| In
the 1930s, a privately funded group of medical and
psychological experts formed a group that called itself
The Committee For the Study of Sex Variants to study
"variations from normal sex behavior." The
chief variation of interest was homosexuality in men and
women. Aided by Miss Jan Gay, a woman who had
compiled case studies on 300 lesbians, George Henry, a
psychiatrist and a member of the executive committee,
began the studies that were eventually |
|
| reported in Sex
Variants. Volunteers were easy to recruit
because they hoped that Dr. Henry's efforts would lead to
greater understanding of their shared
"abnormality."
Henry considered himself a
liberal thinker, open to new ideas, and by all accounts he
treated his interviewees warmly and respectfully, but at
least some of them must have been disappointed when the
book finally appeared in 1941. The book describes
some male homosexuals as innately effeminate, and
dismisses others as narcissists. Still others were
adjudged to have acquired their "abnormality"
out of spite for their parents. One unfortunate
lesbian was even said to have turned to her own sex at
least in part because she was ugly.
The book's lack of a
coherent theoretical focus reflected the turbulence in
American psychiatry in the 1930s. Parts of the book
read like Magnus Hirschfeld's
third sex theory, while others sound like a Freudian
analysis of disturbed family life. In spite of its
muddled approach and sometimes silly analysis of the
causes of homosexuality, Henry wanted to improve the
"plight" of homosexuals, and in the last section
of the book, he argued that homosexuals can make
contributions to American society. Male homosexuals,
he wrote, make great artists and in his opinion, lesbians
contributed to female emancipation, but both are
tragically sentenced to life without families since they
are unable to propagate.
|
