CIRDH Frans VELDMAN, 'FRANS VELDMAN', http://www.haptonomie.org/en/genreal-overview/frans-veldman.html (2012).
Experiential science
He describes the decisive experiences that led him in his search since the adolescence. Highly curious, independently-minded, in a period of limited material resources due to the crises of the 20s, during the war he experienced events decisive for his fate. He himself said to have introduced for the first time in the early 1950 his concept of the empirical phenomenology of contact, called "psychotactile", and of "affective closeness", preceding the notion of haptonomy, on the occasion of a medical conference.
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One can imagine the resistance he encountered within the norm of reserved and authoritarian distance of the medical profession of that time vis-a-vis an affective touch, but the evidence of his findings for the approach to the sick person and the care eventually overcome the resistance and even led him to raise the awareness of the training nurses in the Netherlands in 1967 at the request of the Ministry of Health. This lead to a book "Lichte lasten" ("Light charges") and a film on the clinical kinesionomy, a term, which he invented at the time.
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Haptonomy does not belong to the so called "hard" sciences, but it is "empirical, phenomenological and "experiential" and not experimental. In fact, the personal human empirical experience aims for understanding, while the experimental scientific experience rather aims for explanation.
Link
Klik hier voor het volledige artikel 'FRANS VELDMAN’ @ CENTRE INTERNATIONAL DE RECHERCHE ET DE DÉVELOPPEMENT DE L'HAPTONOMIE.
