The Personality Variables Of Homosexual Women

Reported by Sten Russell

A study on The Personality Variables of Homosexual cron, begun five years ago, was reported on in Los Angeles recently by Virginia Armon, Ph.D., before a group of men and women conre oted with ONE, Ino.

Mrs. Armon is chief psychologist at Pasadena Child Guidance Clinic and director of Training on Clinical Psychology for the Child Guidance Clinic at the California Babies' and Children's Hospital. In 1953 Dr. Armon, with the aid of Vita Sommers, Ph.D., clinical psychologist, Veterans' Mental Hygiene Clinic, Los Angeles, and Howard Russell, a student in the field of educ ati onal psychology, began a study called "The Personality Variables in Homosexual Womon." In the spring of 1958, Dr. Armon finished her Doctoral Dissertation for the University of Southern California. It was in essence a summary of the above-menti oned project.

In the project, thirty homosexual women, referred by CNE, Inc., or friends of ONE, were interviewed and tested. A control group of thirty women who preferred the heterosexual adjustment to the homosexual were also intervie wed and tested. This latter group did not know the purpose of the study for which they had volunteered and were not interviewed to the lengths that the homosexual women were interviewed. This reporter asked why and Dr. Armon answered that it was because these women were all from a suburban, middle class, housewife group and would not or could not answer personal que stions with the same freedom and hone sty permitted by more sophisticated types or by those of a minority group cognizant of the need for cooperating to the fullest with objective students of the problem. Dr. Armon mentioned that one of the great difficulties Dr. Kinsey had had in his research with women was that in general only the more intellectual or highly educated women would reveal sexual facts about themselves in the personal interview form of que sti oning. One hundred women volunteered for Dr. Armon's control group. She took thirty who were married, had children,

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