Keeping in Touch with Mental Health: The Orienting Reflex and Behavioral Outcomes from Calatonia

Abstract

Physical and psychological therapy based on touch has been gradually integrated into broader mental health settings in the past two decades, evolving from a variety of psychodynamic, neurobiological and trauma-based approaches, as well as Eastern and spiritual philosophies and other integrative and converging systems. Nevertheless, with the exception of a limited number of well-known massage therapy techniques, only a few structured protocols of touch therapy have been standardized and researched to date. This article describes a well-defined protocol of touch therapy in the context of psychotherapy—the Calatonia technique—which engages the orienting reflex. The orienting reflex hypothesis is explored here as one of the elements of this technique that helps to decrease states of hypervigilance and chronic startle reactivity (startle and defensive reflexes) and restore positive motivational and appetitive states.

Calatonia: A Therapeutic Approach That Promotes Somatic and Psychological Regulation, Anita Ribeiro Blanchard, Ana Maria Galrão Rios and Leda Maria Perillo Seixas (eds) (2019)

“…Chapter sixteen is a very succinct account of the latest insights into Calatonia that stem from recent discoveries by neuroscientists about the effects of subtle touch on the brain; it is unfortunate that Anita Blanchard was unable to include the rest of her findings in this book. However, a recent publication (Blanchard and Comfort, 2020) explores some of these findings in much greater detail. As with any collection of essays (originally written mainly in Portuguese and all by different authors), there is always the possibility that the final book might end up being written in an uneven or inconsistent way.…”