al bankruptcy of homosexuality" the ROMM point of view seems almost reasonable, and awakens hope that psychoanalytic theory on the subject may eventually reflect the standards of objectivity expected of science generally.
The MAYERSON & LIEF contribution is a detailed statistical report on psychotherapy performed on nineteen cases, examined and treated under OVESEY'S psychodynamic theories (see above). Their report is much too detailed to describe comprehensively within the scope of this article. Suffice it to say that after completion of therapy and a follow-up period of several years, improvement (from "slight" to "apparently recovered") is claimed for fifteen cases (among whom nine were described as "exclusively homosexual"). Of the fifteen improved cases, only one is described as "apparently recovered" at the conclusion of the follow-up period. In spite of the small sample studied, the therapists have drawn a number of general conclusions. From the prognostic point of view, the conclusion having the most general significance is that the degree of heterosexual readjustment as a result of therapy is in direct proportion to the degree of therapeutic motivation, and also to the degree of heterosexual orientation initially present. But obviously, parallel conclusions could be (and have been) reached in connection with other forms of learning or psychological conditioning, so that a new finding can scarcely be claimed in this connection.
In conclusion, it may be remarked that a number of other collections of writings in the same field have been published during the past few years. However, Sexual Inversion is perhaps the one of greatest interest and value, since it is not an anthology drawn from previously published works, but rather an up-to-the-minute cross section of scientific opinion solicited by
one who is himself a qualified professional in the field. The reader, therefore, may be confident that he is being introduced to the most up-to-date published findings on the subject of homosexuality.
Generally speaking, it is not surprising that the clinical surveys in Sexual Inversion, though more extensive by far than other aspects treated, are nevertheless by far the least coherent and persuasive from a scientific point of view. This defect is partly the fault of the terminology to which psychoanalysis has been wedded since the days of Freud; for in spite of all the facts now known about sexual behavior, psychoanalysts still use "homosexuality" and "heterosexuality" as if they were "either-or" categories into one of which each individual must somehow be fitted. It is thus no wonder that psychoanalytic literature on this subject continues to read like Alice in Wonderland. The "homosexual" and the "heterosexual," as individuals, are quite as fictitious as the Mad Hatter and the March Hare, for which reason theories spun around these figments of the imagination are bound to have no more than a superficial gloss of science. When psychoanalysis begins to do more than give lip-service to modern biological and sociological findings on sexual behavior, and to recognize many natural variations of psychosexual development, with all its nuances of "cross-gender" inclinations; and when it begins to develop a terminology which accurately reflects the realities of human sexuality, it will have made an enormous stride into a scientific evaluation of the field.
But even more basic than terminology are the value-judgments under which sexual orientation and behavior are divided into the "natural" and the "unnatural" therefore, into "good" and "bad." In spite of the evidence that psychosexual characteristics have no necessary relation to or derivation from biological factors, modern psy-
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