ZEITGEIST VOL. 2, NO. 1 PAGE 23 people as mentally ill, rather, he believed that there was a way to convert sexualities. In a Letter to an American Mother, he states, “Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation; it cannot be classified as an illness.”4 Freud believes there is nothing inherently wrong with those who identify differently than heterosexually, however, confusion may be created when he stated “we consider it [homosexuality] to be a variation of the sexual function produced by a certain arrest of sexual development.” Although Freud may understand that there are no moral issues with having a different sexual identity, his description of homosexuality as an “arrest of sexual development” makes it seem that such individuals are mentally inferior to others. Later in his letter, when he explained the potential outcome of conversion therapy, Freud stated that “in a certain number of cases we succeed in developing the blighted germs of heterosexual tendencies which are present in every homosexual.”5 The word “success” implies that conversion to heterosexuality is the most optimal outcome, not simply allowing an individual to express their own sexual identity. Freud also makes it appear that in certain homosexual people, there can also be heterosexual desires present, allowing justification for conversion. Although Freud seems to have no personal issue with people identifying differently than heterosexuals, his rhetoric does not clarify this position and therefore allows anyone to take his quotes out of the context of his research and be used to uphold their homophobic agendas and ideas, which was what a homophobiacomplacent society was eager to take. Freud’s original research was misused by homophobes due to societal, rampaging toxic masculinity which forced men into rigid gender roles. Homophobia tends to exist in parallel during times when gender roles are being heavily enforced, such as during a period of war. Many of the men growing up during the early 20th century faced the realities of a war-making society in which, “a boy child is socially categorized and raised with the expectation that when grown he may be called on to dominate and kill.“ In the 1950s after World War II, the pressure of a nuclear family where a union is strictly between a man and a woman informed much of the work of conservative psychologists at the time. Homosexual people did not fit into the nuclear family system, therefore psychologists used Freud’s previous arguments as a way to depict them as mentally ill. After the war, LGBTQ men and women who had found community and confidence because of the military went forth and pursued lives centered around their identity, forming a visible culture. Instead of returning back to their hometowns, LGBTQ veterans stayed together in cities. One GI wrote in a diary entry the following describing his desire to stay with the community he had found, “I can’t change, have no desire to do so, because it took me a long, long time to figure out how to enjoy life…I’m not going back to what I left.” In cities, physical places of meeting like bars started to show up. Samuel B. Hadden was one of many conservative psychologists who misused Freud’s research in order to support the creation and use of conversion therapy. His techniques were developed with the works of Freud and previous psychologists in order to “cure” homosexuality. He described his opinions of homosexuality in a Time Magazine article in 1971, where he stated “to me, there is no such thing as a homosexual. I regard homosexual activity and orientation as but a symptom in an individual who is maladjusted.” Hadden’s views paralleled Freud’s as he believed that “symptoms“ of homosexuality were caused by underdevelopment during childhood. However, where their opinions split was on the validity of their identity. Hadden was not supportive of people who identified as homosexual like Freud was, rather, he believed it was a mental disorder that needed to be cured.7 While cherrypicking from Freud’s work, Hadden synthesized the argument that homosexuality developed a response to a child’s mistreatment throughout their childhood which led to pent-up aggression towards that
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