Country United States ISBN 978-0020753209 | Language English Originally published 1956 Subject Homosexuality | |
 | ||
Media type Print (Hardcover and Paperback) Pages 302 (hardcover edition) Similar Homosexuality: A Psychoan, The talent for stupidity, Divorce won't help, Battle Of The Conscience, Tensions can be reduced t | ||
Homosexuality: Disease or Way of Life? is a 1956 book about homosexuality by the psychoanalyst Edmund Bergler, in which Bergler argued that homosexuality is a disease and that legal restrictions on homosexuality are necessary. The book provoked rage.
Contents
Summary
Bergler argued that homosexuality is a disease. According to him, homosexuals are a small, psychotic group of people, maladjusted and self-indulgent. Bergler maintained that people become homosexual only because of the glamorization of homosexuality. As described by Bayer, he asserted that homosexuals tend to be "unreliable troublemakers and 'injustice collectors', having a deep wish to suffer." Bergler maintained that a homosexual orientation can be changed. He considered legal restrictions on homosexuality necessary.
Sex researcher Alfred Kinsey was dismissed by Bergler as a "medical layman". Bayer summarized Bergler as claiming that "as a result of [Kinsey's] influence, homosexuals have become so outspoken that 'they are now virtually asking for minority status.'
Reception
Homosexuality: Disease or Way of Life?, unlike previous works by authors who had argued that homosexuality is a disease, was greeted with denunciation and rage, signaling a shifting tone in the discussion of psychiatry within the homophile movement. The Mattachine Review and the Ladder published articles critiquing the book in 1957 and 1958. Influenced by the work of Evelyn Hooker, Bayer writes, the critics argued "that Bergler had drawn his conclusions from an unrepresentative sample of homosexuals."
Journalist Gilbert Cant reviewed Homosexuality: Disease or Way of Life? in Mattachine Review, the journal of the Mattachine Society.
Though some reviewers distinguished Bergler from more responsible psychiatrists, others perceived him as representative of the psychiatric profession. Bayer adds that there was recognition that Bergler's work could be used by those opposed to the advancement of homosexual rights.
Homosexuality: Disease or Way of Life? (1956) was cited in Irving Bieber et al.′s Homosexuality: A Psychoanalytic Study of Male Homosexuals (1962). Bieber et al. mention Bergler briefly, noting that like Melanie Klein, he regarded the oral phase as the most determining factor in the development of homosexuality.