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.

The two letters selected for this month's column seem to be in marked contrast with each other. The story of frustration and fear in the first letter is so evidently typical of a boy's early life spent in a home or environment such as the writer of the second letter portrays; where human warmth and understanding are crowded out by prejudice, ignorance, and the hostility growing out of personal unconscious guilt. The writer of the first letter, however, came from Texas while the second letter is postmarked from a town here in California.

Dear Dr. Baker:

I am from Mexico. I came here five years ago, and I do not speak English very well. I hope you will understand my letter.

I am glad to have the opportunity to tell someone my problems. Since I was a child my feelings have been

very feminine and for this reason the boys in school used to laugh at me and often made me the victim of cruel jokes. At home my brothers and sisters and my mother too were always after me-"Do not do this." "Do not talk or act like that"-laughing and ridiculing the way I behaved. All this created a complex of inferiority within me because I did not understand why everyone laughed at me, and I cried alone in disgrace while my brothers and sisters attended parties and feasts. My youth was spent in being afraid of meeting people, afraid to talk, afraid of everything-alone in tears and more tears. But when I was fifteen years old I started to work in a store where the owner's son two years older than I, treated me in a way I liked very much; he did not laugh or make me a victim of jokes and looked at me in a pleasant way. I had him on my mind all the time. One day this

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