The Psychology of Nakedness

Recently, I was talking to a nudist couple from Philippines on a Facebook group who seemed to be overly enthusiastic about their way of living. Nudism(or naturism) is an alternative lifestyle involving social nudity, both in private and in public, and are usually practiced with like-minded people in clothing-optional areas like naturist resorts, public baths and beaches. I had really got no idea of what nudism (or naturism) really is, but after having gotten some enlightenment from the couple I talked to, I started to develop interest in it! It’s nothing like I want to become a nudist myself (and that too in a country where nudity is taken so damn seriously), rather I got interested in the psychology of nakedness.

Have you ever wondered when and why did humans begin to wear clothes? The exact phenomenon that made us to cover ourselves is hotly debated with many individual theories being used to account for it. It has been proven that the urge of making and wearing clothes is not an inherent instinct in humans.  Do you think a baby which is born naked, as soon as it gains awareness, starts to scream for cloths out of embarrassment? No, it doesn’t. Instinct does not tell it to get up and cry for clothes; instinct tells it to scream and yell as loud as possible for its basic needs like milk or whatever.

Looking at the issue from an anthropological perspective, one can argue that the seemingly natal impulse of covering oneself can be a result of what is known as ‘Out of Africa’ theory. This theory is the most widely accepted model describing the geographic origin and early migration of anatomically modern humans. According to this model, Homo sapiens first evolved in Africa's rift valley, and while they were yet not far up the evolutionary scale from monkeys, it was difficult for them to survive in the pretty hot climate in Africa with their furry skin. Our ape ancestors spent most of their time in forests and had fur to protect their body from cold, contrary to the woolly, erect hominid walking around under the sun on the hot Savannah. The later would have overheated, and through natural selection lost their fur in order to control body temperature and adapted to life on the Savannah.While human evolved to be less hairy, the problem started to occur when the Ice Age came along. The humans were now cold without any natural protection. The inherent innovativeness of humans caused them to cover their bodies with the skin of animals they would kill to protect themselves from cold. This need for covering their bodies further gained more significance as humans spread out from Africa to the cooler areas of Asia, Europe... etc. Since then, society accepted clothing as a mandatory part of living.  

But do humans really like to wear clothes? I mean if there was no social restriction, would we be really moving around naked in public? It seems to be an interesting question and the answer to it is quite controversial. What if I say yes humans desire to stroll around the streets naked and wish everyone would do the same! Would you fuckin’ believe it? If you’re a Freudian, you certainly would. According to the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud, our personality is made up of three components—Id, ego, and superego. The id is the set of irrational instinctual trends containing our animalistic desires, fears and repressed emotions;  the super-ego plays the critical and moralizing role; and the ego is the organized, realistic part that mediates between the desires of the id and the super-ego. So under the influence of our Id, we all have the urge to stay naked all the time (and have sex on the road like dogs), but the superego being the seat of morality forbids it like anything. The ego uses defense mechanisms to cope up with our anxieties of not being allowed to have our animal desires like being naked all the times fulfilled.

Over thousands of evolutionary years, we've learned that exhibiting a naked body sends out sexual signals that threaten the security of mating pairs. Society has conditioned us into believing that mating with someone outside the domain of a relationship is bad and Shame is the ideal emotion that enforces this code of conduct. This code of conduct gets encoded into our superego. 

But the urge to enjoy nakedness is still there in the unconscious mind. This is where, as I said earlier, the ego plays its defense mechanism. In psychology, Sublimation is a type of ego defense mechanism where socially unacceptable impulses (like being naked in public) are consciously transformed into socially acceptable actions or behavior (like going to a nudist resort, public bath or beach), possibly resulting in a long-term conversion of the initial impulse. The bottom line is that we all love to be naked from within no matter how much we deny it consciously, but our superego forbids it. While most of the times the urge to stay naked gets repressed into unconscious mind, sometimes our ego lets us enjoy our nudity in socially acceptable ways through sublimation and other defense mechanisms.