Upon the death of psychiatrist Charles W. Socarides two weeks ago, Van of Head of the KweerWolf wrote a thoughtful and personal analysis.
Van encountered Socarides’ book, The Overt Homosexual, at a time in the 1970s when Van was first coming to terms with his attraction to other men.
What I found in Socarides’ book didn’t sound like me. The book told me about men in San Francisco who wore dresses and makeup and got kicked out of fancy department stores for using the women’s restrooms. It told me about men who lived their lives around cruising for sex in public restrooms and in parks. It told me how many of them met tragic ends, though it was pointed out that their ends were their own doings … an early sort of “blame the victim” argument. It told me these men were sick.
Suddenly, I begin to wonder if the word “homosexual” really did apply to me since I had never done any of those things.
I think Socarides’ book was the beginning of my lifelong queasiness with the word “homosexual.”
Van concludes that Socarides left a “legacy of prejudice wrapped in pseudo-science” that fuels the tiny but vocal reparative-therapy and exgay movements.
Van concludes that Socarides left a “legacy of prejudice wrapped in pseudo-science”
Pretty much true. According to an article by Paul Varnell archived over at IndeGayForum
(Thomas) Szasz (professor of psychiatry at Columbia University) returned to the mistreatment of gays in 1970 in “The Manufacture of Madness,” where he argued with numerous historical examples that modern psychiatry is best understood as a continuation of the Catholic Inquisition but using pseudo-scientific language.
http://www.indegayforum.org/authors/varnell/varnell9.html
Psychiatry as it was then practiced–generally psychoanalysis was either pre- or a-scientific.
I think Socarides’ book was the beginning of my lifelong queasiness with the word “homosexual.”
I didn’t read Socarides’s book, but if I had it would probably have left me with a lifelong queasiness with the term “psychiatrist.” I actually saw a psychiatrist a couple of times at the Ohio State Univ’s medical center in 1967. I don’t recall why, but I quickly determined that he was a horse’s hind end and didn’t bother to go back.
Psychiatry has improved a bit since then–since they discovered that some of the maladies previously believed to be mental illness are actually physical illness–but not by much.