Since [my ideas of] both the body and the world have to be built up, and since the body in this respect is not different from the world, there must be a central function of the personality which is neither world nor body. There must be a more central sphere of the personality. The body is in this respect periphery compared with the central functions of the personality.
That is to say, my tactile surface is not only the interface between my body and the world, it is the interface between my thought processes and my physical existense as well. By rubbing up against the world, I define myself to myself.
This dialectic is life-long, and its informative power can hardly be overstated. It establishes preferences and aversions, habits and departures, becomes the very stuff in which attitudes are ingrained. The "feel" in my skin and the "feelings" in my mind, what I "feel" and how I "feel" about it, become so confounded and ambiguous that my internal "feelings" can alter what my skin "feels" just as powerfully as particular sensations can shift my internal states.
It is not too much to say that sensory activity of the skin is a major element in the development of disposition and behavior, an element with enough sophistication and plasticity to account for wide divergences of experience and observation.
The skin itself does not think, but its sensitivity is so great, combined with its ability to pick up and transmit so extraordinarily wide variety of signals, and make so wide a range of responses, exceeding that of all other sense organs, that for versatility it must be ranked second only to the brain itself.
~ Deane Juhan, Job's Body: A Handbook for Bodywork
