Anna
2011-12-01 22:54:44 UTC
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2011/11/18/the-history-of-nude-psychotherapy/
http://tinyurl.com/6qtzrj3
It all started in 1933 with a paper by Howard Warren, a Princeton
psychologist and president of the American Psychological Association,
who spent a week at a German nudist camp a year earlier.
According to Ian Nicholson, Professor of Psychology at St. Thomas
University in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, in the Journal of
the History of the Behavioral Sciences, Warren’s article, “Social
Nudism and the Body Taboo,” “was a qualitative and largely sympathetic
consideration of the social and psychological significance of nudism.”
Warren “described nudism in therapeutic terms, highlighting the ‘easy
camaraderie’ and lack of ‘self-consciousness’ in the nudist park, in
addition to a ‘notable improvement in general health,’” along with the
principal perspective to return to nature.
Soon after, other articles were published in psychology journals that
highlighted the benefits of nudism in contributing to healthy, well-
adjusted kids and adults.
But it was psychologist Paul Bindrim who actually pioneered nude
psychotherapy in 1967. Bindrim was no quack; to the contrary, he was a
qualified professional whose idea was inspired by the well-respected
and regarded Abraham Maslow. Nicholson writes:
Bindrim himself was a licensed psychologist with academic
qualifications from Columbia and Duke University and he was careful to
package his therapeutic innovations in the language of scientific
advancement. Moreover, his therapeutic discoveries drew heavily on the
work of the then-president of the American Psychological Association:
Abraham Maslow. World-renowned as one of the fathers of humanistic
psychology, Maslow had a long-standing interest in nudity dating back
to his graduate work as a primatologist in the 1930s. Although he had
never written extensively on the topic, Maslow’s work was the
inspiration for nude psychotherapy and as APA president he publicly
endorsed the technique as an innovative avenue for growth.
As a student, Bindrim became interested in parapsychology. He studied
extrasensory perception (ESP) with J.B. Rhine at Duke University.
(Rhine coined the term ESP.) When Bindrim moved to California, he
started his private practice in Hollywood and also was ordained a
minister in the Church of Religious Science.
Paul BindrimAgain, Maslow was a big influence for Bindrim. Maslow
became disillusioned with psychoanalysis, behaviorism and the focus on
psychopathology. He called for a focus on personal growth,
authenticity and transcendence. And he viewed nudism as a viable path
to those things.
In his early work, Bindrim created “peak oriented psychotherapy,”
which involved four stages and was conducted in groups: recalling the
peak experience, identifying the activities and things that
contributed to peak experiences; immersing yourself in them; and
extending these experiences into dreams. This was based in part on
Maslow’s ideas about peak experiences. According to Nicholson:
Likening the experience to a “visit to a personally defined
heaven,” Maslow (1968) described peak experiences as moments of
maximum psychological functioning. “He feels more intelligent, more
perceptive, wittier, stronger, or more graceful than at other
times” (Maslow, 1968, p. 105). Not only was a person generally
enhanced during a peak experience, but he also felt a heightened sense
of oneness with himself and the world around him. “The person in the
peak-experiences feels more integrated (unified, whole, all-of-a-
piece) . . . and is more able to fuse with the world” (Maslow, 1968,
p. 104).
The encounter group movement was another inspiration. Here, groups of
people got together for the purposes of openness, self-discovery and
honesty. (No doubt you’ve participated in something similar like the
“trust fall,” one of the techniques used where people fall back and
their partner catches them.)
The techniques were meant to produce strong emotions and thereby
breakthroughs. Another technique was time. Some groups met
continuously for 18 to 36 hours. According to Nicholson: “The
lengthier format and sleep deprivation was thought to allow
participants to build up a psychological momentum.”
The first session of nude psychotherapy took place on June 16, 1967 at
a California nudist resort with 24 participants. Other sessions were
held at swanky hotels that offered natural surroundings and great
amenities. There were typically 15 to 25 participants. The cost was
$100 per participant for a weekend or $45 for a day. According to
Nicholson:
Like other encounter groups, nude marathon participants traversed
culturally anomalous emotional terrain. Most of the participants were
strangers to each other, yet they were expected to share an
unparalleled level of emotional and physical openness with the group.
Aware of the anomaly, Bindrim moved quickly to create an ersatz
community. “Basically, I conceive of the first half of the marathon as
a means of producing a good functioning group in the nude” (Bindrim,
1972, p. 145).
Bindrim eyeballs a participantBindrim began this process by
employing familiar encounter group techniques. Participants were
invited to “eyeball” each other (stare into each other’s eyes at close
range) and then to respond in some physical way (hugging, wrestling,
etc.). After this ice-breaker, participants disrobed in the dark to
musical accompaniment before joining a small circle to perform a
“meditation-like” hum. This process, Bindrim felt, gave rise to the
“feeling of being all part of one human mass” (1972, p. 145).
Like a psychological impresario, Bindrim carefully walked his
“human mass” through a series of emotional displays. Freely blending
psychoanalysis and Maslovian theory, Bindrim told his participants
that they needed to reenact the hurt and frustration in their life in
order achieved a psychologically hallowed state. “The idea is to
regress, if possible, to the trauma that caused the distortion. That’s
the way to start toward a peak experience” (cited in Howard, 1970, p.
95). Under pressure to disclose, participants offered up their
intimate secrets and Bindrim masterfully sought out those human dramas
that could deliver the greatest emotional payoff. During the first
marathon, a participant “Bob” complained that his wife didn’t give him
any love:
Paul grabbed a rolled package of magazines, pulled over a bench,
shoved the package into Bob’s hands, and screamed to him, “Hit her,
hit her, get it out. She wouldn’t give you any love.” Bob in a frenzy,
started to hit the bench harder and harder, screaming and swearing
vindictively. Paul cried with him. The group cried with him. We were
all swept into it. . . . When it was over, we were all limp. (Goodson,
1991, p. 24)
The naked body was viewed as a window into the soul, into one’s true
self. Bindrim devised uncomfortable exercises that would supposedly
support the process of baring your soul.
Nude therapy was based on the idea of the naked body as a metaphor
of the “psychological soul.” Uninhibited exhibition of the nude body
revealed that which was most fundamental, truthful, and real. In the
marathon, Bindrim interrogated this metaphor with a singular
determination. Bodies were exposed and scrutinized with a science-like
rigor. Particular attention was paid to revealing the most private
areas of the body and mind—all with a view to freeing the self from
its socially imposed constraints.
“This,” Bindrim asserted gesturing to a participant’s genitalia
and anus, “is where it’s at. This is where we are so damned negatively
conditioned” (cited in Howard, 1970, p. 96). Determined to squelch the
“exaggerated sense of guilt” in the body, Bindrim devised an exercise
called “crotch eyeballing” in which participants were instructed to
look at each others’ genitals and disclose the sexual experiences they
felt most guilty about while lying naked in a circle with their legs
in the air (Bindrim, 1972; cited in Howard, 1970, p. 94).
In this position, Bindrim insisted “you soon realize that the head
end and the tail end are indispensable parts of the same person, and
that one end is about as good as the other” (Bindrim, 1972, p. 146).
Nude therapy had such a great appeal because people were searching for
spiritual transformation and authenticity. According to Nicholson:
There was an extensive popular and academic literature on the
“decline” of the self-made “inner-directed” man and the emergence of a
feeble, mass produced self who passively responded to the
blandishments of consumer culture (see Gilbert, 2005). Nudist motifs
and nude therapy in particular promised deliverance from modern
despair through a nostalgic invocation of an idealized biological
self. Taking off one’s clothes would restore “authenticity” by taking
the self back to its precommercial, biological foundation.
By the late ‘190s, Bindrim replaced nude psychotherapy with “aqua-
energetics.” He became interested in Wilhelm Reich’s theories,
specifically the idea of “orgone energy.” Bindrim oversimplified the
concept and came up with the idea of life energy, which contributed to
health, kindness and peak experiences. Reich also conceived of the
idea of negative energy, which could be absorbed by water. So Bindrim
adopted this as well, and took his therapy to the pool.
Reactions to Nude Therapy
Considering the cultural climate of the 1960s and 1970s, it’s not
surprising that the media embraced nude psychotherapy, and many
magazines published positive pieces. (But the tides would turn, and
the media soon started portraying Bindrim as less of a genuine
practitioner and more as an extremist in a weird movement.)
Even the professional journal American Psychologist featured a
favorable article in 1969. Conservative politicians took issue with
Bindrim and so did psychologist Sigmund Koch. Even the APA’s Ethics
Committee decided to investigate him, but, again, due to the cultural
climate and the fact that the nudity was consensual, the organization
dropped it.
Also, Maslow, who was the APA president at the time, endorsed Bindrim
and his work, even though he had reservations. Still, other
psychologists and psychiatrists questioned and criticized Bindrim and
his nude therapy. The American Psychiatric Association wrote a letter
to Modern Medicine Journal opposing the therapy.
Other Uses for Nude Therapy
A happy participant of nude therapyIf you can believe it, in the late
1960s, a Canadian psychiatrist used nude psychotherapy for another
purpose: to cure psychopaths in prison. Journalist Jon Ronson
describes these nude sessions in his book The Psychopath Test. (If
you’re interested, here’s my review of the book.)
At Oak Ridge Hospital for the “criminally insane,” psychiatrist Elliot
Barker began conducting “the world’s first-ever marathon nude
psychotherapy session for criminal psychopaths. Elliott’s raw, naked,
LSD-fueled sessions lasted for epic eleven-day stretches,” according
to Ronson. (He received the LSD from a government-sanctioned lab.)
Because the psychopaths seemed normal, Barker surmised that this “was
because they were burying their insanity deep beneath a façade of
normality. If the madness could only, somehow be brought to the
surface, maybe it would work itself through and they could be reborn
as empathetic human beings,” Ronson writes.
In the 1990s, several researchers looked at the recidivism rates for
psychopaths in Elliot’s program and tracked what happened to them.
According to Ronson, when released, 60 percent of criminal psychopaths
will reoffend. The rate for the psychopaths in the program was 80
percent! And the crimes committed were horrific. Peter Woodcock, a
multiple child murder who participated in the program, brutally killed
another inmate and patient who rebuffed his advances. He said that the
program actually taught him to be a better manipulator and to
skillfully hide his “outrageous feelings.”
The Final Days of Nude Therapy
By the late 1970s and early 1980s, nude therapy fell out of favor.
Social attitudes started becoming more conservative. Americans yearned
to revert back to the moral climate of the 1950s. Bindrim’s private
practice thrived, but his nude therapy, which was increasingly viewed
as unethical, dissolved.
And Bindrim and his nude therapy largely were forgotten. “His death in
1997 was unacknowledged within psychology and provoked only a sharply
worded obituary in the Los Angeles Times (Oliver, 1998),” writes
Nicholson.
http://tinyurl.com/6qtzrj3
It all started in 1933 with a paper by Howard Warren, a Princeton
psychologist and president of the American Psychological Association,
who spent a week at a German nudist camp a year earlier.
According to Ian Nicholson, Professor of Psychology at St. Thomas
University in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, in the Journal of
the History of the Behavioral Sciences, Warren’s article, “Social
Nudism and the Body Taboo,” “was a qualitative and largely sympathetic
consideration of the social and psychological significance of nudism.”
Warren “described nudism in therapeutic terms, highlighting the ‘easy
camaraderie’ and lack of ‘self-consciousness’ in the nudist park, in
addition to a ‘notable improvement in general health,’” along with the
principal perspective to return to nature.
Soon after, other articles were published in psychology journals that
highlighted the benefits of nudism in contributing to healthy, well-
adjusted kids and adults.
But it was psychologist Paul Bindrim who actually pioneered nude
psychotherapy in 1967. Bindrim was no quack; to the contrary, he was a
qualified professional whose idea was inspired by the well-respected
and regarded Abraham Maslow. Nicholson writes:
Bindrim himself was a licensed psychologist with academic
qualifications from Columbia and Duke University and he was careful to
package his therapeutic innovations in the language of scientific
advancement. Moreover, his therapeutic discoveries drew heavily on the
work of the then-president of the American Psychological Association:
Abraham Maslow. World-renowned as one of the fathers of humanistic
psychology, Maslow had a long-standing interest in nudity dating back
to his graduate work as a primatologist in the 1930s. Although he had
never written extensively on the topic, Maslow’s work was the
inspiration for nude psychotherapy and as APA president he publicly
endorsed the technique as an innovative avenue for growth.
As a student, Bindrim became interested in parapsychology. He studied
extrasensory perception (ESP) with J.B. Rhine at Duke University.
(Rhine coined the term ESP.) When Bindrim moved to California, he
started his private practice in Hollywood and also was ordained a
minister in the Church of Religious Science.
Paul BindrimAgain, Maslow was a big influence for Bindrim. Maslow
became disillusioned with psychoanalysis, behaviorism and the focus on
psychopathology. He called for a focus on personal growth,
authenticity and transcendence. And he viewed nudism as a viable path
to those things.
In his early work, Bindrim created “peak oriented psychotherapy,”
which involved four stages and was conducted in groups: recalling the
peak experience, identifying the activities and things that
contributed to peak experiences; immersing yourself in them; and
extending these experiences into dreams. This was based in part on
Maslow’s ideas about peak experiences. According to Nicholson:
Likening the experience to a “visit to a personally defined
heaven,” Maslow (1968) described peak experiences as moments of
maximum psychological functioning. “He feels more intelligent, more
perceptive, wittier, stronger, or more graceful than at other
times” (Maslow, 1968, p. 105). Not only was a person generally
enhanced during a peak experience, but he also felt a heightened sense
of oneness with himself and the world around him. “The person in the
peak-experiences feels more integrated (unified, whole, all-of-a-
piece) . . . and is more able to fuse with the world” (Maslow, 1968,
p. 104).
The encounter group movement was another inspiration. Here, groups of
people got together for the purposes of openness, self-discovery and
honesty. (No doubt you’ve participated in something similar like the
“trust fall,” one of the techniques used where people fall back and
their partner catches them.)
The techniques were meant to produce strong emotions and thereby
breakthroughs. Another technique was time. Some groups met
continuously for 18 to 36 hours. According to Nicholson: “The
lengthier format and sleep deprivation was thought to allow
participants to build up a psychological momentum.”
The first session of nude psychotherapy took place on June 16, 1967 at
a California nudist resort with 24 participants. Other sessions were
held at swanky hotels that offered natural surroundings and great
amenities. There were typically 15 to 25 participants. The cost was
$100 per participant for a weekend or $45 for a day. According to
Nicholson:
Like other encounter groups, nude marathon participants traversed
culturally anomalous emotional terrain. Most of the participants were
strangers to each other, yet they were expected to share an
unparalleled level of emotional and physical openness with the group.
Aware of the anomaly, Bindrim moved quickly to create an ersatz
community. “Basically, I conceive of the first half of the marathon as
a means of producing a good functioning group in the nude” (Bindrim,
1972, p. 145).
Bindrim eyeballs a participantBindrim began this process by
employing familiar encounter group techniques. Participants were
invited to “eyeball” each other (stare into each other’s eyes at close
range) and then to respond in some physical way (hugging, wrestling,
etc.). After this ice-breaker, participants disrobed in the dark to
musical accompaniment before joining a small circle to perform a
“meditation-like” hum. This process, Bindrim felt, gave rise to the
“feeling of being all part of one human mass” (1972, p. 145).
Like a psychological impresario, Bindrim carefully walked his
“human mass” through a series of emotional displays. Freely blending
psychoanalysis and Maslovian theory, Bindrim told his participants
that they needed to reenact the hurt and frustration in their life in
order achieved a psychologically hallowed state. “The idea is to
regress, if possible, to the trauma that caused the distortion. That’s
the way to start toward a peak experience” (cited in Howard, 1970, p.
95). Under pressure to disclose, participants offered up their
intimate secrets and Bindrim masterfully sought out those human dramas
that could deliver the greatest emotional payoff. During the first
marathon, a participant “Bob” complained that his wife didn’t give him
any love:
Paul grabbed a rolled package of magazines, pulled over a bench,
shoved the package into Bob’s hands, and screamed to him, “Hit her,
hit her, get it out. She wouldn’t give you any love.” Bob in a frenzy,
started to hit the bench harder and harder, screaming and swearing
vindictively. Paul cried with him. The group cried with him. We were
all swept into it. . . . When it was over, we were all limp. (Goodson,
1991, p. 24)
The naked body was viewed as a window into the soul, into one’s true
self. Bindrim devised uncomfortable exercises that would supposedly
support the process of baring your soul.
Nude therapy was based on the idea of the naked body as a metaphor
of the “psychological soul.” Uninhibited exhibition of the nude body
revealed that which was most fundamental, truthful, and real. In the
marathon, Bindrim interrogated this metaphor with a singular
determination. Bodies were exposed and scrutinized with a science-like
rigor. Particular attention was paid to revealing the most private
areas of the body and mind—all with a view to freeing the self from
its socially imposed constraints.
“This,” Bindrim asserted gesturing to a participant’s genitalia
and anus, “is where it’s at. This is where we are so damned negatively
conditioned” (cited in Howard, 1970, p. 96). Determined to squelch the
“exaggerated sense of guilt” in the body, Bindrim devised an exercise
called “crotch eyeballing” in which participants were instructed to
look at each others’ genitals and disclose the sexual experiences they
felt most guilty about while lying naked in a circle with their legs
in the air (Bindrim, 1972; cited in Howard, 1970, p. 94).
In this position, Bindrim insisted “you soon realize that the head
end and the tail end are indispensable parts of the same person, and
that one end is about as good as the other” (Bindrim, 1972, p. 146).
Nude therapy had such a great appeal because people were searching for
spiritual transformation and authenticity. According to Nicholson:
There was an extensive popular and academic literature on the
“decline” of the self-made “inner-directed” man and the emergence of a
feeble, mass produced self who passively responded to the
blandishments of consumer culture (see Gilbert, 2005). Nudist motifs
and nude therapy in particular promised deliverance from modern
despair through a nostalgic invocation of an idealized biological
self. Taking off one’s clothes would restore “authenticity” by taking
the self back to its precommercial, biological foundation.
By the late ‘190s, Bindrim replaced nude psychotherapy with “aqua-
energetics.” He became interested in Wilhelm Reich’s theories,
specifically the idea of “orgone energy.” Bindrim oversimplified the
concept and came up with the idea of life energy, which contributed to
health, kindness and peak experiences. Reich also conceived of the
idea of negative energy, which could be absorbed by water. So Bindrim
adopted this as well, and took his therapy to the pool.
Reactions to Nude Therapy
Considering the cultural climate of the 1960s and 1970s, it’s not
surprising that the media embraced nude psychotherapy, and many
magazines published positive pieces. (But the tides would turn, and
the media soon started portraying Bindrim as less of a genuine
practitioner and more as an extremist in a weird movement.)
Even the professional journal American Psychologist featured a
favorable article in 1969. Conservative politicians took issue with
Bindrim and so did psychologist Sigmund Koch. Even the APA’s Ethics
Committee decided to investigate him, but, again, due to the cultural
climate and the fact that the nudity was consensual, the organization
dropped it.
Also, Maslow, who was the APA president at the time, endorsed Bindrim
and his work, even though he had reservations. Still, other
psychologists and psychiatrists questioned and criticized Bindrim and
his nude therapy. The American Psychiatric Association wrote a letter
to Modern Medicine Journal opposing the therapy.
Other Uses for Nude Therapy
A happy participant of nude therapyIf you can believe it, in the late
1960s, a Canadian psychiatrist used nude psychotherapy for another
purpose: to cure psychopaths in prison. Journalist Jon Ronson
describes these nude sessions in his book The Psychopath Test. (If
you’re interested, here’s my review of the book.)
At Oak Ridge Hospital for the “criminally insane,” psychiatrist Elliot
Barker began conducting “the world’s first-ever marathon nude
psychotherapy session for criminal psychopaths. Elliott’s raw, naked,
LSD-fueled sessions lasted for epic eleven-day stretches,” according
to Ronson. (He received the LSD from a government-sanctioned lab.)
Because the psychopaths seemed normal, Barker surmised that this “was
because they were burying their insanity deep beneath a façade of
normality. If the madness could only, somehow be brought to the
surface, maybe it would work itself through and they could be reborn
as empathetic human beings,” Ronson writes.
In the 1990s, several researchers looked at the recidivism rates for
psychopaths in Elliot’s program and tracked what happened to them.
According to Ronson, when released, 60 percent of criminal psychopaths
will reoffend. The rate for the psychopaths in the program was 80
percent! And the crimes committed were horrific. Peter Woodcock, a
multiple child murder who participated in the program, brutally killed
another inmate and patient who rebuffed his advances. He said that the
program actually taught him to be a better manipulator and to
skillfully hide his “outrageous feelings.”
The Final Days of Nude Therapy
By the late 1970s and early 1980s, nude therapy fell out of favor.
Social attitudes started becoming more conservative. Americans yearned
to revert back to the moral climate of the 1950s. Bindrim’s private
practice thrived, but his nude therapy, which was increasingly viewed
as unethical, dissolved.
And Bindrim and his nude therapy largely were forgotten. “His death in
1997 was unacknowledged within psychology and provoked only a sharply
worded obituary in the Los Angeles Times (Oliver, 1998),” writes
Nicholson.