TOWARD UNDERSTANDING

The purpose of this column is to create a better understanding of homosexual problems through the psychiatric viewpoint.

BLANCHE M. BAKER M.D., PH.D.

Dear Mr. Lambert:

I was recently introduced to your Magazine and have found within its pages a wealth of hope and understanding.

Last year a few weeks before my 22nd birthday I was fated to receive one of the greatest shocks and disappointments of my life. Fred, whom I had grown up with and loved with a passion too deep to describe, announced his marriage to a very good friend of mine.

I was attending school in a large city at the time and it wasn't long before the effects of this disappointment

began to show in my class work. I was so disturbed that I found it impossible to keep my mind on my studies. So at the end of that semester I left school and joined the Army.

I know now that that was a mistake, but at the time it seemed the only thing to do. It's been almost a year now and I feel that I have recovered.

It's quite unusual for me to pour out my soul to anyone and especially a stranger. But I feel after reading some of your material that you are a person of tremendous insight and that you will understand when I say that my grave experience has left a hollow

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