Late Life Manifesto

In 1966, Leonard Blank, Robert Roth, and two assistants administered the short-form Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and “draw a person” test to 102 East Coast nudists. They used engineering students and “suburbanites” as a control.

(MMPI asks fairly banal questions, there supposedly being a statistical correlation between patterns of answers and personality and pathology. In the “Draw a Person” test, the researcher gives the subject paper and pencil with the instruction to draw a person. It’s about self image. Interpretation is subjective, but there are standard clues.)

They found very little psychopathology among their nudists, with less among women. They did report more “deviant personality features” than their controls. Examples are sexual preoccupations, inhibitions, and body-image distortions. 

Nudist Society quotes Bland and Roth, “Social nudism may provide a sublimated outlet for personality features whose deviant form of expression would be voyeurism and exhibitionism., and, “Whatever the motives, the environment of social nudism may promote a benign influence on the nudist, perhaps a mental health influence.”

The last study (prior to Nudist Society’s) is probably, as the author’s say, “irrelevant to the present research," but if I could talk to one of the researchers, it would be Sandra Robinson, “participant-observer,” under the alias of Erin O’Shea. Robinson’s San Jose State master’s thesis was titled “Nudism: The Bare Facts,” but it sounds like it’s about various kinds of deliberate social nudity, “traditional nudists,” “contemporary nudists,” "Jaybirds or free-lance nudists,” and “commercial nudists.” Examples include “nudist camps, clubs, parties, and beaches, to nude art and photography, modeling, topless lingerie shows, and go-go dancing.”