Why did I choose this photo taken many years ago? Why did I even take it back then? It was my first intentional self-portrait that dared to challenge my self-identity but that wasn’t the reason. The truth is, I don’t know why I took it, nor did I know why back then. It just happened, what can best be described as a “what the hell did I just do?” act. Despite what all previous photos had told the world about me, this semi-nude photo contradicted the carefully crafted image of the quiet, conservative, make-no-waves image that I had come to believe was the real me.
Of course way down deep, I knew better, as did my wife and children. In spite of my best intentions, there were other moments where my clothes fell off and likely caused some concern, usually when we were camping and there were less public beaches and sand dunes involved. “What if someone sees you don’t have your pants/shorts/bathing suit on?”
As with my first post here on my “new” naturist blog site, this post was written, for the most part, in the distant past. I had written the basic core of this post in Costa Rica in March, 2010. I used a different photo back then, chosen after the post had been written, taken specifically for the original post. Now, given the opportunity to revisit the original post I have changed my mind about the image that I want to be used, an image that I hope better fits.
In my culture a man is considered normal or better-than-normal if he is tall, light-skinned, and trim and fit. I am small, short, and not a candidate for any “hunk” status as the defined six-pack abs are missing. I am also dark-complexioned and quite hairy all over. Society has men be men with an active sex life that woos many and scoring many conquests. I only wanted to be desired by one woman. One woman finding me to be the man of her sexual dreams was my dream. Of course that only set me up for maintaining my virginity into my twenties. And, like so many other men, it set me up to dislike my body. I devalued the physical man that I was, and I still wrestle with the belief that my body is my enemy. You’d think that growing older would have solved the body issues problem. But the truth is, today in 2018, my body still is my enemy.
So, I chose this photo, an image that is explicit though its lines are soft enough to give the photo a certain artistic quality that saves it from being just another opportunity for nude exhibitionism. But in all honesty, can I deny the intent?
“If anything of importance is devalued in our conscious life, and perishes – so runs the law – there arises a compensation in the unconscious. We may see in this analogy to the conservation of energy in the physical world, for our psychic processes also have a quantitative, energic aspect. No psychic value can disappear without being replaced by another of equivalent intensity. This is a fundamental rule which is repeatedly verified in the daily practice of the psychotherapist and never fails.” (Carl Jung,The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man, Modern Man in Search of Soul, 1933)
These words written more than eighty years ago, before I was even born addresses the idea of how devaluing ourselves results in problems. What has been devalued in my life? Well, I guess that the answer isn’t as easy to state as I thought it would be. For so many years I devalued myself as a short man, one who didn’t fit in. I lived in redneck country when I left my youth as a city kid. I was the odd man out and soon believed that I even looked odd. That feeling has never really left me and I am just now learning to accept that perhaps I am not odd as I came to believe. After all, I have all the same parts as other men and few of those other men I have come to know in my life have a perfect body.
There was no question in my mind that any woman would actually find me attractive, especially in midlife, I was certain that should I ever find myself without my wife I would likely remain alone. I never did understand what my wife ever saw in me. I was and am certain it had nothing to do with my looks or sexual attraction. She saw something buried under the skin that she valued, likely that old expression holds true here – opposites attract – we are fully opposite (INFP versus ESTJ) in so much.
Of course this lack of body and sexual value for myself had to find another outlet. Dreams became a hot and steamy affair. The face of anima often came looking like a harlot, tempting me. Strange how all of these dreams did nothing but leave me feeling guilty as though is some way, I had cheated on my marriage. The repressed contents also found a veiled presence in poetry.
My outer life served as a reverse mirror for what was happening within. Denying self, denying need all in hopes of becoming more acceptable only served to have anima become even more a temptress. I saw myself as more and more unworthy because of the dirt that was bubbling within. It was only to be expected that something would break.
“The doctor in me refuses point blank to consider the life of a people as something that dos not conform to a psychological law. For him the psyche of a people is only a somewhat more complex structure than the psyche of an individual. Moreover, has not a poet spoken of the “nations of his soul”? And quite correctly, it seems to me, for in one of its aspects the psyche is not individual, but is derived from the nation, from the collectivity, from humanity even. In some way or other we are part of a single, all-embracing psyche, a single “greatest man,” the homo maximus, to quote Swedenborg.” (Jung, The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man, Modern Man in Search of Soul, 1933)
“The psyche of a people” is a powerful statement. When one thinks of it, it is something we have always known. We have no problem with the idea of a culture, a nation having a certain way of being and believing and acting in concert with each other; something that defies logic where one sees a large group of individuals in any particular culture. One would expect a lot more variation. Travelling has accentuated the notion of a collective psyche. And in accepting this idea, I see how my psyche is connected to the collective regardless of my sense of alienation.
In my culture, shame of body, shame of sexual desire is embraced by the collective of a mostly conservative people. And in the collective, of which I am a part, the body is best hidden under layers and layers. Even at a beach, bikinis are sometimes worn but are typically covered with tee-shirts and baggy shorts or some sort of material. Shame of body, a sexual body, is also hidden under layers of fat. If one can look unappealing sexually, then perhaps one will kill sexual desire within. But it doesn’t work and we cover ourselves in tattoos, we pierce our bodies, and spend exorbitant amounts of money for clothing behind which, if we are lucky, the truth of our bodies are hidden.
So we repress as individuals, repress as cultures, repress as a human race trying to proclaim that we are beings that transcend fascination with the human body and human sexuality. And in this repression, we end up hurting ourselves and others. We become tyrannical. And it is here where the deviant within surfaces to lurk in the world of porn and perversion, a dark world. And in defence of ourselves, we go on crusades against others who dare to challenge our insane war against our naked humanity. Today’s conflict in Canada, at the beginning of 2018, concerning nude swimming venues for family participation, is just the tip of the larger conflict where the collective unconscious seems to be winning, a war of darkness versus the light of awareness.
And as each of us become more conscious, we do influence the consciousness of the whole. Perhaps there is real hope. Maybe I am not so absurd, not a dirty old man after all. Perhaps I am just an ordinary human.