The phenomenon of touch

a trinitarian reduction

Fernando Murillo

pp. 373-388

in: Malte Brinkmann, Johannes Türstig, Martin Weber-Spanknebel (eds), Leib – Leiblichkeit – Embodiment, Berlin, Springer, 2019

Abstract

In this chapter, I posit the erotic and the body in close relation to the universality of touch, in an attempt to show their proximity in formative experience. To do this, I work through an essay by Ignacio Martín-Baró called "La Psicología de la Caricia" [the psychology of a caress] (1970). As Martín-Baró compellingly shows, there is a subtle dialectic through which touch and the human being shape each other. In discussing the phenomenality of this dialectic in touch, I draw both from the phenomenological tradition represented in the lineage of Husserl, Heidegger, and Marion, as well as from psychoanalytic theory. Methodologically, the study is organized in three moments of phenomenological reductions, operationalizing a "trinitarian lens". The chapter then offers a discussion on the Freudian perspective on the drives, as lending an understanding of the phenomenality of touch by positing Eros as "the ultimate cause of all activity", particularly including educational activity.

Cited authors

Husserl Edmund

Heidegger Martin

Freud Sigmund