The Homosexual: A New Minority; 4; The Causes of Homosexuality

[noise] [ambience, percussions] [Host] From KXKX the FM station of San Francisco. Ri- Riverside Radio WRVR FM presents one in a series of ten programs. T- The Homosexual: A New Minority. A brief s- survey and view of the continually controversial subject which haunts America today hom- homosexuality. For the series, the revere ned John B. Moore, minister ?Lied? Memorial Methodist Church California acts as monitor. W- We are here today to consider the question how effective is psychotherapy with homosexuals. Our guests are Dr. Albert Ell- Ellis, practicing psychotherapist in New York City, executive dir- director of the Institute for Rational Living Incorporated the author of Ninety Fi-

Five Books the latest of which is entitled homosexuality its causes and cure. Our other guests are Hal Call of the Mattachine Society and Clarence Colwell minister of Metropolitan Mission of the United Church of Christ here in San Francisco. Before we discuss psychotherapy with homosexuals, why don't we look at this recent book of Dr. Ellis's which yet is to be published and to talk about causes and cures of homosexuality. Would you like to begin here Dr. Ellis? Yes this, ah, book which is called Homosexuality Its Causes and Cure is actually my twenty-third not my ninety-fifth book, it will take me a few more weeks to write up to ninety five but i'll keep going on it. Anyway the book considers the many causes of homosexuality from the purely

physiological alleged causes to the many psychological and sociological and it comes to a conclusion that the physiological causes are mainly a myth that there is no direct causation of homosexuality for physiological reasons there is an indirect causation in the sense that physiology has a great deal to do you with severe emotional disturbance unlike my psychoanalytic friends who I used to be a member of but now I am agin psychoanalysis. I don't believe that human beings are merely raised to be disturbed they are also born as I un-euphemistically say with holes in their heads and they have tendencies toward severe emotional disturbance so when they are severely disturbed they could become homosexuals, alcoholics, drug addicts, schizophrenics, and so on, and there is an indirect physiological causation in the case of many homosexuals but there is no direct causation or direct causes seem to be sociological and psychological and I list in this new

book many causes and that's why causes is put in the plural. Hal would you like to speak to this at all yet? Well I would like ask Dr. Ellis if his view on causes is one which, ah, ah, has its roots early, very early in the formative years of childhood, ah, as opposed perhaps to the concept some people have that homosexuals are often converted into the practice, that sometime in their life after having reached sexual maturity. I have in mind a statement that the police officer would make where he says that, ah, homosexuals wouldn't be so bad and so much of a police problem if they were not so busy converting others to the practice. We haven't found in our work and in Mattachine that, ah homosexuals are converted in that sense, they may discover their homosexuality long after they are sexually mature or they may discover early, earlier in life. Ah, have you a discussion on that, Dr. Ellis, that you could give us now? Well, as usual in the

field, there's no all-inclusive answer that gives one central pattern to all cases. First of all, I think we all understand that by homosexuals we're talking about the fixed homosexual here and not the individual who has occasional homosexual behavior which maybe forty percent of American males have. We're talking about the individual who almost exclusively or exclusively is homosexual. And in most instances the great majority he is from homosexual from at least his early teens and is not necessarily by any means seduced into it. Though, that does not mean he cannot be. Because if an individual is severely disturbed enough and what I call enough of a goofer, if he takes the easy pathway and peculiarly enough in our silly society it's easier for them to have had a sex relations, homosexually than heterosexually for most part, then he may because he's a goofer, be lead into fixed homosexuality but he would have to be

predisposed. The average male United States has some amount of homosexual behavior in is early days and does not get seduced. In the great majority of cases there is no such thing as seduction. In a minority there probably is What about this problem, Dr. Ellis, of, ah, the terror of the opposite sex that so many of the confirmed homosexuals bring to us in the Mattachine Society. Mattachine Society. It becomes evident that in many cases confirmed adult practicing homosexuals are not as much attracted to their own sex as they are scared to death of the opposite. Yes, I'm glad you make that point because that's exactly what I've always found. That I have no trouble whatsoever curing most of my homosexual patients if we define cure as their ability to participate actively and enjoy heterosexual relations. By cure I do not mean they get cured of all their emotional disturbances because almost nobody does in this, in these United States.

But if we mean by cure that they are able to actively enjoy and look forward to heterosexual relations then I cure a very high percentage of those I see. And one of the main reasons I'm able to do so is the reason you gave. It isn't that they are incapable of having sex relations with girls. They're very potent very often, as soon as they start having sex relations with girls. But they're so frightened of doing so that they do not even try. And they come and tell me all the time and I'm sure you've heard even more often than I have in the Mattachine Society that they have no desire for girls and this usually means that they're terribly scared, so scared that they never try and therefore they never develop the desire. But once I can psychotherapeutically help them over their terrible fear of failure with a female, of not making it sexually, of not being a responsible person, of not being a good husband and father. Then sexually they do very very well. Lots of times better than my heterosexual patients who have a lot of potency problems. Dr. Dr. Ellis, may I, ah, go back to your statement

relative to the book this is soon to be published, and this goes back to the matter of causation. And I believe you made the statement that the physiological, uh, factors here were, uh, pretty much, uh, in your judgment, ah, a myth, ah. Directly, indirectly they influence the individual again, because for example there's no way in which you could inherit a real organic homosexual desire or tendency. If there were it would soon be genetically wiped out because obviously fixed homosexuals aren't going to have many children. So, just genetically you can see it's pretty impossible. But there are ways in which you can inherit certain physical characteristics such as you might look very good looking, for what, which is what homosexuals go for or you might be a little on the effeminate side or you might have other physical characteristics which would slightly prejudice you toward homosexuality. So we can't throw out the physiology completely but it's

a minor fact that it has no direct physical causation as far as any research has shown. We've had hundreds of studies, hormonal, surgical physiological and so on and the genetic and there is no evidence whatsoever as i review very carefully in one of first chapters of his book, for a direct physical causation. Well direct physical causation I think would be pretty difficult to prove in almost any area of investigation and in our entire universe. Ah, this is a very difficult thing. No, in Huntington's ca--- and several other ailments, including some so called nervous ailments, we do pretty well have direct physical genetic causation. This has never been shown in most psychological ailments, but, ah, we do have it in a few. You know there would have to be a necessary, ah, genetic, ah, structure here that would, ah, predispose one toward homosexuality or is it possible that, that there is that there is such a thing as it kind of

malfunctioning, ah, ah, of the, ah, of the hormone, ah mal-functioning of, ah of the, ah, glands in one kind one way or another which which, ah, can be a contributing factor in this whole thing. For example, only yesterday or maybe it was this morning in the Chronicle, Dr. Robert J. Stoller, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, University of California Medical School in Los Angeles, was quoted rather extensively and indicated, ah, ah, pretty much, ah, ah, a conclusion which ah pointed in that direction. That is, ah, a physiological kind of, uh, explanation for, uh homosexuality at least as a contributing factor. I'd be interested in seeing his evidence but all the evidence so far shows that when you take anybody who's deficient in the male hormone testosterone and you feed him more of it, if he's homosexual, he becomes more homosexual rather than heterosexual. Also I did a classic study of

hermaphrodites many years ago which has been redone by John Money and his associates which show that hermaphrodites who are all balled up physiologically they really have characteristics of both sexes including sometimes ovarian and testicular tissue are heterosexual in ninety percent of the cases in relation to how they're raised no matter what they have inside them. So there is a great deal of evidence showing there's no direct inheritance or physiological factor. Now there can be some tendencies as you say. I personally think way back, uh, and Magnus Hirschfeld's thought the same thing and so did Krafft-Ebbing, that the physiological tendencies otherwise, that if you have an individual who has these physiologically predisposed to be inadequate, to be schizophrenic, to be something like that, then he can easily get over to any kind of peculiar behavior pathway including in our society homosexuality and incidentally I think we should say here that

homosexuality in our society is by definition or especially legal definition wrong but it isn't necessarily wrong in any other society. We have the classic instance of ancient Greece and if we had a different social structure which permitted homosexuality as they did in ancient Greece then the individuals who tend to go for it would obviously not be necessarily disturbed but in our culture where I think unfortunately we ban it, we make it illegal, we persecute homosexuals which we definitely would not do if we were sane about it then we encourage to gravitate to this deviant area, just as we encourage to gravitate to other deviant areas, people have a rough time facing themselves and getting along in life, and I make the heretical statement which disturbs my homosexual friends or great deal even though I fight for their civil liberties that most fixed homosexuals in our society, not all over the world, are not only neurotic, they are definitely more severely disturbed, than that

and they're borderline psychotic, most of them. Now that doesn't mean all, but that's most, the majority. [Call] Yes, I wanted to clarify that with Dr. Ellis because in the many hundreds of adult confirmed homosexuals, mostly males, who come to us every year, not, I would say, not more than one of a hundred would take a pill in our office and be able to walk out of our office door completely heterosexual because it's a foreign land to them. They are again frightened of it. It's an adjustment that they, that is, it is unlike anything they know or would want to know, as you can imagine. Therefore we over the years in Mattachine, we've come to take the position that homosexuality is an aspect of nature and we are working to gain acceptance of that idea and particularly to get the individual caught up in the condition once he's confirmed in it to do more

and more in this work of self acceptance so that he can function in the very best possible way as a responsible productive individual and not with necessarily unlimited license, we don't ask for that for anyone in the sphere of sex. Now, do you have any particular criticism of that kind of, uh, that kind of an approach, Dr. Ellis? And do you think it would tie in or would it be out of line with what you're speaking of in the cure, in the therapy that's available for the homosexual individual maybe earlier in life or to prevent it or adjust those who wish to change and so forth. [Ellis] No, I know of the work of the Mattachine Society for many years and as a matter of fact I'm an honorary member of the society and I think that in general it's official position is a good one. First of all it's for civil liberties in the homosexual world and he is a deprived individual in our silly society, again. And secondly, they take the position that you take. Now I think that many members of the society unfortunately do not exactly go along with this official position

and they really think that the only thing you can do with a homosexual is adjust him to his homosexuality. This is a very mistaken and pernicious position because you can do much more if you have a highly active directive form of psychotherapy instead of psychoanalytic psychotherapy which I did for years but which I abandoned because it's a very woefully inefficient method of psychotherapy. But with a rational active, directed method such as the rational emotive psychotherapy which I and my associates now use then you can definitely in many, though by no means all cases, get the homosexual not merely to adjust to his homosexuality, which would be a good thing in itself, I confess to that. But also very often to go beyond that and make it successfully and happily in some degree of heterosexual participation. [Call] Could I come back to this question of homosexuality as of neurosis or psychosis?

I'm not quite sure that I understand you, Dr. Ellis, when you speak in terms of society and referring to the Greek society where there was more acceptance of this than there is in our society, would it be if, for example, there were civil liberties granted to homosexuals in our society and that the attitudes of the public change toward us, would this mean that homosexuals would then not be neurotic? Is it the social milieu which determines neurosis in this way? [Ellis] Not entirely, but it would partly be what you just said because one of the reasons why homosexuals are so disturbed in this society is not just that the society helps make them disturbed, which it does by its very puritanical attitudes and many are driven into homosexuality. One of the big causes that I've put my the book is heterosexual puritanism. The YMCAs, for example, in this country have quite a time with homosexuality. They are hotbeds of homosexuality and when they come to me and ask me what they can do about this I say, well, why don't you put the girls and the boys together

in the Y? Why are you separating? Why don't you encourage heterosexuality? And they're scandalized by that sort of thing. But that would be one of the basic answers. So as soon as you down heterosexuality you're going to create more homosexuality in any kind of a human group. Now the other reason is that in a society such as ours where you ban anything -- and we've been a lot of things which are pretty harmless, we ban free speech very often, especially in the form of sex censorship. And where individuals persist in doing that thing against the law and dangerously, I don't mean a blue-letter law which is never adhered to but a real law, and unfortunately in San Francisco and my New York homosexuals are arrested every day. They should not be. But they are and when you ban something and make it illegal, and people insist, nonetheless, in only participating in that form of sex behavior which is banned, then they are normally compulsively driven to do so, it's not just a matter of choice. Now it's the compulsivity which

makes them disturbed. And incidentally, they're a lot of homosexuals in the United States, millions that we'll never even know about, probably, although who at one time were exclusively homosexual and who didn't even get psychotherapy but who just said to himself, look, this is foolish, I will get into trouble if I keep going around to men's rooms and picking up boys and so on and so forth, maybe I shouldn't get into trouble, ah well, and they have literally trained themselves to go with girls and to get at the sexual aliveness and pleasure from so doing and this is what I do in my type of therapy, I've trained my homo, hetero, homosexual male to go with, to date, to make passes at, to enjoy females and at the same time to show them how to get rid of their fears while they're doing this - the fear of failure, how awful it'll be if the girl rejects them or if they are temporarily impotent. And in this manner you can definitely, as I said before, cure, by which again I mean get

to enjoy heterosexual participation, a great many homosexuals. But on the other hand, a great many, as Mr. Call knows even better than I do, will make no attempt to train themselves or go for any kind of psychotherapy because it's much easier for them to remain the way they are on a short range hedonistic basis than to take the longer range goal of getting off this exclusive kick and at least being also able to enjoy the other half of the human race sexually. [Call] In changing this attitude toward homosexuality we're going to have to go, I think to the deeper problem and change attitudes towards sexuality itself, which, because ours is a basically anti-sexual culture. Would it seem to you that a sensible and widespread program of sex education at a realistic early age and having parents as well as their children educated about it, would that serve, you think, Dr. Ellis to possibly prevent a great

deal of this exclusive and compulsive homosexuality that you are speaking of? [Ellis] Yes, I think it definitely would. The one caveat we have to put there is that, right now, if that kind of sex education were done by the kind of people who teach it on the college level and sometimes in our high schools, who are very prudish themselves, then it can do much more harm than good. But if we had objective liberal sex teaching from kindergarten onward, and I I'm glad you included the parents as well since they are as ignorant if not more so than the children sometimes these days, then I think that we would get rid of a great deal of the anti-sexualism in our society, which definitely helps make people disturbed and compulsively attach not only to homosexuality but all kinds of other fetishes. There are lots of heterosexual fetishes such as peeping or something like that, so Compulsive individuals don't just become homosexuals but because they are driven to tone down the direct thing that they would like to do, which is construed as dangerous in our society, namely heterosexual participation, they gravitate

to all kinds of other fetishes and become exclusively or compulsively attached to one of the these. [Colwell] Coming back again to one of your earlier comments, Dr. Ellis. Functioning in church circles as I do, one of the common comments, uh that oftentimes I hear, and I think is unfortunate but nonetheless, there it is, that heterosexuality is exclusively that form of sexual behavior which conforms to the laws of God and if this is true then I'd like to push this question a little bit farther with you in this matter of choice because it's at this point where, where the church or church men, I should say, very often make this judgment about homosexuality not only as being contrary to the laws of God, a judgment which I

personally don't make. But the moral judgment comes in where they are convinced by, I would take it, a person such as yourself that homosexuals, per se, that is every homosexual has a choice and can make and does indeed make a deliberate choice which keeps him confirmed in this, this, uh, circle of homosexuality. Now I don't want to misread what you've said and so I want you to, to read me again. [Ellis] Well, first on the deliberate choice business, it is true that we do have some measure of what used to be called free will and therefore we can make a choice of our behavior with great effort and practice no matter how we are raised. And this is the Freudian non-sense again that the way we are raised clips us for life. That no matter how we are raised, our raising gives us certain value system, certain assumptions about ourselves and we can as human beings re-assess those value systems whether they be religious views, economic, sexual or otherwise, we do have with hardwork and

effort a good deal of so-called free will but at the same time it is most difficult for us who have unconsciously trained ourselves by telling ourselves hogwash for many years that I can't make it with girls or wouldn't it be awful if I fail or something like that. It's very, very difficult for us to do this changing and therefore the choice is there but it crea-, it's a hard, hard thing to follow and no human being should ever be blamed or condemned for not making this choice just because our society happens to be primarily heterosexual. As to the laws of God, if there were a God, which I definitely doubt since I'm very atheistic myself and I think that religion does not by any means give us the good way of life when it's defined in any orthodox fashion. If there were a God, we certainly do not know what his laws are and as far as so-called nature is concerned there is no question whatsoever that all the evidence shows that there is no such thing as a natural sex law which leads only to heterosexuality. The natural law of

sex leads to plurisexuality, meaning that the individual is born with a tendency to get an orgasm in a number of different ways, one of which is heterosexuality, one of which is homosexuality, one of which is masturbation, etc., etc., the laws of nature are clearly not just heterosexual. [Call] And you're saying that from your point of view, homosexuality is a variation in the spectrum of sexuality and not a deviation as society defines it. [Ellis] Yes the only time it becomes a deviation, and heterosexuality itself may become one, is when the individual, as Mr. Call said before, compulsively is driven only to do this thing and no other. Now it's the compulsivity, the exclusivity which makes it the deviation not the homosexual behavior. No behavior sexually is that aberated per se. it's the way in which you do the behavior, and this goes for non-sexual behavior too. Therein comes the neurosis. That's right the way in which you do it, not the act.

Even stealing for example is not aberated per se because if you're starving and you steal something out maybe very sane behavior but if you are a compulsive thief then you are a nut you're not just a thief. Your compulsivity is the issue. May not one be then a compulsive heterosexual? Yes and in our society actually as I've said in my book, The American Sexual Tragedy, in under no circumstances a heterosexual even consider homosexuality. Suppose you're on a desert island for twenty years with nobody but males. If he wouldn't even consider homosexuality then he would be just as rigidly and fixatedly attached to that as the homosexual normally is. Now in our society we make a virtue out of this particular fetish which we call heterosexuality, therefore would only be a minor aberation if it were exclusive. You spoke of one of the causes of the aberrations and the neuroses and our society's prudishness that our antisexual bias. What are some of the other causes of

homosexuality and what do you think are the crucial factors in its cure in terms of your procedures, for example, and I'm know of another psychiatrist who has spoken of group therapy in working with homosexuals. Well I do group therapy but i don't have an exclusive group of homosexuals. I would put a homosexual in with a regular group or two or three of them but if you put him in an exclusively they tend to de-convert each other at times. So it has its dangers. But anyway the other basic causes are the causes of all human disturbances. The first is anxiety including guilt, depression, self-hatred, and so on and most homosexuals, the great majority of them are individuals who do not like themselves enough and are afraid of doing the wrong thing, failing, of not achieving perfectly or adequately, of not being loved, accepted and adored by practically every other significant person they would meet and secondly the other basic cause is hostility, meaning that the

individual not only dislikes the acts of other people but condemns those people in toto. And a great homosexuals not by any means all, do dislike the acts of the females for example their mothers, sisters and others as I said earlier and condemn these acts. And also the other cause that goes along with that is low frustration tolerance or goofing where you find it difficult to do a thing and consequently you give up easily. Now the cure, basically consists of hacking away in my own rational emotive manner at the causes of the anxiety, the nonsense you tell yourself that created your early history nonsense and the causes of the hostility and low frustration tolerance [unintelligible] a lot of help I'm just wondering, you said earlier Dr. Ellis, that your psychotherapy was specifically and consciously deliberately directed to the matter of converting a person from homosexuality to

heterosexuality and i'm wondering if part of this or even most of it may not be because this is simply the easiest way to live in our society. Now can you answer what he said in about fifteen seconds is about all the time we have. Yes I'll just say that no even in any society if you were exclusively homosexual, didn't even consider heterosexuality, he would be sick so i'm interested in getting rid of his fixation, his compulsion. Thank you very much for participating in this interesting discussion. There are lots of questions left in our minds Dr. Albert Ellis, Hal Call and Clay Colwell [music] The Homosexual, a new minority. You've been listening to the third in a series of ten programs on the subject of homosexuality in America today. The moderator for the series the Reverend John B Moore, Minister of the Glide Memorial Methodist Church California Next week at this time: Homosexuality and sex behavior in the

U.S. discussed by Wendel B. Pomeroy co-author of the Kinsey report and 20 year associate of the Kinney Institute for Sex Research The Homosexual - a New Minority was originally produced by KXKX, the FM station of San Francisco va