History of one delusion

Sometimes, it is difficult to find a source of a particular delusion. For example, when did nakedness become a source of embarrassment? It was not always that way.

In 1939 Norbert Elias [1], a German sociologist, has published ‘The Civilizing Process’ [2]. The book “remained largely unknown and unread among both the German and English speaking public for thirty years”. The goal of the author was to explore “the civilizing of manners and personality in Western Europe since the late Middle Ages”, and to show “how that was related to the formation of states and monopolization of power within them” [3]. “Elias traced how post-medieval European standards regarding violence, sexual behaviour, bodily functions, table manners and forms of speech were gradually transformed by increasing thresholds of shame and repugnance, working outward from a nucleus in court etiquette” [4].

“Elias has argued that the development of civil society in Europe was predicated on codes of etiquette as the basis of social intercourse. One component of the new etiquette was the emergence of the ‘shame frontier’. Until the sixteenth century, ‘the sight of total nakedness was the everyday rule’ for bathing and for sleeping <…> Moral conduct and codes of etiquette were not attached to the sight of the naked body” [5,6].

“In the ‘manners books’ or guides to conduct that appeared especially in the period between the 1300s and the 1700s, Elias identified changing emotional attitudes to the basic physical realities of human existence. <…> For example, being discovered naked became a source of embarrassment. What had once been permissible became forbidden” [7].

It seems to have been common practice, at least in the towns, to undress at home before going to the bathhouse. “How often,” says an observer, “the father wearing nothing but his breeches, with his naked wife and children runs through the streets from his house to the baths … (N. Elias)

Image: bath by Matthew gorecki | Flickr – Photo Sharing! (Creative Commons License)

References
[1] Norbert Elias – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[2] Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process, Vol.I. The History of Manners, Oxford: Blackwell, 1969.
[3] Stephen Mennell, Norbert Elias (1897-1990), A Biographical Sketch
[4] The Civilizing Process – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
[5] Jennifer Craik, The face of fashion, London: Routledge, 1993.
[6] Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave, New York: Bantam Books, 1980.
[7] Andrew Linklater, Norbert Elias, Process Sociology and International Relations

True story: Fraternity Elysia (1946)

Sept. 2, 1946: Police arrest more than two dozen men and women in a raid on the Fraternity Elysia nudist camp in La Tuna Canyon. (Valley Retrospective: The 1940s – LA Daily News)

In 1936, Charles and Lillian Richter moved into a small, elegant modernist house in Pasadena. It had windows up to ceiling height, which may have given their neighbours some unexpected views. For the Richters had become ardent nudists. A year earlier, in 1935, they had joined the Fraternity Elysia, located in the Los Angeles Hills on a 250-acre estate near Lake Elsinore and run by Hobart and Lura Glassey and their business partner Pete McConville. (The earth moved for him – Times Online. Report by Christopher Hudson – From The Sunday Times, October 29, 2006)

Charles Francis Richter (1900 – 1985), was an American seismologist and physicist. Richter is most famous as the creator of the Richter magnitude scale… (Charles Francis Richter – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Glassey v. State, 1947. “The facts of the case are as follows: Police officers using false names appeared at the entrance of the Fraternity Elysia, a property bounded on three sides by uninhabited hills, paid the customary visitor’s fee, and signed a registration form acknowledging acceptance of nudism as a wellspring or fountain-head of moral and health benefits. Observing a number of nude men, women, and children engaged in activities such as badminton, swimming, and sunbathing, the officers arrested a man and a woman who were acting as managers and charged them with violating an ordinance proscribing operation of facilities patronized by three or more nude persons not of the same sex. (Two nude badminton players not of the same sex would have been acceptable, it seems.) A municipal court found both guilty and the judge imposed sentences of 90 and 180 days for McConville and Glassey. The Supreme Court ruled that the appellants had not demonstrated that the ordinance unduly restricted personal liberties. The original decision stood.”

Source: Richter’s scale: measure of an earthquake, measure of a man by Susan Elizabeth Hough (Princeton University Press, 2007)

1935 nudist tea party By carbonated | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Image: 1935 nudist tea party | Flickr – Photo Sharing! (under Creative Commons license)