Albert Ellis, Ph. D.

Later in the same issue of ONE, Chris Rezak, writing from the feminine viewpoint in an article entitled "For Writers: an Appeal," notes that "there are a very, very few excellent novels on the shelf of homosexual literature-they need company. This then is a call to arms to others, to myself. Let's begin to think in terms of writing a warm, beautiful novel, full of depth and passion, seasoned with humor-a book about people who live proudly and happily with their homosexuality, who are strong and capable and find life great funand who never even think of suicide."

Although I, too, have several times gone on record as stating that homosexuals are not necessarily neurotic; although I am the author of the highly approving introduction to Donald Webster Cory's "The Homosexual in America"; although I have been a consistent supporter of Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey's work and have publicly defended the first and second Kinsey reports more, perhaps, than any other psychologist in the United States; and although I have no insignificant reputation as a non-homosexual who staunchly upholds the rights of homosexuals and opposes any persecution of them, I must strongly protest against the expressed and implied sentiments of Freeman, Rezak, and all others who fail to see that although all homosexuals are not necessarily neurotic, the great majority of them indubitably are. Moreover, if we mean by "homosexual" and individual whose sex desires are exclusively oriented toward the members of his (or her) own sex, or who is incapable of enjoying sex participation except with a member of his (or her) own sex, then there can be little doubt that all such homosexuals are, and necessarily are, neurotic. To deny this is folly, and will only do great harm to innumerable homosexuals.

The problem of homosexuality and neurosis can only be clearly understood if we first understand what is neurosis or sexual abnormality, perversion, or deviation. From a psychological or psychiatric standpoint, neurosis or perversion can only be meaningfully defined by using some criterion of illogicality, irrationality, childishness, fixation, fetichism, inflexibility, rigidity, or exclusivity. A neurotic, in other words, is an individual who is theoretically endowed with normal intelligence and education, but who nonetheless acts in a childish, irrational, effectively stupid manner. A pervert or deviant is one who is physiologically or theoretically able to obtain sex satisfaction in several different ways-since man, biologically, is a plurisexual animal who has several available roads to sex stimulation and orgasm-but who actually is limited to one or two major forms of sex outlet because he is irrationally, fearfully fixated or fetichistically restricted by certain ideas or behavioral habits which he learned at some earlier time in his life.

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