JWW: Does Henry have any qualms about sending patients to Edith? Does he sense any ethical conflict?
HENRY: He shook his head. None. Let me say, though, that at the very beginning I was a lot less certain on this score. Even now, I’ve no assurance that what I’m doing is legal. It would be possible to make a case that I’m functioning as a pimp, aiding and abetting prostitution. I can’t really conceive of being faced with criminal prosecution, but at the same time I certainly wouldn’t welcome publicity.
Personally, I’m convinced that sexual therapy of the sort which Edith presently performs will be a very common feature in the future. I can’t see why it shouldn’t.
The Right Not to be Gay
The Gay Liberation Movement has been getting a lot of attention recently. It’s my feeling that they’re accomplishing a great deal for homosexuals, not only in terms of changing society’s attitudes but in raising the self-esteem of homosexuals themselves. The message, to gay and straight alike, is that homosexuality is a matter of choice, of personal preference, and that the concept of “curing” the homosexual should be abandoned as a relic of a bygone era.
I think this is very good, I think the positive effects are enormous, but I’m not sure it’s entirely valid. What is lost sight of is the fact that there are any number of male and female homosexuals who might be described as being gay in spite of themselves. It’s all well and good to talk about their having the right to be gay, but this ought to be just one of their options. At the same time, I would argue that they have the inalienable right not to be gay.
Because, as I’m sure you are aware, many people suffer greatly as homosexuals. As much as the Movement shouts at them that Gay is Good, that Gay is Beautiful, they do not believe this, and they find little that is good or proud or beautiful in their own sexual lives. They are not liberated. Quite the contrary. They are generally “closet” homosexuals, very anxious to keep their sexual tastes a secret from all their acquaintances, not merely for fear of social ostracism but also because they themselves are ashamed of the desires which move them and the acts which they perform.
• • •
JWW: Lester is a mild-mannered bearded pipe smoker, a clinical psychologist in his forties with a practice about equally divided between private and group therapy. I learned of his treatment for homosexuals from a friend of one of his patients.
At first he was very reluctant to be interviewed. He made excuses, pleading that he simply could not spare the time. When I persisted, he told me that he very definitely wanted to avoid publicity, that he already had a more than full caseload, that the journalistic media invariably sensationalized when they ran material on the treatment of homosexuals, and that he preferred not to be a party to any of this. I assured him that I wrote books, not magazine pieces, and that I was no more inclined to give him personal publicity than he was to receive it. I would change his name and sufficiently alter circumstances in the cases he might acquaint me with to render any specific identification impossible and preserve full anonymity for all concerned.
With this understood, he became quite eager to cooperate. I saw him on several occasions and found him a very good subject. The remarks which follow were distilled from our conversations.
• • •
LESTER: At the beginning, I was very reluctant to make any attempts to “cure” homosexuals. I find the phrase itself objectionable enough. Homosexuality is not a sickness, it is thus not to be “cured.”
Further, I have many of the same objections as the Gay Liberation people have to some of the lines of “treatment” for homosexuals which one hears of. There is a doctor, for example, who has made quite a name for himself by sexually conditioning male homosexuals. He uses a sort of Pavlovian technique by means of which his patients are shown photographs of nude males which are accompanied by unpleasant electrical shocks. By various comic-opera devices of this sort he presumably conditions them to have negative reactions to the stimuli they had previously learned to find erotic, and in similar fashion he uses photographs of nude females in order to channel the sexual impulses in a heterosexual direction. Not only does this whole method seem to me to have the barbarism of the course of treatment in A Clockwork Orange, but I seriously doubt that it could work as well as he insists it does. It would seem to me that a person so conditioned would have difficulty enjoying any sort of sex at all.
And yet how was I to overlook the fact that there were many homosexuals who did not want to be homosexual? On the one hand, I never failed to acknowledge that many homosexuals are well-adjusted, that they are capable of leading productive and fulfilling lives, that they may engage in short- or long-term relationships which can be fully satisfying. They may even constitute a majority. Nevertheless, for others, homosexuality is never satisfying. It is not merely a source of guilt but is genuinely unsatisfying.
Consider a man, for example, who can have sexual relations only with strangers. He haunts public lavatories, he kneels in hallways to fellate men he has never seen before and will never see again. He risks disease, blackmail, arrest—and even if he escapes all three, he is leading a life which is hellish. His estimate of self is low, his guilt is ever-present, his fears are often overpowering.
Add to this the fact that the man wants, desperately wants, to have what he frequently refers to as “a normal life.” He wants to fall in love with a woman. He wants to be a husband, a father. He wants, in short, to be someone other than the person he has somehow become.
I came to regard such persons as involuntary homosexuals. You are of course familiar with the concept of the transsexual, the female soul in the male body or vice-versa. I came to see that the homosexual I have described is similar to the transsexual in certain respects. He is, in a sense, a heterosexual soul trapped in a homosexual life style.
But how to deal with this? A transsexual could at least fly to Denmark for a sex-change operation. It seemed that some equivalent form of psychic surgery ought to be available.
One question I asked myself was why a person who was so uncomfortable in the role of homosexual should have found himself in that role in the first place. There are a great many explanations rooted in childhood, family situation, etc. Rather than concern myself with their validity, I looked for somewhat less profound answers. And came to several conclusions.
First of all, it seemed to me on the basis of my own experience and much of the literature with which I made myself acquainted, that many persons of this sort functioned as homosexuals because it was easier. It is simply easier for an individual, especially a male, to find partners for casual homosexual acts than for similarly casual heterosexual acts. One has an infinitely greater chance of finding a partner at a gay bar, for example, than at a heterosexual singles bar. Nor is there any heterosexual equivalent of the Turkish baths or public rest rooms where homosexual contacts can be achieved effortlessly.
This applies, perhaps even more forcefully, to adolescent males. Perhaps they were seduced by an older male. This happens very often. Assume further that they had had no heterosexual experience before that time, and that they are introverted and generally ill at ease with females. They find that homosexual relations are physically satisfying—an orgasm, after all, is an orgasm, however and with whomever one has it. They find, too, that homosexual relations are easily accessible. It does not take long for the pattern to establish itself, and I am convinced that this can and does occur even when there is nothing in the background or personality of the individual which would specifically foster homosexuality.
• • •
JWW: Lester went on to discuss this point at considerable length. He added that a period of homosexual behavior could have the effect of making the individual regard himself as a homosexual, and that, in the absence of successful prior heterosexual experience, this homosexuality would be perceived as exclusive.
• • •
LESTER: A man says to himself as follows: I am engaging in homosexual acts. Therefore I am homosexual.
Therefore I am incapable of functioning heterosexually. He may or may not attempt to refute this by having sexual relations with a female, at which time the prophecy is apt to be self-fulfilling; he expects that he will fail, and his expectations in and of themselves serve to guarantee failure. This reinforces his original conviction, and he now says: I tried to have sex with a woman, I was not able to do so, therefore I am definitely homosexual and will so remain for the rest of my life.
At the same time, one realizes that homosexual acts do not necessarily make a man homosexual. The obvious example is among convicted criminals. Men in prison will very often engage in homosexual relations constantly while incarcerated, then abandon the practice entirely upon their release, only to resume it if and when they again find themselves behind bars. These are men who are able to tell themselves that their homosexual behavior is merely a convenience, a response to a set of special circumstances, and that they are basically heterosexual in spite of it.
I then decided to try to define homosexuality, and the definition I worked out was not the usual one. I decided that a homosexual, the sort of homosexual whom I might be able to assist, was best defined not by the fact that he performed homosexual acts but that he did not perform heterosexual ones. This struck me as a very important way of looking at things. In this light, the idea of conditioning a patient against homosexual desires was obviously absurd. One simply had to make him capable of functioning heterosexually. If he could do this, if he could make love to a woman and find the experience enjoyable, it hardly mattered whether or not he continued to respond sexually to other males. Once he was capable of functioning as a bisexual, if you will, then he had the option of being gay or not being gay. He could be bisexual, he could be exclusively heterosexual, he could do more or less as he wished.
A great many people in the field are increasingly inclined to regard bisexuality as the ultimate state of healthy sexual expression. According to this line of thinking, either exclusive homosexuality or exclusive heterosexuality is thought to be, if not neurotic, at least limiting. I feel this is a moot point. From a pragmatic standpoint, it’s necessary to realize that one simply does not see patients who are unhappy because they are only able to have heterosexual relationships, while one definitely does see people who are miserable because they are only able to function homosexually.
• • •
JWW: Lester talked at length about the emergence of bisexuality as a legitimate sexual life style. He said this trend is especially evident among the young, an observation which my own experience definitely confirms. He stressed that an awareness of the possibility of bisexuality ought to do a great deal to lessen the incidence of the syndrome he describes, the person who finds himself a homosexual in spite of himself, by reducing the tendency of the individual to assume that, because he can function homosexually, he perforce cannot function heterosexually.
Lester talked, too, about the way in which his therapeutic approach to homosexuality gradually developed, from his recognition that certain homosexuals ought to be schooled to function heterosexually to the ultimate development of a course of treatment. While I found this therapeutic odyssey absorbing, I think it will be better for our purposes to move directly to an account of an actual case which well illustrates Lester’s approach.
• • •
LESTER: Paul was twenty-six when I first saw him. He was referred to me by his regular physician after a suicide attempt; sleeping pills. The official diagnosis was an accidental overdose, but Paul admitted to me immediately that he had intended to kill himself. While he had never actually attempted suicide previously, he reported that he had felt intermittently suicidal for years and had often thought about various methods of killing himself. It’s said that contemplation of suicide gets all of us through a lot of bad nights, but when one starts acting out these thoughts, it’s a fairly clear sign that something is very wrong.
I saw Paul regularly for several months. Then he dropped out of therapy for over a year. When he returned, he said that his situation had not improved at all, that he was experiencing frequent depression of a severe order along with anxiety attacks and identity crises. His life had evidently turned quite chaotic in the intervening year. Before he had held a good position in the art department of an advertising agency. He had quit that job and drifted around, working in jobs for below his capacity, clearing tables in a cafeteria, working for a messenger service, that sort of thing.
He thought, and I agreed, that group therapy might be valuable for him. He had always been very shy, had trouble relating to people. Group therapy is often specifically useful in such situations. Also, he was not now in a position to afford individual therapy. Group, naturally, is considerably less of a burden financially.
He responded quite favorably. In ideal circumstances, group therapy can be successful in much the same way that organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous are successful; the individual derives strength from the knowledge that he is in some way responsible for the well-being of others, who in turn are concerned about him, have things in common with him, care about him.
Paul’s history was not extraordinary. His family situation, while hardly inconsistent with the development of homosexuality, was by no means a guarantee of it. There was a certain love-hate ambivalence with his mother and a lack of closeness with his father, who died while Paul was at college. Paul was very good at examining his childhood and finding all sorts of elements in it which would make him grow up gay. His reasoning was quite perceptive.
However, I very quickly concluded that his homosexuality was far more circumstantial in origin. He was not born to be a homosexual—and although that’s not a popular concept, I believe certain persons are predisposed in that direction almost from the moment of birth; there are just so many eases of men and women who vividly recall being attracted to their own sex or identifying with the opposite sex as early as three or four years of age. Nor did I feel that he had been raised to be a homosexual. Instead, several incidents and circumstances combined to facilitate this development.
The most obvious causative events were the homosexual experiences he began having in adolescence. His first homosexual experience was not a matter of seduction, at least not in the usual sense. He and another boy, a good friend, began engaging in mutual masturbation, then performed fellatio upon one another. Paul was thirteen at the time. The relationship went on for several months, until the school year ended and the other boy went away to summer camp. There he drowned in a swimming accident. This was tragic, not only for the boy who drowned, but for Paul as well. He immediately interpreted it as a sign, divine retribution for their sins, and went through a period when he fully expected that he, too, would be struck down in some unspecified way as punishment for what he and his friend had done. He never confided this fear to anyone, incidentally, but instead spent the better part of a year in quiet terror.
But for the drowning, there’s every likelihood that Paul and his friend would have outgrown their relationship. Adolescent homosexual experiences of this nature are extremely common in the sexual histories of men who go on to lead exclusively heterosexual lives. In certain environments, specifically the British public schools, adolescent homosexuality is a norm.
In Paul’s case, the relationship didn’t have a chance to wear itself out. The abrupt termination, the guilt, all made him withdraw and made him dwell on what he and this other boy had done.
Physical factors and personality elements also worked to his disadvantage. Paul was tall, slender, fair-haired, and fair-skinned. He was also studious and artistic. In short, he conformed in several ways to the popular image of the homosexual. Now I could argue that the image has no basis in fact, that athletes are as apt to be gay as scholars, but all of these elements of Paul’s appearance and personality worked to engender a self-fulfilling prophecy effect. In two ways—he was enabled to regard himself as “typically” homosexual, and he was also perceived as a likely prospect by homosexuals looking for sexual partners.<
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This last point is very relevant. I’m quite convinced that a great many young men who never have homosexual experiences owe their abstinence to lack of opportunity; homosexuals are not drawn to them, and thus they are not solicited sexually. Others, who do attract homosexuals, are far more likely to have gay experiences even though they may be no more personally disposed in that direction.
Paul’s developing sex life followed predictable lines. His first contact with a stranger took place at a Greyhound bus station. He did not actively solicit the contact, but did visit the men’s room there because he had heard that it was a place where homosexual contacts could be made. Over the next several years he frequented the terminal and other similar areas, where he would meet a stranger, fellate him and/or be fellated by him, and then swiftly depart. Each occasion was a source of guilt, yet he found it impossible to refrain from such contacts.
During this time he had virtually no social life. The few casual relationships he had with other boys were allowed to decay, probably because he feared the development of a friendship such as he had had with the boy who drowned. He did not date at all and acquired a reputation as a square and a loner. He believes some of his classmates may have known or suspected that he was homosexual, but there was never any scandal, and if rumors about him were circulating, he never heard them.
By the time I saw him, Paul had established a sexual life style that was extremely unsatisfying for him. There is certainly such a thing as a well-adjusted homosexual, but he was the furthest thing in the world from being one. The thought of any physical contact with a male partner, aside from specific oral-genital contact was repugnant to him. He became physically nauseated, for example, at the thought of kissing another man on the mouth. He did not want to know his partners’ names or for them to know anything about him. The most nearly satisfactory form of contact for him, he told me, was the “glory hole.” These are holes a couple inches in diameter bored in the partitions between adjoining toilets in a public lavatory. One inserts one’s penis in the opening and is fellated by the person next door; the two “partners” never even set eyes on one another.
The Sex Therapists: What They Can Do and How They Do It (John Warren Wells on Sexual Behavior Book 15) Page 4