The Week in Weird (Naked Therapy Edition)

Welcome back to a new week and a brand-new roundup of some of the strangest stories in circulation. This week's theme centers on interpersonal relationships, with stories about the validity of nudity in relation to therapy, marriage and making wedding dresses out of the most ephemeral and surprising of materials.

But we also have an interesting story about the how one psychologist developed a test to measure whether dogs are self-conscious and one about the ongoing development of space beer. Truly, we live in miraculous times.

If you think you're on top of all the weird news out there, jump ahead and take the Fark Weird News Quiz. If not, here's a recap:

How to remove a Freudian slip

Picture a therapist's office. A client is reclining on the couch, staring up at the ceiling and talking. Sometimes it's hard for him to focus, but the therapist guides him back onto topic with a comment or a question. The client glances over and stumbles again, pausing midthought. He's trying to discuss his recent slip-up while attempting to quit smoking, but instead of staying on topic, he begins drifting again as his mind wanders.

This would be a lot easier if his therapist weren't completely naked.

While the client is discussing his issues, his therapist is listening, and nodding ... and piece by tantalizing piece, stripping off every stitch of clothing except for her smart square-frame glasses. The client tries to avoid looking at the attractive brunette sitting stark naked less than 10 feet away, but seems to be fighting his mind's natural impulse to follow its own course in this situation.

The naked therapist, Sarah White, says that the removal of clothing is symbolic and represents an establishment of trust between herself and her client. She notes that the sessions, which begin online and gradually lead toward more direct interaction with clients, have the goal of showing that she has nothing to hide, figuratively and very literally.

While clinical psychologists scoff at the approach, White calls it "power through arousal" and claims that she's flipping the traditional approach of psychotherapy on its ear. Instead of trying to control the wild animal passions with the cold, analytical methodology of conventional therapy, she opens with lingerie, stockings or just skin, using the raw sexual energy to push issues into the open.

While its effectiveness thus far may be difficult to gauge, one thing is certain: The world would be a lot less tense if people could work out their differences without pants.

Yellow snow as scientific experiment

For a long time, psychologists have used a test to measure self-awareness. It's called the mirror test. Designed in the 1970s, it attempts to gauge self-awareness by determining whether an animal can recognize its own reflection in a mirror as an image of itself.

What researchers do is put somewhere on the animal a small but noticeable marking that would be visible only when the animal looks in the mirror (such as a spot on the forehead). If the animal recognizes its own reflection, it will reach up and touch the spot on itself out of curiosity. Animals that have passed the mirror test include chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas, bottlenose dolphins, elephants and magpies.

One animal that failed was the dog, humanity's trusted canine companion for millennia. Researcher Marc Bekoff of the University of Colorado wondered if dogs might be just as self-aware but far less reliant on their visual acuity and far more on their strongest sense: smell.

So he designed a slightly different variation of the mirror test, but instead of putting his animal in front of a mirror, he followed his dog around on a walk and scooped up its urine out of the snow.

He then redeposited the yellow snow farther down the path and measured how long his dog took to sniff that spot compared with other animal markings. Bekoff noticed that his dog spent a much shorter period examining its own scent than other animal markings on the trail, indicating that it was already aware of itself.

Which just goes to show that even yellow snow can have scientific value in the proper context.

A very special day for the flushing bride

Spring is almost upon us, and this means that the annual marriage onslaught is nearly here. As TV characters get engaged and far-flung wedding invitations come trickling in, it's a dreadful time to be in a long-term relationship that hasn't taken the Next Obvious Step.

The exquisite white china gears of Big Wedding are grinding forward again, and jewelers are ramping up guilt-heavy glossy advertisements of engagement rings ranging in price from Sweet Mercy That's Expensive to Oh God There Goes My Savings. And that's just the ring. Weddings also involve catering and drinks, chapels and reception halls, docile and elegant wedding invitations in a variety of delicate script fonts, and the most dangerous element of all: the wedding dress.

For men, even the grisliest footage of war, death or poverty can never compare with the chilling horror of events like the Running of the Brides and the brutal carnage of the aftermath.

Thankfully there are better ways to get a wedding dress. In addition to wedding dresses in white satin, lace, silk and taffeta, the more adventurous are making wedding dresses out of toilet paper.


Fortunately, the toilet paper wedding dresses aren't intended for wearing to an actual marriage ceremony. It's part of an annual contest by a wedding website to come up with creative approaches to be money-conscious when planning weddings. Entries must be the most attractive, wearable dresses that can be fashioned using nothing more than toilet paper, tape, and glue.

Contest winners get cash prizes up to $1,000, which buys quite a bit for the blushing bride.

Which is important when she's standing at the altar next to her Prince Charmin.

Getting your drink on ... while in orbit

Australia might not be well known for its space program, but that doesn't mean the country isn't ready for the impending rush of space tourism over the next couple decades. While other nations have focused on expensive rocketry experimentation, Australia is keeping its focus on a more important element of orbital enjoyment: brewing beer in space.

Rather than concentrating on the mind-boggling costs of measuring thrust, orbital trajectories and re-entry friction, the clever Aussies will focus on how to entertain space tourists with a space beer designed for maximum enjoyment in minimal gravity.

The beer has been developed as a joint project between space engineering firm Saber Astronautics Australia and the Australian 4 Pines Brewing Co. Testing will take place soon using a modified aircraft that will fly high into the atmosphere and then pitch downward to simulate weightlessness.

Researchers will then measure the effects of the beer in the weightless environment, including alcohol content, carbonation, best containers for storing the beer and biometric data on the research subjects testing it. (This is, frankly, one of the very few times where it's worthwhile to be a research subject.)

Researchers will also make sure the beer doesn't have the same effects in space that it does on earth: severely increasing the pull of gravity on the test subjects.

Just be careful. In space, no one can hear you vomit.

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