GLR November-December 2022

Nevertheless, Freud did not believe homosexuals were neces sarily unhappy and dysfunctional people; nor did they need to be “cured.” Dr. Abraham Brill, one of Freud’s early American promot ers and translators, was even more radical in his assessment. Writing in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease (1919), he reaffirmed that, “everyone is more or less homosexual, which enabled them to live in friendly relations with their fellow be ings of the same sex.” Most homosexuals, he claimed, did not want to be cured; nor could they be. The only homosexuals who did seek therapy were of the “compulsion neurotic type.” Psy choanalysis of homosexuals who were forced into therapy and who did not want to be cured was “simply a waste of time and money.” Brill argued that it was more useful to encourage the family to be broad-minded. Writing at the end of the Roaring Twenties, Dr. Clarence P. Oberndorf noted in the Urologic and Cutaneous Review (1929) that, at least in educated circles, American attitudes towards sex were far less Victorian. He even criticized as outdated Radclyffe Hall’s portrayal of the “dis tressed and fatalistic wail” of the lesbian heroine in The Well of Loneliness (1928). Upon Freud’s death in 1939, and with the U.S. entry into World War II, psychoanalytic views of homosexuality took a distinct turn for the worse. Psychoanalyst Sandor Rado in 1940 challenged Freudian orthodoxy by denying the universality of infantile bisexuality and by insisting that homosexuality was distinctly pathological and potentially curable. Typically, ana lysts blamed homosexuality on a close-binding, overprotective mother and a detached, hostile father. Some psychoanalysts even advocated the additional use of hormone and shock ther apies for recalcitrant patients who “posed too much resistance to treatment.” Psychoanalysis also gained enormous professional clout thanks to its involvement in the war effort. The Selective Serv ice wanted to screen out inductees who might buckle under pressure and undermine company morale. “Homosexual pro clivities” were one of the mental handicaps to be referred for

that friends or comrades believed he was homosexual, stared at him oddly, whispered insults like “cock sucker,” “woman,” “fairy,” and tried to engage him in fellatio or sodomy. Kempf explained that it resulted from “the pressure of uncontrollable perverse sexual cravings.” In the most severe cases, it became chronic and was indistinguishable from dementia præcox or schizophrenia. Ten years earlier, Freud had proposed that para noia was frequently the result of repressed homosexuality being transformed through the defense mechanisms of reaction for mation (“I hate him”) and projection (“he hates me”). Analysts increasingly believed that schizophrenia in general was caused by homosexuality. One analyst even called schizophrenia the “twin brother” of homosexuality. Homosexuality increasingly became the culprit for just about every other psychopathology. In addition to psychotic dis orders, it was connected to all neurotic disorders, alcoholism, even promiscuous heterosexuality (or Casanova syndrome). Thus Dr. Benjamin Karpman was exaggerating only slightly when he declared in 1937, “The problems of psychiatry will not be solved until we solve the problem of homosexuality.” § T HE PROBLEM OF HOMOSEXUALITY only grew after the war, par ticularly following the publication of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948), by Alfred C. Kinsey, Wardell Pomeroy, and Clyde Martin. The “Kinsey Report” disclosed astoundingly high rates of homosexual behavior (as well as masturbation and other perversities). It quickly became a global bestseller and in spired the formation of “homophile” groups such as the Matta chine Society. Many psychiatrists and sexologists objected to its findings and were offended by Kinsey’s sharp critiques of both hormonal and psychoanalytic explanations of homosexu ality. Most notably, Kinsey argued that sexual orientation was not binary (either hetero- or homosexual) or fixed over one’s lifespan. The thought that homosexuals were numerous and not all flamingly evident no doubt also fueled the gay purges that began in 1950. Like “Reds,” “sex perverts” might be corrosive

more expert scrutiny and exclusion. Dr. Manfred Guttmacher complained in Neu ropsychiatry in World War II (1966) that “there was that pathetic group of homo sexuals who had denied their abnormality to induction examiners and who had blindly hoped to adjust by living a robust life among thousands of normal military men. ... Others with strong latent tenden cies developed psychosomatic disorders and acute anxiety states.” Psychiatrists also assessed for “reclaimability” the thousands of armed forces members di agnosed with “pathological sexuality.” The stresses of war and crowded all male living conditions seem to have prompted numerous cases of “acute anx iety states” with “homosexual panic.” The term first appeared in Dr. Edward Kempf’s textbook Psychopathology (1921), which described typical cases in which a young man became convinced

The G & LR Left: Evelyn Hooker. Source unknown. Right: Alfred Kinsey 1894-1956, Harvard . Photo credit: Everett.

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