Touch, such as affective caress, can be interpreted as being pleasant. The emotional valence that is assigned to touch is related to certain bottom-up factors, such as the optimal activation of C-tactile (CT) afferents. Tactile processing with a hedonic or emotional component has been defined as affective touch-a component that CT fibers are likely to convey. Tactile deficiencies are frequent in the psychiatric population but also in healthy people with disorganized attachment; accordingly, it is likely that affective difficulties in adults with disorganized attachment are reflected in altered perception of affective touch. To test this hypothesis, we combined methods from clinical psychology, psychophysics, and neuroimaging. We found that people with a history of traumatic parental bonds and a disorganized attachment pattern perceive a "caress-like" stimulus as being unpleasant, whereas participants with organized attachment consider the same tactile stimulation to be pleasant. Further, unlike in organized adults, the responses of disorganized adults to CT and non-CT stimulation activated limbic and paralimbic structures in a fight-or-flight manner, suggesting that early experiences with parental deficiencies shape the physiological responses of peripheral CT fibers and central nervous networks. In humans, touch is the first sensory system to develop 1,2. The earliest sensations that we experience are tactile. At 12 weeks of gestation, the cutaneous receptors and somatosensory functions have matured 3 , and the fetus is able to make movements when their lips are touched 4 ; in contrast, other sensory modalities, such as hearing and vision, develop later. The early emergence of tactile functions in fetal growth suggests that its initial tactile experiences are crucial for the development and maturation of an organism. This hypothesis has been demonstrated in several developmental pathways, from biological growth 1 and psychological maturity 5 to achievements in social skills 6. Sigmund Freud, whose background was in neurophysiology, defined the skin as the "first psychological organ" 7. Despite the evidence that has posited the primacy of touch in human development, we owe the first attempts to link the sense of touch to social, cognitive, and affective domains to studies on animals, among which research by Harlow 8,9 on rhesus monkeys remains a cornerstone. In his famous studies, Harlow demonstrated that infant rhesus monkeys preferred to cling to a surrogate wire mother that was covered in warm cloth than to one that provided milk but comprised only wires. Harlow also observed that on experiencing a sudden frightening stimulus, the cloth model was again preferred to the wire mother, wherein the monkeys sought immediate physical contact with the cloth model, after which their fear subsided. Based on these findings, Harlow suggested that the absence of comforting touch led to psychological stress in the monkeys. Likely, these studies provided the seminal evidence of the influential function of bodily contact in t...