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Homosexuality: A Freedom Too Far
In this explosive book, Dr. Socarides, an early and persistent advocate of civil rights for homosexuals, dares to relate how gay politics has sold society on the notion that same-sex sex is "a normal variation, like left-handedness." Dr. Socarides knows that homosexuality is not a normal variation. Nor are gays "born that way" -- another idea that has been created by pseudoscience and accepted as truth by the media and the courts and academe. He knows that the seeds of his patients' homosexual orientation were planted in their earliest years, usually before the age of three, and their appropriate genderdefined self identity impaired as the result of abuse and neglect.He documents this clinical opinion by summarizing a number of systematic studies, first reported in the early psychoanalytic literature, and continuing on into the 1990s, and by giving us an inside look at his successful work treating homosexuals over more than 40 years.Treatment? "Yes," he says, "in suitable cases, through the insight that comes with a successful analysis, we can free men from their compulsions and help them go on to happy family lives, with women (and children) who love them." In these pages, he shows us how he himself has made this happen in the course of his career.That endorsement didn't come by accident, but by design and by a monolithic public relations campaign that has been carried on since 1973, when gay rights activists infiltrated the American Psychiatric Association and succeeded in striking homosexuality off the APA's list of disorders. Dr. Socarides shows how that move, a political shell game and not a professional inquiry, has hurt homosexuals in the long run, and subverted society in the process.Dr. Socarides describes his mounting concern over same-sex sex and AIDS, the sexual revolution, gay psychiatrists, the seduction of the innocent in our nation's classrooms, the gay and lesbian takeover in academe, gays in the military, and the disastrous road U.S. society has taken by ratifying the self-serving self-delusion (and ultimate self-destructiveness) of the gay rights crusade - which continues to seek a freedom that cannot be given by any society. "It is a freedom too far," he says. "Homosexuality cannot make a society, nor keep one going for very long."Dr. Socarides continues to work with men and women who are deeply troubled about their orientation and want to change. Indeed, Dr. Socarides leads a group of therapists around the world who specialize in dealing with homosexuality. In the spring of 1995, he won the Distinguished Professor award from the Association of Psychoanalytic Psychologists, British Health Service, and lectured on his research findings in London at the Anna Freud Child Development Center, the Portman Clinic, the Tavistock Clinic and before the British Psychoanalytic Society.
321 pages, Hardcover
First published July 1, 1977
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 5, 2025
"This breakdown of the family could only happen in a society that seems to have decided, over the past 20 years, that dads were optional, single mothers were chic, and recreational sex normal, even for children." In this book, written in the 90s, Charles Socarides takes aim at the growing gay and lesbian pride movement we're all too familiar with today. Using the dialogue format of writing once common in centuries past, he holds forth on homosexuality and its physical, mental, moral, and societal dangers.
Socarides uncovers a number of taboos that Big Gay doesn't like to talk about anymore. NAMBLA (the North American Man/Boy Love Association), a pedophile activist group, was once an open and acknowledged component of the gay movement until PR optics forced its banishment. Sodomy is a dangerous practice that causes physical injury and was the main cause of the AIDS epidemic. ("[Q:] What do doctors think of anal sex? [A:] It's a great way to kill yourself.") Finally, the removal of homosexuality from the APA's Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders was a political decision, not a scholarly one, that was spurred on by a massive campaign of pressure and intimidation.
Dr. Socarides is a psychoanalyst, so expect some Freudian nonsense throughout. However, while Freud and his acolytes unleashed sexual 'liberation,' Socarides is clearly a conservative and advocates for self-control. He marks a distinction between those he terms homosexuals and gays, with the former being those with the condition of same-sex attraction, and the latter not only acting on these feelings to an extreme degree, but subverting our society in myriad ways to make their lifestyle easier and more acceptable.
Socarides uncovers a number of taboos that Big Gay doesn't like to talk about anymore. NAMBLA (the North American Man/Boy Love Association), a pedophile activist group, was once an open and acknowledged component of the gay movement until PR optics forced its banishment. Sodomy is a dangerous practice that causes physical injury and was the main cause of the AIDS epidemic. ("[Q:] What do doctors think of anal sex? [A:] It's a great way to kill yourself.") Finally, the removal of homosexuality from the APA's Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders was a political decision, not a scholarly one, that was spurred on by a massive campaign of pressure and intimidation.
Dr. Socarides is a psychoanalyst, so expect some Freudian nonsense throughout. However, while Freud and his acolytes unleashed sexual 'liberation,' Socarides is clearly a conservative and advocates for self-control. He marks a distinction between those he terms homosexuals and gays, with the former being those with the condition of same-sex attraction, and the latter not only acting on these feelings to an extreme degree, but subverting our society in myriad ways to make their lifestyle easier and more acceptable.
February 25, 2019
Disgusting anti science nonsense. We've known homosexuality is genetic for over 15 years at the current date (2019). We've known for decades prior it's a birth based condition and anyone saying otherwise is fueled by either self hate of their own bisexual or homosexual feelings/frustrations or they are religion-based bigots. The rare and most dangerous breed of homophobe is the 'scientist' or 'psychologist' who attempts to push his own narrow narrative. Anyone claiming a. gays are born gay or b. that gays can change their natural inclination and attractions - are anti-science bigots who simply cannot understand that some people prefer their own gendersex for romance, love, and sex.
June 24, 2024
Charles Socarides, who studied at New York Medical College and Columbia University, is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, where for over three decades he has campaigned against greater social acceptance and legal equality for gay and lesbian folk.
He defends anti-gay prejudice on the grounds that broad acceptance of homosexuality is "a tempting of social and personal disaster." To promote his ends, he has cooperated with evangelical and orthodox religious advocates and rightist political forces to provide a pseudo-scientific underpinning to what is clearly simple intolerance.
He doesn't openly promote a "pogrom" in his present effort "Homosexuality: A Freedom Too Far." Rather, we read: "Stopping bias, persecution and violence against gays is the legitimate and worthy aim of the movement. It errs in demanding a freedom too far, a freedom to alter the basic male-female design. Those who endorse this change will get no thanks from future generations." But Dr. Socarides' "liberality" does not extend back very far in time.
His 1978 volume "Homosexuality" - a model of incompetent research methodology and the sloppy use of clinical data - suggests a network of "Federal Sexual Correctional Centers" for homosexuals, who - in his view - need incarceration not simply because of their deviant sexual conduct but as well on account of the fact that, inter alia, they are likely to smoke marijuana and promote radical, left-wing political causes.
Socarides offers his foundational analysis: "Some say gays were born that way and others say it's a choice. Few mention a third possibility -- that homosexuality is unconsciously determined in a child's early years, and that we have a practical science in dealing with those unconscious beginnings. It's called psychoanalysis, and it is a science that can bring freedom to those caught up in their compulsions."
Citing the desirability of and reasons for change, we read: ""Our male patients did not have good relationships with their fathers. They feared them, and reported excessive fears of injury during childhood. And, while most of them were still terribly dependent on their mothers, down deep, they feared them, too. By extension, they ended up fearing and avoiding all women. But we can free these men, men who must have sex with men, and turn them around so they can love women."
The prima facie absurdity of the foregoing paragraph is, I trust, apparent to all unbiased adult readers.
Socarides has been repudiated by every responsible clinician of note, and he has been disciplined by the American Psychoanalytic Association for presenting - under sworn statement and in court - statements of that Association dating from the 1950's as statements of its current views on homosexuality. In the face of threatened prosecution, he appears to have ceased doing so, at least for the present.
Ironically enough, Dr. Socarides' son, Richard, is openly gay and was a senior member of President Clinton's White House staff with the position of presidential liaison to the Department of Labor. Of all of Socarides' offspring, Richard and his male partner are the only ones to have presented Socarides the elder with (adopted) grandchildren. One can only hope that these children's visits with their grandfather are supervised.
This is bronze, age, pseudoscience, and it deserves to be cast on the ash-heap of history.
He defends anti-gay prejudice on the grounds that broad acceptance of homosexuality is "a tempting of social and personal disaster." To promote his ends, he has cooperated with evangelical and orthodox religious advocates and rightist political forces to provide a pseudo-scientific underpinning to what is clearly simple intolerance.
He doesn't openly promote a "pogrom" in his present effort "Homosexuality: A Freedom Too Far." Rather, we read: "Stopping bias, persecution and violence against gays is the legitimate and worthy aim of the movement. It errs in demanding a freedom too far, a freedom to alter the basic male-female design. Those who endorse this change will get no thanks from future generations." But Dr. Socarides' "liberality" does not extend back very far in time.
His 1978 volume "Homosexuality" - a model of incompetent research methodology and the sloppy use of clinical data - suggests a network of "Federal Sexual Correctional Centers" for homosexuals, who - in his view - need incarceration not simply because of their deviant sexual conduct but as well on account of the fact that, inter alia, they are likely to smoke marijuana and promote radical, left-wing political causes.
Socarides offers his foundational analysis: "Some say gays were born that way and others say it's a choice. Few mention a third possibility -- that homosexuality is unconsciously determined in a child's early years, and that we have a practical science in dealing with those unconscious beginnings. It's called psychoanalysis, and it is a science that can bring freedom to those caught up in their compulsions."
Citing the desirability of and reasons for change, we read: ""Our male patients did not have good relationships with their fathers. They feared them, and reported excessive fears of injury during childhood. And, while most of them were still terribly dependent on their mothers, down deep, they feared them, too. By extension, they ended up fearing and avoiding all women. But we can free these men, men who must have sex with men, and turn them around so they can love women."
The prima facie absurdity of the foregoing paragraph is, I trust, apparent to all unbiased adult readers.
Socarides has been repudiated by every responsible clinician of note, and he has been disciplined by the American Psychoanalytic Association for presenting - under sworn statement and in court - statements of that Association dating from the 1950's as statements of its current views on homosexuality. In the face of threatened prosecution, he appears to have ceased doing so, at least for the present.
Ironically enough, Dr. Socarides' son, Richard, is openly gay and was a senior member of President Clinton's White House staff with the position of presidential liaison to the Department of Labor. Of all of Socarides' offspring, Richard and his male partner are the only ones to have presented Socarides the elder with (adopted) grandchildren. One can only hope that these children's visits with their grandfather are supervised.
This is bronze, age, pseudoscience, and it deserves to be cast on the ash-heap of history.
August 19, 2024
HIS FINAL COMPLETE BOOK ON THE SUBJECT
Psychiatrist Charles Socarides (1922-2005) has also written 'Homosexuality' and 'The Overt Homosexual.'
He wrote in the first chapter of this 1995 book, "I have spent most of my professional life, some 40 years, helping homosexuals get on with that healing and repair, and, in many cases, find happiness in a marriage and a family. In doing this work... I have come to learn about the mysterious, but imperative, drives that force men and women into same-sex sex... and about the things a doctor can do to help them overcome these drives... If they want to change, I am here to say they can. For the past 20 years, this fact has been one of the better-kept secrets in our society. I think it is time to let the secret out." (Pg. 7-8) Later, he asserts, "homosexuals that I have had in treatment consider their therapy a success if they're now able to control their up-to-now uncontrollable impulses toward same-sex sex... If you add these patients to my success rate of complete cures, I am batting about .666." (Pg. 150)
He states, "Homosexuals ... hardly have any other choice... Their activity is not a preference, but a neurotic adaptation to unconscious fears. And so, for the most part, I would go along with the insistence of gay activists who maintain that their lifestyle is more `orientation' than `preference.'" (Pg.16-17)
Of the infamous 1969 police raid on the Stonewall Inn, he states, "If the cops had exercised common sense, they would have overlooked the liquor law violation and put their blessing on the party... The government can't tell people of whatever shape, size or color that they can't get together." (Pg. 49)
Of the 1973 decision of the APA to remove homosexuality from the list of "disorders," he comments, "The organization was under political assault by gay activists... It was easier for the leadership to switch than fight." (Pg. 74) He contends, "It was a very cowardly thing to do, and it was a decision that is still haunting us today." (Pg. 79) He concludes, "A lot of unfortunate things have happened as a result of that action. But it was a huge mistake." (Pg. 157)
Socarides' views have remained basically the same throughout his career (despite the fact that his oldest son is openly gay). And they remain as controversial as they always were.
Psychiatrist Charles Socarides (1922-2005) has also written 'Homosexuality' and 'The Overt Homosexual.'
He wrote in the first chapter of this 1995 book, "I have spent most of my professional life, some 40 years, helping homosexuals get on with that healing and repair, and, in many cases, find happiness in a marriage and a family. In doing this work... I have come to learn about the mysterious, but imperative, drives that force men and women into same-sex sex... and about the things a doctor can do to help them overcome these drives... If they want to change, I am here to say they can. For the past 20 years, this fact has been one of the better-kept secrets in our society. I think it is time to let the secret out." (Pg. 7-8) Later, he asserts, "homosexuals that I have had in treatment consider their therapy a success if they're now able to control their up-to-now uncontrollable impulses toward same-sex sex... If you add these patients to my success rate of complete cures, I am batting about .666." (Pg. 150)
He states, "Homosexuals ... hardly have any other choice... Their activity is not a preference, but a neurotic adaptation to unconscious fears. And so, for the most part, I would go along with the insistence of gay activists who maintain that their lifestyle is more `orientation' than `preference.'" (Pg.16-17)
Of the infamous 1969 police raid on the Stonewall Inn, he states, "If the cops had exercised common sense, they would have overlooked the liquor law violation and put their blessing on the party... The government can't tell people of whatever shape, size or color that they can't get together." (Pg. 49)
Of the 1973 decision of the APA to remove homosexuality from the list of "disorders," he comments, "The organization was under political assault by gay activists... It was easier for the leadership to switch than fight." (Pg. 74) He contends, "It was a very cowardly thing to do, and it was a decision that is still haunting us today." (Pg. 79) He concludes, "A lot of unfortunate things have happened as a result of that action. But it was a huge mistake." (Pg. 157)
Socarides' views have remained basically the same throughout his career (despite the fact that his oldest son is openly gay). And they remain as controversial as they always were.
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