"VIP" Obituary

[Guest Jocoluver]

I don't know if this the correct forum but I think it is important information for us:

 

December 28, 2005

 

 

Charles W. Socarides, Psychiatrist and Psychoanalyst, Is Dead at 83

 

By MARGALIT FOX

 

Dr. Charles W. Socarides, a well-known psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who maintained publicly, long after it was considered scientifically acceptable to do so, that homosexuality was a condition amenable to treatment and even to conversion to heterosexuality, died on Sunday at Metropolitan Hospital Center in New York. He was 83 and lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

 

The cause was heart failure, his wife, Claire Alford Socarides, said.

 

Dr. Socarides (pronounced sock-uh-REE-dees) was a clinical professor of psychiatry for many years at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, where he retired in 1996.

 

A frequent guest on television talk shows and news programs, Dr. Socarides wrote a half-dozen books about homosexuality. They included "The Overt Homosexual" (Grune & Stratton, 1968] and "Homosexuality: A Freedom Too Far - A Psychoanalyst Answers 1,000 Questions About Causes and Cure and the Impact of the Gay Rights Movement on American Society" (Adam Margrave Books, 1995).

 

In 1992, Dr. Socarides helped found the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality. The primary mission of the organization, of which he was a past president, is "to make effective psychological therapy available to all homosexual men and women who seek change," according to its Web site.

 

In his writings, public appearances and private practice, Dr. Socarides argued that homosexuality was a "neurotic adaptation" that in men stemmed from absent fathers and overly doting mothers. In "Homosexuality: A Freedom Too Far," he estimated that he had helped 35 percent of his gay patients to "become heterosexual" and a slightly smaller percentage to control their gay impulses.

 

"I hope that with my work I've delivered some from a mysterious malady over which they felt they had no control, which felt like an instinctual urge that they could not deny or understand, at the same time fighting against it mightily," Dr. Socarides said in a 1995 interview in The New York Times. "I would help them make the fight."

 

Dr. Socarides maintained his position long after the American Psychiatric Association rescinded its definition of homosexuality as a form of mental illness in 1973, a watershed moment for the profession.

 

He maintained his position, too, despite the fact that one of his children is openly gay and was a nationally prominent gay-rights advocate.

 

Charles William Socarides was born in Brockton, Mass., on Jan. 24, 1922. He received an undergraduate degree from Harvard in 1945 and an M.D. from New York Medical College in 1947.

 

Though Dr. Socarides's ideas are still embraced by some conservatives, they have met with increasing disfavor in recent decades.

 

"Socarides outlived his time," Gilbert Herdt, an anthropologist who is the director of the National Sexuality Resource Center in San Francisco, said in a telephone interview yesterday. "He became a kind of anachronism, and a tragic one in the sense that he continued to inflict suffering on the lives of some gay and lesbian individuals and the L.G.B.T. community in general."

 

Dr. Socarides's first three marriages, to Veronica Rak, Nan Bennett and Barbara Bonner, ended in divorce. {Clearly a mark of mental health!!!} Besides his wife Claire, whom he married in 1988, he is survived by a sister, Helen Socarides Covett, of Brockton; four children, all of Manhattan: Richard, a son from his first marriage, who was an adviser to the Clinton White House on gay and lesbian issues; Alexandra and Charles Jr., from his marriage to Ms. Bonner; and Jacqueline, from his fourth marriage; and one grandchild. A daughter from Dr. Socarides's first marriage, Daphne Socarides Stolorow, a clinical psychologist, died in 1991.

 

In an interview yesterday, Richard Socarides said that he and his father managed to sustain a relationship, in part because both men refrained from discussing their work. "It was complex," he said. "We tried to relate to each other as father and son."

 

 

 

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

[Houston Bonfires]

Dear Jocoluver:

 

Thank you for posting the obituary of this man. I have seen him interviewed and used as an expert witness numerous times. I found myself feeling sorry for him until I would realize the enormous pain he was inflicting. I can only hope that his life will be used as a mirror to those who realize this man had few answers regarding homosexuality and humanity and that they must search elsewhere for facts that can better provide them peace of mind and solace.

 

Thanks again,

 

Houston Bonfires

[Guest Jocoluver]

Thank you HB. I also posted this obituary over at Muscle Service Open Topic. There have been only 3 responses over there. I am surprised - maybe it is just less posters with the holidays.

 

I have been in freudian analysis for 10 years. It was my psychoanalyst who alerted me to Socariedes death. My analyst has always been disparaging of this man and totally in favor of the decision to remove homosexuality from list of mental illnesses - supportive/approving of my sexual orientation.

 

Homosexuality is not where my major mental difficulties lay (althugh there was much residuum of societal and internalized homophobia).

 

I have discovered very much why my genetic bisexual potentiality turned in this direction. It is a result of both "nature and nurture" (although I had assumed it was totally congenital). But it certainly was not a conscious choice "back then" - but it is NOW!

[JesusNYC]

Clinton White House on Gay and Lesbian Issues

 

Yes, this is quite frightening. Clinton's White House...

 

His sick son worked with Clinton's administration and so did Dr. Tony Campolo after the Monica shit. These self-professed prophets all supported Exodus Intl and those campy queens at Peninsula Christian Center on CNN. Both orgs were shut down and all that funding flushed down the toilet, when John Paulk from Exodus was confronted in a Washington, D.C. at a gay bar.

 

The fucker - Paulk was Chairman of the Board for Exodus North America, the nation's most prominent ex-gay organization.

 

Exodus officials said Paulk lied when he said he did not know he was entering a gay bar. "We believe that John's actions -- to spend time socializing in a gay bar, and then to mislead both the public and Exodus leaders -- merit some form of disciplinary action," said Bob Davies, North American Director of Exodus International, in a statement released Tuesday.

 

Catch these fuckers. Find shit on Don Wildmon and the AFA.

 

This will be hard since there is nothing to do in Tupelo, Mississippi, but drive drunk.

 

Out of 900 total traffic deaths reported in Mississippi in 2004, 341 were alcohol related. Remember there are only 365 days in a year and the state only has 2 million people. New York City has 8 million and Los Angeles has 4 million in the city proper.

 

Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't that mean Mississippi is just plain retarded.

 

Ignorant and backwards, but they know how to collect money from US taxpayers. $11 billion accounting fraud at WorldCom, based in Clinton, Mississippi. Mississippi's rank as the poorest state in the nation.

 

Once again, home of the American Family Association (AFA), Mississippi will always be considered responsible for KKK, Jim Crow, and now anti-gay activism.

[catnip]

RE: Clinton White House on Gay and Lesbian Issues

 

I can remember being eleven or twelve and looking up Homosexuality in my public library's subject catalogue. The first book I saw listed was "The Overt Homosexual." I didn't know what overt meant back then, but it sounded forbidden and thrilling (I still vividly remember that title). I was too scared to go to the stacks and look for it, though. Glad I didn't!

[Houston Bonfires]

RE: Clinton White House on Gay and Lesbian Issues

 

Dear Jocoluver:

 

I believe that to some degree each of us has internalized homophobia and I also believe that most of us become self-aware enough to use that fact to our own advantage. We become experts at recognition and therefore to solution.

 

My best wishes for your continued success with Freud and my best wishes for a blessed and happy 2006.

 

Houston Bonfires

[Guest Jocoluver]

RE: Clinton White House on Gay and Lesbian Issues

 

Thanks again HB and same to you!

 

I'll try to find and post Freud's letter to an American Mother re-assuring her that her homosexual son was not mentally ill (I recall he called it just a variation).

 

:9