way with his theories—or to change them to fit his theories. Since my mother had died very early in my life-and my father was obviously deranged-I laid much of my trouble at his door and said so... " (p. 226)

"Dr. Portzweig would impatiently bring me back to his theory of my case. "Then why didn't you inform on him?' 'But I did to the few people I could trust. Try to remember we're not talking about an adult, not even an adolescent. We're talking about a scared little kid-practically a baby.' All these facts he brushed grandly aside, as being beside the point. 'You wanted to be denied. You probably provoked your father.'

"I gave up trying to correct him: obviously he knew much more about my childhood than I did..." (p. 227)

"He seemed so bent upon my learning his theories verbatim and reciting them back to him that I don't believe he actually heard more than half of what I had been trying desperately to tell him.

"It was obvious after a while how things were going. As he would ask the question, and I would give the answer, I would always draw a huge 0 while he drew 100 on theory. If I mentioned that in spite of my troubles, I had so far managed to work, that was because I was a masochist." (p. 228) Eventually Joyce begins to see through Portzweig/Bergler, but there is an added factor. Part of her trouble is a morbid attraction to people she finds loathsome. And she begins to feel his hatred, however impersonal:

"Besides, it wasn't just me he hated. It was all writers. It was the entire literary mecca. And other meccas, too.. He hated his elevator man who called him Doc. He hated taxi drivers. 'In this country, they call you Buddy or Mack.' He hated other analysts. 'They do not understand orality, therefore they cannot cure." (p. 232)

The doctor's attitude towards his colleagues is fully reciprocated. She makes some inquiries: "... the doctor, an eminent and very famous analyst.. had had 'bad experiences, with him,' he said. 'Orality, orality, orality—well` everybody knows about orality... The patient must get the hostilities out of his system and if you have to contend with the doctor's hostilities, what system-and can you expect?'... The second one... called him 'crude, conceited, overbearing.'... But it was the third one, my woman friend who came from his own city, who gave me an insight into his character, explaining the extraordinary ambition for fame and prestige, the incredible, 'abnormal' interest in publication." (p. 237)

Reading Joyce MacIver's brilliant study of the Bergler of so many years ago, and then finding almost everything applicable to the Bergler most familiar to readers of this magazine, one can only wonder how so many otherwise intelligent people (such as the Time editors who once gave him such wide, favorable publicity) could have been imposed upon by this modern witch doctor.

mattachine REVIEW

(Editor's Note: The preceding review was written before the unexpected death on February 6th. of Dr. Edmund Bergler. It is no secret that Dr. Bergler was not highly respected in most homosexual circles, yet it is one of the ironies of the times that his theories should have received the unwarranted publicity that they did. Although he refused a Mattachine invitation to speak in New York, he actively sought the sponsorship of other organizations, and was presented at Cooper Union and at Manhattan College. His books received wide acclaim if not endorsement from otherwise reputable quarters, although they were poorly written, repetitive and wierdly documented; thus illustrating the blindness of the day, and abetting his questionable career. It is not surprising that he was especially favored in the local law-enforcement circles-ever vigilant for an articulate justification for their preoccupation with homosexuality as a menace-although he considered homosexuals more sick than criminal. His insistance that homosexuals "could be cured if they wanted to be," served as justification for intensified persecutions on the part of his fans in the vice squad. In his obituary the New York Herald Tribune reported:

"In 1959, Dr. Bergler published a book entitled, 1,000 Homosexuals, which reported on findings he reached after thirty years of treatment of deviates.

"In this volume, Dr. Bergler contended that the homosexual is essentially a masochist and an unhappy one, whether conscious of it or not. He also rejected the theory that excessive parental care tends to promote homosexuality, and he contended that the homosexual controls the power to cure his condition.

"He was one of the first physicians to report on a 'curé rate' for homosexuality, counting as 'cures' only patients effecting a lasting conversion to sexual normality.

"Dr. Bergler was one of the foremost and most articulate critics of the late Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey's report on the sexual practices of American males, charging, among other things, that it frequently was used by older men to seduce youths."

His theories were never endorsed by the Mattachine Review.

THE GAY LIFE BROADWAY, '61 '62

Tom Wilson

As I type these lines it is almost March 1st. and spring is just around the corner-which means that the closing chapter of another Broadway season