Invasiveness

Contact, or connectedness, between people may vary in many ways, one obvious one being whether the contact is friendly or hostile. Another dimension of human contact, particularly relevant to the matter of personal space, is whether one person is drawing something (contact, affirmation) heavily from the other. It seems to me that, perhaps through some kind of connectedness between people, that when somebody draws like that, not only do they receive something,but also the person they are drawing from loses something. (Indeed, Jesus, who perhaps has been drawn upon more than any other person in history, said ``Who touched me? I felt power go out of me!'' when used for healing without asking him first.)

In my own experience, having personal space is not so much a matter of not having other people present, but of not having anyone drawing something personal from you.

[Space index] John C. G. Sturdy

Last modified: Sun Jun 10 21:39:56 GMT Daylight Time 2007