Abstract
It has been argued that touch, far from being a curious datum of human existence, is so essential to human development and helpful to maintaining adult psychological and physical health that it can be considered a right. This argument’s corollary is that, given that we cannot touch without being touched, appropriate touch normally is and should be a source of pleasure to both giver and receiver.
The proposed paper will respond to these theses with a caution: contemporary literature on child sexual abuse points out that abusers of children also, and especially, profess to embrace these beliefs. Neither a simple boundary distinction (do not touch particular persons in particular places) nor a test for intent (do not intend to harm or violate) adequately responds to the challenge posed by this fact. Thus it will argue that an adequate Christian ethic of touch depends on the possibility of developing powerful psychological and theological distinctions between nurturing and violating touch.
The psychological prong of this argument will draw upon extensive contemporary research on child sexual abuse to argue that abusers either pursue an imagined egalitarian mutual love with their victims or use abuse to gain a sense of empowerment over them. In theological terms the root problems are a mis-labeling of the object of love (the good the lover desires); of the object’s true needs (the gift the lover offers); and of the union with the beloved (the character of mutual delight). The paper will argue that, theologically, “good touch” is a matter of rightly-ordered love and that a critical, feminist retrieval of love theology yields categories and distinctions that begin to illumine the so-far unordered category of touch between unequals.
Sources
Sources to be drawn up on include the following:
Psychology: Lenore E. Auerbach Walker, ed., Handbook on Sexual Abuse of Children: Assessment and Treatment Issues; Jacqui Saradjian, with Helga Hanks, Women Who Sexually Abuse Children: From Research to Clinical Practice; Louise Armstrong, “In the Footsteps of Doctor Freud and Down the Proverbial Garden Path,” Feminism & Psychology; Michele Elliot, ed. Female Sexual Abuse of Children; Christine M. Kreklewetz and Caroline C. Piotrowski, “Incest Survivor Mothers: Protecting the Next Generation,” Child Abuse and Neglect.
Theology and Ethics: Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est; Susan Ross, “Eros and Agape: Some Feminist Reflections,” among others; St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine on love, with contemporary critical commentaries; Marie Fortune, Mary Pellauer, and other feminist specialists on theology and abuse; James Nelson, Carter Heyward, Gareth Moore, and other “theologians of embodiment,” 1970s and forward.