmed this. 

Anger-crying and fear-or-sadness crying do not look the same. 

They also don’t sound the same, and can be distinguished with careful attention. 

Anger-crying is often an act of dominance, and should be dealt with as such. 

I lifted him up, and laid him down. Gently. Patiently. But firmly. He got up. I laid him down. He got up. I laid him down. He got up. This time, I laid him down, and kept my hand on his back. He struggled, mightily, but ineffectually. 

He was, after all, only one-tenth my size. 

I could take him with one hand. 

So, I kept him down and spoke calmly to him and told him he was a good boy and that he should relax. 

I gave him a soother and pounded gently on his back. He started to relax. His eyes began to close. I removed my hand. 

He promptly got to his feet. 

I was impressed. The kid had spirit! 

I lifted him up, and laid him down, again. “Lie down, monster,” I said. I pounded his back gently some more. Some kids find that soothing. He was getting tired. He was ready to capitulate. He closed his eyes. I got to my feet, and headed quietly and quickly to the door. 

I glanced back, to check his position, one last time. He was back on his feet. I pointed my finger at him. “Down, monster,” I said, and I meant it. 

He went down like a shot. I closed the door. We liked each other. Neither my wife nor I heard a peep out of him for the rest of the night. 

“How was the kid?” his father asked me when he got home, much later that night. 

“Good,” I said. “No problem at all. He’s asleep right now.” 

“Did he get up?” said his father. 

“No,” I said. “He slept the whole time.” 

Dad looked at me. He wanted to know. 

But he didn’t ask.  And I didn’t tell. 

Don’t cast pearls before swine, as the old saying goes. And you might think that’s harsh. 

But training your child not to sleep, and rewarding him with the antics of a creepy puppet? That’s harsh too. 

You pick your poison, and I’ll pick mine.