Homosexuality: A Psychoanalytic Study of Male Homosexuals

Homosexuality: A Psychoanalytic Study of Male Homosexuals

The 1962 Basic Books edition
Author	Irving Bieber, Harvey J. Dain, Paul R. Dince, Marvin G. Drellich, Henry G. Grand, Ralph R. Gundlach, Malvina W. Kremer, Alfred H. Rifkin, Cornelia B. Wilbur, Toby B. Bieber
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Psychology
Published	1962 (Basic Books)
Media type	Print
Pages	358
LC Class	62-11203

Homosexuality: A Psychoanalytic Study of Male Homosexuals is a 1962 book about the development of male homosexuality by Irving Bieber, Harvey J. Dain, Paul R. Dince, Marvin G. Drellich, Henry G. Grand, Ralph R. Gundlach, Malvina W. Kremer, Alfred H. Rifkin, Cornelia B. Wilbur, and Toby B. Bieber.^[1] Though the work was influential and earned Bieber the status of psychoanalytic expert on homosexuality, several of his and its other authors' claims were later repudiated by the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association, and they have been criticized on a variety of methodological grounds.

The study

Homosexuality was the product of a ten-year investigation that employed the services of eight psychoanalysts and one clinical psychologist. They compared the analytic treatment of 106 male homosexuals to an unmatched sample of 100 heterosexual male patients in analytic treatment. They gathered data from a 450-item questionnaire, which they developed and submitted to treating therapists. The questions, which were answered by the therapists, concerned the family constellations of patients as reported in therapy. Information was gathered regarding patients' feelings about their mothers, fathers, siblings, and peers, the perceived effect that such figures had on their aggressive, sexual and independent activity, and memories of activities and preferences during childhood and latency.^[2]

Influence

Homosexuality was influential, and its success earned Bieber the status of psychoanalytic expert on homosexuality. Kenneth Lewes, who sees Homosexuality as flawed and notes that it deviates in several important ways from traditional psychoanalytic theory, writes that almost every psychoanalytic article published after 1962 refers to it with approval, with the exception of some discussions in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Quarterly. Lewes writes that, "For many, it seemed the much-awaited confirmation of psychoanalytic ideas, and, for a while, it signaled an apparent formalization of the psychoanalytic theory about homosexuality."^[3] It has been suggested that the study informed stereotypes later promulgated by the media.^[4] For example, in 1964 Life Magazine featured an article on homosexuals and smothering mothers directly inspired by Homosexuality.^[5] Homosexuality is one of the most repeatedly cited studies related to sexual orientation therapy, although its research methodology has been seen as flawed.^[6]

Findings and conclusions

The specific findings of Homosexuality concerned three broad areas: mother-son relationships, father-son relationships, and developmental patterns. A significantly greater proportion of homosexuals had "close-binding-intimate mothers" who were seductive to their sons and also overcontrolling and inhibiting. A significantly higher proportion of homosexuals also reported having detached, hostile, or rejecting fathers whom they hated or feared during their childhoods. Fathers who did not fit that description were sometimes seductive toward their sons, but in all cases profound interpersonal disturbance characterized relations between fathers and sons. None of the fathers of the 106 male homosexuals were warmly related to their sons. It was also found that boys who grew up to be homosexual "fit the stereotype of the sissy during latency and adolescence, fearing physical injury and avoiding aggressive activity."^[7]

From their findings, Bieber and his colleagues concluded that a family constellation that included a close-binding-intimate mother and a hostile, detached, and rejecting father strongly predisposed a child to become homosexual. They rejected the idea that constitutional factors play an important role in the development of homosexuality. They also rejected Sigmund Freud's insistence on the centrality of constitutional bisexuality, accepting Sándor Radó's arguments against Freud's theories about bisexuality. They denied that there is any homosexual phase in psychosexual development, having found that 41% of the heterosexual controls reported having had no homosexual "problem." They concluded that "latent homosexuality" does not exist and that homosexuality should be considered "latent heterosexuality." Lewes comments that their rejection of Alfred Kinsey's figures for the incidence of homosexuality seemed supported by their theoretical conclusions. Bieber claimed that 1% or 2% of people were homosexual.^[8]

Attempts at replication

Several attempts were made to replicate Homosexuality's findings. "On the Genesis of Male Homosexuality: An Attempt at Classifying the Role of the Parents", a study published in 1965 in the British Journal of Psychiatry, did not find the pattern of close-binding-intimate mothers in the childhood of homosexuals. "Parental Background of Male Homosexuals and Heterosexuals", a study published in 1974 in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, replicated Bieber's findings with disturbed homosexuals, but found few differences between the childhoods of undisturbed homosexuals and heterosexuals. A series of non-analytic studies of homosexuals who were not patients were published between 1970 and 1973. These rejected Bieber's conclusions, although they nevertheless found a rough corroboration of some of his findings. Poor parental relationships were also reported by these studies, although their authors believed that "this might be a retrospective finding." They found that one fifth of homosexuals had good relations with their fathers and generally could not distinguish homosexuals who were not patients from heterosexuals on the basis of psychopathology. This series of studies was itself subject to attempts at replication, and one of its findings, that masculine homosexuals did not go through a period of adolescent sissiness, was not supported. "The Role of Identifications in Homosexuality and Transvestism in Men and Women", a 1964 study by an analyst published in The Pathology and Treatment of sexual Deviation: A Methodological Approach, qualified some of Bieber's findings but presented no new data. "Parental Relations and Male Homosexuality in Patient and Nonpatient Samples", a study by Evelyn Hooker published in 1969 in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, pointed out that disturbed family relations were neither a necessary nor a sufficient cause of homosexual object choice.^[9]

Methodological problems

Lewes sees the strength of Homosexuality as "its amassing an enormous amount of data, which satisfied the psychoanalytic need for subtle and sophisticated information gathered from a large clinical experience." However, he also writes that the study is flawed and its results vitiated due to its methodological errors. In his view, the most important error is the sample, which consisted of patients in analytic therapy. Since these subjects had been preselected for psychopathology, the question of the emotional disturbance of the homosexual population at large could not be addressed. Bieber diagnosed the sample as follows: 28 were schizophrenic, 31 were neurotic, and 42 character disordered. While similar proportions obtained in the control group (although only eighteen percent of the controls were diagnosed as schizophrenic), Bieber's comparison in effect involves two groups of moderately to severely disturbed males. Of the homosexual sample, 90% were "eager to conceal" their sexual orientation and 64% wanted their homosexuality "cured". Bieber and his colleagues ignored the difficulties of obtaining a "normal" homosexual sample, which had been pointed out by Kinsey and other writers, and while this omission was criticized at length, Bieber did not accept the objection. Bieber continued to argue for the general applicability of his data, citing studies of homosexual adolescents committed to Bellevue Hospital, of soldiers arrested for homosexual activities during World War II, of prison populations, and a study done among low socioeconomic classes at a municipal hospital. Lewes comments that, "It is dismaying to see a major study repeat the chronic psychoanalytic error of generalizing from disturbed patients to the general population."^[10]

Lewes also criticizes the assumptions that informed Homosexuality: Bieber assumed a priori that adult homosexuality is psychopathological and misunderstood Freud's ideas about narcissism, conflating it with autoeroticism. Bieber and his colleagues concentrated on family dynamics, viewing sexual development as based on the effects of interpersonal stress on a biological constitution that naturally pressed to normative heterosexuality. Consequently, they saw any deviance as ipso facto evidence of severe interpersonal trauma. Their attention was shifted from biology, intrapsychic forces, and preoedipal development, and toward events that occurred after the Oedipus complex had been negotiated. Lewes finds the Bieber team's questionnaire "remarkable as a psychoanalytic document for its almost unqualified probing of events that transpired during latency and adolescence", and believes that this makes it important to reexamine their conclusions, since "it is not at all clear if such disturbance is the cause or the result of homosexual object choice." He observes that while this objection was raised from the discipline of clinical psychology and general psychiatry, it was rejected without argument by a member of Bieber's original team.^[11]

Homosexuality, by eliciting information about homosexuals' history at latency or after and by concentrating on characteristics of the family after subjects had passed through the Oedipus Complex, implicitly assumed that later object choice had been determined by particular family constellations operating after the complex and interpreted its data in conformity to that assumption. By doing so, it avoided dealing with two alternative explanations: one that sees the family system as maintaining and supporting a previous individual psychic development, and one that views the family system as the result rather than the cause of that development. While 72% of the homosexuals remembered their fathers as detached and hostile, it is not clear whether the father's withdrawal was the cause of the son's failure to have identified with him or the result of the son's sexual advances.^[12]

Repudiation

Several of the central claims made by Homosexuality were repudiated ten years after its publication by the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association, and in 1973 the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its official list of psychiatric disorders. However, Homosexuality was still read and taught in psychopathology courses in universities in the 1980s.^[13]

See also

References

Footnotes

Bibliography

Books