ual unintentional rut most of us live in, must be of disaster-diameter, a psychological cyclone. Then when the victim, his engines failed, is driving before the storm the rescue ship stands by, gets a cable across and tows the almost-derelict to port.
Now we have to ask how does this design for salvage fit the sex deviant? It certainly isn't very clear. For most isophyls, though they surely do their full share of self-pitying, don't feel too badly and don't want to be other than they are. There are two 'anonymoi' which get nearer to the isophylic problem: one of these, which is hardly six months old, numbers 21 charter members. It is composed of nothing but ex-prisoners, a cross section of standard 'criminals.' Does 'doing time' generate enough sense of ordeal to fire lawbreakers to conform? And are there converted 'ex-cons' to act, as the 'dried-out' AA act toward the still-soused?
To both questions, "No." What has made these convicts want to get out of the racket rut is an experience not of misery but of ecstasy in the exact term of that phrase of being 'able to stand outside' themselves and view themselves. Their psychiatrist takes with them an 'extra-sociative' medicament. Then he can act as their mentor when on release they join with him in this developmental group therapy. The other anonymous group is made up of released sex deviants.
Still it seems doubtful when we add these two further groups of men who have collided with the Law that we yet have any kind of blueprint which isophyls might modify to fit their requirements. We can however examine in some detail the actual structure of AA.
There can be little doubt that the degree of success which is attained by any of the other successive ‘anonymoi' largely depends on the degree to which they follow these rules, these "12 steps." We need not go through
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them in detail here. Anyone can find them in any of the widely known AA literature. What must be said, however, this is a time-taking, will-demanding way of living and few people are likely to adopt it unless an acute pressure drives them to do so. That necessary pressure, as noted above, is with AA's, and almost all other 'anonymoi,' given by an acute desperation. It is the 12 steps or out of the window. But there is, and isophyls know it far better than most. what Thoreau named "quiet desperation." Boredom, futility, the steady senselessness of life-these are slow tortures. They won't by themselves lead to anything but more of themselves. But if anyone should find there is meaning ahead, this hope can make him get ready to reach it. Isophyls are freer in this respect than the normal householder.
And there is increasing evidence that the isophyl is an advanced type, the growing edge of the human species: and that evidence also shows that if he won't cooperate with this inner drive and help it fulfill itself in him then he must become a peculiarly futile creature. The Homosexual Anonymous would then be made of a group or groups, the members of which are now concerned with development therapy, a psychiatry of growth. This would have to be its essential axiom. And as intentional growth (e.g. in any athletic learning) is always effortful training, there would have to be much the same seriously accepted rules as say in one of the traditional vow-organized fraternities or a traditional Masonic lodge.
No anonymous will work unless those in it work. As isophyls are today, just the casual disgust of the conventional and the clumsy raids and punishments of the Law aren't half-enough intolerable to make most of them do more than complain. If however they can see that they are
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