Charles Socarides

Charles W. Socarides was a controversial psychoanalyst who campaigned against the decision of the American Psychiatric Association that homosexuality was not a mental illness. A product of the 1950s era American medical-ization of psychotherapy that retained the language and non-scientific approach of Freudianism though not its balanced humanistic insights into human sexuality—graduating from Harvard College and receiving a certificate in Psychoanalytic Medicine from Columbia University in 1952--Socarides theorized that homosexuality was the product of overbearing mothers and absent fathers. He also claimed that he had "cured" many of the mental "disorder” although as a Freudian he escaped from the burden of having to offer convincing empirical proof for his claims.

Angry Marginal Figure
Socaride's numerous mainstream professional critics dismissed his life’s work as lacking a scientific foundation. Gilbert Herdt, director of the National Sexuality Resource Center in San Francisco, summarizes his work as going "from being the reigning paradigm to being considered eccentric." Jeanne Hoff, a retired psychiatrist personally familiar Socarides described him as a, "captive of the psychoanalytic school, now thoroughly discredited, and tried to use elements of that theory to explain what was largely hidden from view at the time, causing a great deal of suffering to parents and gays alike for the implication of abnormality. Modern psychiatry, more objective and less blaming, sees homosexuality as one band on a broad spectrum of normal variants in the ways human sexuality develops, and not a rare and destructive disorder. He never seems to have made the adjustment to data, objective study, or the demise of his psychoanalytic faith-based system." Socarides' unscientific convictions were not shaken by the 1973 decision of the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. Dr. Socarides claimed the association was, "under political assault by gay activists." That a majority of professional colleagues simply disagreed was unacceptable as an idea to him, but then mainstream psychiatrists know that paranoia is often associated with homosexual panic. Socarides had an openly gay son, Richard Socarides, who served as a White House advisor on gay and lesbian rights in the Clinton Administration. Socarides postured by “willingly” taking some of the blame for his son’s homosexuality, saying that he had "failed" his son by not seeing him enough after divorcing his first wife.

Early Conversion
Charles Socarides appears to have become a Freudian at the impressionable age of 13 after reading a biography of Sigmund Freud. His conversion was thus less the result of intellectual conviction than attachment to a portrayal of a attractive father figure in text.

Intellectual Limitations
Much of Dr. Socarides' work was spent studying how homosexuality develops and how it might be treated. He was convinced that homosexuality is a neurotic adaptation that could be completely overcome. According to Socarides, male homosexuality typically develops in the first two years of the boy's life, during the pre-oedipal stage of the boy's personality formation, and is caused by a domineering, controlling, castrating, and phallic mother who prevents her son from separating from her, and a distant, weak, abdicating, and rejecting father who does not serve as a role model for his son and does not support his son's effort to escape from the mother.

In addition to rejecting the proposition that homosexuality was normal--it appears in every society on the planet—Socarides also disregarded a wide variety of other possible organic or genetic causes. His lack of training in cultural anthropology and the gaps in his training in the biological sciences may have disinclined him to develop beyond his original intellectual indoctrination.

Claims of Successful Treatment
Dr. Socarides “treated” patients for homosexuality throughout his career. He claimed that "about a third" of his patients became heterosexual and led heterosexual lives after treatment. Similar claims of “cure” rates continue to be made by the small minority of psychotherapists who share his misunderstanding. By "cure" Socarides and other reparative psychotherapists do not mean that their subjects no longer experience homosexual feelings but rather that such feelings are effectively repressed. Of course, sexual repression of any sort comes with its own dangers to the personality which may be reflected in self-destructive and anti-social behaviors, behaviors often preferred by other suffering from similar mental disturbances.