The Hidden Problem

Every day hundreds of U.S. parents are faced with a problem which few of them know how to tackle: a son (more rarely, a daughter) who shows more interest in his own than in the opposite sex. Such cases are commonest in families that have been disrupted by the death of one parent, by divorce or separation, or by constant bickering between husband and wife. But they are also found, and all too often, in families that consider themselves normal in every way. Then parents scourge themselves with the question: "What did we do wrong?"

Some parents berate the boy more than themselves. Last week, when Harlow Fraden was indicted for the cocktail murder of his parents in The Bronx (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS), he was quoted as saying that he had killed them because "his mother called him a 'fairy.' "

Though homosexuality may have its origin in early childhood, it is generally not until the beginning of adolescence that a boy gives overt signs of it. At this stage, responsibility lies most heavily upon the parents. They need to know that in every human personality there are both masculine and feminine traits, and that puberty, being a time of great stress and adjustment, is also a time for experimentation.

The startling statistic compiled by Zoologist Alfred C. Kinsey (TIME, Aug. 24) that 50% of U.S. males have some homosexual contact in their lives does not prove them sexually abnormal. In the great majority of cases, the contact is slight and limited to one or a few occasions during childish exploration in a strange, new world. Parents who recognize this will not make the mistake of exaggerating the importance of the event. Then, most likely, the fancy will pass without more ado.

The real problem of male homosexuality involves boys who show no sign of growing out of it naturally. Partly because of strong social prejudices, partly because the topic was so long under a strict taboo, ignorance about it is almost universal. What are its causes? Can it be cured? If so, how? On these key questions, leading U.S. psychiatrists and other doctors are at last nearing agreement. A consensus:

P:Homosexuality is not an inherited taint. There is no reason to believe that there is even an inherited tendency or susceptibility to it. Nobody is born with it, and it is not glandular in origin.* It is not a disease in itself but is a symptom of an underlying emotional disorder. This disorder may be of any kind and any degree of severity. It may be a common neurosis that leaves the patient outwardly well enough to go about his affairs, and amenable to treatment if he chooses to accept it. Or the victim may be a psychopathic personality, with a defective conscience or inadequate sense of responsibility toward others, and virtually impossible for psychiatrists to treat successfully. Or he may be a schizophrenic (split personality) ; many of these respond well to treatment.

P: There is one underlying cause common to every case of true homosexuality: the individual has failed to "identify," as psychiatrists put it, with the parent of the same sex. In normal development a young boy wants to be substantially like his father, and things go wrong when a boy rejects his father as an ideal. If the father is a dominating, bullying type, the boy is likely to prefer, and tend to identify himself with, his mother's yielding tenderness. If father is a henpecked weakling, the boy will reject him and resolve to avoid his mistake of falling into the clutches of a dominating or shrewish woman. The possible variations are innumerable.

P:Underlying a boy's rejection of his father (no matter what the surface details of the latter's temperament) there is almost invariably a lack of true paternal love. For three months, Manhattan playgoers have seen this spelled out in Robert Anderson's Tea and Sympathy (TIME, Oct. 12). Herbert Lee, divorced when his son Tom was five, claims to have given the boy "everything"--he has sent him to the best schools and kept him in boys' camps all summer. In truth, he has been everything to the boy but a father. When Herb Lee learns that his seemingly effeminate son is falsely accused of homosexuality, he does all the wrong things. So do many real-life parents, whether the charge is false or well-founded. They are fortunate if they can get worthwhile help from family or friends or even from their ministers. One useful thing they can do is to take the boy to a psychiatrist, where, first of all, such cobweb words as "hereditary," "congenital" and "hopeless" should be swept from their minds.

A psychiatrist will treat the parents as much as the boy, in an effort to correct the flaws in the youngster's background. He will seem to pay little attention to the symptom of homosexuality, being scrupulously careful not to give it disproportionate emphasis. Instead, he will help the boy to see how his emotional growth has been stunted or twisted by factors that he did not understand. Then, when the whole personality is once more developing along more nearly normal lines, the problem of homosexuality can be resolved.

Psychiatric treatment need not mean prolonged analysis. If the boy is in his early teens and not set in his ways, a few hours of give & take interviews may suffice. The older the boy and the more deep-rooted the habit, the longer the treatment and the less the chances of success. Some who will not give up the habit can be helped to adjust to society so that they will do no further harm to others.

Psychiatrists hold that bullying and cries of "Pervert!" are an incitement to the deviate to prove himself, possibly in crimes of violence. And, they add, those who protest most loudly against deviations in others are the least sure of their own sexual adjustment.

* Though misfit glands may cause the very different problem of pseudohermaphroditism (TIME, Dec. 15, 1952).

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