Contents
- Psychologies: Why do we develop the notorious five senses so differently? After all, our brains are the same!
- “Taste governs learning to speak and read,” said Françoise Dolto, adding that a child with a speech delay can make progress by tasting a variety of spices and delicious foods. How do you explain it?
- You also claim that feelings affect our ability to think!
- Yet we seem to be gradually losing the sharpness of our sense of smell. Why?
- How does connecting with our feelings improve our relationship with our own bodies?
- How can you reconnect with your feelings?
By developing the ability to perceive smells, textures and tastes, we become more open to dialogue with the outside world. And this helps us to shift the focus of our attention from ourselves and distract from worries about our imperfections.
Touch, sight, smell, hearing and taste — the five senses allow the body to be in contact with the outside world. However, their severity is not the same for everyone. So, for example, if we live in a metropolis, then city noise, air diluted with exhaust gases, and sterilized foods that we eat dull our sensory susceptibility … As a result, we find ourselves cut off, separated from our five senses. Does that mean from your body?
Psychologies: Why do we develop the notorious five senses so differently? After all, our brains are the same!
Gisele Arrus-Revidy: The ability to feel is our innate, biologically determined property, and at the same time it can be transmitted and educated. For example, in the families of musicians, artists or gourmets, where great importance is attached to sensory perception, it is automatically transmitted to the child. Conversely, in families where parents hold puritanical views, showing contempt for the body and bodily pleasures, such sensitivity is not encouraged. It happens that this causes a backlash: a person sets himself the goal of becoming a gourmet, an esthete, strives to become seductive, conducting various experiments with his body. But it happens that people are not capable of such a rebellion: being alienated from their body, they seem to be under anesthesia and are not able to realize that, for example, they are cold or they want to eat. After all, they are literally forbidden to feel. This clearly shows how the word can affect our biology.
“Taste governs learning to speak and read,” said Françoise Dolto, adding that a child with a speech delay can make progress by tasting a variety of spices and delicious foods. How do you explain it?
The mouth is a kind of crossroads where anatomy, physiology and psyche intersect, where food and words, taste sensations and speech meet. The hungry baby starts screaming. At the same time, it is not this inarticulate cry that introduces him into the verbal world, but, on the contrary, a feeling of satiety and well-being, which prompts him to turn his head away from his chest or nipple. «No, I don’t want any more milk» — it is with this denial that he shows his first desire to speak. From now on he will learn to fill his empty mouth with words. And gradually the learning of speech and the comprehension of taste will be connected.
You also claim that feelings affect our ability to think!
And there is. By the way, a person, before comprehending the world around him, first perceives it sensually — with his eyes, ears, tactilely, smells it. And if his senses are sharpened early due to music, painting, gourmet food, etc., this leads to an enrichment of vocabulary, which, in turn, helps to think more subtly. Unfortunately, today perception by feelings has come to play a secondary role in relation to information. Especially when it comes to nutrition. Although, for example, I have a very sharp sense of smell, and therefore my nose guides me. To the dismay of my family, I can easily devour expired food on the package: my sense of smell tells me that they are still quite edible.
Yet we seem to be gradually losing the sharpness of our sense of smell. Why?
It is the most direct and most ancient of the senses. It plays the most influential role in human communication. So, two people can subsequently reconsider the first visual impression of each other, forgive each other for words spoken out of place, but if we are repelled by the smell of another person, this is already irreparable. According to Freud, the loss of the human sense of smell was due to the onset of civilization. When a person walked on all fours, he directly perceived the smells of his own kind. Then he got to his feet, and it became more difficult for him to perceive the smell.
At the same time, in order to “become a man”, to rise above other animals, he consigned the sense of smell to oblivion, forced it out of consciousness. However, signs of the animal nature still remain in us: we retain love for our own smells, including unpleasant ones. Loving your scent means loving your body. We identify with it in the same way as with our bodily appearance.
How does connecting with our feelings improve our relationship with our own bodies?
We are too narcissistic about our appearance, and this prevents us from feeling our body from the inside. This narcissism leads us to dissatisfaction with our appearance. Reconnecting with our sense perception will make it easier for us to exist in our imperfect shell. The willingness to perceive the external world helps us shift the focus from ourselves and forget a little about our physical imperfections.
How can you reconnect with your feelings?
If the value of these feelings has been lost too early, a course of special therapy may be required. In general, the brighter and richer in smells the environment around us, the better our senses develop. So I can advise you to visit places of special sensory richness more often. You can go south, to the sea, take a walk in the forest or through the noisy and fragrant bazaar, or just go to the museum.