CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE

HOMOPHOBIA IN PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH:

METHODOLOGICAL, HISTORICAL, AND PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES

A Thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in

Psychology

by Preston Reese

January, 1983 Copyright 1982 Preston Reese The Thesis of Preston Reese is approved:

Lawrence E. Sneden II, PhD

'1Hchard W. ·Smith-; Plib

Karla Butler, PhD (Chair)

California State University, Northridge

ii "In an expanding universe, time is on the side of the outcast. Those who once inhabited the suburbs of human contempt find that without changing their address they eventually live in the metropolis."

Quentin Crisp (1968)

iii TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface iii List of Tables ...... v Abstract ...... vi

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION...... 1

CHAPTER TWO: HOMOSEXUALITY IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ...... 8

CHAPTER THREE: THE SCHISM BETWEEN PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY ...... 36

CHAPTER FOUR: HOMOSEXUALITY AND PSYCHIATRY ...... 44

CHAPTER FIVE: THE LANGUAGE OF HOMOPHOBIA...... 68

CHAPTER SIX: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF THE PSYCHOLOGICAL LITERATURE ON HOMOSEXUALITY POST-1974 76

CHAPTER SEVEN: METHODOLOGY, SUBJECTS, AND THE FUTURE OF GAY RESEARCH...... 94

CHAPTER EIGHT: EPILOGUE-- THE CRISIS IN PSYCHOLOGY .. 122

References ...... 135

iv LIST OF TABLES

Table

1. Focus of Study in Psychological Research on Homosexuality (1975-1980) ...... •...... 82

2. Level of Analysis in Psychological Research on Homosexuality (1975-1980) .. ...•...... • 33

3. Participants Used in Psychological Research on Homosexuality (1975-1980) . . . • ...... • . . . . . • . • . . 84

4. Methods Utilized in Psychological Research on Homosexuality (1975-1980) . . . . • . . • . . . . . • ...... • 86

5. Sex of Researcher(s) in Psychological Research on Homosexuality (1975-1980) ...•.....•...... 87

6. Sex of Researcher x Homophobia in Psychological Research on Homosexuality (1975 1980) ...... •••. 88

7. Homophobia x Geographical Area in Psychological Research on Homosexuality (1975-1980) ..•...... 90

v ABSTRACT

HOMOPHOBIA IN PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH:

METHODOLOGICAL, HISTORICAL, AND PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES

by

Preston Reese

Master of Arts in Psychology

In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association declas­ sified homosexuality as an illness; the American Psycholog­ ical Association adopted a similar resolution in 1975. The post-decision psychological and psychiatric literatures on homosexuality were examined by means of an empirical study.

A computer search elicited 214 journal articles published during the period 1975-1980; these were analyzed on various dimensions including level of homophobia (bias against ho-

vi mosexual persons), place of origin, sex of researcher, and theoretical orientation.

A chi-square test revealed that female researchers are less likely to hold prejudicial attitudes toward homosex­ uality, and a tentative conclusion was drawn that psycho­ analytic research conducted in the Eastern United States has the strongest anti-homosexuality bias. It was shown that, overall, the majority of the post-decision research on gay people is not anti-homosexual.

The study of homosexuality was placed in broad and varying contexts, with emphases on cross-cultural data, historical antecedents of current prejudices, discussion of the functions of language, and an examination of under­ lying values and assumptions in the social sciences.

The methodology of research into homosexuality came under close scrutiny, highlighting experimenter bias ef­ fects and the problems of obtaining representative samples.

Guidelines and implications for future research were dis­ cussed.

An epilogue raised larger issues surrounding the ef­ fectiveness of the entire hard-science model of psychology, with the suggestion that a paradigm shift may be occurring.

vii CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

The single greatest finding in the combined social

sciences is that the variability of human behavior is far greater than its uniformity. Yet in current American psychology, as well as in the culture at large, a premium

is placed upon the reduction, negation, or elimination of variabilities. Experimental methodologies, personality theories, and statistical tests all rely heavily on the concept and measurement of normative behavior, of averages, of minimization of deviation from the norm. Even the ubiq­ uitous Analysis of Variance, which purports at least in name to examine variability, uses means to represent all the individuals in a group.

1 2

Psychologist and physician William H. Sheldon spent years attempting to classify human physiques and their corollary personality traits within the confines of three

somatotypes. After categorizing thousands of American males, Sheldon (1954) reflected on how inadequate the con­ cept of average can be: "When asked by a patient what the latter's correct weight should be, the doctor has been in a position to tell the patient only what the average hap­ pens to be for men of his same age and stature. This is like being told by a shoe salesman what the average shoe size is for men of your age and stature. That average shoe may miss fitting your foot by half the width of your foot, and the average weight of men your age and stature may miss your own optimal weight by seventy pounds" (p. 1).

In abdicating the concept of average, Downs and

Bleibtreu (1972) suggest, "It would be far more useful to attempt to define the limits of the range of variation in any human characteristic and then be able to place a particular person somewhere between these extremes, rather than to consider any deviation from the average as an exception, deviance, or pathology" (p. 295).

For the most part, however, American psychology has typically rejected the paradigm of variability as normality in favor of a model which often views non-normative behav­ ior as pathological.

The effects of such a choice have been manifold. Psy- 3

chiatry and clinical psychology have become, in this centu­ ry, the new arbiters of taste and judgment, and have gener­ ally reinforced existing middle-class cultural values as regards sex roles, marriage, work, and conformity. We are left with a cultural ideal unattainable by most, unap­ proachable by many.

One group which has, until quite recently, been con­ sidered to lie far outside the boundaries of normalcy is comprised of the estimated twenty million homosexuals living in the United States (Bell & Weinberg, 1978). This group has a history of stigmatization sufficient to fill hundreds of volumes, but let us here touch upon the heart of the matter as regards the mental health professions.

Until 1973, homosexuals were said to be 'mentally dis­ ordered' in the official nomenclature of the American

Psychiatric Association. Then in December of 1973, the

Trustees ruled, by a unanimous vote with two abstentions, that "homosexuality shall no longer be listed as a mental disorder" (American Psychiatric Association, 1973), thus effecting an overnight cure for some twenty million Amer­ icans.

The diagnostic category of homosexuality was replaced by •sexual orientation disturbance,' a new category which describes "individuals whose sexual interests are directed primarily toward people of the same sex and who are either disturbed by, in conflict with, or wish to change their 4

sexual orientation. This diagnostic category is distin­ guished from homosexuality, which by itself does not neces­ sarily constitute a psychiatric disorder" (American Psychi­ atric Association, 1973).

In the same bulletin, the Trustees announced the adoption of the following resolution: "Whereas homosex­ uality per se implies no impairment in judgment, stability, reliability, or general social or vocational capabilities, therefore, be it resolved that the American Psychiatric

Association deplores all public and private discrimination against homosexuals in such areas as employment, housing, public accomodation, and licensing and declares that no burden of proof of such judgment, capacity, or reliability shall be placed upon homosexuals greater than that imposed on any other persons. Further the American Psychiatric

Association supports and urges the enactment of civil rights legislation at the local, state, and federal level that would offer homosexual citizens the same protections now guaranteed to others on the basis of race, creed, color, etc. Further, the American Psychiatric Association supports and urges the repeal of all discriminatory legis­ lation singling out homosexual acts by consenting adults in private."

With these strong words, the Association sought to invite one aspect of human variability into the circle of normality. 5

The American Psychological Association soon followed suit with a resolution which supported the action of the

American Psychiatric Association, and which added the following paragraph to the original text: "Further, the

American Psychological Association urges all mental health professionals to take the lead in removing the stigma of mental illness that has long been associated with homo­ sexual orientations" (American Psychological Association,

1975).

One might expect that with such clear statements of official position from the top, the message would have filtered down into the ranks to produce changes in thera­ peutic stances, curricula, and not least of all in the domain of research. After all, research ostensibly oper­ ates at the cutting edge of knowledge; surely the end was at hand of attempts to equate homosexuality with pathol­ ogy.

But was this to be the case? This thesis will address itself, by means of an empirical study of the post-decision research on homosexuality, to the question of what portion of the recent psychological literature remains culture­ bound and thus virulently homophobic.

The term 'homophobia' has achieved general utility in the psychological literature on homosexuality during the last decade; it denotes fear or hatred of homosexuals, whether on an individual or cultural level. The word 6

'homophobia' has been widely credited (Berger, 1977, p.283;

Altman, 1982, p. 63) to George Weinberg, in his Society and the Healthy Homosexual (1972). However, the term was used at least a year prior to this in a journal article by K. T.

Smith (1971).

Churchill (1967, p. 82) earlier used the neologism

'homoerotophobia' to describe the same phenomenon, and it seems possible that Smith (1971) may simply have shortened

Churchill's more linguistically accurate term to the pres­ ently popular 'homophobia.' Of course, long before the word 'homophobia' existed, Geoffrey Gorer had written about it as an entity, in his classic The American People

(1948, pp. 106-132).

In addition to the empirical overview of the recent literature, this thesis concerns itself with a number of historical, methodological, and philosophical issues: what is the background of the uneasy relationship between homosexual people and the mental health professions? how does language both reflect and influence attitudes toward homosexuality? what problems are involved in selecting a representative sample of gay people?

Chapters 3, 7, and 8 of this thesis will step back to take a still broader view of the way in which the science of psychology operates. Questions to be addressed include: how has the historical separation of psychology from phi­ losophy affected the nature of psychological inquiry? how 7

effective is the current paradigm? is a paradigm shift

occurring? what values are implicit in the methods psy­ chology has chosen to conduct its work? are there meaning­

ful alternatives to these methods?

The present paper is predicated upon two assumptions: that homosexuality per se is not a pathological state, and that psychological research can best be understood only when viewed in philosophical and historical context. These values are made explicit from the outset in the belief that all psychological inquiry is governed by underlying values

(Koch, 1974), and that the usual pretenses to scientific objectivity are both misleading and counterproductive.

The controversy surrounding the study of homosexual­

ity has been beneficial in forcing a recognition of the

influences of cultural and personal biases on scientific methods and results. This controversial quality has been

lamented by some as having unduly introduced values into the objective nature of science; rather, it should be applauded for helping to unveil the values and assumptions which are present in all psychological research. The field of homosexuality is a rich one in which to explore the nature of experimenter bias and the nonobjectivity of science. CHAPTER TWO:

HOMOSEXUALITY IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Presenting a history of the homosexual in Western society alone runs the risk of reinforcing the commonly held view that homosexuality has always been shunned by the peoples of the world. This danger can be defused by examination of non-Western cultures and of the long-sup­ pressed evidence that homosexuality found a marked degree of acceptance throughout much of the Christian Era as well.

Let us first turn to the cross-cultural evidence pro­ vided by the field of anthropology. Everyone 'knows• that homosexuality has been forbidden since the beginning of

8 9

time, just as surely as the fact that war is inevitable since it has always been with us. Yet as it turns out, both war and the forbidding of all homosexual behavior are recent phenomena on the human scene, and are non-universal even 1n our own time.

In the perspective of some three million years of hominid history (Birdsell, 1975), the past six thousand years, or what we commonly call History, can be seen as a brief moment in time. But since this is the milieu in which we live, it becomes commonplace to speak and behave as though this is the way humans have 'always' lived.

This not only reflects the hubris of Western society, but also the standard ethnocentrism found in every culture in the world. Societies believe that their way is the right way and the only way despite, or perhaps because of, the incredible diversity which various cultures exhibit.

To believe otherwise would weaken the social glue which holds human societies together.

There have been cultures where, as in our own, members who work hard and are helpful are seen in a highly favor­ able light; there are cultures where a member .. who enjoys work and likes to be helpful is .•• neurotic and regarded as silly" (Benedict, 1932, p. 74).

There exist today societies in which violence is ln­ stitutionalized and ritualized (as with boxing and foot­ ball), while at least one contemporary society, that of the 10

Tasaday, does not even find it necessary to have words in its language for war, murder, or interpersonal violence

(Nance, 1975).

There is a special problem here toward the end of the twentieth century, in that Western society has devoured or

'won over' so many other cultures that Western ways are encircling the globe and wiping out evidence of other styles of life. Thus the danger is increasing that we may soon establish a global culture based on the mistaken belief that life revolves around fast-food emporia and gasoline stations, meanwhile obliterating the mirrors that other cultures hold up for us to see ourselves.

We will increasingly be forced to turn to a time gone by, in order to gather evidence about truly different so­ cieties. We must recognize that many Americans continue to believe that 1492 was the year in which their continent was discovered, when, in fact, as Vonnegut (1973, p. 10) points out, "millions of human beings were already living full and imaginative lives on the continent in 1492. That was simply the year in which sea pirates began to cheat and rob and kill them."

As anthropologist Paul Bohannon (1980) has remarked,

"the questions we are asking are all very shallow in their time dimensions. By shallow, I mean they go back only four or five hundred years. In taking such short views, we can't really see what is happening" {p. 29). 11

Yet in spite of ethnocentrism and the spread of Amer­

ican values, as late as 1951 in their landmark Patterns of

Sexual Behavior, authors Ford and Beach were able to state

that "our own society disapproves of any form of homosexual

behavior for males and females of all ages. In this it

differs from the majority of human societies" (p. 125).

The authors go on to describe and tabulate information on

seventy-six societies other than our own for which sexual

information was available. They conclude that in 64% of

these societies, "homosexual activities of one sort or

another are considered normal and socially acceptable for

certain members of the community" (p. 130).

Ford and Beach provide reports on societies in which

male homosexuality is compulsory at least for certain peri­

ods during a man's life, as with the Keraki of New Guinea

and the Aranda of Australia. The authors comment that,

among the Siwan of Africa, "males are singled out as pecu­

liar if they do not indulge in these homosexual activities"

(p. 132) and that the Siwan "talk about their masculine

love affairs as openly as they discuss their love of women"

(p. 132).

Ford and Beach were also able to gather information on

institutionalized forms of female homosexuality among the

Aranda, the Chukchee, Crow Indians, the Objiwa, Samoans, and other societies too numerous to list. They describe,

for example, the custom of the Haitians, by which if a 12

woman does not find pleasure with a husband, she shall seek another woman as a sexual partner (p. 133).

Lending additional depth to their study, Ford and

Beach go on to describe homosexual behavior among sub­ human primates and lower mammals. They document homosex­ ual alliances, both sexual and social, among monkeys, por­ poises, guinea pigs, rats, dogs, and lions. The authors conclude that "the cross-cultural and cross-species compar­ isons ••• combine to suggest that a biological tendency

[for homosexuality] is inherent in most if not all mammals including the human species •••. The basic mammalian capac­ ity for sexual inversion tends to be obscured in societies like our own which forbid such behavior and classify it as unnatural" ( p. 143) •

Since the time that Ford and Beach helped to open the anthropological doors, an avalanche of cross-cultural and cross-species research has supported their findings, in areas as diverse as woman/woman marriage in Africa (Krige,

1974; Obbo, 1976; Oboler, 1980), elevation of male homosex­ uals to the position of priest or shaman among American

Indians (Sturtevant, 1978), and female pairings of seagulls in Southern California (Hunt & Hunt, 1977) •

Yet it is only since the opening of the 1980s that a scholarly reevaluation of what we commonly call History has been undertaken, insofar as homosexuality is concerned. As recently as the late 1970s, world-renown historians Will 13

and Ariel Durant were able to state on national television, in all seriousness, that homosexuality was the primary cause of the fall of the Roman Empire.

A substantially different view of homosexuality is to be found in John Boswell's Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (1980). In this revisionist and schol­ arly history, Boswell details not only the well-known his­ torical intolerance of gay people, but also the lesser­ known periods of acceptance during the Christian Era. Bos­ well has taken the significant step of acquiring facility in foreign languages (both ancient and contemporary) so that he might avoid the problem of "the longevity of prej­ udice against gay people and their sexuality [which] has resulted in the deliberate falsification of historical records concerning them" (p. 17). Thus Boswell is able to go directly to source materials which have not been altered by hands in later centuries.

This business of translations is not to be taken lightly, nor has it been in the past. The first version of the Bible made by direct translation from the Hebrew and Greek into English was the work of William Tyndale in the 1500s. He met bitter opposition, was accused of in­ tentionally perverting certain passages, and saw his New

Testament burned as "untrue translations." Tyndale was eventually "betrayed into the hand of his enemies, and in

October 1536, was publicly executed and burned at the 14

stake" (Holy Bible, 1952, p. iii).

But before Boswell, it is instructive to turn first

to other works on homosexuality in history. Only the

briefest history is feasible here, but it is included with

an eye toward providing both an overview itself, and a look

at how history can be used as a political and social tool.

Such an overview will also provide a background for the

examination of recent research on homosexuality and the way in which cultural values may determine the attitudes

of scientists and historians.

Historian Arno Karlen has written extensively on the

history of homosexuality in Western civilization; his work

typifies the pre-Boswell view of written history. Karlen

suggests from the outset (1971b) that homosexuality was

absolutely forbidden by the ancient Hebrews, dismissing

the claims of Bachofen (1967) and others that the Hebrews

originally had been one of the Great Mother cults that

sprouted in that part of the world and which accepted homo­

sexuals. In any case, the Hebrews by Old Testament times

had most certainly institutionalized anti-homosexuality in

their legal codes, specifically as regarded temple prosti­

tutes. Their neighbors in Assyria and Egypt had similarly

codified anti-gay strictures.

According to Karlen (1980), the Hebrew tradition be­

came increasingly anti-homosexual during the Christian Era; whereas the Hebrews "saw no value in chastity for its own 15

sake" (p. 76), Christian theologians expounded the idea that all sexuality which did not lead to procreation was sinful, culminating in Thomas Acquinas, who "expanded and further systematized these ideas and the results became

Church doctrine" (p. 84). Karlen theorizes that even during the Dark Ages, about which we have very little ln­ formation, it is "fairly sure that churchmen and the newly converted 'barbarian' tribes shared pretty much the same formal values about homosexuality" (p. 85).

Thus Karlen paints an unbroken chain of anti-homosex­ uality in the West for the past few thousand years, at least as regards the Judea-Christian branch of culture, while suggesting that "the rise of Christianity did not create but only perpetuated hostility to homosexuality"

(p. 85).

Another significant branch of our cultural heritage was inherited from the Greeks who, unlike the Hebrews, are popularly thought of as having institutionalized homosex­ uality at least in certain strata of their Golden Age so­ ciety. Karlen, however, calls this a "modern myth," stat­ ing that "ancient Greece's •acceptance' of homosexuality ... remains common knowledge- to all who have not read the primary sources" (1980, p. 80). Nor has Karlen read the primary sources in the original language, but we will let that rest for a moment.

Karlen's thesis is that the Greek approval of homosex- ' . 16

uality is the result of various rewritings of history, one of which took place in ancient Greece itself:

"Homosexuality was increasingly referred to in Greek literature and depicted in Greek art from the sixth century

B. C. on-- in the poetry of Sappho and Anacreon, the prose of Plato, the plays of Aeschylus. In fact, Greece was rewriting ancient Mycenaean myth at this time to fit its very different sensibility. Hercules, Zeus, and Poseidon were given homosexual escapades; Aeschylus retold the sto­ ry of Achilles and Patroclus, making them lovers ..• " (Kar­ len, 1980, p. 79).

Thus in essense, Karlen's argument suggests that the reason we believe the ancient Greeks approved of homosexual behavior is because the ancient Greeks rewrote even older myths in such a way as to celebrate homosexuality. If

Karlen is trying to demonstrate that the Greeks did not approve of homosexuality, then his analysis seems circu­ itous and even contradictory.

Karlen goes on to state that further rewritings oc­ curred during the Renaissance and the late 1800s, which increasingly elevated the status of homosexuals in the eyes of history. But in the few passages where Karlen is willing to acknowledge even the existence of homosexuality among the ancient Greeks, he equates it with pederasty or misogyny. Worth noting in this context is Seltman's (1962) very different thesis that the male homosexual subcultures 17

of ancient Greece and Rome became increasingly visible and mainstream as the status of women improved, a situation which is in fact analogous to the United States after 1970.

Karlen even dismisses Plato's Symposium, a pinnacle of literary praise for homosexuality, as being "hardly [sug­ gestive of] vast social acceptance" (1980, p. 80).

John Boswell, Professor of Ancient History at Yale

University, has challenged this view in his aforementioned

Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality. He sug­ gests that the Greco-Roman world indeed enjoyed a wide ac­ ceptance and approval of homosexual behavior, perhaps even more than we have popularly believed.

Boswell's most significant contribution was providing the reader with accurate, unexpurgated new translations of ancient texts, thus creating alternatives to the heavy­ handed censorship and alterations of the Victorian age:

"In a manuscript of Ovid's Art of Love, for example, a phrase which originally read, 'A boy's love appealed to me less• was emended by a medieval moralist to read, 'A boy's love appealed to me not at all,' and a marginal note informed the reader, 'Thus you may be sure that Ovid was not a sodomite.•

"Crudities of this sort are of course easily detected, and more modern ages devised subtler means of disguising gay sentiments and sexuality. Changing the gender of pronouns has been popular at least since Michaelangelo's 18

grandnephew employed this means to render his uncle's

sonnets more acceptable to the public; and scholars have

continued the ruse even where no one's reputation was

involved: when the Persian moral fables of Sa'di were

translated into English in the early nineteenth century,

Francis Gladwin conscientiously transformed each story

about gay love into a heterosexual romance by altering the

offending pronouns" (Boswell, 1980, p. 18).

This problem has not been limited to the mere substi­

tution of pronouns and the switching of gender: Sometimes

their anxiety to reinterpret or disguise accounts of homo­

sexuality has induced translators to inject wholly new con­

cepts into texts, as when the translators of a Hittite law

apparently regulating homosexual marriage insert words which completely alter its meaning or when Graves 'trans­

lates' a nonexistent clause in Suetonius to suggest that a

law prohibits homosexual acts" (pp. 20-21).

Boswell suggest from the outset that "Athenians and

Romans were quite open about homosexual feelings, and gay

relationships were 'public' in the sense of being frankly

acknowledged and generally accepted" (p. 22).

Throughout the course of the book, Boswell details

centuries of gay acceptance interrupted by periods of in­

tolerance. He discovers that it was 533 A.D. before the

first anti-gay legislation was enacted (p. 171) and that

the only surviving civil statute outlawing homosexuality 19

from the era of Charlemagne is, in fact, a forgery written for political and religious reasons by an early translator

( p. 177) .

According to Boswell, mistranslations and censorship have robbed us of an accurate sense of gay history which would include, for example, extensive periods during the

Middle Ages in which gay people were openly accepted and celebrated in song and in ecclesiastical writings. As

Chesser (1971, p. 131) has remarked, "It is hard for many people today to enter into this state of mind •••. When

Canon Montefiore suggested that Christ may have had a homosexual personality he was met with shocked indignation.

We have been conditioned by a long tradition to regard homosexuality as a disgusting perversion. If we look at it in a historical perspective we shall see that this is an insular point of view."

Moving through more recent history in a highly dis­ similar fashion, Karlen (1980) repeatedly suggests that homosexuality has been forbidden or nonexistent during various historical periods. Karlen holds, for example, that the major figures of the Italian Renaissance--­

Michaelangelo is one-- were in fact not homosexual, going so far as to suggest that "If anything, there seem to have been fewer known homosexuals among the creative figures of the Renaissance than in the urban population at large"

(p. 91). How Karlen obtained accurate figures on the 20

incidence of homosexuality among the Italian urban popula­

tion remains an open question, but in any case, Karlen

argues that [male] homosexuality has traditionally been thought of as being associated with creativity and "special sensitivity, which is thought of as feminine" {p. 92). But he suggests that this is specious, since "most of the world's great creative work has been done by men" {p. 92).

These statements are so riddled with sexism and faulty logic, not to mention simple inaccuracy, that they raise

serious questions about Karlen's qualifications and moti­ vations.

Moving further ahead in history, Karlen {1980) aston­ ishes with his defense of the Puritans, whom he claims have been unjustly maligned as repressive and hypocritical.

He writes {p. 94) that "despite the extreme moralizing of every aspect of life ••• and the occurrence of some sexual­ ly tinged witchcraft crazes," there is no reason to believe that the Puritans exhibited any evidence of unusual repres­ siveness or maladjustment.

Are not "sexually tinged witchcraft crazes" (in which hundreds, perhaps thousands of lesbians were burned to death [Katz, 1976]) and "extreme moralizing in every as­ pect of life" enough evidence?

Karlen similarly defends the Victorians from charges that they were repressive or anti-sexual by claiming that

"we simply do not know what happened in most Victorian 21

bedrooms" (1971a, p. 170). It seems odd, however, not to suggest inferences from the vast body of Victorian liter­ ature. And elsewhere Karlen has argued that homosexual behavior in ancient Greece and Rome was never common, and that to believe so is a "modern myth." Karlen reveals his bias by speaking out of two corners of his methodological mouth.

Perhaps Karlen's most astonishing argument is his denial that "strictures on homosexuality in the West rise from 'Judeo-Christian repressiveness"' (1980, p. 83). This becomes a difficult conclusion to substantiate when Karlen himself details church doctrine which classifies as sin all sexual behavior which could lead to pleasure and which would not lead to procreation. The Church "denied com­ munion to homosexuals and prostitutes even when they were dying" (p. 84), assigned a penance of "excommunication and lifelong fasting for sodomy" (p. 85), and demanded penances

"for homosexuality and effeminacy [which were] usually greater than those for fornication, adultery, sometimes even incest" (p. 85).

The oft-quoted book of Leviticus states, for example, that if "a man has intercourse with a man as with a woman, they both commit an abomination. They shall be put to death; their blood shall be on their own heads" (New Eng­ lish Bible, 1971, p. 132).

Thus it is curious that Karlen tries to exonerate 22

the Judea-Christian ethic, when it is clear from his own writings that it has been highly repressive. Also curious

are his arguments about Greece and Rome, and his defense

of the Puritans and the Victorians. In contradiction to

this defense, Karlen (1980, p. 76) is willing to state,

however, that the "scientific study of sex began with the

anti-Victorian movement of the late nineteenth century."

Often it seems that Karlen's work is an apologia for

the institutional forces which have disrupted and ended the

lives of gay women and men throughout various periods of history. Karlen (1980, p. 97) might well apply this obser­ vation to his own work: "Especially in such emotion-laden matters as sexuality, the tools of history are therefore

sometimes curved mirrors instead of searchlights."

While Karlen (1971a, 1971b, 1980) may have reinforced

the generally-held view that during the past few thousand years homosexuality has been rather uniformly prohibited in

Western society, we have seen evidence to the contrary sur­

face from various sources.

McDonald (1981, p. 3) reminds us of a fragment by the early poet Sappho (trans. Mary Barnard, 1958), who wrote

You may forget but

Let me tell you

this: someone in

some future time

will think of us. 23

Boswell seems to have fulfilled the prediction. He has also, not incidentally, dismissed the work of Karlen as "largely useless and inaccurate" (1980, p. 169) and

"deservedly ignored by scholars" (p. 4). Perhaps

Boswell has set a welcome trend in returning to the orig­ inal manuscripts for fresh translations.

However much the history of homosexuality in Western society has been distorted through mistranslation or mis­ representation, there can be little room for doubt that homosexuals in the United States have been treated with nearly uniform disdain, rejection, and punishment. Jona­ than Katz, in his mammoth Gay American History (1976), has provided a wealth of source material detailing the abuse of gay people at the hands of the clergy, the law, and the practices of psychology, psychiatry, and medicine throughout u.s. history, beginning with the execution of lesbian 'witches' in the Colonies.

The New Haven Colony statute against lesbianism was the first on colonial books. While [male] homosexuality was already forbidden by law throughout the colonies, re­ quiring the death sentence, the New Haven statute of 1655 specifically included lesbians in proclaiming that "If any woman change the naturall [sic] use into that which is against nature, as Rom. I, 26, she shall be liable to the same [death] sentence" (Katz, 1976, p. 23).

Actually, the first recorded execution for homosexual- 24 ity on what is today u.s. soil was carried out in the Vir­ ginia colony in 1624-25 when Richard Cornish, a ship's master, was tried and found guilty of a homosexual act with one of his stewards. From the minutes of the trial we read of the crime: " master of the said ship being then 1n drink, called to this examinee to lay a clean pair of sheet into his bed •.. and then the said

Williams .•• went into the bed to him, and there lay upon him, and kissed him and hugged him, saying that he would love this examinee if he would now and then come and lay with him ..•. " (Katz, p. 17) •

Months after the trial and execution of Richard

Cornish, one witness-- Thomas Hatch-- remarked in a pub­ lic meeting that he thought Cornish was put to death wrongfully. Hatch was subsequently brought to trial for making such remarks. He was found guilty, and it was or­ dered that "Thomas Hatch for his offence shall be whipped from the fort to the gallows and from thence be whipped back again, and be set upon the pillory and there to lose one of his ears •.•. " (Katz, p. 19).

The Virginia laws by which Cornish was executed were eventually liberalized in 1779, through the work of a com­ mittee headed by Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson himself authored the bill which removed the death penalty for sodomy. The new bill read, in part, "Whosoever shall be guilty of .•• sodomy with man or woman shall be punished, 25

if a man, by castration, if a woman, by cutting thro' the cartilage of her nose a hole of one half inch diameter at the least" (Katz, p. 24) .

Also in 1779, a twenty-two-year-old Alexander Hamil­ ton was working in the war effort against Britain, a few battles under George Washington already completed. It was in this year that Hamilton began a series of letters to the twenty-five-year-old John Laurens, son of a prominent South

Carolina family:

"Cold in my professions, warm in friend­

ships, I wish, my Dear Laurens, it [might] be

in my power, by action rather than words, [to]

convince you that I love you. I shall only

tell you that 'till you bade us Adieu, I hard­

ly knew the value you had taught my heart to

set upon you •.• " (Katz, pp. 453-54).

Hamilton continues later that year;

"I have written you five or six letters

since you left Philadelphia and should have

written you more had you made the proper re­

turn. But like a jealous lover, when I thought

you slighted my caresses, my affection was

alarmed and my vanity piqued" (Katz, p. 455).

In response to John Laurens' suggestion that Hamilton find a wife, the letter continues that Hamilton will advertise for a spouse "in the public papers ••• you will hear of 26

many who will be glad to become candidates for

such a prize as I am •.• It will be necessary

•.• to give an account of the lover-- his size

[original in italics], make, quality of mind and

body [original in italics], achievements, expec­

tations, fortune, &c. In drawing my picture

mind you do justice to the length of my nose

and don't forget that I " [here five words

have been mutilated in the manuscript]. "After

reviewing wh~t I have written I am ready to ask

myself • • • Do I want a wife? No--" (Katz, p. 454).

The five words mutilated above are not the only alt- ered passage in the manuscript. According to Katz there are a number of fragments and sentences which have been crossed out so heavily that they are indecipherable. Who crossed them out? Katz (p. 645) remarks that "at the top of the first manuscript page, a penciled note, presumably written by John c. Hamilton, an early editor, reads: 'I must not publish the whole of this.'"

Even allowing for the ornate writing style typical of

Hamilton's day, it is clear that there was more to these letters than mere literary convention. Despite Mr. Laurens' apparent disinterest, Hamilton continued to write, until

Laurens' untimely death in a skirmish with the British in

1782. Seven years later, Hamilton would be the nation's first Secretary of the Treasury. 27

Hamilton's sentiments were shared by certain women of

Philadelphia, if we can believe the account by the French lawyer Moreau de St. Mery in his book about a six-year stay in that city: "Although in general one is conscious of widespread modesty in Philadelphia, the customs are not particularly pure ••••

"I am going to say something that is almost unbe­ lievable. These women .•• give themselves up at an early age to the enjoyment of themselves; and they are not at all strangers to being willing to seek unnatural pleasure with persons of their own sex" (St. Mery, St. Mery•s Amer­ ican Journey, in Katz, 1976, pp. 25-26).

A century later, attitudes toward homosexuality had not changed in the u.s. Ironically, though, homosexuals were one of the persecuted groups who came to America in large numbers; Katz (p. 37) tells of a thirty-eight-year­ old merchant who fled to the u.s. after a scandal in his native Germany. Upon arrival, the man wrote a long, open, anonymous letter to noted psychiatrist Krafft-Ebing, de­ tailing his persecution. Katz describes the mere writing of such a letter as "an early, individual act of resis- tance."

Krafft-Ebing published the letter in a psychiatric journal, and it found its way into an American medical journal in 1888:

"I know of a case in Geneva where an ad- 28

mirable attachment between two men like myself

has existed for seven years •••• One thing is

true. Our loves bear as fair and noble flowers .•.

There are the same sacrifices the same pain,

the same joy, sorrow, happiness, as with men of

ordinary natures ••••

"In consequence of the disgrace which came

upon me in my fatherland I am obliged to reside

in America. Even now I am in constant anxiety

lest what befell me at home should be discovered

here and thus deprive me of the respect of my

fellow-men.

"May the time soon come when science shall

educate the people so that they shall rightly

judge our unfortunate class, but before that

time there will be many victims" (pp. 38-39).

Indeed science was beginning to make some early obser­ vations of homosexual behavior, and not only on the psychi­ atric couch, but also in the zoo: Dr. Irving Rosse, Pro­ fessor of Nervous Disorders at Georgetown University in

1892, noted two male elephants engaged in what appeared to be homosexual loveplay. "To my astonishment, they en- twined their probosces together in a caressing way; each had simultaneous erection of the penis, and the act was finished by one animal opening and allowing the other to tickle the roof of his mouth with his proboscis ••• [an 29

act] prohibited by the rules of at least one Christian denomination" (Katz, p. 41).

Presenting a paper on his observations, Dr. Rosse warned that such "crimes of sexuality" were not confined to the human species, but rather had their origin in "the biological beginnings of crime as observed in curious in­ stances of criminality in animals" (Katz, p. 41).

Most of science held attitudes similar to that ex­ pressed by Rosse, and science contented itself by devising various 'treatments• for the abominable condition of homo­ sexuality.

Katz has provided a wealth of depressing accounts of the often grisly treatments endured by countless homosex­ uals at the hands of the medical and psychiatric establish­ ment, beginning with reports of the castrations common during the late 1800s. (In historical perspective, it seems that psychiatry took over where colonial law left off; this is, of course, not the only occurence of that phenomenon-- see Szasz, 1970.)

One such account (Katz, pp. 140-142) includes a per­ sonal letter written by the patient, who underwent castra­ tion as a treatment for his homosexuality: "The effect of removing [my] testicles was far from beneficial •.•• Ire­ turned to Chicago last Wednesday night, but felt so miser­ able. I am utterly incorrigible, utterly incurable, and utterly impossible. At home I thought for a time that I 30

was cured, but I was mistaken, and after seeing Clifford last Thursday I have grown worse than ever as far as my passion for him is concerned. Heaven only knows how hard

I have tried to make a decent creature out of myself, but my vileness is uncontrollable, and I might as well give up and die. I know now that this disease was born in me, and will leave me only when my breath leaves me. And this is all the harder to bear when I think that I might have been a gentleman but for this horror, which has made me attempt suicide, caused me to be incarcerated in an insane asylum three years, and resulted in my being locked up in a cell in an almshouse in Connecticut for three weeks."

In many ways, this case serves as a model example of the self-fulfilling nature of the 'homosexuality-as-disease' labeling process. A man who seemingly functions well ("I have friends among nice people, play the piano, love music, books .•• ") is defined as sick and is driven to despair and suicide, is imprisoned in mental hospitals, is castrated, and has come to loathe himself as not being 'normal.'

Nor was this an isolated case of this style of treat­ ment; it continued into the twentieth century. Katz quotes a 1904 doctor's report on a gay patient: "In this case an operation was performed on the filaments of the pudic nerve supplying the testes, but the morbid inclination still per­ sists, notwithstanding the operation and a course of chol­ ogogues, antiseptic intestinal treatment and full bromism 31

[sedation]. This man is a competent accountant and a cultured gentleman, much distressed still by his persisting malady and has asked to be castrated and talks earnestly of suicide as a not far distant resort in the event of failing of relief" (p. 145).

The renowned Dr. Havelock Ellis in 1896 assures us, though, that the failure of this type of treatment is the fault not of the doctor, but of the patient: "Such persons are frequently of unstable mental balance, so that the mu- tilation produces a depressing effect, while it does not remove the perverted tendency" (Katz, p. 143).

Treatment for homosexuals moved from castration, to widespread lobotomy, to- after 1950- the more 'humane' techniques of aversion therapy. Katz (p. 133) quotes a

1964 medical report in its entirety, suggesting that "noth- ing else in the treatment literature conveys quite so much in quite so little space":

"Aversion therapy was conducted with a

male homosexual who had a heart condition [em-

phasis added]. The particular form of aversion therapy involved creation of nausea, by means

of an emetic, accompanied by talking about his

homosexuality. The second part of the therapy

involved recovery from the nausea and talking

about pleasant ideas and heterosexual fanta-

sies, which was sometimes aided by lysergic 32

acid. In this case, the patient died as a

result of a heart attack brought on by the

use of the emetic."

The attitude toward homosexuality reflected in this sort of treatment has remained almost universal among the general public of the United States until very recent times. Accurate information about homosexuality was, in essence, impossible to obtain.

A strong undercurrent of religious fundamentalism con­ tinually fueled anti-gay sentiments. Journalist Sara Har­ ris (1969, pp. 165-68) quotes community leader John Soren­ son of Miami: "I would rather see any of my children dead than homosexual •••• I think the sin of homosexuality is worse than the sin of murder .•.• We can't hate them. The point is to love them. [Sorenson is a Baptist deacon.]

How do you love a homosexual? You love him this way. You put him in prison."

The judicial system continued to uphold this type of attitude. In Louisiana, a 1966 jury convicted Mary Young and Dawn DeBlanc of "unnatural carnal copulation," and sentenced them to three years in the state prison. In

1967 the Louisiana Supreme Court upheld the decision on the basis that oral copulation was indeed "devious and ab­ normal because it is contrary to the natural traits and/or instincts intended by nature ••• " (Katz, 1976, p. 128). Despite the avalanche of oppression in the u.s., there 33

were pockets of growth and flowerings of tolerance in other

parts of the Western world long before the advent of the

present-day gay rights movement. For example, during the

1920s and early 1930s there existed in Germany a number of

viable and growing organizations dedicated to homosexual

rights (Lauritsen & Thorstad, 1974, pp. 6-31). This was a

broad-based movement with a multitude of political and pro­

fessional supporters.

However, by the time of Hitler's Germany, homosexuals

were being imprisoned in death camps, where they were ident­

ified by pink triangles on their uniforms (Lautmann, 1981).

Crompton (1978) has estimated gay deaths to have been as

high as half a million. Nazi Germany remains, for the

present, the most recent example of gay genocide. A monu­

ment erected to those victims in Amsterdam serves as a

reminder that homosexuality today is not subject to uni­

versal disapproval even in the Western hemisphere: a pink

marble sculpture in the shape of three equilateral tri­

angles is the first monument "to commemorate the persecu­

tion of homosexuals," according to Amsterdam representative

Peter Dros (Boyle, 1981). The sculpture, placed outside

Amsterdam's historic Westerkerk, "will be a monument to

the homosexual victims of the Nazi persecution during

Hitler's occupation of the Netherlands," states Dros, "but

it will also be a reminder that homosexuals still face per­

secution in places like Iran and the United States" (p. 8). 34

In addition to pre-Nazi Germany, another surprising

pocket of gay support was Russia after the 1917 Revolution.

Although the USSR today is notoriously repressive to gays

and others, laws against homosexuality were abolished by

the Bolsheviks "within a month of [their] coming to power"

(Bridgewater, 1980, p. 12). At the time, the then-new

legislation was announced in a government pamphlet: "Con-

cerning homosexuality, sodomy, and various other forms of

sexual gratification, which are set down in European legis­

lation as offences against public morality-- Soviet legis­

lation treats these exactly the same as so-called 'natural'

intercourse. All forms of sexual intercourse are private

matters" (Bridgewater, p. 12).

These views were wiped away by Stalin in the 1930s

when, ironically, gays were "denounced as the 'fascist

perversion' at the time that Hitler's propagandists were

calling homosexuality 'sexual Bolshevism'" (Bridgewater,

p. 12).

Overall we can see that, despite our own cultural

denial and punishment of homosexuality, homosexual behav­

ior has existed almost uniformly across time, across cul­

ture, and across species. Anthropologist Frederick L.

Whitham (1980, p. 96) has summarized that, in the broad­

est sense of human history, "homosexuality • . . should not

be viewed as a result of aberrant family relationships and

faulty social structures, but as a non-dominant, universal 35

manifestation of human sexuality."

Even setting aside the long-term anthropological per­ spective, we see that homosexuality has been manifest throughout recorded-- that is to say recent-- history.

Mistranslations, a heavy editorial hand, and selective in­ clusivity have all contributed to our biased view that homosexuality has been universally disapproved of in West­ ern society. We have seen what a remarkable degree of ac­ ceptance may have attended homosexual behavior during var­ ious historical periods, remarkable, that is, to a society such as ours in which heavy penalties have been imposed on this behavior. CHAPTER THREE:

THE SCHISM BETWEEN PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY

The social sciences have frequently disguised them­ selves as seekers of the Truth, of the universal nature of things, of laws which regulate behavior across time and culture. Universal truths, however, may be an inap­ propriate goal for psychology. And in this regard, a warning has been sounded by Szasz (1970): The fundamental conflicts of human life are not between competing ideas, one 'true' and the other 'false'-. but rather between those who hold power and use it to oppress others, and those who are oppressed by power and seek to free them­ selves of it" (p. 63).

36 37

Society is made up of diverse individuals and groups, including various ethnic minorities, Ku Klux Klan members, radicals, conservatives, lesbians and gay men. As such, conflicts of social interest are certain to remain a part of the sociopolitical scene. As Rappaport (1977) aptly points out, if conflict is to be resolved through legiti­ mate political channels, then everyone-- including the social scientist-- is on one side or another. To pretend otherwise, particularly in the arena of sexual politics, is naive in the extreme. Gould (1980, p. 7) reminds us,

"Science is not an objective, truth-directed machine, but a quintessentially human activity, affected by passions, hopes, and cultural biases."

The rules of the game would be made clearer if the players were willing to grapple openly with and reveal the underlying values which form the guiding light of any given piece of psychological research. Yet these values are rarely made explicit. If theories and orientations are not chosen and tested simply by their truth value, and it seems likely they are not, then the processes by which they are chosen and tested become a matter of urgent concern. Good­ stein (1978) addresses this issue as it relates to organi­ zational psychology: "While each [theory] tends to pro­ claim the general utility of its approach, the personal predilections of the consultant appear to be the most com­ mon basis for accepting one over another" (p. 59). 38

Accidents of history, however, may have had an even more profound and global effect on the ways in which psy­ chologists go about their work; an important example of this is found in the manner in which psychology separated from its philosophical moorings some one hundred years ago.

In asking why psychology has been so resistant to examin­ ing its values and exploring philosophical implications of its work, we will do well to look at the historical ante­ cedents in the development of American psychology.

Until the 1870s, psychology was taught in American colleges and universities by philosophy professors. This was a rather mentalistic psychology which included liberal doses of philosophy and theology. But then William James arrived with his imported German scientific psychology, just when America was ripe for things scientific. James himself, however, was firmly rooted in a philosophical background, and his brand of psychology included intro­ spection, consciousness, and subjective experience as bases for data gathering; it was not so much the content that changed, but rather the emphasis on practical experimental methods. Nonetheless, James (1892) did emphasize psychology as a natural science, and he attempted to relegate philosoph­ ical considerations to the back burner. He wrote (p. 146),

"I wished by treating psychology like a natural science, to help her to become one," adding that "we need a fair and 39

square and explicit abandonment of such questions as that of ••. the transcendental ego, the fusion of ideas, the particles of mind stuff ... and a fair and square determi­ nation on the part of philosophers to keep such questions out of psychology" (p. 149).

Still, James remained more an empiricist than a strict experimentalist. His background in philosophy encouraged him to place his work in a broader context, as reflected in the sometimes philosophical flavor of his Principles of

Psychology (1890). But the conflict had begun; psychology made rapid inroads in the universities as philosophy began its decline. Philosophy students in great numbers began to leave the fold, in order to join the 'scientific revolu­ tion' (Beloff, 1973, chap. 2). Perhaps the rift was has­ tened by interdepartmental rivalry for student enrollment at major educational institutions which had established separate departments of psychology.

It is worth noting as an aside that since 1900 this trend has continued to the point where philosophy depart­ ments at certain institutions have difficulty treading water, while psychology departments now graduate thousands of students who can never hope to find employment within the ranks of the profession. Watts (1972, p. 135) warns,

"We are close to the point where departments of philosophy will close their offices and shift the remaining members of their faculties to the departments of mathematics and lin- 40

guistics."

Wundt himself had feared that the creation of separ­

ate departments would endanger psychology's continuing

grounding in, and contact with, philosophy. His fears

accurately anticipated the situation which followed. By

the turn of the century, psychology had further coalesced

into a strictly experimental science, not content with

being 'merely' an empirical one. Nonexperimental data fell

into disfavor, while perhaps ironically, William James'

reputation suffered for his lack of having totally embraced

purely experimental methodologies to the exclusion of all

else (Klein, 1942).

Psychology's unflagging dissociation from philosophy

may have contributed to the rise of operationalism, and

eventually to the establishment of behaviorism as the sine

qua non of the psychological sciences, as espoused by

Watson (1919). By the 1920s, many American psychologists had become enamoured of Watson's approach, and had entirely

abandoned such concepts as mind and feeling. Perhaps the ultimate expression of this was found in the work of Skin­ ner, who further reformulated psychology to eliminate the

internal human experience of consciousness altogether from his stimulus-response psychology. To his credit, however,

Skinner (1963) was one of the few to recognize in retro­

spect that, far from existing outside the domain of philos­

ophy, behaviorism itself was a philosophy. 41

The behavioristic view and its attendant methods held

sway in academic psychology for decades, and is still pre­

eminent in many institutions of higher learning. But the work of psychologists such as Maslow (1954) and Piaget

(1952), with their respective interests in human experience

and human cognition, signaled a challenge to the mechanis­

tic reductionism of the strict behaviorists.

Alexander and Selesnick (1966) suggest that the neces­

sity for training large numbers of clinical psychologists

during and after World War II may have contributed to the

movement away from behaviorism, toward a reacquaintance with human subjects and human problems, and to a reevalua­

tion of the generalizability of animal studies to human

populations.

With these less •pure• pursuits came the increased

awareness, at least for a few, that psychology is engaged

in endeavors which require attention to philosophical con­

cerns. The 1960s saw a rising degree of consideration for

the ethics of psychological experimentation (Baumrind,

1964; Milgram, 1964). The 1970s witnessed confrontations

between psychology and emerging political forces, particu­

larly in regards to homosexuality, to women, and to various

ethnic minorities (Rappaport, 1977).

Despite the rise of a more ethical and socially aware

psychology, and the implementation of stronger rules for

experiments with human subjects, most psychologists have 42

continued to refuse to acknowledge that philosophical con­ siderations may be the major determinant, or at least a powerful influence, regarding the questions that research­ ers ask and the methods used to explore these questions.

The separation of psychology from philosophy created a wound which is only beginning to heal. Many researchers, writers, and clinicians remain blissfully unaware of, or perhaps intentionally silent about, the frames of reference which guide their work.

Since a psychological experiment is nothing more than an argument by analogy-- reducing astonishingly complex behaviors to easily manipulated variables, with results applied to the social world at large-- the dangers of not recognizing one's biases become clear. In some cases (e.g.

Bieber, 1962; Friedman, 1976; Bieber, 1976), exchanges of ideas in clinical research can seem like little more than formalized mudslinging. Even at their most rigorous, lab­ oratory experiments prove nothing in the formal sense; they may argue, they may suggest, but they do not offer proof in the mathematical sense. A geometric proof is a step-by­ step process, the end product of which is an inescapable and solitary conclusion. A statistical procedure, however, is by its very nature a probabalistic statement. Noted statisticians Campbell and Stanley (1963, p. 35) are ex­ plicit on this point: "The results of an experiment 'probe' but do not 'prove' a theory." 43

Hiding behind the framework and rhetoric of formal

psychological experimentation are some rather urgent ques­

tions: how is psychology shaping the world? who are its victims? what are its values? how does its methodology

influence outcome? how appropriate and productive is the prevailing paradigm?

Although these issues should properly move from the periphery of psychological discourse to its center, such a hurried remarriage of psychology and philosophy seems un­ likely. Rather, as social realities continue to impinge on psychologists, and the forces within psychology (e.g.,

Community Psychology) work to make such issues preeminent, the reconciliation will be gradual. After all, the aris­ tocracy is unlikely to hand over the throne without a fight. CHAPTER FOUR:

HOMOSEXUALITY AND PSYCHIATRY

While the rift between psychology and philosophy has exacerbated the problem of examining underlying assump­ tions in research, it is clear that the root of the prob­ lem, as regards homosexuality, lies in the medical-psychi­ atric domain. As Fredericks (1976) has suggested, "In contemplating the proverbial resistance of medicine to new ideas, one is reminded of the prehistoric animal so huge that its tail might successfully be attacked before a neural message could be flashed to the distant brain. It was a fault for which Nature compensated by creating a second brain, at the base of the tail, yielding one of the

44 45

few creatures genetically equipped for reasoning both

~ priori and~ posteriori. But for the monster of medi­

cine, no supplementary brain exists ••. " (p. 140).

However much we may speculate on the effects of the

division between psychology and philosophy, it is histor­

ically evident that the greater part of professional homo­

phobia stems not from psychology, but from psychiatry.

With its roots in medicine, psychiatry was destined to

follow a path focusing on pathology.

As an extreme example, we can devote attention to

Benjamin Rush, known as the Father of American Psychiatry.

Rush proclaimed that people of African descent were not

naturally black, but that Negritude was in fact a disease

"derived from the Leprosy" (Szasz, 1970, p. 154). Rush

believed that this leprosy was inherited, but no longer

infectious, thus rendering a black person, according to

Szasz, "a medically safe domestic ••.• Here, then, was an

early model [1797] of the perfect medical concept of ill­ ness-- one that helps the physician and the society he

serves, while justifying social maltreatment as medical

prophylaxis" (p. 155).

However ludicrous Rush may sound to modern ears, his

theories are not far afield of contemporary psychiatry as

regards homosexuality, and this sort of thinking has had

some rather devastating consequences for homosexuals living

in this society. The abuses of gay people at the hands of 46

medical doctors and psychiatrists did not end with the turn-of-the-century accounts of •treatment• discussed previously.

But first, as we enter the arena of psychiatry, it becomes increasingly important to define our terms. Just what is a homosexual? Psychiatrist Judd Marmor (1980, p. 5) characterizes the homosexual person "as one who is motivated in adult life by a definite preferential erotic attraction to members of the same sex and who usually (but not necessarily) engages in overt sexual relations with them," stating further that "it does not exclude those who are involved in fantasies of intense sexual longing for members of the same sex, yet are prohibited by fears or moral considerations from actually indulging in overt homo­ sexual activity."

Such a definition accurately and perceptively avoids the pitfalls of an operational definition of homosexuality requiring overt homosexual behavior. No doubt there are persons of both heterosexual and homosexual orientations who have never engaged in sexual behavior of any kind with another person (such a pattern is in fact required for certain members of the clergy).

Unlike Marmor's characterization of homosexuality as an adult phenomenon, Saghir and Robins (1980) see it as

"an early childhood phenomenon characterized by psychologic responses that include emotional attachments and fantasies 47

directed primarily at members of the same sex. These at­ tachments and fantasies develop in childhood and adoles­ cence and persist, more overtly and intensely, into adult life. Sexual behavior is only the expression of the basic psychological propensity and, therefore, secondary to it" (p. 281).

Birk (1980) declines any general definition whatsoever by declaring that "there is in fact no such unitary thing as 'homosexuality'" (p. 376). Clearly there is no real consensus as to what homosexuality really 'is,' or even if it exists as a clinical entity. Is it a disease? A set of behaviors? A personality type? A genetically-programmed specialty of nature designed to enhance social conditions?

From the above contributions of Marmor, Saghir and

Robins, and Birk, perhaps it is best to propose that homo­ sexuality has various definitions which may have utility in different contexts.

Because of its connotations as well as denotations, the word 'homosexual' itself has come under fire in recent times. Some writers suggest that this word holds too high a negative connotation, due to its use by the legal and psychiatric establishments. Thus, just as 'Negroes' redefined themselves during the 1960s with the Black Is

Beautiful movement, many gays have similarly redefined themselves with a new name through the Gay Pride movement of the 1970s, and by politically discarding the term 'homo- 48

sexual' as part of the process of divesting themselves of negative labels.

The word 'gay' in fact has been chosen by historian

Boswell as being the most scholarly term, not only for its lack of pejorative connotation, but also for having the longest history (for a discussion, see Boswell, 1980, pp. 41-45). His research shows 'gay' to be older than

'homosexual' by at least several centuries, from the Old

Proven<;al 'gai. '

As was discussed earlier, the word 'homophobia' was coined as recently as 1971. Falling chronologically be­ tween 'gay' and 'homophobia' is the word 'homosexual,' which was invented in 1869, when a Hungarian medical doctor by the name of Benkert wrote a pamphlet on the subject un­ der the pseudonym Kertbeny (Karlen, 1971b, p. 187). This term, however, did not achieve general usage until well into the twentieth century.

Whatever our current choice of nomenclature and defin­ ition, psychiatry has traditionally defined gay people as sick. In the United States, nearly all of the psychiatric research into homosexuality was concentrated on causality; and this research nearly always assumed pathology behind this sexual orientation. These assumptions did not arise from previous research, but rather out of the already ex­ isting sociopolitical paradigm.

The National Institute of Mental Health, during the 49

mid-twentieth century, provided grants for any number of psychiatrists who researched according to the disease model-- the classic example is a study by Irving Bieber et al, Homosexuality:~ Psychoanalytic Study (1962), which named 'Mom' as the primary culprit in the etiology of homo­ sexuality. This position, of course, reflects not only the predominant anti-gay ethic, but also the sexist bias of the period. The studies which appeared, for example, during the 1950s reveal equal measures of anti-gay and anti-woman sentiment; typical is the Caprio (1954) study which expounds the usual psychoanalytic position that lesbians really want to be men, that they are 'castrating types,• and that they exhibit all manner of 'inappropriate' behavior.

This business of 'inappropriate' behavior is perhaps the heart of the matter. Many current writers in the field of sex research theorize that the root of homophobia is not anti-homosexuality per se, but rather disapproval of any deviation from rigidly defined sex roles. And since male behavior was and is highly valued, much-cherished, and fiercely protected, any woman who crossed that behavioral barrier was subject to the label 'dyke.' Social analysts have recently hypothesized that this labeling process

('fag,' 'dyke') is what serves to keep members of a sexist society 'in line' (Berger, 1966).

But Caprio ignores these issues 1n his 'landmark' 50

Female Homosexuality: A Modern Study of Lesbianism (1954).

Caprio bases his hypotheses not only on patients from his own psychiatric practice, but also from 'case histories' drawn from the magazines Life Romances (August, 1953) and

~Confessions (September, 1953). Among these hypotheses is the assertion that women who become lesbians are viciously anti-male. Caprio (p. 237) quotes a patient to prove his thesis: "I still feel incensed and outraged that a woman's sex life must be dictated and directed by the public while a man is allowed perfect and complete freedom in this respect."

Caprio states variously that "many seductions take place in ladies' restrooms" (p. 246), that lesbianism may be caused by "fear of sex, marriage, and responsibility"

(p. 161), that "many prostitutes are latent homosexuals insofar as they resort to sexual excesses with men to con­ vince themselves that they are heterosexual" (p. 93), and that "crime is intimately associated with female sexual inversion" (p. 302).

Further revealing the level of his analysis, Caprio goes on to state that "artists, dancers, musicians, writers and actresses have a predisposition to bisexual gratifica­ tions because of their accelerated mode of living, their bohemian morals and neurotic temperaments" (p. 304). It becomes increasingly difficult to keep in mind that the author is a doctor of medicine and an 'authority.' 51

Caprio concludes that "the vast majority of lesbians

are emotionally unstable and neurotic. Many of them be­

come quite disturbed at the thought that psychiatrists

regard them as 'sick individuals' in need of treatment"

(p. 304). Small wonder.

Caprio's book, by virtue of being the only major study

of lesbians in two decades, was widely quoted and widely

accepted as gospel. It is worth noting that Female Homo­

sexuality: A Modern Study of Lesbianism "appeared in 1954,

at the time of a virulent antihomosexual witch-hunt in

Washington, D.C., where Caprio happened to make his home"

(Katz, 1976, p. 184).

Most studies, of course, continued to concentrate on male homosexuals. Irving Bieber, Edmund Bergler, and

Charles Socarides formed the psychiatric triumvirate of homophobia during the 1950s and 1960s. The famous study by Bieber is given extensive analysis in Chapter 7 of the present paper, so let us turn to Bergler, another important

figure in the dissemination of psychiatrically-approved bias aginst gays.

A few short samples of Bergler's writing (1956) will

suffice to answer the question contained in the title of his most popular book, Homosexuality: Disease or Way of

Life?: "It is granted that heterosexuality per se does not guarantee emotional health; there are innumerable neurotics

among heterosexuals, too. But there also exist healthy 52

heterosexuals, and there are no healthy homosexuals" [em­ phasis in original] (p. 9).

Bergler claims: "For nearly thirty years now I have been treating homosexuals, spending many hours with them in the course of their analyses. I can say with some justification that I have no bias against homosexuals; for me they are sick people requiring medical help" (p. 25).

However, "though I have no bias, if I were asked what kind of person the homosexual it [sic], I would say:

'Homosexuals are essentially disagreeable people, regard­ less of their pleasant or unpleasant outward manner. True, they are not responsible for their unconscious conflicts.

However, these conflicts sap so much of their inner energy that the shell is a mixture of superciliousness, fake ag­ gression, and whimpering. Like all psychic masochists, they are subservient when confronted with a stronger per­ son, merciless when in power, unscrupulous about trampling on a weaker person. The only language their unconscious understands is brute force'" (p. 26).

Bergler concludes his paragraph by adding that "what is most discouraging, you seldom find an intact ego among them," an hypothesis which Bergler does not bother to substantiate.

Continuing on a similar tack, Charles Socarides claimed media attention by announcing that nearly half of all homosexuals are psychotic. Socarides seemed partie- 53

ularly invested in denouncing homosexuality to the public, and has remained a highly visible figure into the 1980s, maintaining that homosexual orientation is the result of

faulty family background and pre-Oedipal conflict (1968).

And of course Socarides 'proves• that homosexuals

are disordered by holding up a few of his psychiatric

patients as examples: "This position was documented by

substantially large number [sic] of cases of obligatory homosexual patients who had undergone psychoanalysis with me" (1976, p. 375).

In September 1972, Socarides testified against a civilian naval employee "with an outstanding work record who had accidentally been discovered to be homosexual"

(Marmor, 1980, p. 391). In a sworn deposition, Socarides testified that all homosexuals "show symptoms and signs upon deep investigation which would probably place them between the borderline neuroses and the psychoses. They

are [sic] a severe condition" (Marmor, p. 392). The em­

ployee in question was discharged.

When Socarides was challenged with presentation in a

journal article of evidence that pre-Oedipal conflict and

faulty family background did not produce homosexuality in a particular patient (Friedman, 1975), Socarides replied

(1976, p. 370) that the patient is somehow •really' a homo­

sexual who "shows both homosexual and transvestitic con­

flicts but somehow has managed to function [emphasis in 54

original] sexually with the opposite sex."

In other words, Socarides' contentions are unaffected by adverse evidence, since he can ascribe unconscious moti­ vations that seemingly would confirm his allegations.

Other writers, also Freudians, have tried to equate homosexuality with paranoia (e.g. Klaf & Davis, 1960). In this line of reasoning, the external forces of prejudice and discrimination which the homosexual person experiences daily are ignored. Instead, the focus is on intrapsychic mechanisms by which the victim torments herself or himself.

Gay people living in the mid-twentieth centery United

States were subject to harrassment, physical violence, and blackmail, but paranoid 'fantasies' are seen as simply part of the syndrome.

This parallels rather neatly the claims that women who are battered by spouses are masochistic. Snell et al

(1964) express the belief that "the husband's aggressive behavior is fulfilling masochistic needs of the wife and is necessary for the wife's equilibrium .•• even though she protests it" (p. 111). Through these sorts of convo­ luted psychoanalytic twists of logic, the victim becomes the perpetrator.

Strangely enough, Sigmund Freud, who as the father of psychoanalysis might be suspect as the root of psychoanal­ ytic homophobia, was himself anything but a homophobe. In his famous letter to an American mother, Freud (1951, p.786) 55

wrote that "Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation. It cannot be classified as an illness •••. "

Freud went on to state that "It is one of the obvious injustices of social life that the standard of culture should demand the same behavior in sexual life from every- one ..•. "

Freud shared this attitude in speaking with profes­ sional colleagues as well. Nicholas Deutsch, grandson of the famed psychoanalyst Helene Deutsch, relates an intrigu­ ing anecdote about his grandmother and Sigmund Freud (Katz,

1976, p. 161): "This is a story my grandmother told me; she had just begun practicing on her own, under Freud's supervision, in Vienna, and she took on a patient who was a Lesbian. My grandmother was disturbed because, although the analysis finally concluded successfully-- the woman could deal with various problems in her life-- she was still a Lesbian. My grandmother was rather worried about what Freud would say about this turn of events. When she next saw Freud the first thing he said was, •congratula• tions on your great success with Miss X.' My grandmother, startled, said, 'But she's still a Lesbian.' To which

Freud replied, 'What does it matter as long as she's happy?'"

Then, what happened to American psychiatry? A portion of the answer may lie in the question of the accuracy of 56

English translations of the works of Freud. According to psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim (1982, pp. 79-80), Freud was betrayed by his English translators. Bettelheim com­ plains that Freud's term 'Schaulust'-- meaning the plea­ sure of looking at someone sexually attractive-- was given a negatively charged 'scopophilia• in English, a word which has diagnostic and pejorative overtones. Bettelheim is similarly disturbed when Freud's •seele,' or soul, mean­ ing-- according to Leo (1982, p. 61)-- the whole passionate self, mind plus emotions," is translated as 'mental appa­ ratus.' As Bettelheim (1982, p. 52) suggests, "One cannot be expected to gain an understanding of the soul if the soul is never mentioned."

Bettelheim first noticed the problem when he worked as director of a school for disturbed children in Chicago during the 1940s. Fellow staff members had read Freud in

English, and as a result they were long on theory, short on sympathy. The English Freud was "of little use in helping children afflicted by severe psychiatric disorders. Often it was even an impediment" (Bettelheim, p. 52).

Bettelheim concludes, "Freud's direct and always deep­ ly personal appeals to our common humanity appear to read­ ers of English as abstract, depersonalized, highly theoret­ ical, erudite and mechanized-- in short, •scientific'"

(p. 52).

Robinson {1981) refers to "the striking decline in 57

moral and intellectual quality as the psychiatric tradition

passed from its founder, Freud, through such epigones as .•.

Irving Bieber, and finally into the hands of a low-comic

villain like Charles Socarides. Freud was both the smart­

est and the most humane of psychiatrists. He stressed the

bisexual constitution of all human beings, he opposed the

notion that homosexuality was a disease or that it disqual­

ified a person as a therapist, and he remained circumspect

about its causes and pessimistic about the chances of ther­

apeutic conversion •••. Bieber and Socarides, by contrast,

grew dogmatic and flat-footed where Freud had been cautious

and nuanced" ( p. 34) •

Freud, in fact, believed that homosexuality was bio­

logically rooted "and is the expression of a universal human trend" (Marmor, 1980, p. 3). Yet in later times,

psychiatry seemed to have forgotten all that. It took a

psychologist, Evelyn Hooker, to suggest that homosexuals may not be sick at all.

In a landmark experiment, Hooker (1957) administered

personality tests to matched groups of homosexual and heterosexual males. The test results were handed blind

to a group of experienced clinicians, who were asked to

rate the subjects on a scale of adjustment from superior

to disturbed. It was found that there were no statistical­

ly reliable differences between groups. The psychologists

and psychiatrists could not distinguish between the hetero- 58

sexuals and the homosexuals on any dimension.

Hooker's experiment is often cited as proof that homo­ sexuals are not sick. A more cautious interpretation of the data would suggest that Hooker demonstrated that at least not all homosexuals exhibit pathology when measured by the criteria widely accepted by psychiatrists in the

1950s, using the diagnostic tools which the psychiatrists themselves claimed would reveal mental illness and per­ sonality disorders.

Even this was a revelation in the repressive '50s.

Hooker's results strongly challenged the widely-held notion that all homosexuals are disturbed and even that homosex­ uality is a clinical entity. Here was clear evidence to the contrary.

Nonetheless, psychiatry in the main continued its excoriation of homosexuality, punctuated by David Reuben's immensely popular Everything You Always Wanted To Know

About Sex, But Were Afraid To Ask (1969). The extensive chapter on male homosexuality is probably the most baroque, bizarre, and disturbing psychiatric work published to date on the subject. It is also, not incidentally, the most widely read information on homosexuality in the history of the printed word, outside of the Bible. Since its publica­ tion in 1969, Everything ••• has gone through sixty-four printings in the United States alone. The book has spread throughout the world in innumerable translations as well. 59

It is perhaps best to let psychiatrist Reuben speak for himself, in his own self-serving question-and-answer style:

"What is male homosexuality? "Male homosexuality is a condition in which men have a driving emotional and sexual interest in other men. Be­ cause of the anatomical and physiological limitations in­ volved, there are some formidable obstacles to overcome.

Most homosexuals look upon this as a challenge and approach it with ingenuity and boundless energy. In the process they often transform themselves into part-time women. They don women's clothes, wear makeup, adopt feminine mannerisms and occasionally even try to rearrange their bodies along feminine lines" (p. 129). "Few real women have such alluring clothes as the queens. Among homosexuals, expense is no object and there is never a husband in the background complaining about the cost of a new dress .•.• What they wear underneath is also very important to the queens. Generally they favor the same underwear as female prostitutes •.. " (pp. 137-38).

"What do homosexuals really do

with each other? "An almost unbelievable variety of ingenious things. Since their equipment is a bit limited, they need a lot • I 60

more imagination in sex than the average heterosexual couple •.•. Generally the circumstances are far from roman­ tic. According to one homosexual, it goes something like this: 'Whenever I feel like sex, I drive down to the bowl­ ing alley. I walk into the men's room, find an empty cub­ icle, go in, take down my pants, and sit on the toilet.

Then I wait. It never takes very long .•. '

"Are all homosexual contacts as

impersonal as that?

"No. Most are much more impersonal. . • • No names, no faces, no emotions. A masturbation machine might do it better.

"Surely there must be more to

homosexuality?

"There are dozens of variations but they all have this in common: the primary interest is the penis, not the per- son" ( pp. 132-33) .

"Isn't that kind of dangerous?

"Homosexuals thrive on danger" (p. 134).

"How does an 'S and M' work?

"They specialize in luring other homosexuals to their apartments, trapping them, and torturing them .••• Occasion- 61

ally the torturer gets carried away, the evening escalates,

and ends in mutilation, castration, and death. Sadly,

that's all part of the homosexual game" (pp. 135-36).

"Aren't homosexuals afraid of

being arrested?

"Maybe they should be, but they aren't. Lack of fear

of the consequences is one of the puzzling characteristics

of homosexual behavior" (p. 142).

"Why do so many homosexual ex­

pressions refer to food?

"Food seems to have a mysterious fascination for homo­

sexuals. Many of the world's greatest chefs have been homosexuals. Some of the country's best restaurants are

run by homosexuals. Some of the fattest people are homo­

sexuals.

"The exact reason is complex but clearly food over­

shadows much of homosexual behavior. Aside from using their mouths as a principal sexual organ, food plays an­ other role in their sexual lives.

"Since Nature apparently did not anticipate homosex­ uality, the male has not been equipped with glands to secrete a sexual lubricant ••.• Salad oil and margarine are commonly used. Among gourmets, butter and olive oil arepreferred" (p. 147). 62

Reuben closes his chapter with a tale about two homo­ sexual men who died of cancer in England, "cancer of the breast .••. Ironically these men who wanted to be women died of a woman's disease. That's as close as they came"

( p. 151) .

It is not difficult to discern voices other than that of clear professional objectivity throughout this writing.

Reuben's chapter on male homosexuality is doubly dangerous for readers in that it is surrounded by relatively sane discussions of other. sexual issues for most of the remain­ ing fifteen chapters, notwithstanding a totally off-base assessment of prostitution.

Strangely enough, there is no chapter on lesbianism, only a two-page token summary included in the chapter on prostitution itself:

"What about female homosexual

prostitutes?

"Among the hookers this is not a recognized specialty.

Most hustlers will take on anyone, women included. Since the majority of prostitutes are female homosexuals in their private lives anyway, making it with another girl is like a busman's holiday.

"What do female homosexuals do

with each other? 63

"Like their male counterparts, lesbians are handi­ capped by having only half the pieces of the anatomical jigsaw puzzle. Just as one penis plus one penis equals nothing, one vagina plus another vagina still equals zero.

Female homosexual relationships .•• seem to last a little longer than the male equivalent, but their course is no less stormy; the girls betray and deceive each other with monotonous regularity" (pp. 217-219).

In another chapter, Reuben presents a straightforward discussion of fellatio, concluding that "it is probably the most common form of heterosexual activity next to copula­ tion. It is harmless in itself. The only possible bad effect •.. is from the guilt some women feel over it. They can stop worrying. They are not perverted •.•

"Isn't that the kind of thing

homosexuals do?

"Yes. But heterosexuals needn't feel perverted when they do these things" ( p. 170) .

Again, this remains for the present the most widely­ disseminated modern information on homosexuality, with over eight million copies in print in the u.s. alone. Reuben's curious fantasies about homosexuality lack any shred of supporting evidence, or even a sense of fair play. In di­ rect contrast, countless small- and large-sample surveys (e.g. Bell & Weinberg, 1978; Freedman, 1975; Hooker, 1957; 64

Lehne, 1978; Peplau et al, 1978; Spada, 1979) demonstrate that lesbians and gay men enjoy their respective identities as women and men, they go to work, fall in love, pay taxes, maintain successful relationships and, disappointing to some, lead fairly conventional lives.

Regarding Reuben, the analogy is recalled to Benjamin

Rush, who believed Negritude to be an illness. Now we can openly laugh at such lack of sophistication, but how dif­ ferent are the twentieth-century writings of psychiatrists who try to equate homosexuality with pathology? Pertaining to blacks, Reuben (1969, p. 270) does not seem so far from

Rush, when he sprinkles his homophobia with a dash of racism:

"I'f these [untreatable, sexually­

transmitted] diseases are so ter­

rible, why aren't they better known?

"Unfortunately these conditions affect primarily two segments of society, neither of which carries much weight.

Most victims are Negroes or homosexuals. It is rare for a white heterosexual to be stricken. [Treatable diseases such as] syphilis and gonorrhea can strike the mayor's daughter, the bank president, solid citizens in general.

The underground diseases afflict the shoe-shine boy, the homosexual prostitute, the black call girl."

Here again, Reuben does not offer any evidence to sup- 65

port his claims. As we have seen, Bieber, Caprio, Reuben et al relied on clinical populations to extrapolate the nature and etiology of homosexuality. Thus a neurotic, tortured (mainly by society and psychiatrists) group of psychiatric patients became the subject pool for the arm­ chair speculations of a few analysts whose words became gospel.

Clearly the use of homosexual psychiatric patients to confirm the psychoanalytic disease theory of homosexuality is circular in the extreme. 'Patients• are by definition disturbed individuals. It is hardly surprising that they would 'reveal' pathology.

As a research method this is so transparently flawed as to render sophisticated readers incredulous. How could the scientific community and the public have accepted gen­ eralizations from samples so obviously unrepresentative?

There are at least three reasons. First, psychiatrists were the priest class and primary norm-carriers of the day

(Szasz, 1970) and, as such, the public had little reason or ability to question them.

Second, the pronouncements were consistent with al­ ready existing sentiments regarding homosexuals. As

Kierkegaard (1965, p. 132) has lamented, "Man is a social animal •••• It is all one to him whether it is [the truth], the profoundest nonsense, or the greatest villainy-- he feels completely at ease with it, so long as it is the view 66

of the herd ..

Third, due to the fact that homosexuality in the

United States has been until quite recently a phenomenon almost completely obscured from public view, lay persons had no information available to them with which to make a comparative judgment, should they have been so inclined.

There were a few exceptions to this bleak picture.

Sex research pioneer Alfred Kinsey, for example, obtained homosexual subjects by using volunteer interviewees rather than psychiatric patients. Ironically, Kinsey was roundly castigated for this research method, particularly by Edmund

Bergler (1956, p. 168) who railed that" .•• whom you inter- view is a matter of vast concern in such a study each unit in a Kinsey sample stands for approximately 10,000 people, and thus ••• if one hundred test objects are incor­ rectly chosen, one million people are misrepresented ••••

In his psycho~ogical-psychiatric innocence, Kinsey is not aware of the fact that homosexuals have a deep inner guilt

(admittedly or not) because of their perversion."

It is indeed ironic that Bergler would hurl methodo­ logical stones at Kinsey, when Bergler has used subjects who by definition can only confirm his hypothesis.

At the same time, it is important to remember that until the era of Alfred Kinsey and Evelyn Hooker, the only homosexuals who made themselves known to social scientists of any stripe were those who entered psychotherapy or psy- 67

choanalysis. Thus Bergler's beliefs, at least on the sur­

face, were not so mysterious as they may appear to us now.

Nonetheless, those patients were victims of the pre­ vailing definition of normality in mid-twentieth century

America. As Downs and Bleibtreu (1972, p. 308) point out,

the consequence of that definition "is that we tend to think of the range of human variability as being much nar­

rower than it is. This can lead to severe personal prob­ lems for people with features or characteristics which fall within the range of normal human variability but outside the range of variability as their culture conceives it."

Despite existing and pandemic prejudice and abuse, gay people in the u.s. have come a long way from the days of the Byzantine empire under the emperor Justinian, who re­ quired that convicted homosexuals be "tortured, mutilated, paraded in public, and executed" (Karlen, 1980, p. 89).

That code, however, is still reflected in the psychological torment and mutilation inflicted on gay people in the u.s., resulting in a highly elevated suicide rate for this group

(Rofes, 1979). An argument can be made that it is unneces­ sary to execute deviants if they murder themselves in suf­ ficient number, and psychiatry has played a pivotal role in this tragedy. CHAPTER FIVE:

THE LANGUAGE OF HOMOPHOBIA

As recently as 1971, the New York Times refused to print the word 'homosexual' (Preston, 1981). Presumably if the phenomenon was ignored and suppressed, it would cease to exist. This mistaken belief has had, at least through the 1970s, disastrous consequences for young people in the United States and elsewhere who are attempting to formulate positive gay identities (Berzon, 1979). In the past and to a large extent nowadays, public non-acknowl­ edgement of homosexuality has led most young gay people, if temporarily, to the conclusion, "I am the only one."

Language has powerful effects; it defines reality and,

68 69

as with the New York Times, it can deny reality. It is no accident that the War Department renamed itself the Depart­ ment of Defense. The power to name and rename things has generally been held exclusively by the ruling class (Po­ grebia, 1980). And certainly the ruling class in the

United States has provided an enormous arsenal of negative labels for homosexuals. The word 'homosexual' is itself more pejorative than descriptive; and the emphasis on the sexual component of such a person's totality is clear-- we rarely hear of someone being discussed as " a heterosex­ ual," at least not in news headlines.

The language of causality reflects commonly held at­ titudes and beliefs. Socially endorsed qualities are taken for granted; no one asks 'why' a popular high-schooler be­ comes a cheerleader or what 'causes' baritones. Converse­ ly, we do not often hear someone ask what might 'help' a young person to become homosexual. Generally speaking, the word 'cause' itself has negative connotations-- what causes cancer?, what caused the traffic accident?, what caused the earthquake? Psychology, as a perceived authority on human behavior, has often wielded the word 'normal' in a punitive fashion, however unwittingly. Whereas a denotation of 'most fre­ quently occurring' is perhaps intended, the connotation of

'abnormal' begins to carry what semanticists of the 1930s called surplus meaning (Field & Field, 1972). Here, 'ab- 70

normal' becomes not merely 'non-normative,' but also •un• desirable, pathological.'

Similar to the problem in the usage of the word 'nor­ mal' by psychologists, is the misuse by the lay public of the word 'natural.' Smith (1979) notes that the question of 'What is natural?' is often wielded as a double-edged sword in discussions pertaining to non-normative sexual behavior. Popular culture has sometimes maintained that homosexuality is abnormal since only humans would be so degenerate as to engage in such unnatural acts. When evi­ dence is produced that indeed most mammalian species en­ gage in various forms of homoeroticism (references col­ lected in Weinrich, 1976, pp. 145-56; see also Hunt & Hunt,

1977), then the argument is turned around to protest that humans should "be more civilized than dogs" (Smith, p. 103).

On a different level of analysis, Warren (1980) points out that logically speaking, homosexuality is a kind of behavior rather than a type of condition. Yet we do tend to view homosexuals as different entities, rather than as people who do a different sort of thing. This might be in part a result of the fact that the English language does not contain a verb, "to homosexual," as it does for most other behaviors. Rather, homosexual becomes something that one "is." Warren concludes that the absence of a verb for homosexual behavior tends to stagmatize or 'taint' the entire person who is labeled homosexual, at least in the 71

mind of the perceiver who disapproves of specific behaviors.

The frequently magical language of psychoanalytical thought has sometimes served to baffle and to mystify, rather than to illuminate. The pronouncements of psycho­ analysts have amazing similarities to the incantations of the witch doctor who serves the same magical function in other societies (Szasz, 1970). Yet when it comes to homo­ phobia, not only the lay public but mental health profes­ sionals-- as we have seen with Reuben (1969)-- can be ex­ plicit and direct.

A conspicuous example of unmistakable homophobia in non-psychologists can be found in the responses to a survey conducted by Crew (1978), who attempted to gather data on the status of gay persons by mailing questionnaires to the chairpersons of the eight hundred and ninety-three college and university English departments registered with the

Modern Language Association. The language scribbled into the margins by respondents to the survey was all too reveal­ ing: "'Gay Persons'-- do you mean queers?" .... "This is the damndest thing I have ever seen!" •... "Returned with disgust!" ...• "God forbid!" ..•. "Your questionnaire has been posted on our department bulletin board and has been treated as a joke" (p. 3).

Homophobia stands out in sharp relief when presented in such clear terminology. But what of the more subtle, and perhaps more pervasive, biases which creep often un- 72

noticed into the most scholarly and 'liberal' treatises?

The very titles of certain publications may suggest the

value assumptions implicit: The Problem of Homosexuality

in Modern Society (Rutenbeck, 1963) or Sexuality and

Homosexuality (Karlen, 1971). Might not society be the

problem? Is homosexuality so bizarre that it cannot be

included under the rubric of sexuality? Contrast these

with a title chosen by Bell and Weinberg (1978), Homo­ sexualities: A Study of Diversity Among Men and Women.

Here, a recognition of, and appreciation of, variety is apparent from the title alone.

An ideal and extended example of linguistic bias is provided in what is considered to be the currently defin­

itive statement on homosexuality in psychology: Homosex­

ual Behavior: A Modern Reappraisal (1980), edited by

Judd Marmor. This book includes contributions by such

eminent researchers as Evelyn Hooker, and the team of

Saghir and Robins. Nonetheless, Marmor's introduction

is laced with underpinnings of homophobia, as revealed in

his negatively biased language: he asks if homosexuality

is an outgrowth of "family disturbances" (p. 3), whereas Warren (1980), in the same volume, inquires in less judg­

mental terms about "familial factors" (p. 126). Marmor discusses an experiment by Dorner in which testosterone

injections administered to castrated rats leads to "per­ fectly normal heterosexual behavior" (p. 8). Nowhere do 73

we find reference to perfectly normal homosexual behavior.

He quotes John Money, who refers to a "hidden predis­ position, perhaps lurking in the neurohormonal system of the brain ••• " (p. 9). Hidden from whom? Is this predis­ position hiding more cleverly than does a heterosexual pre­ disposition? And lurking where? In some dark alley of the mind, waiting to leap out and frighten someone?

Marmor offers hope for "constitutionally 'effeminate' boys or 'masculine' girls" when he states that they may later develop "normal heterosexual object relationships," as well as "appropriate gender-role identification" (p. 9).

Appropriate to whom? To those who believe that girls must play with dolls and boys with baseball gloves? Who in­ vented these roles? Is this even a scientific question?

Marmor seems to accept and encourage the status quo for sex roles; he does not seriously address the underlying values and social issues.

Ironically, Marmor was instrumental in the American

Psychiatric Association's change in nomenclature regarding homosexuality. As a perceived champion of the gay civil rights movement, Marmor should be presumed to accept homo­ sexuals as equals. But at the close of his introduction,

Marmor again gives himself away: "The legalization of homosexual behavior between consenting adults and the out­ lawing of discriminatory practices against homosexuals is a first and necessary step in making it possible for the 74

millions of men and women whose early life experiences,

through no fault of their own, have rendered them erotical­

ly responsive to their own sex to live lives of dignity and

self-respect" (p. 21, emphasis added).

This double-edged sort of message is not likely to

increase the self-esteem of many lesbians or gay men; and

the United States is going to find it difficult to accept any "faulted" group into its mainstream.

Marmor's language could not have been labeled homo­ phobic until the word 'homophobia' existed. The very cre­ ation of the neologism 'homophobia' has ushered in a new reality; the focus has shifted from the victim to the per­ petrator.

And the 'gay' movement, by renaming its members some­ thing other than 'dyke' or 'fag' or even 'homosexual,' has created a new actuality for consumption: persons with same­ sex attraction will no longer tolerate being labeled as

"constitutional psychopathic inferiors," as they were in the past (Timmons, 1980, p. 1).

As Stone (1980) writes, in her review of Elizabeth

Janeway's Powers of the Weak, "the blue chip is the power to name oneself, and to be called by that name. Surely this is a truth that will be attested to by millions of former Negroes, queers, and girls" (p. 37). Interestingly enough, the Anthropological Research Group on Homosexuality was denied publication of a number of important papers on 75

the grounds that the word 'gay' is unscientific (Read,

1980).

If psychology is to make good on its destigmatization of homosexuality in accordance with the Association's 1975 resolution, then it will need to develop and press into service a descriptive lexicography, rather than one which is judgmental or pejorative in flavor. Words and labels have been an historically significant tool in the arsenal of the mental health professions, and there is every reason to believe that a new vocabulary for gay psychology-- 'gay' instead of homosexual, 'typical' instead of appropriate,

'androgynous• instead of effeminate, and 'statistically infrequent' rather than abnormal-- will help to redefine the position of gay people and ease their transition to a more visible and productive style of living.

As has often been wryly suggested by Quentin Crisp, the Englishman who dared to come out of the closet in the early 1930s, never say normal-- say common. CHAPTER SIX: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF THE PSYCHOLOGICAL

LITERATURE ON HOMOSEXUALITY POST-1974

The Stonewall Riot of 1969, during which gay people fought back against police harrassment in New York City, ushered in the current era of Gay Liberation. The move­ ment had been working behind the scenes for decades (this is an area traditionally ignored by u.s. historians; see Licata, 1981), but Stonewall signaled a willingness on the part of gays to fight publicly for their rights as citi­ zens.

Only one year after the riot 10,000 gay women and men marched in Central Park to commemorate the event (Licata,

76 77

p. 179); the gay community had been quickly politicized and mobilized. This is extraordinary, given the shroud of secrecy under which nearly all homosexuals in the u.s. had been forced to live their lives. Soon, demands were being made across the nation to end the oppression of gays on both personal and institutional levels.

The power game took a dramatic turn in 1973, when Gay

Liberation protestors repeatedly interrupted American Psy­ chiatric Association proceedings to encourage the passage of a change of status for homosexuals in the nomenclature of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). As dis­ cussed earlier, the APA on December 15, 1973 removed homo­ sexuality from its official list of disorders. The Amer­ ican Psychological Association followed in January, 1975 with a similar resolution.

What has happened since then? It might be reasonable to expect that at least the majority of research published would reflect this new position, and even that homophobic

journal articles would eventually become scarce. The pres­ ent experiment is an attempt to examine in toto the output of research on homosexuality published in psychological and psychiatric journals for the period 1975-1980.

What sorts of questions have psychiatrists and psy­ chologists asked since the rejection of the disorder model of homosexuality? What kinds of gay people form the sub­

ject pools of this research? Has homophobia disappeared 78

from the literature as mandated by the APA decisions?

Theoretically, social scientists may 'ask' any ques­

tions they like, but the only quantifiable measure we have

of these is the literature which finds its way into print.

It is that literature to which we now turn.

Method

A computer search of the Psychological Abstracts index was conducted through Lockheed's DIALOG system, with com­

puter banks in Palo Alto, California, accessed through

telephone lines at California State University, Northridge.

The search was limited to journal articles identified

as having 'gay,' 'homosexual,' 'lesbian,' or 'homophobia'

as a major subject area, defined by appearance of the term

in the on-line description filed for the article. Terminal

endings of these words were truncated and left open (e.g.

'homophob=-·-') to instruct the computer to search for all

words which included other suffixes after the root ('homo­

phobic,' etc.).

The computer was further instructed to limit its

search to articles published in the United States, in the

English language, between January, 1975 and September,

1980.

From its File Eleven bank (Psychinfo), which includes

approximately 338,000 references, the computer tagged and

printed 214 abstracts with references which matched the in- 79

structions. These abstracts became the 'subjects' of the study when they were evaluated on the following dimensions:

1) Sex of researcher(s)

2) Sex of participant(s)

3) Type of participants (e.g. students, patients)

4) Method utilized (e.g. ethnography, true ex­

periment)

5) Focus of study (e.g. attitudes, pathology)

6) Level of analysis (e.g. institutional, indi­

vidual)

7) Location of research

8) Presence of homophobia

This last dimension is a qualitative variable, seem­ ingly a subjective matter, yet very little interpretation was required. The journal authors tended to divide them­ selves rather neatly according to their stance on homosex­ uality. For example, it is not difficult to place Gnepp

(1975) in the homophobic category when he "attacks the decision of the American Psychiatric Association ••. It is asserted that no government should abdicate its respon­ sibilities by permitting the young of society to feel that all behavior is equally moral" (from the abstract).

Nor is it easy to mistake the obvious absence of homo­ phobia is those authors who suggest taking an advocacy role . I 80

for gay persons in psychotherapy (e.g. Hall, 1978). Still, a test of interjudge reliability was conducted in order to empirically appraise whether another rater would achieve similar results. An independent observer judged a random sample of 30 of the 214 abstracts, categorizing them as a) homophobic, b) unknown, or c) non-homophobic. Then the responses were compared with those of the author. In only one case were the ratings completely divergent (homophobic versus non-homophobic). In an additional three cases, the independent observer marked abstracts •unknown,' whereas the author had categorized these as either 'homophobic' or

•non-homophobic.' Thus there was absolute agreement for

26 of the 30 items, a binomial test of which achieves sta­ tistical reliability at the .01 level.

Clear indicators of homophobia included an emphasis on causation of the 'disorder,' suggestions for •cure,' discussion of prevention, or writing which moralized nega­ tively about gay behavior. Indicators of non-homophobia included proposals of advocacy roles for therapists, dis­ cussion of •coming out• as an adult developmental issue, negation of psychoanalytic pathology models, exploration of gay community strengths and support systems, and sugges­ tions for promoting family acceptance of gay members.

Results

The 214 abstracts tagged by computer search revealed 81

a welcome variety of subject matter, methodology, and point of view. This literature on homosexuality (1975-1980) has been broken down into components as charted in Tables 1-7.

The extraordinary diversity of research questions is seen in Focus of Study (Table 1). The exclusivity of the disease model is heading toward extinction, while other avenues are providing new information of inestimable im­ portance, such as baseline data on healthy gays (Peplau et al, 1978; Lehne, 1978).

Table 1 shows homosexuality being approached from thirty-five different vantage points. Note that Etiology is listed as distinct from Pathology; while technically similar, it seems worthwhile to distinguish the two in order to highlight the non-homophobic nature of the former.

Regarding Level of Analysis (Table 2), we can see that the individual level predominates, but this is closely fol­ lowed by research which is predicated on multiple levels of analysis. Indeed it seems difficult to imagine any piece of gay research which would not intrinsically be open to multiple levels of analysis given the varying family, in­ stitutional and social pressures which impinge on gay func­ tioning in the United States.

The emphasis on individual level of analysis reflects not only the still visible remnants of the intrapsychic disease model of homosexuality, but also the recent appear­ ance of baseline research which is simply trying to estab- 82

Table 1

Focus of Study in Psychological Research

on Homosexuality (1975-1980)

Pathology 36 Attitudes toward homosexuality 21

Assessment 18

Collection of baseline data 16

Developmental issues 13

Love relationships 12

Therapeutic advocacy 11

Methodology 10

Etiology 7 Conflict resolution 2

Hormones 7 Labeling theory 2

Rejection of analytic theory 7 Needs assessment 1

Gay bars/baths 6 Handwriting analysis 1

Heterosexual bias 5 Job security 1

Civil rights 5 Crisis intervention 1

Animal studies 4 Rape victims 1

Ethics 4 IQ 1

Sex roles and stereotypes 4 Androgyny 1

Organizations in gay community 3 Demographics 1

Advertisements 3 Social change 1

Drug abuse and treatment 3 Gays in Mexico 1

Alcohol abuse and treatment 2 Case management 1

Sexual dysfunction 2 Total: 214 83

lish what goes on 'inside' gay people. And although the individual level is the modal category (38%), this still represents less than a majority of the total research out­ put.

Table 2 Level of Analysis in Psychological Research on Homosexuality (1975-1980)

Individual 81

Multi-level 65 Institutional 26

Social 12

Organizational 8

Family 7 Community 5

Species 3 Dyad 3

Subspecies 1 Unknown 3

Total: 214 84

Table 3 presents totals for type of participants in gay research. Further breaking down the categories of human participants, we find an intriguing array of homo­ sexual subjects. Social scientists have studied, among others, elderly lesbians and gays (Minnigerode & Adelman, 1978), gay male athletes (Garner & Smith, 1977), priests and nuns (Halstead & Halstead, 1978), alcoholics (Small &

Leach, 1977), truck drivers (Corzine & Kirby, 1977), and parents (Green, 1978).

Table 3

Participants Used in Psychological

Research on Homosexuality (1975-1980)

Female 19

Male 69

Female and male 51

Hermaphrodite 1

Gorilla 1

Stumptail monkey 1

Rhesus monkey 1

Guinea pig 1

None 70

Total: 214 85

Despite all this diversity, fully one-third (42 out of

139) of the studies using human subjects focused on psychi­ atric and other psychotherapeutic patients. overall, as in previous decades, we see a preponderance of male subjects, which reflects sexism and which may lead to a rather lop­ sided view of homosexuality. Still, the ratio of male-to­ female studies is less top-heavy than was the case during the 1940s through 1960s, when lesbians were almost entirely ignored by researchers.

From Table 4 we can note a preponderance of relatively unsophisticated methodology. Case histories and correla­ tional studies-- or no method whatsoever-- abound. Only

29 of the articles (13.5%) are true or quasi-experiments.

Perhaps most damaging of all from a pure science point of view is the fact that only one research study (Friedman &

Frantz, 1977) out of two hundred and fourteen is a repli­ cation of a previous experiment.

However, it is well to remember that this area of research has recently gone through an enormous paradigm shift;' thus it may be appropriate to see an emphasis on broad-based, non-specific techniques such as surveys, sim­ ple correlations, and reviews of the literature. This may be an effective way to gain moorings and develop meaning­ ful research questions, while the details and the method­ ological nitty gritty may arrive later.

A healthy cross-pollination from anthropology is seen 86

Table 4 Methods Utilized in Psychological Research on Homosexuality (1975-1980)

Correlational study 49 Review of literature 33 Case history 32 Presentation of theoretical material 32 Collection of baseline data 16 Quasi-experiment 15 True experiment 14 Participant-observation or ethnography 10 Institutional or public opinion survey 6 Analysis of archival data 5 Replication of a true experiment 1 Reanalysis of existing data 1 Total: 214 87

in the ten studies which utilized ethnographic and/or par­ ticipant-observation methods to study the gay community and its institutions; such data are likely to be of in­ creasing value as the gay community opens its doors to non-gay researchers and the general public. As can be seen in Table 5, 39 (or 17%) of there­ searchers were female, while 131 (or 61%) were male. For the remaining 22% of the articles, authors were co-sexual or their names were not clearly identifiable as being male or female.

Table 5 Sex of Researcher(s) in Psychological Research on Homosexuality (1975-1980)

Male 131 Female 39 Co-sexual 34 Ambiguous name(s) 10 Total: 214 88

Far more interesting than these numbers alone, how­ ever, is the relationship between homophobia and sex of researcher (Table 6). Indeed, 20 million gay Americans received a brand-new clean bill of health in 1973 and 1975, but no such miracle was effected for all of the members of the mental health professions, and males still seem partic­ ularly plagued with homophobia.

Table 6

Sex of Researcher x Homophobia

in Psychological Research on Homosexuality (1975-1980)

Homophobic Non-homophobic Unknown

Male only 36 89 6 n = 131

Female only 2 37 0 n = 39

n = 38 n = 126 n=6 N = 170

x,.

[note overall N = 170 due to dropout of co-sexual and ambiguously-named authors] 89

Of homophobes, only 2 (less than 6%) are female, while

among non-homophobes, females number 37 (or 42%) in that

category, far outweighing their actual representation (27%)

in numbers. A chi-square test of Sex of Researcher x Homo­

phobia resulted in X2.( 1) = 9. 36, .E < • 01. Clearly, female authors are less likely to demonstrate homophobia in the

psychological literature.

Overall, including all 214 pieces of published re­

search, 46 were judged homophobic, 162 were non-homophobic,

and 6 could not be ascertained. Thus even if we count the

last 6 as homophobic, a large majority (76%) of the re­

search articles are non-homophobic in nature. This is re­

markable, given how recently the paradigm shift for homo­

sexuality has occurred.

For the Geographical Area dimension (Table 7), the

Mississippi River was used to divide entries into Western

or Eastern United States, as the vast majority of studies were conducted on or near the West and East Coasts.

With respect to geographical area, the non-homophobic

research is distributed close to expected values. However,

39 of the 46 homophobic articles (or 85%) originated East

of the Mississippi. Even with the inclusion of the non­

homophobic column, we see a statistically significant re­ sult of a chi-square test, with X'-( 1) = 20.79, .E < • 001. (By performing more than one chi-square test on the data, the

probability of a Type 1 error arises. However, these were 90

pre-planned chi-squares, and inflation of the alpha level was minimal, particularly as the results were highly reli­

able, with one test significant at the .01 level and the

other at the .001 level.)

The concentration of publishing psychoanalysts in New

York City may in part account for this strong regional dif­

ference, as might the large amount of published material

emanating from (predominantly gay) San Francisco and other major cities of the West Coast.

How might this affect the level of homophobia in the

Table 7

Homophobia x Geographical Area in

Psychological Research on Homosexuality (1975-1980)

Homophobic Non~ homophobic Unknown

Western u.s. 7 86 2 n = 95

Eastern u.s. 39 76 4 n = 119

n = 46 n = 162 n=6 N = 214

X.2.(d.f. =1) =20.79, £< .001 91

published output on homosexuality? As an example, San

Francisco is considered to have the highest per capita gay population in the nation. Thus it might be reasonable to assume that the number of homosexual researchers is un- usually high. Then it could be argued that either such re- searchers are well-versed and relatively bias-free in their area of study, or conversely that they are politically mo- tivated to produce positively-biased results which show homosexuality in an especially favorable light.

Alternative hypotheses abound: perhaps the city of

San Francisco has 'selected' for gay citizens who are more content with their lifestyle, and who thus test healthier• on personality inventories. Or perhaps the accepting so- cial ambience of San Francisco has created an environment in which persons of homosexual orientation can develop without internalizing anti-gay values to begin with.

Whatever the reasons may be, it remains clear that homophobia has nearly disappeared from research conducted in the Western United States. The homophobic research which lingers seems to be concentrated in the Eastern part of the country, and although it is waning, Morin (1977, p. 630) comments, "The assumption of pathology continues to be found in even the most contemporary of psychoanalytic writings."

Primarily, however, there is a marked decrease in homophobia and a turning to more productive research mod- 92

els. The decision to declassify homosexuality as an ill­ ness came not so much from science and research as from politics and a changing social ambience; yet the decision has had a profound influence on the questions psychologists and psychiatrists ask about homosexuality. Since the time of the 1973 American Psychiatric Association's resolution and a similar statement by the American Psychological As­ sociation, a dramatic change has come over the literature.

Whereas before 1973 the vast majority of hypotheses in print revolved around homosexuality as a disorder, it is now the case that the bulk of psychological research is no longer anti-gay. Attitude toward homosexuality is now a major focus of study (e.g. Thompson & Fishburn, 1977; West,

1977), as well as examination of the gay community as a functional entity (Fein & Nuehring, 1975; Stein, 1976), inquiry into developmental issues for adult gays (de Monte­ flares & Schultz, 1978; Laner, 1978), and the collection of baseline data to chart unfamiliar territory (Belote &

Joesting, 1976; Friedberg, 1975).

The APA decisions swung the pendulum far from the pre-

1973 days of homophobia, but in 1980 conservative political pressures nudged it in the other direction. The American

Psychiatric Association inserted 'ego-dystonic homosexual­ ity' into the Third Edition of the Diagnostic and Statisti­ cal Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III), creating a whole new controversy. This diagnostic category "is reserved for 93

those homosexuals for whom changing sexual orientation is a persistent concern ... " (American Psychiatric Associa­ tion, 1980, p. 281). Diagnostic criteria include, "the individual complains that heterosexual arousal is persis­ tently absent or weak ... ," and that "there is a sustained pattern of homosexual arousal that the individual explicit­ ly states has been unwanted and a persistent source of dis­ tress" (p. 282).

The objection to such nomenclature is that it deempha­ sizes the obvious underlying social issues of why someone would find homosexuality 'ego-dystonic• in an intensely homophobic culture to begin with. An argument can be made that DSM-III might just as well have included •ego-dystonic

Jewishness,• given the anti-Semitism which impinges on the functioning of Jewish people in our society.

It is doubtful, however, that the reinsertion of homo­ sexuality into DSM-III will have nearly as profound an ef­ fect as its earlier removal. The American Psychiatric As­ sociation may have sounded a homophobic note, but it is hard to imagine the new gay research marching back into the closet and closing the door. CHAPTER SEVEN:

METHODOLOGY, SUBJECTS, AND THE FUTURE

OF GAY RESEARCH

Outwardly, poet Walt Whitman denied the homosexual content in his work (Katz, 1976, pp. 340-50). In his private diary, however, Whitman wrote, "It is Imperative that I obviate and remove myself at all hazards from this incessant enormous and--- [passage defaced]. TO GIVE UP

Absolutely and for good this Feverish, useless undignified pursuit of 16-4 [P.D., Peter Doyle]-- too long much too long persevered in--- so humiliating. LET THERE from

THIS HOUR BE no faltering. NOT ONCE, under any circum­ stances-- ANY meeting WHATEVER from This Hour, for LIFE

94 95

(Kaplan, 1980, p. 316).

Over one hundred years later, during a membership

drive for which members of the Association of Gay Psychol­

ogists were asked to submit names of friends and profes­

sional associates, a warning was printed: " you might

want to call the person in advance to make sure which ad­

dress to use, and to prevent them from becoming alarmed

about how we got their name" ("Call for Participation,"

1981).

We are still living in a notably homophobic society;

thus we must make certain to be cognizant of the implica­

tions for information-gathering. How can we study a group

driven to invisibility? What effect does a climate of fear

produce on the availability of data? Which methods are ap­

propriate for examining various gay phenomena? Who are the

subjects who have been utilized in past gay research? What

methodological confounds weaken these studies?

First let us explore the traditional, hard science

view of problems in experimentation. While there are many

factors which contribute to methodological problems in

psychological research, they can be reduced to one factor:

control. All reflect the degree to which the experimenter wishes to, and is able to, control the experimental set­

ting, the participants, the manipulation of the indepen­

dent variable, and the measurement of the dependent vari­

able. Experiment, quasi-experiment, and non-experiment 96

are not distinct entities; properly speaking, they lie on a continuum. The degree of true experimentation depends on the number of factors which remain uncontrolled.

The most salient among these factors (based on Camp­ bell, 1957; Campbell & Stanley, 1963) are:

a) Mortality-- have any subjects been lost during the course of the experiment? If so, have they been lost from all groups equally? In this case, one is left with a prob­ lem of external validity. Yet it can never really be de­ termined that subjects were not lost differentially; thus mortality is properly a problem of internal validity. One is left not knowing whether any significant treatment ef­ fect is due to the treatment itself or to the difference between groups as a result of mortality. In animal re­ search, for example, mortality literally can confound re­ sults. If Group 2 receives a treatment (an injection of a new drug) which kills half the subjects, one can hardly justify basing results on the half that lived. Similarly, if gay participants drop out of one of two counseling groups differentially, alternative hypotheses will weaken the interpretation of the results.

b) History-- this can be a problem of external or in­ ternal validity. If subjects are not randomized into treatments, their past history is a plausible alternative hypothesis for results. If members of Group 1 were raised in New York City, while members of Group 2 grew up in 97

Oatmeal, Nebraska, then childhood residence becomes a rival hypothesis.

There also exists the problem of local history which occurs in the experimental setting. If the dependent vari­ able is an IQ test, and a homosexual group and a heterosex­ ual control group are in different rooms, and a lawnmower is roaring outside one of the rooms, then results are con­ founded by local history.

On the level of external validity, if all subjects share a particular unique history (all were raised in a

Japanese-speaking home, and the IQ test is in English), then generalizability is limited to those persons sharing that particular history.

c) Maturation-- while conceptually similar to History, maturation involves changes within the subject which occur systematically. An example would be the problem introduced if Group 1 is always measured in the morning, but Group 2 during the evening. Fatigue, which varies systematically, becomes a rival hypothesis for obtained results.

In certain time-series experiments, physical matura­ tion (in the longitudinal sense, e.g. the onset of puberty) may present a confound with the time of introduction of the treatment.

d) Testing-- when participants are tested more than once, particularly in pre-post designs, testing itself becomes a rival hypothesis. This is typically a problem 98

of external validity in experiments where all groups re­ ceive both a pre- and a post-test; here one can legiti­ mately generalize only to a tested population.

This is usually problematic only where testing is not a normal procedure for the setting. Thus, for example, in educational research, testing does not normally interfere with generalizability.

If only one of two groups is tested in a pre-post design, then the internal validity of the experiment is threatened. We must accept that the act of being pre­ tested changed Group 1; perhaps they learned something about being good test-takers, or perhaps they actually picked up content (on the dependent measure) from the pre­ test.

e) Statistical regression-- this becomes a source of confounding whenever extreme data are selected by the nature and timing of the study. For example, if a group of psychiatrically hospitalized patients is selected for their recent outbursts of violent behavior, and these sub­ jects are administered a new drug which is designed to re­ duce psychotic rage, a reduction in violent behavior is almost certainly confounded with the participants' own statistical regression to their 'average' amount of violent behavior.

Similarly, if additional highway patrol officers are assigned to duty when traffic fatalities have surged to an 99

all-time high, the officers will likely be credited with reducing the accident rate shortly thereafter. However, the accident rate has in reality settled itself down to its own •average rise.' f) Instrumentation-- problems of measurement, called instrumentation, can be introduced by people or machines. If a weighing scale is used to measure Group 1, and a dif­ ferent, inaccurate scale is used for Group 2, then clearly there will be a problem of internal validity. An experi­ menter with a strong anti-gay bias may not measure inkblot tests for homosexuals in the same manner as for heterosex­ uals.

In a time-series experiment, a data-gatherer might measure more accurately in the morning than at the end of the day; thus the experimenter's own 'maturation' intro­ duces a problem of instrumentation. Human observers are notorious confounders of internal validity due to this problem of differential measurement. Thus it is important to randomize not only treatments, but experimenters as well. g) Selection-- this problem of internal and external validity often threatens gay research. Who are the sub­

jects? How were they chosen? With whom are they being compared? This information frequently leads us to the question of generalizability. A central feature of most gay research conducted be- 100

fore 1970 is that much of it was based on clinical popula­ tions; yet as we have seen, results have frequently been stated in terms generalized to all homosexuals.

h) Interaction effects-- any of the possible threats to validity described above may interact with one another to produce higher-order confounding effects. There are also interaction problems involving the treatment itself.

For example, an interaction of testing and treatment X occurs whenever the test itself sensitizes subjects to the treatment. Another example of treatment confounds is that of selection/treatment interaction. In this case, a re­ searcher might have difficulty convincing an organization to agree to research. For example, out of twenty gay rap groups contacted, only one agrees to allow researchers in the setting. It therefore becomes a possibility that the one cooperative group will interact with treatment X in a different manner than would the nineteen non-cooperating groups.

In the truest of all possible true experiments, each of the above sources of confounding would be controlled.

Yet this still leaves a problem of reactive arrangements to weaken internal validity and limit generalizability.

Reactive arrangements are the effects of introducing nov­ elty into a setting, such as placing a highly visible re­ searcher in a field setting, or conversely, bringing a par­ ticipant into an elaborate and intimidating psychology lab. 101

Such reactive arrangements increase the probability that participants' behavior will be significantly different than it would be under more natural or typical circumstances.

For a classic study which exhibits a significant num­ ber of the threats to validity, we can turn to Bieber et al (1962), who explored the familial backgrounds of homo­ sexuals and heterosexuals. This study is particularly im­ portant in that it has remained oft-cited in the literature and, even more important, that it has had enormous social consequences.

The authors used a static-group comparison of 100 heterosexual psychiatric patients and 106 homosexual pa­ tients. These subjects were matched on such variables as age occupational status, income, and educational level.

However, since these were 'found' subjects, they could not be matched for such variables as religion, and there were an inordinate number of Jewish subjects among the hetero­ sexual group (n=67) against the approximately 40 in the homosexual group (Bieber et al, 1962, p. 27).

In addition, subjects differed on place of birth; while 74% of the heterosexual sample had been raised in

New York City, fewer than 50% of the gay subjects had been raised there, the majority having migrated there during adult life (p. 28).

A questionnaire was administered to the subjects, a questionnaire which had been devised in the following man- 102

ner: a number of psychoanalysts were contacted and asked what sorts of things they believed might cause homosexual­ ity. Their answers were compiled, and a 450-item inventory was developed. Questions focused on relationships with and between parents, e.g., "Did the family eat dinner togeth­ er?" and, "Did Mother want the individual to grow up like another particular individual?" (p. 45).

As Bieber states (p. 30), the questionnaire was

"unique" in one respect: the actual subjects, the patients, never saw the questionnaire. Their psychoanalysts filled out the answers.

This leads to an insurmountable problem; the analysts knew the purpose of the study, they selected which hetero­ sexual patients to 'interview' from among a large popula­ tion, they most likely held similar views on how the study was 'supposed to come out,' and in any case, their only measure to collect data was a second-hand, retrospective interview with no contemporary measure of the past. The patients' recall of their own past may well have been in­ fluenced by the therapists' questions during the original sessions, and the analysts may have selectively remembered and notated information which fit the analytic model. Sny­ der and Swann (1978) conducted empirical investigations of these phenomena, and conclude that "popular beliefs about other people (in particular, clearly erroneous social and cultural stereotypes) are ... stubbornly resistant to 103

change. Even if one were to develop sufficient doubt about

the accuracy of these beliefs to proceed to test them ac­

tively, one nevertheless might be likely to 'find' all the

evidence one needs to confirm and retain these beliefs. And, in the end, one may be left with the secure (but to­

tally unwarranted) feeling that these beliefs have survived

(what may seem to the individual) perfectly appropriate and

even rigorous procedures for assessing their accuracy" (p.

1212) .

In a different study, Snyder and Cantor (1979) showed

that experimental participants not only "invest more time

and effort in retrieving confirming evidence [of meaningful

or even random hypotheses] than in retrieving disconfirming

evidence," but that they also "attach greater relevance to

confirming evidence than to disconfirming evidence" (p.

341). The authors warn, "Little may users of confirmatory hypothesis-testing strategies realize that, were they to

test precisely the opposite hypothesis, they might just as

readily generate substantial and convincing amounts of evi­ dence in support of that hypothesis, too" (p. 342).

Germane to the Bieber study, Snyder and Cantor (1979,

p. 330) found that not only did participants preferentially

collect hypothesis-confirming evidence, but they also

"framed hypotheses in terms of those attributes whose pres­

ence would confirm the hypothesis."

In spite of all these 'aids,• most of the Bieber ques- 104

tionnaire items failed to achieve statistical significance: for example, only 27 of the original mother-related items were significant at the .05 or .01 levels (pp. 45-46).

Similarly, only 20 of 70 father-related items were statis­ tically reliable (p. 86). Needless to say, another serious problem engendered here is the wildly inflated alpha level resulting from computing such a large number of statistical tests on the same data.

One might be in a position to forgive and forget, were this billed as a pilot study; but Bieber et al speak in firm causal language throughout. For example, Bieber con­ cludes that homosexuality is necessarily a pathologic con­ dition (p. 304), that parents-- especially mothers-- are responsible for a homosexual outcome (pp. 79-84), and that a homosexual orientation is an expression of hidden inca­ pacitating fears of the opposite sex (p. 303).

The fact that both the homosexuals and the members of the icontrol' group (so labeled by Bieber) were psychother­ apy patients is one of the few virtues of this 'experi­ ment'-- at least internal validity is not threatened on that ground. But obviously, external validity is severely weakened; properly the results, such as they were, should not have been generalized beyond white, upper middle class, male American psychoanalytic patients. The details of Bieber's study raise problems of selec­ tion, of instrumentation, of history, of construct valid- 105

ity, of reactive arrangements, of selection/instrumentation interaction, and of selection/treatment interaction.

Despite all this, perhaps the most basic improvement necessary to this study would have been a more cautious attitude regarding the interpretation of results. Even a

single-group correlational study can have value as a lim­ ited probe to generate questions for further research. But the use of a patient population to study any general phe­ nomenon is a serious blunder, even in a pilot study; re­ sults are bound to be exceedingly skewed and misleading.

Oddly enough, Bieber has not recognized the flaws in his research as the years have gone by. Rather, he con­ tinues to provide "further evidence" from his patient pop­ ulation. In 1976, Bieber (p. 368) declared that "since

1962, when our volume was published, I have interviewed

about 1,000 male homosexuals ••• ,"as if studying a vast number of psychiatric patients would somehow make up for

the slipshod methodology of using a patient population to

begin with.

The folly of pointing to psychiatric patients as

typical homosexuals can be exposed not only by examining

the rules of methodological rigor, but also by attending

to alternative data collection methods. Spada (1979), for

example, used an open-ended essay questionnaire which was

distributed widely through various sources in gay male com­

munities across the nation. This method brought forth an 106

enormous quantity of data that reflected the diversity of the more than 1,000 gay male respondents.

As it was not limited to a psychiatric population, the questionnaire could elicit responses to a particular

item which ranged from, "I feel that part of the reason

[for being homosexual] is a very hostile father" (Spada,

1979, p. 4), all the way to, "Growing up, I was very close to my father. He was in many ways my best friend and we

spent many hours together whenever he was not at work" (p.

4) •

Looking at the recent journal literature on homosex­ uality overall, there has been so little methodology to

speak of that it becomes difficult to criticize. Of the 214 studies which have appeared in u.s. journals since the

January, 1975 American Psychological Association decision declassifying homosexuality as an illness, few (n=14) uti­ lized true experimental designs, and nearly as few (n = 15) used quasi-experimental methods. The remainder consists of

a minority of correlational studies and a majority of 'stud­

ies• which present case histories or theoretical materials.

Since there has been such an outpouring of literature

on homosexuality, we cannot treat each article individual­

ly. But certain journal articles serve as models for types

of methodological problems which recur again and again.

Let us first take up an example of the case history and the

kinds of conclusions which are drawn from it. 107

Lane (1977) is not much better or worse than other in­ vestigators utilizing this method. She reports the case of a male psychotherapy patient who is troubled by his homo­ sexual orientation. During the course of therapy, the sub­ ject discusses his homosexuality regularly, but to no •cur• ative• effect.

The therapy moves through material the •experimenter' claims has some relation to Oedipal anxiety. Still there is no cure. Then the therapy moves to pre-Oedipal issues, and the patient is soon cured of his homosexuality. The conclusion stated by Lane is that the origins of homosex­ uality lie in developmental stages different from those suggested by earlier Freudians.

This sort of non-methodology is rampant in both the psychiatric and psychological literature. To meet even minimum methodological requirements, the experimenter would need to have originally hypothesized that 'pre-X' would indeed produce the change, and the design would certainly need an •n• greater than 1 (either through obtaining a larger subject pool to begin with, or by replicating an intensive-design n = 1 procedure a number of times) .

Additionally, the experimenter would need to make certain constructs more explicit. After all, it is dif­ ficult to grasp, let alone quantify, "pre-Oedipal mater- ial."

A second study, which used quasi-experimental methods 108

for a different approach to the same theme, is the experi­ ment by Silverman, Bronstein, and Mendelssohn (1977) which purports to explore psychoanalytic theory regarding homo­ sexuals and schizophrenics. The design was as follows:

60 subjects were shown material tachistoscopically, and were then administered Rorschach inkblot tests. Previ­ ous baseline inkblot measures had been taken for all 60

participants. The 30 homosexual subjects were shown ta­ chistoscopic material with a high incest content. After the material was shown, the homosexual subjects displayed

"increased homosexual orientation" on the inkblot test.

The 30 schizophrenic subjects were shown aggressive material on the tachistoscope, after which their inkblot

scores revealed "increased schizophrenic content."

The experimenters conclude that their hypotheses-­ unresolved incestuous wishes cause homosexuality, and un­

resolved aggressive fantasies cause schizophrenia-- have

been confirmed.

The above study is, of course, really two entirely

unrelated correlational studies. There are no controls

for instrumentation (who administered the pre-tests?), nor

for overwhelming experimenter bias effects (the experi­

menters themselves scored the post-test), nor for effects

of testing and history.

In addition, despite the appearance of a two-group

study, the experiment clearly has neither control groups 109

nor control tasks for making meaningful comparisons.

The most obvious improvement essential to the proce­ dure of this study is the addition of control groups for both the homosexual and schizophrenic subjects. Without that basic requirement met, no experiment-- whether or not it holds up a facade of science-- can allow statistical in­ ferences to be drawn from the data.

The limited generalizability of the study is another serious liability; the homosexual as well as the schizo­ phrenic subjects were institutionalized psychiatric pa­ tients. While the use of hospitalized schizophrenics has at least some face validity, hospitalized homosexuals are hardly representative of gay people at large.

This problem of participant selection is critical to gay research, and deserves further attention here. As the social sciences produce more and more research utilizing gay subjects-- whether or not these subjects are psycho­ therapy patients-- a question arises. Just who is gay? As an artifact of homophobia, there is no such thing as a ran­ dom sample of homosexuals. To believe otherwise involves magical thinking.

Nor is there such a thing as a modal gay subject.

This is not well understood by all researchers. Ovesey and Woods (1980, p. 331), for example, flatly state that

" ••• we shall formulate a compact psychodynamic framework within which any homosexual deemed suitable for psychother- 110

apy can be understood and treated [emphasis added]. Homo­

sexuals seek genital contact with other men primarily for

sexual gratification, that is, for orgastic pleasure."

(The authors leave it unclear as to whether heterosexual men seek out genital contact for reasons primarily other

than sexual gratification, and obviously the authors ignore women entirely.)

Ovesey and Woods disregard both cognition and emotion,

thus essentially obliterating the gay subject. Yet they claim their definition of a gay person is sufficient know­ ledge for a clinician to understand and treat that person.

Taylor ( 1978, p. 106) reminds us, "Many of the problems homosexual people face are not caused by homosexuality it­

self, but by the way homosexuality is defined and the re­

sulting societal reaction that occurs when it is discovered.

Thus the accuracy of definitions and validity of the means used in arriving at them are of particular concern to homo­

sexuals and social scientists alike."

Dr. Alfred Kinsey, in a letter to a foreign correspon­

dent, noted in 1952 that "the information that one gets

from a traveler or from persons who have lived in the coun­

try without making an actual survey from a good portion of

the population must inevitably reflect their own view­

points. For instance, we have extended notes from persons who have lived in Arabian countries for long periods of

years, and find that the Arabian people are very much re- 111

strained .•• and with homosexuality practically unknown.

This reflects the restricted experience of such an observ­ er. Other persons have suggested that homosexual activity is more common than any type of non-marital heterosexual activity, and this I am inclined to believe, although I am still uncertain what the averages would be ... " (Pomeroy,

1972, p. 403).

While homosexuality is no longer quite so hidden from public view, the current transitional period of gay libera­ tion presents its own problems in terms of subjects. Col­ lege and university professors conducting homosexual re­ search have seen a new subject pool spring up before them; as Gay and Lesbian Student Unions appear with greater fre­ quency, subjects become more accessible. But herein lies an issue. Members of such organizations would tend to be not only unrepresentative of 'pure' homosexuality (there is no such thing), they would even be unrepresentative of the larger homosexual population of the United States. After all, these students are the end product of the developmen­ tal stages required in coming to terms with a positive gay identity. By definition, anyone attending an open meeting of a gay/lesbian campus group has come much of the way toward internal integration.

The problem of generalizing from students to a larger population is hardly limited to homosexual research, but indeed there are additional difficulties which arise from 112

selecting any openly gay sample. Such participants will

perhaps be the best-adjusted, the highest-motivated, the

most psychologically sophisticated, and they will generally

be the youngest. The results of personality tests, stress

and coping measures, or life adjustment inventories are

likely to be skewed in a positive direction, perhaps lead­

ing to an interpretation nearly as biased as one based on

a psychiatric population. There have, in fact, been stud­

ies (Freedman, 1975) which support the hypothesis that

homosexuals are mentally healthier than heterosexuals.

But again, which homosexuals? It is essential that

investigators recognize the wide range of responses to a

hostile environment as experienced by homosexuals. Spada

(1979) quotes a large number of anonymous (and this is sig­ nificant) respondents in his aforementioned survey of gay males; a comparison of two of the responses may be illus­

trative:

"I think one of the best things I like about being gay

is that being part of a minority serves to enhance my out­

look on other minorities. It makes me conscious of sexist

attitudes which I assimilated through society, so I could

eliminate them" (Spada, 1979, pp. 293-294).

Contrast that with, "I'm still in the process of real­

izing it, exploring it. It has seemed to me, at various

times, terribly sad- being left out, somehow, of the crowd, the isolation of being different ••. " (pp. 294-295). 113

The latter respondent would not so easily come to the attention of the researcher utilizing an openly gay sample.

But then, there is no 'single pulse' to homosexuality, and research on openly gay populations can be extremely pro­ ductive, so long as researchers use caution in interpreting and generalizing from their data.

A related problem exists for researchers working with historical or archival data. Emily Dickinson suffered the posthumous indignity of having the pronouns for the object of her affection in the love poems changed to the male gen­ der by relatives who feared publishing the work in its original form (Faderman, 1981).

How many less-famous individuals have had their sex­ uality whitewashed? How can we ever know more than haphaz­ ard information about gay lives from historical periods of intense homophobia? It would be impossible, for example, for researchers to establish incidence figures retrospec­ tively for eras in which it was impossible to say aloud,

"Yes, I am gay."

Ironically, lesbians and gay men themselves now con­ stitute a major element in perpetuating the invisibility of homosexuality. The vast majority of homosexuals remain, in the vernacular, in the closet. Thus the public is allowed to retain mistaken stereotypes of gay people, "this feeling of universality leading to pluralistic ignorance" (Schneid­ er, 1976, p. 288). 114

Schneider, discussing this phenomenon in another con­ text, notes that "members of a small community, for exam­ ple, may know that 'everyone' disapproves of card-playing, but may not realize that many people nonetheless partici­ pate in this deviant activity •... People accurately per­ ceive the norms of the group, but they do not correctly perceive how common non-normative behavior is" (p. 314).

Of course, as social conditions improve for gay peo­ ple, then our 'subject pool' can make itself more evident in all its diversity.

In the meanwhile, how can researchers reduce the prob­ lem of obtaining a reasonably representative sample? Com­ munity psychologist c. 0. Word (1976) has proposed the use of the sampling technique known as the random-intercept method, in conducting attitude research in the black com­ munity. This method involves a trained interviewer ap­ proaching every eleventh person in a given locale, such as a barber shop or a line at the supermarket checkstand.

While this technique has been utilized by Word to good effect in research on black attitudes toward television, it might present special problems of generalizability when used in the gay community. After all, for potential sub­ jects simply to stand in line at a gay rodeo event or a packed gay dance bar requires a certain degree of openness.

Sampling this group may bring up once again the problem of not having access to the closeted majority. 115

Nonetheless, such a sampling procedure would at least be a significant improvement over the generalizability of studies based on psychiatric patients. The random-inter­ cept method may be one of the best currently available methods for securing baseline attitude data from the gay community.

At least as important as choice of subjects is the level of awareness the experimenter brings to the research setting. What does the experimenter know about the gay community and its history? Does the experimenter know any gay people personally? As Robinson (1981, p. 34) states,

"An acquaintance with even a handful of homosexuals- and only the most desultory knowledge of their history- gives the lie to all the psychiatrists• doctrines." It is cer­ tain that a more than academic familiarity with the gay community is a prerequisite to high-quality research.

Even when researchers have 'found' their gay subjects, an identity puzzle remains. Warren (1980, p. 126) delin­ eates the problem succinctly: "Many lay persons and even social scientists assign the identity 'homosexual' tooth­ ers on the basis of [sexual] behavior. But the individuals who engage in the behavior may see themselves as homosex­ ual, heterosexual, or bisexual. Behavior and personal identity are not identical, either among males ..• or fe- males."

Conversely, there exist many self-identified gays who 116

do not behave genitally at all, and perhaps have never had a sexual encounter with a same-sex person in their history.

Tennov (1980) declares that it is not genital behavior which defines people as straight or gay, but their experi­ ence of falling in love.

Sex researcher John Money concurs, "the most secure definition of heterosexual vs. homosexual or bisexual has less to do with sexual behavior or experience than with the sexes of the individual(s) with whom one is capable of fal­ ling in love. It would thus make more sense to classify people on the basis of their erotic imagery, their fanta­ sies, than on the basis of visible behavior" (Mass, 1980, p. 25) •

Interestingly enough, it has been argued by Bergen

(1981) that as homosexual rights become commonplace, then homosexuality per se will no longer be a focus of identity, and Bergen in fact suggests that this largely has already become the case.

In reply to this theory, Denneny (1981) proposes that,

"As long as such enormous social sanctions are directed against open homosexuality, I think it's quite sensible for a gay person to think being gay is a significant iden­ tity, an 'imperative status.' Hannah Arendt once said,

'When you are attacked for being a Jew, you cannot say,

Please excuse me, I am not a Jew, I am a human being.

This is silly"' (p. 6). 117

At the very least, it seems that researchers should recognize that a gay identity is still a significant, com­ plex, and dynamic component in the makeup of a homosexual person, and is likely to remain so for some time.

As Robinson reminds us (1981, p. 34), "Everyone who has thought about the question recognizes that being gay means to be different in ways that transcend what one does in bed. To say how much that difference is a function of the particular circumstances under which homosexuals have lived, and how much it has deeper roots, would be prema­ ture. But homosexuality is a complex state of being ...

To reduce it to a sexual orientation-- although understand­ able as a political tactic-- considerably diminishes its richness and importance."

Taking all these issues into account, what then is the future of gay research? First, it is imperative that psy­ chiatry and psychology continue to question the utility of the pathology model of homosexuality. That area of re­ search has been nearly exhausted, and is unlikely to bear meaningful new data.

In our own time, homosexuality might most properly be addressed by psychology not as a clinical issue per se, but rather as an adult developmental issue. This gets to the heart of the behavior versus identity question: how does a person move from a stigmatized homosexual identity or a denial of self to a positive lesbian/gay identity? what 118

stages must a person pass through in a homophobic society before achieving integration of his or her sexual orienta­ tion? These questions are beginning to receive explora­ tion from such researchers as Cass (1979) and Berzon (1979) who have presented both theoretical and practical models for such identity formation.

Research on lesbians is critical to the future of gay research. What leaps from a long-range review of the lit­ erature, relative to the vast outpourings on male homosex­ uals, is the paucity of research on lesbians. It is, in fact, usually possible to substitute the term 'male homo­ sexual' for the word 'homosexual' in research carried out before 1970. Women were generally not included-- either literally or conceptually-- in writings on homosexuality before that time, and if they were, women were included only peripherally or in a short separate section. As

Hooker suggests, "Until recently, researchers didn't pay much attention to lesbians. It was as though psychologists, most of whom are men, couldn't believe female homosexuality existed" (Chance, 1975, p. 52).

In addition to women's issues, all sorts of research questions await exploration: how can we best help gay peo­ ple adapt to an abrasive environment? how can we reduce that abrasiveness in our society? how can we assist gay people to acclimate quickly and effectively to positive social changes? how can we best counsel families with gay 119

members? which components are the most significant in a gay person's self-definition? what can society as a whole learn from the gay community? how can we learn more about the hidden members of the gay community? what about minor­ ity gays?

Perhaps, as Morin (1977, p. 633) comments, "Future re­ search will be even more complex as samples are selected that identify themselves as 'gay' and not as 'homosexual.'

The emerging definition of 'gay' or 'lesbian' is different from that of 'homosexual.' The term gay, like the terms black, Chicano, and woman, connotes a value system as well as designates group membership. Gay is proud, angry, open, visible, political, healthy, and all the positive things that homosexual is not. Future research will have to ac­ count for the various definitions of the samples under study."

Pillard advises that, "There is much [research] that could be done. Kids growing up in lesbian families ... the whole issue of gay parents and gay kids A study could also be done on the cognitive abilities of gay people; there is good reason to speculate that gay people have un­ usual cognitive and creative gifts ... it has been suggest­ ed that gay people have higher IQ's. No one has tested even a simple proposition like this" (Mass, 1979, p. 18).

The area of homophobia deserves special attention.

Who are the homophobes? how do these attitudes develop? 120

which other attitudes form a constellation with homophobia? how can we eliminate homophobia from such critical institu­ tions as the mental health professions?

Another rich area for research is sociobiology, which in particular raises serious questions about science and cultural values. What if it is determined, ten years hence, that homosexuality among mammals is largely genet­ ically determined? This discovery will be greeted with de­ light by some observers who will claim that this proves homosexual behavior to be natural. Others will determine that the findings are proof positive that homosexuality is a genetic disease.

It seems certain that values surrounding homosexuality will continue to influence the questions asked, the results obtained, and the interpretation of those results. Thus we might ask, who should be conducting gay research? It has been suggested by radical gay therapists that only gay peo­ ple themselves should have the right to study homosexual­ ity. But academic psychology is unlikely to go along with such a plan, and with good reason. It doesn't •take one to know one.' But again, heterosexual researchers who have no personal familiarity with the gay community will be blun­ dering in the dark.

Whatever the future brings, researchers, journal edi­ tors, and the consumers of such information will need to continue the current reanalysis of the nature and utility 121

of the data gathered during the past fifty years. And ef­ forts to improve the quality of future investigation mu·st be redoubled if psychology is to extricate itself from the quagmire of faulty research which has typified much of the scientific study of homosexuality.

As Boswell (1980) suggests, only in times of social acceptance do gay people develop visible subcultures. The recently increased visibility of lesbians and gay men af­ fords psychology a rare opportunity to learn about this sizable and varied group. CHAPTER EIGHT: EPILOGUE

THE CRISIS IN PSYCHOLOGY

As Torrey (1978, p. 3) suggests, "The history of sci­ ence teaches us that although we grow up thinking that certain things are right they often turn out to be other­ wise. This is true not only of specific facts, but of whole models of knowledge."

By stepping back from the details of gay research, we may be able to touch upon issues that are of the utmost im­ portance to the study of homosexuality. Hiding behind the elaborate structure of contemporary research methodology is a global question: how appropriate and productive is the prevailing research paradigm?

122 123

When we are confronted with rampant experimenter bias, an almost total absence of replication, poor methodology and slipshod reporting, one response is to insist upon tightened methods and clarity of writing. Another plaus­ ible response is to pull back from the particulars and to question the entire foundation on which the science of psy­ chology rests.

Not only the study of homosexuality, but all of aca­ demic psychology has come under a great deal of criticism from within, during the past decade or so. Koch (1974, pp. 27-28) is unsparing: "Our students are asked to read and memorize a literature consisting of an endless set of advertisements for the emptiest concepts, the most inflated theories, the most trivial 'findings,' and the most fetish­ istic yet heuristically self-defeating methods in scholarly history-- and all of it conveyed in the dreariest and most turgid prose that ever met the printed page. For these riches, they must exchange whatever curiosity about the human condition may have carried them into the field; what­ ever awe or humility they may feel before the human and organismic universe; whatever resources of imagination or observational sensitivity they may bring to the study of that complex universe; whatever openness to experience-­ their own or others-- they might have. Fine or ardent sen­ sibilities will no longer seek out such debasement. When, by misfortune or misadvice, they arrive in such a field, 124

they will soon abandon it-- as they seem to be doing in

increasing numbers."

Not only has the content of academic psychology come

into question, but the logical positivism on which it rests

has been criticized as an inappropriate model for the study

of human experience and behavior. A central criticism re­

volves around the utility of the 'hard science' paradigm

borrowed by psychology from the physical sciences.

Heim (1970) takes a severe position on this, believing

that the physical science model cannot even begin to ad­

dress psychological phenomena. Deese (1969) strikes a more

moderate posture and suggests that the experimental model

may well serve certains areas of psychology, such as memory

and learning, but that other areas require alternate method­

ologies.

Baumrind (1980) goes further to state that the para­

digm on which psychology rests is a male-dominated, control­

oriented, rigidly inflexible system which is in the process

of being replaced slowly by a new paradigm that encourages

naturalistic studies, 'soft' methods of data collection,

and longitudinal experiments conducted in context. Her

views reflect the growing awareness that psychology cannot

operate in the closed-system fashion of physics. Samelson

(1980, p. 623) adds, "Our 5earch for understanding must go

beyond a call for more attentive reading and replication.

We must admit that our model of science as a social pro- 125

cess, transforming subjectivity into objectivity .•. , fails

to take into account all the shared social effects imping­

ing on real scientists enmeshed in their society."

Ironically, as long ago as the 1930s, Winter (1936,

p. 131) was able to comment that "the physical sciences are now beginning to admit the relative character of their pos­

tulates, the non-predictability of some of their principles

The hope and ambition of psychology was to develop

toward the apparent perfection enjoyed by the physical sci­

ences. Today the situation as far as the physical scien­

tists are concerned, is radically altered, if not complete­

ly reversed."

This is a trend which has not abated a great deal to

the present day. Psychology tenaciously holds onto a de­

terministic, mechanistic model even while "modern physics has rejected the law of causality as an ultimate objective

of science" (Glass, Willson & Gottman, 1975, p. 5).

A central problem here is that psychologists who are locked into the logical positivist paradigm seem to believe

that their experimental results arise magically and auto­ matically from airtight methodology. This, for the sophis­

ticated observer, is a naive proposition. The very act of

operating in terms of statistical probabilities inherently

involves accepting that psychology cannot be studied in the

absolute, law-governed mode of the 'old' physics.

The aura of science in the West has apparently pushed 126

some psychologists into believing that they will achieve

respectability only if they don the lab coat of the physi­

cist, and it has been repeatedly alleged (Kaplan, 1964;

Westland, 1978) that psychology is busier achieving the ap­ pearance of a science than it is attempting to solve the

real-life problems that we face.

But even in its pretense to 'hard' science, psychology has forgotten certain basic ingredients. For example, of

the total of 214 published journal articles on homosexual­

ity for the period 1975-1980, only one was a replication.

Do we have a science then? R.A. Fisher, who created the ubiquitous F-test for statistical significance-- and thus

ought to know-- insisted that replication is the true basis

for judging significance, and that repetition of results, each significant at the .05 level, is the basis of scien­ tific truth (Tukey, 1969).

Another problem surrounds the issue of the usefulness

of academic psychology. Hudson (1970, p. 288) laments, "If you consider the truly prodigious expenditure of man-hours

that psychology has involved over the last 50 years, the

output in terms of socially usable insights or techniques

is disappointing." MacLeod (1965, p. 344) warns that "if we do not find an answer, and one that will convince others

as well as ourselves, somebody before very long is going to call our bluff."

These and other problems-- ethics, publication prac- 127

tices, and so on-- have led to a critical juncture which

has been dubbed The Crisis in Psychology. An entire liter­

ature has in fact sprung up devoted to this crisis-- the

failure of the logical positivist paradigm-- and to its

possible resolution.

No less a polymath of unquestioned stature than Albert

Einstein was well aware of the dangers of self-deception

and self-perpetuation inherent in accepting a given para­

digm. He is quoted to the effect that "concepts that have

proved useful in the constitution of an order of things

readily win such authority over us that we forfeit their

earthly origins and take them to be changeless data" (Salz­ man, 1980, p. 313). We are reminded of scientific ratio­ nales such as those of Benjamin Rush regarding Negritude,

and the notions of S.A. Cartwright, a 19th-century physi­

cian who proposed that black slaves suffered from drapeto­

mania, the insane desire to run away (Gould, 1981).

Too few scientists have spoken up to point out the

prejudicial nature of the paradigmatic beliefs which pro­

duce such theories. Yet this is the nature of paradigms; when we see things only one way, reality may go unnoticed

before our very eyes. Berger (1966) goes further to claim

that there is no reality other than that which is socially

constructed. One advantage of a crisis-producing paradigm

shift is that it throws into relief those gross errors and

glaring absurdities which have passed hitherto as gospel. 128

If, as Gould (1980, p. 7) has said, science is not a

"truth-directed machine," then what propels it and makes it change? Kuhn (1970) argues that it is precisely those crises and scientific revolutions, much like political revolutions, that force science to alter its methods and its course. Kuhn proposes that the progress of science is not directed by the linear accumulation of knowledge, but by shifts in the way in which science-- and the culture at large-- views the world.

While such shifts may originate in science itself, as when Galileo insisted the earth moved around the sun, they also develop outside the boundaries of science, as with the gay rights movement. It was political pressure, not over­ whelming scientific evidence, that forced the American Psy­ chiatric Association to issue its decree in 1973. (Szasz, incidentally, according to Robinson [1981, p. 34] argues

"with some cogency ••. that gays have erred in regarding the APA's decision of 1973 as a victory, since to do so implies that the APA is in fact qualified to make such de­ cisions.")

But now we are indeed faced with a new scientific paradigm shift which calls into question the entire struc­ ture of research methodology: "The positivist experimen­ ter, rather than observing the state of nature as it exists in situ, manipulates in artificial contexts the relation­ ship among observables, which often are oversimplified and 129

fragmented for convenient measurement. The meaning of a complex psychological concept is treated as though it were exhaustively explored by the trival operations by which it is measured" (Baumrind, 1980, p. 646).

Sampson (1977, 1978) notes that American academic psy­ chology, with its fictional self-concept of objectivity, emphasizes cultural values of mastery, detachment, and

"self-contained individualism" (1977, p. 769). Baumrind

(1980, p. 647) adds that, "Not only is it impossible for scientists to be objective in the positivist sense, but they should not be so. That is, empirical work directed at describing and explaining what is should do so within a framework of clarifying and justifying what ought to be ....

But for positivists, the activity of science is removed from its prescriptive function, as though ethical neutral­ ity were possible or desirable. The fact that social the­ orists inevitably favor certain values, outcomes, and so­ cietal structures ••. is disregarded."

Early sociologist Max Weber argued vehemently for the concept of 'ethical neutrality• to which Baumrind refers.

Weber found it inexcusable that anyone should present "per­ sonal, subjective convictions as scientific truths by clev­ erly confusing, supposedly in good faith, empirically as­ certainable and scientifically verifiable observations with attitudes and value judgments ••. " (Freund, 1969, p. 80).

Some social scientists now believe that •subjective convic- 130

tions' and 'scientific truths' are impossible to sequester so thoroughly, but for Weber, "It has been and remains true that a systematically correct scientific proof in the so­ cial sciences, if it is to achieve its purpose, must be acknowledged as correct even by a Chinese ..• " (Freund,

1969, p. 83).

Gergen and Morawski (1980) counter this: "From the empiricist standpoint, the investigator ideally operates as a passive recording device, charting the contours of nature and developing theories to map the world as observed. How­ ever, emerging ..• is an opposing view of scientific activ­ ity. In this case, the investigator is viewed as one who creates through his or her theoretical lens what facts there are to be studied .... we found that in the interpre­ tation of others' behavior, one necessarily projects mean­ ing and intention into their actions. It is projected meaning of such actions and not to behavior itself to which one reacts. And, there appears to be no means of objec­ tively anchoring such interpretations" (pp. 338-39) the traditional fact-value dichotomy is woefully mislead­ ing" ( p. 343) •

Thus it may be possible that not even experimenter bias effects are 'bad,' so long as they are acknowledged.

Then we can recognize that a researcher is simply trying to sell a point of view, whether or not that researcher is fol­ lowing Baumrind's prescription to show us how things ought 131

to be.

If the hard science model has not produced meaningful

blocks of data on human behavior, where can we turn? A

number of methods, some borrowed from other social scien­

ces, may indeed be gatherers of richer data. One such

method, the participant-observer technique of anthropology,

has the enormous advantage of bringing the researcher close

to the phenomenon of investigation. It also tends to in­

sure that the researcher will gain a clearer understanding

of the context in which behavior occurs. Further, this

method encourages the observer to experience the phenomenon

from the perspective of the observed, thus reducing the

likelihood of misinterpreting the meaning of the behavior.

Baumrind (1980) recommends not only the participant­

observer approach when appropriate, but also any other

methods which "do not reduce human activity to stimulus­

response" (p. 650); her suggestions include naturalistic

studies, baseline data-gathering in survey style, person­

situation interaction experiments conducted in context, and

extended field observation.

Levine (1980) has even suggested that investigative

reporting can be a legitimate method in the psychological

search for evidence, and that this technique may provide

suggestions "for developing teachable, disciplined methods

for field research and clinical and case studies" (p. 626).

Levine reasons that the sort of •soft' data elicited by 132

such techniques will provide a depth that is missing from

traditional, quantifiable data: "Questionnaires and atti­

tude scales that force individuals to respond in abstract

terms provide the social scientist with abstractions rather

than with close representations of the experiences them­

selves. Representations of feelings and meanings provide

the basis for our understanding of each other and of the

social world ... Modern abstract theoretical statements re­

duce such meaning-feeling variables to a minimum" (p. 637).

Close-up, longitudinal methods of data gathering re­

duce the problem of obtaining only a snapshot view of the

target population. At the same time we must be careful to

avoid bottom-line conclusions regarding field research as a

cure-all for researcher bias; psychology, anthropology and

sociology have all been occasionally littered with viru­

lently prejudiced reports from the field.

In its frenzy to generate new data, psychology may have overlooked an additional source of plenty in its midst: now may be the best time of all to reanalyze, re­

frame and refocus the existing body of data. Few experi­ ments have been reanalyzed, fewer still replicated. Per­ haps the researchers who wish to retain major elements of

a 'hard science' model would do well to begin here.

Even in a replication, though, it is important to look

for the underpinnings-- the guiding light-- behind the re­

search. We need to disabuse ourselves of the notion that 133

hard science will answer philosophical questions; but the underlying values of psychology may prove a particularly unattractive matter for reductionists to consider, as phi­ losophy cannot be reduced to quantifiable variables.

Human endeavors must always be punctuated with a ques­ tion mark. The search for universal truths is almost cer­ tainly an inappropriate model for psychology. There are precious few effects we have found which hold across sub­ jects, transituationally, transtemporally, and across cul- tures. •sometimes' and 'maybe' are closer to the truth than any other model.

Unfortunately, "too narrow an identification with sci­ ence ..• has fixed our eyes upon an inappropriate goal ..•.

The special task of the social scientist in each generation is to pin down contemporary facts. Beyond that, he shares with the humanistic scholar and the artist in an effort to gain insight into contemporary relationships, and to re­ align the culture's view of man with present realities"

(Cronbach, 1975, p. 126).

Kuhn (1970) reminds us that once the major institu­ tions accept a new paradigm, the world is quite literally not the same. This has happened for lesbians and gay men; not only has consciousness changed, but everyday behavior has been transformed. Just as it became possible to sail around the globe without falling off the edge, it has re­ cently become feasible for gay people to navigate success- 134

fully through our society.

Now science is being urged "to round the great turn from hard, mechanistic, reductionistic science to soft, or­ ganic, systems-view science" (Miles, 1982, p. 8). Will the push for a paradigm shift be successful? There are power­ ful reasons-- monetary, political, intrapsychic, and philo­ sophical-- why the experimental paradigm is not going to be transformed overnight. But as Pillard suggests (Mass,

1979, p. 18), "One might say that it's the test of a sci­ ence whether it can absorb new ideas. If not, the disci­ pline is more like a religion or a cult ••. "

Psychology has at least been successful in returning the study of cognitive functions to legitimacy. Zimbardo

(1982, p. 59) adds that, "Now that cognitive psychology has taken the head once lopped off by radical behaviorism and returned it to the body of psychology, we might in the next ten years consider implanting a heart or a little soul in the same body. When that takes place, it may be easier to know what psychologists can offer to people and how they can do so " During the transition period, psychology will likely remain in a disheveled state of disarray. But as social psychologist Darryl Bern (1972, p. 54) cheerfully points out, the fact that everything is falling apart is probably a good indication that we are making progress. REFERENCES

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