many psychiatrists, he is careful to leave an "out" in his statement. when he says that homosexuals can all be "cured... if they really want to be cured and will work, in a psychotherapeutic relationship, for such a cure." (p. 11). With such a formula, the blame for failure can always be put on the patient: he didn't "really want" to be cured! And the poor patient is once again clobbered over the head with an implied or open accusation of perverse, sinful desires. We must seek to understand this sort of thinking. for it brings otherwise intelligent and kindly psychiatrists to insult their homosexual patients by using the word "pervert" in therapy: They are trying to make the patient "want" to be cured. But the verb "to want" may speak for a very complex set of motives, arising out of a long and elaborate history.

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Dr. Ellis' discussion, like that of most psychiatrists, takes place in a very rarefied atmosphere, into which real life seldom intrudes. He does not consider, for example, the important question of selfknowledge: the fearful struggle which most homosexuals through to admit the fact of their homosexuality to themselves. Anyone with much experience in the "gay" world knows that this is a problem of tremendous proportions. Denial of an important fact in this situation may well lead a person to a general denial of reality in other situations. The psychiatrist's patient will either be in the midst of the struggle, or he will have resolved it by finally admitting the truth to himself (and perhaps to his friends). In the first instance, a condition of the sound development of the patient's tormented personality is to help him find the courage to face the facts.

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It will not help to call him a "pervert." He is already tearing himself into shreds; the first problem is to get him to stop. In the second instance, the patient who has admitted his homosexuality has won a real personal victory, and that of no mean proportions. (See, for example, the very interesting letter on page 7, just before Dr. Ellis' article). Whatever other problems such a person may still have, he has already solved a difficult and important one; and he is in some sense "one up on" a vast number of people who lack his courage. He has achieved a kind of stabilization in which the basic neurotic blockages have become, as it were, encysted and limited in the role which they play in his personality. One should not lightly tell him to upset this balance and begin all over again to restructure his personality. He is probably a more responsible person than is the man who calls him "pervert." (There is also the person whose admission of homosexuality is related not to his courage but rather to masochistic, despairing self-depreciation. In a handsome or notably clever person, the same basic state of mind may take a sadistic turn and express itself as a general defiance of society. Both these well-known types seem pretty sick to me. The despair which underlies both attitudes is not helped by insults).

Another basic phase of a homosexual person's motivation with respect to psychotherapy is his history of loves and friendships and the structure of mutual interests and obligations which these entail. These attachments and relationships may cover many years and be deeply felt. The accepted opinion in America is that they are of no validity, being tainted with an immoral, sexual side. I

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