Considerations
Inthe July 2025 issue of this magazine, Michael Aroney brought forth an examination of “nakedness.” It is not an accident that Aroney begins his essay, What is Nakedness, with a discussion of our intrinsic relation to forgetfulness. He justifies his exploration of the concept of nakedness by positioning his essay as an attempt to remember those things about nakedness that we have forgotten. However, as a student of psychoanalysis, I must expand upon this beginning. We have not merely forgotten what nakedness is; we have repressed its essence altogether. We must seek to remember that which we have “forgotten” about nakedness because repressed psychic material does not simply dissolve. It continues to impact our daily lives, our experience of self, other, and world, and the current political environment in America 2025. This is why I have answered Aroney’s call for further investigation and to engage his analysis of nakedness in a critique of the current socio-political reality.
In this essay, I seek to illuminate the social functions and operations of nakedness, as initially analyzed by Aroney, in the contemporary conservative Christian culture of the United States of America. Through this concrete application of nakedness, I reveal additional elements of its essence and illuminate the possibility of nakedness becoming perverted. In applying the concept to a determined situation, I reveal previously hidden aspects of its social and psychological function and revise others. This discussion seeks to emphasize that what society represses is exactly what must be confronted and articulated.
Lastly, before beginning, I want to ensure that nakedness is well defined. As Aroney so astutely observes, nudity and nakedness are distinct phenomena, as one “can feel naked without necessarily being nude, and conversely, someone can be nude without feeling naked in any meaningful way” (Aroney, 2025). Aroney argues that nakedness is contingent upon the existence of concealment. That is to say, if social and environmental conditions require concealing parts of the body, then exposing them creates the experience of nakedness. The expectation that the now-present body part should be concealed is precisely what creates the experience of nakedness. Thus, nudity stands in contrast to nakedness as it lacks any demand for concealment. Said another way, nakedness exists only in the context of repression.
Repression, Nakedness, and Clothing
During Freud’s lecture in Vienna, titled The Meaning of the Symptom, he outlines a case study of a lady with severe obsessive compulsions. During the treatment, Freud asked the lady what she thought might be the reason behind her compulsive behaviors. She consistently replied with “I don’t know” (Freud, 2012). The “I don’t know” signifies the perpetual human state of being unknown to ourselves and represents the unconscious as the main investigation of psychoanalysis. The “I don’t know” declares ignorance as to what is beneath the surface of our everyday lives and conscious experience, often as a result of repression. It is symbolic of our psychic “clothing.”
Repression occurs as an unconscious defense mechanism that prevents specific, often sexual and unacceptable material, from entering consciousness. The mind represses said material under the assumption that if the material were not repressed, the subject would experience intense anxiety and/or trauma. It is worth noting that repression is distinct from suppression, which is the conscious attempt to shove down feelings or memories. Repression happens automatically, yet both cause disruptive psychological and sometimes physiological symptoms.
Lacan observes that repression extends beyond sexuality and crosses over into the domains of the Symbolic Order, that is, the language, laws, and socio-cultural networks the child is born into. The parents integrate the child into the symbolic order by teaching it language, culture, social norms, ethics, and so on. The symbolic order transcribes itself into the flesh and psyche of the child. Here is where we see the link between repression and clothing come into view. The subject is necessarily repressed through its introduction into the symbolic order. Parts of the self become hidden, and others remain present. This process of repression introduces the possibility of feeling naked.
Infants initially experience need in a direct and sensuous manner, mediated only through their fusion with the mother. However, as the paternal “No!” is introduced, separating the mother-child dyad, the child becomes transcribed into the symbolic order and no longer experiences itself in a direct and Real way. This primal, raw experience of the self is substituted with the alienation of the Law and language. Kemp (2006) describes this experience as follows –
“Language, however, can never capture a full sense of lived-experience, and thus, as the child proceeds to acquire and use language more fully, the more fully it is alienated from this primal experience of itself and the world. Language thus entails not just the loss of the mother, but also the increasing loss of primal experience. Lacan terms this loss alienation.”
With the alienation of loss, feelings of lack and desire are introduced, along with additional rules, limitations, and taboos. Lacan astutely observes that in order to become a socially integrated subject and begin relating to others, the individual must submit to and identify with the personification of the symbolic order and universal authority named the Other. We conform to and internalize the Other, imagining what it is the Other desires so that we may avoid punishment, receive pleasure, and conceive of ourselves in a coherent manner. Or, described another way, we begin dressing ourselves, covering up those parts of the self deemed unacceptable and highlighting the areas that lead to positive outcomes and please the Other. As Lacan argues, our desire is the desire of the Other. Desire is structured through those around us, specifically the parental authority figures, language, and culture. Repression is not something that can be escaped. It is inherent to our current order and the structure of our mind.
Through this dressing of ourselves, we learn to perform, both consciously and unconsciously. We repress and hide those body parts of the Freudian sexual instincts. We clothe the phallus, the sexual and erogenous zones, and by doing so, we move the specific body parts and their related repressions from the realm of nudity to nakedness. As Aroney (2025) states,
“The body is the fundamental sign which often reveals too much about the self and forces us to suppress its semantic power through concealment…”
Repression is intrinsically connected to the idea of nakedness and its counterpart of clothing. Our psychic composition is structured by that which is absent, repressed, and clothed. The unconscious is that which, if exposed, would cause the subject to feel naked by definition.
Repression and nakedness serve a foundational role in the creation of society itself. In his seminal work Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud proposes that the existence of civilization is contingent upon the individual repressing their sexual and aggressive instincts, moving them from the sphere of nudity to nakedness. Lacan extends Freud’s theories by introducing additional aspects of repression required for social existence. However, while deeply intriguing, Freud’s idea was subject to criticism by a Doctor of Medicine and psychoanalyst, Wilhelm Reich. He articulates a seeming contradiction in Freud’s argument, stating,
“Two facts are at variance: On the one hand, the child has to repress its instincts [clothe itself] in order to become capable of cultural adjustment. On the other hand, it acquires, in this very process, a neurosis which in turn makes it incapable of cultural development and adjustment and in the end makes it antisocial” (Reich, 1962).
This neurosis, as described by Reich, is what Aroney seeks to explain in his essay during his discussion of the society without nakedness. Aroney (2025) envisions a kind of preoedipal or primitive society, yet imagines them as a future, perhaps “post-oedipal” civilization. He writes,
“When the self and world are porously connected, no rigid binary can emerge, and no distinction between public and private realms would be made. Consequently, bodily sites would not acquire the status of self-revealing thresholds, which could eliminate the need to cover parts of the body—as there would simply be nothing to conceal.”
Aroney argues that when the binary between self and other breaks down and our phenomenological intending becomes more “porous,” our feeling of nakedness would lessen. With a porous community we can trust, we can become vulnerable and choose to expose ourselves. We can repress, “until we feel safe knowing that others actually want to ‘see’ us, and know that we will not be harmed by their interpretive conceptual systems” (Aroney, 2025). Thus, with a stronger community, we return to a state of mere nudity. Aroney argues, along with Reich, against Freud. Rather than repression being the glue of society, it leads to its alienation. Repression is something that can be and ought to be done away with.
Nakedness and Civilization
However, this is where I would like to push back against Aroney and offer a psychoanalytic revision. Lacan’s conception of repression and the Other demonstrates that nakedness is a necessary reality of the unconscious psychic life if one is to become integrated into language and social existence. Nakedness, in its abstract form, is an inherent quality of civilization itself. Hungarian psychoanalyst and anthropologist, Geza Roheim, explains that “Man was able to discard his sexual periodicity because he had learned to cope with the demands of reality by means of repression” (Roheim, 1972). This process marks the shift from mere nudity to the state of recognizing oneself as naked. The erogenous zones are repressed for reasons beyond what Aroney argues. These sites are hidden precisely because they are the sites of sexual repression.
Roheim only comes to this conclusion after his anthropological field research. Pre-field study, Aroney and Roheim both seemed to agree that “if civilization was based on repression, then it followed that the most primitive culture should also be the most permissive” (Robinson, 1969). They would be nude rather than naked. However, after his research, Roheim, like Freud and Lacan, concludes that repression, or the ability to experience nakedness, is an organic necessity. Moreover, it is repression that permits civilization, communication, and relations with other people to exist at all. Thus, while I agree that vulnerability, abjection, the separation between self and others, and so on promote concealment, I do not think these are the only or central reasons for concealing ourselves. These reasons omit the fact that nakedness and repression are necessities of the human psyche.
Repression acts as the glue of the community itself and is not something that can be overcome. This is where I disagree with Aroney. When do we ever expose our bodies to those we are close to, or vulnerable with, other than Significant Others? The body remains concealed; thus, nakedness remains a perpetual possibility. Indeed, many feel more comfortable seeing nudity in strangers than in those they are close to, evidencing that repression is stronger in the community than with strangers (this fact becomes explicitly relevant in the discussion below about the Christian Right). I am sure many would agree they would prefer to, and feel less strongly about, seeing a nude stranger on the beach than a naked family member in the home.
Surplus Repression
Unlike Aroney and Reich, I am not as concerned with the erosion of nakedness and a return to nudity since I am not convinced this is possible. I am instead interested in the perversion of nakedness and the prevention of such perversion. To examine the psychoanalytic interpretation of nakedness, we will use the political and religious Christian Right in the United States of America, especially the American South, as a case study. The Christian Right can loosely be characterized as socially and traditionally conservative with fundamentalist religious beliefs. They also tend to possess a culture of honor as seen in the American South and generally support neoliberal economic policies that place an emphasis on choice and free will (Gannon, 1981).
Beyond these demographic characteristics, the Christian Right also contains personality features. These elements of the personality were explored by Adorno et al. in their study of the authoritarian personality and the psychological conditions that give rise to fascism. They identified traits such as: submissive and uncritical attitude towards authority, hostility towards those who deviate, opposition to subjectivity, identification with powerful figures, excessive preoccupation and repression of sexual matters, and rigid conformity (Adorno et al., 1950). These characteristics generate an unconscious attraction to fascism and authoritarian style political rulings.
Describing the Christian Right as inherently repressive and prone to nakedness would be accurate but meaningless, since all groups and communities are inherently repressive. Instead, we will gain more from describing their situation as excessively repressive and perverted in the Lacanian sense of the word. That is to say, rather than the group seeking its own enjoyment for enjoyment’s sake, they submit themselves, in a masochistic fashion, and substitute their pleasure for the pleasure of the Other. They derive excessive pleasure from obedience and its stability. Their surplus submission to the Other, caused by the initial trauma of a particularly demanding “castration” (initial alienation), due to strict social and ethical requirements, leads to a co-dependent psychic state, and consequently, promotes severe separation anxiety from the authoritative aspect of the Other. Their in-group and religion provide a “concrete” morality, existential framework, social guidance, community, comfort, and so on. It offers the convenience of not having to disagree and think for oneself, and unfortunately, this creates an intense dependence. Fascism, and related forms of political organization, seek to return to a lost past or unity with the (m)Other, “To Make America Great Again,” rather than progress onwards into further independence. They seek to replace the chaos of change, progress, and independent thinking with obsessive order embodied in a powerful and conservative leader. They possess a,
“common ego ideal – which all men in the group would share. Thus arose the political leader who by virtue of being loved by all forged a community out of disparate individuals” (Robinson, 1969).
They have intense feelings of hatred and desire to punish the out-group, as everything that threatens this shared relationship with the Other is the threat of Lacanian “castration.” Repression continues to develop in surplus so that they may secure their position within the group and thereby limit the possibility of additional separation from the Other.
In excessively repressive cultures, in order to be a part of the in-group, they expect each other to “dress” in the same way, both literally and metaphorically, to cover and become alien to the same body parts and desires as they have. Or, to put it another way, the group wants everyone to relate to the Other in the same manner they do, so that the social relationship can be cohesive and polished, establishing a coherent symbolic order. It is not a secret that the Christian Right openly despises nakedness with disgust, viewing the body as completely utilitarian and full of sinful temptation. Without the possibility of nakedness, without repression of the individual and submission to the authority, there is no buy-in, no sacrifice, no demonstration of one’s loyalty to the group. They view revealing dress and self-originating ideas as untrustworthy, prideful, shameful, and egotistical. The Christian Right is by definition not interested in authentic nudity, for humanity’s nudity, the unrepressed self, is deserving of Hell. They expect members, and even non-members, to conceal.
When the Christian Right is asked about what exists behind closed doors, they want to simply be able to say “I don’t know” and pair it with “and I don’t care.” They enjoy excess repression. They do not want nudity. They desire nakedness. This attitude is prevalent in their politics, as seen in their willful ignorance of what occurs in the war room and foreign countries. It is prevalent in their denial of the harm intrinsic to social conservatism. It exists in their judgment of out-group members, in the otherness of the homeless and underserved, and in their racist justification of systemic racism. “Keep these items behind closed doors and allow us to exist as we are,” they say. “Let us say I don’t know and be happy with it.”
We see the haunting traces of this attitude in their creation myth of humankind and the advent of sin. The eating of the fruit symbolizes the simultaneous destruction and identification (you are what you eat) with the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Attempting to know for ourselves rather than merely doing what we are told led to our downfall and sinful nature. We must repress our own ideas and identify with God’s. Those who obstruct this process must be overcome and will be punished.
In the Christian Right today, we see all of these elements of the authoritarian personality, in both the followers and leaders of MAGA, perhaps most astutely in Tucker Carlson’s speech in 2023 at the Turning Point Rally. The speech is littered with Dr. Strangelove psychoanalytic Oedipus complex moments –
“Dad comes home and he’s pissed. Dad is pissed. He’s not vengeful. He loves his children. Disobedient as they may be, he loves them. Because they’re his children. They live in his house. But he’s very disappointed in their behavior. And he’s going to have to let them know…And when Dad gets home, you know what he says? You’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been a bad little girl, and you’re getting a vigorous spanking right now. And, no, it’s not going to hurt me more than it hurts you. No, it’s not. I’m not going to lie. It’s going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me. And you earned this. You’re getting a vigorous spanking because you’ve been a bad girl” (Penn, 2024).
Perversion indeed. The case study of the Christian right teaches us the paradox of nakedness – The more clothing we subject ourselves to, the more naked we become. As Aroney stated, “Concealment is revealment” (2025). We may not be able to prevent nakedness altogether, but surely we can prevent its surplus and perversion.
Conclusion
Aroney began a brilliant investigation into nakedness, attempting to uncover its essence and begin a conversation about its various phenomenological, psychological, and social functions. All of my revisions offered to his theory, such as the intrinsic and inescapable nature of nakedness, push back on his idea of vulnerability, the relation of nakedness to Freudian and Lacanian repression, and the perversion of nakedness, lead to an addition to Aroney’s initial theory rather than a subtraction.
I invite others to continue the investigation into surplus nakedness and its perversion so that we can perhaps mitigate harm and continue to reveal the inherent nature of nakedness. Nakedness is the product of repression. It is, unfortunately, necessary, as without some level of repression, our social relations could not exist. However, this is not to say it should not be observed closely or examined, as nakedness and an overreliance upon clothing can lead to its perversion. While nakedness is necessary, at least for now, it comes with inherent risk, and thus, this conversation must continue. I am left with a few questions. 1) While I am not sure I agree with Aroney’s conception of how a return to nudity may take place, does this mean it is altogether impossible? Is Lacan correct? What would the economic, political, and social organization of a nude society look like? What would its language look like? 2) What does the inverse of the perversion of nakedness discussed above look like?
I feel the conversation has just begun, as nakedness can be applied to gender theory, Marxism, psychoanalysis, anthropology, phenomenology, dialectics, etc., via various case studies. Further inquiry should look into applying the concept of nakedness as widely and deeply as possible so that we may continue illuminating its essence and articulate the repressed.
Works Cited
Adorno, T., Frenkel-Brenswik, E., Levinson, D. J., & R. Nevitt Sanford. (2019). The Authoritarian Personality. Verso Books
Aroney, M. (2025, July 29). What is Nakedness? | Epoché Magazine. Epoché Magazine; Epoché Magazine. https://epochemagazine.org/83/what-is-nakedness/
Gannon, T. N. (1981). The New Christian Right in America as a Social and Political Force / La Nouvelle droite chrétienne en Amérique, force sociale et politique. Archives de Sciences Sociales Des Religions, 52(1), 69–83. https://doi.org/10.3406/assr.1981.2226
Géza Róheim. Australian Totemism. Humanities Press International, 1972.
Kemp, R. (2006). Notes Towards a Phenomenological Reading of Lacan. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology, 6(1), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1080/20797222.2006.11433915
Luciew, J. (2024, September 22). Tucker Carlson, JD Vance in Hershey: Most revealing moments. Pennlive. https://www.pennlive.com/politics/2024/09/tucker-carlson-jd-vance- in-hershey-most-revealing-moments.html
Robinson, P. (1969). The Freudian Left: Wilhelm Reich, Geza Roheim, Herbert Marcuse. Harper Colophon Books.
Sigmund Freud, Granville Stanley Hall, Stephen Robert Wilson, & Wordsworth Editions. (2012). A general introduction to psychoanalysis. Wordsworth Editions.