Touch is the underdog of our senses. Vitally important to our mental and physical wellbeing, yet undervalued in a society that upgrades ‘touch-screens’ and downgrades skin-touches, we generally discuss touch when it is abusive or intrusive but speak less of it as a requisite need. Here I explore whether we can compensate for our loss of physical touch with psychological touch, through our use of technology.

To fall in love is to enter into a vulnerable, giddy, preoccupied state of mind. We take the person we love unbridled into our dreams and fantasies and feel a loss of control as our mind wanders mischievously away from mundane aspects of the everyday onto a fantasied exciting future with our new love. It is delicious yet maddening. But how does this maddening, chubby love uncurl into a mature love that lasts? And what can porcupines tell us about love?

Netflix series Russian Doll, released in February 2019, plays with the psychological concept of ‘repetition compulsion’ to produce a dark comedy that offers an apt metaphor for the re-emergence of childhood trauma in adulthood.

The film ‘10 Cloverfield Lane’ has been discussed as a metaphor for abuse, but it is also, I think, a metaphor for the turmoil of our inner world when traumas from our past impede our capacity to live an authentic life in the present.