Summer Camp Cum Psychotherapy

Timothy Noah at Slate on, “What your enjoyment of sleep-away camp, or lack of same, says about your character.” How much did these hideaways determine our adult psychology? “If there’s a more reliable Rorschach than sleep-away camp, I’d like to see it. How you responded to being shipped off to a cluster of cedar cabins beside a mountain lake; to being taught Native American crafts, chants, and songs of dubious authenticity; and to being subjected to various painful hazing rituals—many of them involving underwear—reveals an awful lot about your fundamental character. If, as the Duke of Wellington claimed, the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, then the psychotherapy bills of our own great nation were run up on the tetherball courts of Camp Weecheewachee (or whatever the hell your summer camp was called).”