Books

Notices and reviews of books, articles, plays and poetry dealing with homosexuality and the sex variant. Readers are invited to send in reviews or printed matter for review.

BOD

SEXUAL DEVIATION by Anthony Storr, Penguin, Baltimore, 1964, 139 pp., 85 cents.

Written by a psychoanalyst, this is a readable, clear, simplified presentation of a psychoanalytic formulation of the nature, origins, and treatment of what are often referred to as sexual perversions. The title reflects the author's humanistic and non-moralizing attitude. It is his position that all sexual deviations arise out of two feelings engendered by childhood experiences, sexual guilt and sexual inferiority, and while his exposition is reasonably fair and non-dogmatic, it is a narrow and limited view. Like other presentations of psychoanalytic theorizing about the origins of homosexuality, this book fails to make clear why certain individuals become homosexual after having been exposed to less than adequate parents during childhood while others do not. According to Storr (apparently borrowed from Bieber), the combination of a detached, non-affectionate, or hostile father and an extremely intimate and over-emotional mother is likely to produce homosexuality. Actually that parental combination is neither necessary nor essential for producing homosexuality: all boys with such parents do not become homosexual (which they would if this were a sufficient cause), and some boys without such parents do become homosexual (which they

could not if that parental combination were a necessary cause). Also like many other writers, Storr tends to ignore the fact that there is great variation in the temperaments with which children are born, and that those tendencies almost certainly play an important role in how the individual is treated, even as an infant.

R. E.

HOT FOR CERTAINTIES by Robin Douglas-Home, N.Y., E. P. Dutton & Co., 1964, 215 pp., $3.95.

The fulcrum of this compelling novel is an accusation of homosexuality leveled against David Melrose by Aubrey Squires-Birch, his obviously

twisted house master. Since the accusation is false-David's adjustment is firmly heterosexual-a review of the book might seem somewhat out of place in ONE. Yet it raises questions.

The novel is most ably written. Even the fog of self-pity through which the narrative steers does not prevent some humorous glimpses of English public school attitudes toward homosexuality, along with the expectable horrific ones. The book is peopled by real men and women. It has splendid pace.

But it left this reader dissatisfied and suspicious. The vindictiveness of the prudish house master may be ac-

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