Havelock Ellis saw homosexuality as a result of organic structure and unusual hormone balance.

The most extensive data for the United States, of course, was that of the Kinsey group. These investigators, to begin with, made a notable contribution to scientific discussion of homosexuality by establishing a 7-point scale of behavior, ranging from exclusive heterosexuality through various degrees of homosexual-heterosexual balance to exclusive homosexuality.

They emphasized that one could not divide males merely into two types-homosexual and heterosexual since "reality is a continuum, with individuals in the population occupying not only the seven categories . . . but every gradation between each of the categories as well."

The Kinsey group found, in the males investigated by them, that, among unmarried males up to 35 years of age, almost half had had some kind of homosexual experience. For all males up to 28 years of age the figure was almost 37 per cent.

They also came up with these statistics:

One out of every 8 males (13%) had more homosexual experience than heterosexual for at

least three years between the ages of 16-55.

• One out of six (18%) had at least as much homosexual experience as heterosexual for at least 3 years during this period.

• One out of twenty-five (4%) was exclusively homosexual throughout his life after the onset of adolescence.

Kinsey's data on the female contradicted that of earlier observers: his group found homosexuality among women to be only a half to one-third of what it was among males. This finding, incidentally, is in keeping with Kinsey's observations of psychological differences between males and females.

Although Kinsey's findings aroused a great deal of opposition and skepticism, no survey or study has since contradicted his figures. They must therefore be accepted as the most reliable and authoritative figures available.

In the light of these figures, any theory which purports to explain homosexuality must be inclusive enough to take in a wide section of the population. It cannot base itself solely on homosexuals who are haled into court as sex offenders or on individuals who seek psychiatric counsel because they are disturbed.

Unfortunately, too many theories put forward by psychiatrists and analysts overgeneralize on the basis of experience which is limited to clinical practice with disturbed or pathological aspects of homosexuality.

As a result, most often homosexuality is defined as a symptom of mental disease or personality disturbance; and all homosexuals are viewed as being necessarily neurotic or fixated at an infantile level of psychosexual development.

English and Pearson, for example, in their well-known book on emotional problems, define homo-

mattachine REVIEW

sexuality as "a character disturbance," adding that the same causes operate in its development as in the development of a neurosis.

In their discussion, they define homosexuals as "infantile," "seriously maladjusted," "sexually immature" and "unconstructive" individuals who are "less wellrounded personalities than heterosexuals, more emotionally unstable and tend to be dependent."

These views have been increasingly.challenged by recent studies.

Dr. Desmond. Curran and Dr. Denis Parr one a British consultant psychiatrist, the other a research fellowmade a careful study of one hundred cases who had been seen in psychiatric practice.

They concluded that the homosexuals they studied were "on the whole successful and valuable members of society, quite unlike the popular conception of such persons as vicious, criminal, effete or depraved."

"Only one-fifth," they said, "were at all obviously 'pansy,' and we found no reason to regard most of the patients as physically, intellectually or emotionally immature (unless the basic criterion for 'immaturity' is that of being a homosexual-a circular argument)."

Wide World Kinsey and later investigators have Increasingly challenged the traditional Freudian interpretation of homosexuality. searcher reported the same findings as Drs. Curran and Parr.

An anonymous homosexual physician writing in one of the leading British medical publications. cited sixteen case histories of persons known to him, in support of the same thesis. The majority of these individuals, he asserted, were well-adjusted and respected members of their community.

The most recent research--an investigation conducted for the British Biology Council by Gordon Westwood, a research psychologist-has also called into question many of the favorite myths about homosexuality. Over a period of two years Westwood met and interviewed 127 homosex-

"Only half the patients showed significant psychiatric abnormality other than their sexual deviation and such associated abnormalities were often slight. Moreover, many of these abnormalities were explicable as a reaction to the difficulties of being homosexuals in different walks of life.

ual."

Renée Liddicoat, in a doctoral thesis accepted by the Psychology Department of the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, reported on a group of non-institutionalized homosexuals fifty males and fifty females. This re-

Most of the homosexuals interviewed, Westwood concluded, "led useful and productive lives." This study, he declared, "confirms the conclusions of Liddicoat and Parr, who agree that homosexuals comprise a heterogeneous group of personality types, some of whom