What Makes Naked Therapy Different?

What Makes Naked Therapy Different?
October 19, 2010

Since the discipline of therapy was invented over 100 years ago by Sigmund Freud, the “sacred” and “hidden” status of the therapist has been rigidly defended. According to the High Priests of Psychoanalysis, therapists must NEVER reveal themselves to their patients save in the most intellectual and calculated of ways.

The field of Naked Therapy, which I look to pioneer, takes the opposite, and, I believe, healthier approach. Instead of asking her patient to rid himself of his repressions and false beliefs while simultaneously hiding behind a wall of repression and status, the Naked Therapist shows herself as she is – naked and unafraid. By showing herself, both physically and psychologically, she moves from being someone who simply “talks the talk” to someone who “walks the walk,” and this makes all the difference.

Further, by showing herself the Naked Therapist can also arouse her patient, and by experiencing and accepting the arousal he feels for his therapist, the patient is better able to experience and accept arousal in life. In other words, by becoming naked before her patient, the Naked Therapist allows a number of things to happen in the therapeutic context that could not otherwise take place – she allows her patient to desire her, she becomes a living example of fearlessness and self-pride to him, and she develops a level of intimacy with the patient that in a traditional, clothed session would be impossible.

It is through this relationship of desire, pride and intimacy that the Naked Therapist helps her patient heal himself of guilt, shame, and fear and become a more powerful individual. For in the end, all psychoses and depressions are, in a sense, a phobia toward being naked before the world. And by being naked before her patient, the Naked Therapist proves by direct example that this phobia can be overcome.

It is thus that Naked Therapy heals and guides more effectively than its repressed predecessor. For just as Freud himself said, the goal of psychotherapy is to allow the patient to love and to work. And there is no better way to gain the confidence, desire-rich and shame-free thinking one needs “to love and to work” than to engage in the thrilling and eye-opening process of Naked Therapy.