Woolfian Boundaries - Clemson University

Real Bodies and the Psychology of Clothes
terrifi c, the features distorted, and the eyes wild and strained”…. Th e Polynesian
Führer sometimes “continued for two or three days possessed by the spirit or
deity; a piece of native cloth, of a peculiar kind, worn round one arm, was an
indication of inspiration, or of the indwelling of the god with the individual
who wore it”…. In Germany and Italy the inspiration of Hitler and Mussolini
is permanent. Hence the wearing of a piece of cloth of a peculiar kind (e.g.
inscribed with the swastika) has also become permanent and has been extended
from the god-inspired leader to the leader-inspired followers, for it indicates
that the wearer has accepted the inspiration either directly or indirectly. (Quack,
Quack! 45-47; internal quotations from Frazer’s Th e Golden Bough).
So far we have seen that both Flügel and Leonard Woolf are concerned with the relations
between mind/psychology, discourse/symbolic systems (including visual and verbal
symbols), and the body. Th eir modernising projects spring from the conviction that the
“symbol” upholds its authority by the combined forces of id and super-ego, and consist
in liberating the conscious mind from the primitive, archaic instincts of the body and the
moral response of the super-ego. While Leonard Woolf emphasises the education of the
rational mind as a counter-measure to the Nazi’s primary object of education, “the rearing
of strong bodies” (Quack, Quack! 81), Flügel is particularly concerned with the idea that
modernising the mind eff ectively depends on modernising the body. Hence the project
of the clothes psychology, of describing how bodies and minds are fashioned by clothing;
how bodies signify and perform within a culturo-symbolic order; and how it is possible to
sublimate states of interiority onto a bodily exterior.
Integrating clothing into a general theory of human development, Flügel understands
dress as a gendered discourse invested with narcissistic/exhibitionistic and phallic
symbolic value. On the journey from naked infant to clothed and civilised adult, clothing
emerges as an important component in drawing the infant out of the primary, iddominated
condition. Simplifi ed, clothing mediates paternal law, the prohibition placed
upon the narcissistic and auto-erotic pleasures the infant gains from his or her naked
body. Clothing also signifi es the individual’s position with respect to the phallus. Th e case
among primitive people for men to be more decorated than women, and the remnants of
this in some European customs, suggests that men are inherently more inclined to decoration
and women more inclined to modesty in dress. Traces of the primitive state are seen
in military and ecclesiastical hierarchies and in academic robes, also in the forms of social
convention which require men to temporarily remove a garment as a sign of respect, for
example the hat on entering a church. Th us, “In men, castration itself is symbolised by
the removal of garments, while the possession or display of the corresponding garments
serves, in virtue of their phallic symbolism, as a reassurance against the fears of castration”
(Psychology of Clothes 104-5).
In modern times, according to Flügel, sexual diff erence divides along diff erent lines.
Apart from the anachronistic remnants of primitive phallic display referred to above, modern
males are ruled by clothes regimes abounding “in features which symbolise [man’s]
devotion to the principles of duty, renunciation, self-control” (Psychology of Clothes 113),
eff ectively preventing sublimation of infantile narcissism onto clothing. Sublimated narcissism
of this kind is understood to be of benefi t to the individual and culture, carrying
75