Our handshake conveys more information about us to others than we think, says an American study I recently read. Researchers at the University of Alabama rated the handshakes of 112 male and female college students on eight characteristics: dryness, temperature, texture, strength, vigor, grip integrity, duration, and eye contact. Subjects also completed four personality questionnaires and the results were cross-referenced. The researchers found that handshakes are stable and consistent across time and gender. The study concludes that the characteristics of the handshake are related both to objective measures of personality and to the impressions that people form of each other. Five particular handshake characteristics (strength, vigor, duration, eye contact, and full grip) were used to determine whether a handshake was considered firm. The results confirm the widely held belief that individuals whose handshakes are firmer are more extroverted and open to experience and less neurotic and shy than those with a less firm or weak handshake, and this information about an individual is transmitted to others when they shake hands.
taxpayers to Touch Papers: Dialogues about touch in the psychoanalytic space (Galton, 2006) discuss the meaning and importance of many aspects of touch in the psychotherapy consulting room. Various contributors explore what it means for a psychoanalyst or psychotherapist to shake hands or refrain from shaking hands with a client. They comment that in the UK psychoanalytic community there is a general reluctance to shake hands with patients, except sometimes at the beginning and end of treatment. Shaking hands with a patient is considered by many British psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists to be physical contact that should be avoided or kept to a minimum because it disrupts the transference relationship. We may also wish to consider whether the physical contact of a handshake might arouse in a client (or therapist) fears of seduction or engulfment. As Brett Kahr reminds us in tactile papersAny physical interaction between two people can trigger unconscious memories of previous physical interactions, especially those of a provocative or abusive nature.
However, a handshake at the end of a psychotherapy session can also be a sign of a better ability to relate to others. When I recently mentioned to a psychotherapist colleague who was writing this article about handshakes in the consulting room, she told me about a client she had been working with for several years. At the start of treatment, her patient had been hospitalized for 18 months and could barely speak. They had never shaken hands until recently when, at the end of the last session before summer break, the patient came over and shook my colleague’s hand. This action was understood by both as an expression of the patient’s emerging ability to connect and relate to others and to herself.
In everyday life in the UK and North America, after the first meeting it is unusual to shake hands with someone you meet regularly, in contrast to many parts of Europe and South America where it is common for people to meet. shake hands every time you meet. and again when sharing. Two of the collaborators tactile papersalthough they have lived and worked in the UK for many years, they came from other countries and cultures where the handshake is more prevalent, including in psychoanalytic circles.
Maria Emilia Pozzi, born in Italy, writes in tactile papers that his first psychoanalyst, in Switzerland, shook his hand at the beginning and end of each session four times a week for several years. It was shocking when she met her first analyst in London, who never stood up or shook her hand until the last session, when she steeled herself and initiated a handshake, which she remembers was answered by what she knew. felt like a slightly embarrassed gesture but a shake of the hand in response.
Psychoanalyst AH Brafman, who came to the UK from Brazil, writes that he finds it amusing to read discussions that include the handshake as an example of touching the patient. He recalls his own surprise in his first sessions with his analyst in London when his handshakes elicited interpretations about the unconscious transference significance of such behavior. Even now, many years later, he remains unconvinced that he was expressing a particular unconscious need with his desire to shake hands.
Another contributor, the distinguished psychoanalyst Pearl King, now in her eighties, writes that she always gives patients a welcoming handshake at the first meeting, believing that it is important to work from a culturally accepted baseline. However, the only other time she shakes hands with her patients is after the last session before a long break. It is a firm handshake, in her mind conveying to the patient that she is fine and that she will take care of herself while she and the patient are apart, because she knows that her patients have to trust her not to do anything that might jeopardize their safety. be. there to continue working with them when they return after the break.
Psychoanalyst Valerie Sinason writes in tactile papers of a very different handshake when he visited a nursing home on the Greek island of Leros a few years ago. He describes how he entered a huge, cold room that smelled of excrement and in which naked and stained patients huddled on old iron beds. He made his way to one particular crowded bed, introduced himself, and held out his hand. Out of the mass of human pain, a man with Down syndrome uncoiled and shook his hand. A year later, he places the same young man in the first group home for people with learning disabilities in Athens. He opened the door when she rang the bell and they shook hands as usual. He was smartly dressed and took her on a tour of the house. He then told her through an interpreter: “I remember you. You shook my hand at Leros.”
If handshakes really do reveal as much about us as the US study concludes, perhaps shaking hands with our psychotherapy clients could reveal more about us than we wish, and thus could interfere with the transference relationship. On the other hand, if our customers really can learn so much about us from our handshakes, how much more can we learn about them from their handshakes?
References
Galton, G. (2006). Touch Papers: Dialogues about touch in the psychoanalytic space. (London: Karnac).
This article was first published in Karnac ReviewNumber 10
2006Graeme Galton