The skin is our body limit, the psychological container of our identity '.

The skin has two main functions: to "protect" defining the boundaries of the body and to "feel

the merger" with another, for example, when we are embraced and we are like one.

The transformation of the "bound body"   is one of the most important effects of caresses. 

"It is only which transforming our physical limit," said the Chilean psychologist and  anthropologist Rolando Toro, creator of the Biodanza ® "in something plastic, enable us to feel and radiate and project our identity to relate with other people and with the ' entire universe. The flexibility of the skin (tactile) and muscle (kinesthetic) is vital to a healthy identity. " 

Sensitize the skin by touching it properly, therefore, means raising own identity, our own. In addition to the existential level, the caress also induces changes in our body: giving and receiving strokes have the same power of certain drugs, activating  in cells because the production process of endorphins and hormones: it is like a magic touch that heals. 

The first experience 
The first experience of contact is with our mother. The affective gestures that allow the baby to grow up healthy and safe, loving and strong are the most ancient of care and give and receive affection, rocking, hugging, caressing, kissing, staing close, looking affectively.
The satisfaction of this requirement is important to achieve security and the conviction to be desired and valued, necessary, the adult will feel involved and will be able to have relationship with the other. 
It's through contact with the mother, normally, that the child learns in the first days of life.  There is always someone ready to take care of him and satisfy his needs. It is in this way that the infant learns, as a fundamental attitude, the positive principle that he can trust; attitude that Erik Erikson calls "the original trust."That trust is the cornerstone of healthy personality. We will give evidence in countless everyday situations, if we rely on a public conveyance,we expect good relations ore have nothing more than an embittered confidence disappointed. 
Confidence is the original premise of every positive attitude towards others, the ability to identify ourselves with the community and all forms of social engagement and, more generally, the capacity for love. 
We learn Love from the skin. A good relationship with the mother (or mother substitutes) is woven on a plot of reciprocity: the pleasure of touch gratifies and satisfies both the child, the mother. A good contact between father and sons give security and stability.

Love and Development

An environmental condition that ensures a quality of reciprocity and sincere affection can develop and express the spontaneous, natural contact, bodily pleasure and hospitality. Under these conditions communication can reach a very high degree of integration, demonstrating the ability to have a warm and welcoming: an affective contact. What happens however, when this happens? 
Rene Spitz, known neuropsychiatry, has made a thorough research on the neurophysiological effects of touch and caress on children hospitalized or orphans, in conditions of deprivation. His research has been a revolution in children because they have shown that strokes and a sense of security, such as bringing the baby in the arms, for example, are essential for the development. His studies have shown that children living the first months of life without the most basic forms of love, do not establish a proper connection between the cerebral cortex and diencephalon, crucial bridge in order to experience the relationship between the outside world and inner , emotional and visceral world. 
When the child can not develop the "expected" personal relationship with his mother, it can be possible the development of  disorders that can go as far as the syndrome of neglect. 
Children who have deficiencies of maternal affection, or from those who take care of them, have the difficult growth and irreversible damage reported in appearance motor, emotional, language and intellectual development. 
In the "Study on child psychoanalysis, began to study the phenomenon of infantile marasmus and death for anaclitic depression, René Spitz describes the effects of prolonged institutionalization in children under one year of life. This research shows that, due to lack of tenderness and love, 60% of children surveyed, although they were well fed and receive medical care and essential hygiene , they died before two years of age.

From pre-natal life to the post-natal

"For small children be raised, pampered, petted, to be held, massaged," writesFrederick Leboyer, great innovator of Pediatrics world "are all essential nutrients, like vitamins, minerals and proteins, if not more. More than smell, heat, and the voice of the mother who knows the child, even if full of milk this, let it die of hunger. " 
Leboyer's statement is taken and demonstrated by Harry Harlow with an historical experiment performed on two groups of small infants of monkeys choosing between two puppets-mother showed a preference without a doubt for the mother of cloth that radiated heat,rather than the mechanics mother  with artificial breasts ready to feed the children every second, but without a fur. 
Similar results were seen by many other researchers, among the most famous studies include those of Levine conducted on two groups of mice,one regular caressed, the other not, Spitz has shown that the negative influence of the lack of recovery in affective abandoned Children .Margaret Ribble, which had the merit of highlighting the need for three types of sensory stimulation for healthy growth: tactile Contact , kinesthetic movement and singing.