As director of the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami School of Medicine, Field has extensively studied and documented touch. In this book-length essay on the importance of touch, she argues that while skin is the largest sense organ of the body, it is taken for granted and overlooked in terms of research; it is also our most social sense in that it usually involves another person. Field discusses different kinds of touch e.g., tickling, inappropriate touching, touch that is relaxing as well as anthropological findings. For example, various studies show that Americans are some of the least tactile people in the world. Field goes on to suggest that many of the problem behaviors we see in this country might be traced to the absence of touch, or, as she characterizes it, to "touch hunger." In her enthusiasm for her subject, she offers a few observations that strain credulity, as when she suggests that a fetus may turn out to be a good swimmer because of being stimulated in the womb by massage. Descriptions of the results of touch deprivation, the mechanics of how touch operates in the body, and various touch therapies and their benefits, especially in terms of pain reduction, are detailed. ...



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