There is something mysterious and possibly intuitive in that desire to bond with the present body with the other; something we can call pre-reflective. This leads us to explore certain subjective and affective roots in search of answers. For decades psychology -and even neuroscience- has understood the importance of the maternal or paternal bond of affection (be it a mother, a father or the main caregiver of the baby) in the construction of the subjectivity of a human being. Not just to explore the world and relate to others (including, over time, unfolding the miracle of empathy), but to feel real. A baby needs food as well as loving support, to survive and be.
The psychoanalyst Didier Anzieu understood that this primordial link occurred through the skin-to-skin contact of the baby and the mother (or main caregiver). On that border would arise the I-skin, as a psychic and relational foundation. And one of the greatest signs of maturity, said Donald Winnicott, would be the ability to be alone, which develops from the internalization of that initial bond of support. Therefore, we can reflect on what, in the beginning, is the skin-to-skin relationship. And that when that link has been good enough, the adult person would no longer need constant face-to-face contact with others. But it is possible that he needs to update it, from time to time. Back to the origin. And that, from that imprint, the bond of the present body could facilitate the encounter with the other.
From a cognitive perspective, the neurophenomenologist Francis Varela he posited that the mind is embodied and that the subject, world and otherness (and thus knowledge, which emerges) are co-constructed in and from bodily experience. “It is through the body of the other that I establish a link with the other, first as an organism similar to mine, but also perceived as an embodied presence, place and medium of an experiential field. This double dimension of the body (organic/lived) is an essential aspect of empathy”explains Varela.
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Investigating the neurological substrate of empathy can also contribute. According to some neuroscientists, such as Anthony Damasius, the mirror neurons that are activated when perceiving the movements of the other, as if we were performing that movement ourselves, have a similar role in the human experience of empathy. When seeing certain gestures and emotional expressions in the other, the mirror neurons would activate a similar emotional bodily reproduction. The areas where these neurons would be found are related to sensorimotor experience. We can say that the greater the contact with the gestures and emotional expressions of the other, the greater the potential for spontaneous and direct activation of that empathic experience. Likewise, we assume that, in general, the more mediated and shortened this contact with the other, the greater the difficulty of direct activation.
A present body encounter with a person could facilitate this neural-emotional empathic experience more than a photo (which continues to channel it anyway), and the latter would facilitate it more than a chat. This does not mean that it cannot happen through a dialogue in a chat, only that for this to happen, it may require greater commitment and willingness from the interlocutors. The massive emergence of emojis in text messages seems to have the intention of compensating for the lack of tone, emotional gestures and other forms of non-verbal language.
The explanations of the affective, cognitive and neuronal substrate of the relationship and the face-to-face encounter end up making sense when we understand the global existential experience, which includes and transcends the previous ones. “I realize myself at the contact of the You; when I become I, I say You. All true life is an encounter”has expressed the existential philosopher Martin Buberwho in his reflections differentiated the meeting I-Youwhere one opens to the being of the other in mutual recognition and participation, of contact I-It, where one reifies and uses otherness. We can hypothesize that the less mediated the encounter, the greater the closeness and the less difficulty in participating in the relationship. I-You. This does not mean that a meeting cannot be generated in virtuality, nor that presence ensures it (it only facilitates it). Let’s think of a meaningful email where someone tells a loved one about an important experience with which the latter is committed during and after reading; or in a meeting of friends in a cafe where everyone is answering messages on their cell phones.
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There are dynamics in virtuality, particularly in social networks, that hinder the meeting I-Youand facilitate egocentrism and objectification of the other. The paradigm of immediate connection/disconnection, where one enters and leaves a situation in a clickcan lead us, for example, to watch and even re-send a supposedly funny video where a person is denigrated, without this questioning us empathically or ethically, largely because it is a clipping of a life and of a subjectivity, where emotions , the story and the suffering of that person are left off camera. The context of automatism and torpor in which immediacy, resultism and the constant stimulation of social networks immerse us, facilitates the objectification of the other. On TikTok we pass videos of real situations that would move us deeply if we witnessed them.
Likewise, the constant editing of what we say, the photoshop of what we show, they distance us from the spontaneous face-to-face dialogue, where one builds a conversation together with the other, in a broader understanding of the latter, and, therefore, of oneself. Isolation is further accentuated by network algorithms, which, in pursuit of personalized consumerism, reduce content to their own likesend up reducing the world to oneself (and to one’s own prejudices), as explained by the philosopher Byung Chul Han in his essay The expulsion of the different.
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Paradoxically, during the quarantines and their revaluation of affective ties, there has also been a renewed search for the encounter with the other through Zoom, Meet and other synchronous forms of video calls. This affective commitment has been channeled, and most of us have verified it. Nevertheless, there are deep vital situations where it does not seem to reach. Let us think of the case of people who have not been able to say goodbye to their loved ones about to die or who had already died. The virtual connection has been of some use, but from psychological clinical experience it seems to have been insufficient in a large number of cases. The impossibility of saying goodbye to the body of a loved one with one’s own body is a risk factor for complicated grief, and the difficulty of dealing with the loss. Also, at the other end of life, a newborn cannot receive on screen the affective support that he needs to grow. Nor would a mother or caregiver who is in charge of feeding him, putting him to bed and changing his diaper, mechanically, while he is immersed in the cell phone, be enough. The baby needs the look, the caress and the affective-bodily support of the other, to know that he exists.
Faced with two inevitable realities unfolded by the pandemic, the face-to-face hybrid existence and our relational existence, we must be aware and responsible in the choice of what to mediate through technology and what not, and to what extent. Not automate, but choose to choose. In addition, Given the recognition of our relationship, we are called to spread the meeting I-Youboth in virtuality and in person. With the awareness that the encounter of the present body is the most spontaneous and direct form of meeting and human bonding. We can find the synthesis of everything said in the experience of the embrace.
existential and relational psychologist; co-author of the book Who are we after the pandemic?
Source: Ambito
