In 1945 Dr. Evelyn Hooker’s gay friend Sam From urged her to do a study challenging the commonly held belief that homosexuals were by nature mentally ill. It was work that would ultimately strip the “sickness” label from millions of gay men and women and change the course of history.
Episode Notes:
In 1945 Dr. Evelyn Hooker, a UCLA psychologist, and her husband sat down for a nightcap at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco with her former student Sam From and his male partner. Sam told Dr. Ho...
In 1945 Dr. Evelyn Hooker’s gay friend Sam From urged her to do a study challenging the commonly held belief that homosexuals were by nature mentally ill. It was work that would ultimately strip the “sickness” label from millions of gay men and women and change the course of history.
Episode Notes:
In 1945 Dr. Evelyn Hooker, a UCLA psychologist, and her husband sat down for a nightcap at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco with her former student Sam From and his male partner. Sam told Dr. Hooker that it was her responsibility to study “normal” homosexuals to show the world what they were really like—to challenge the commonly held belief that gay people were by nature mentally ill. Dr. Hooker took up the challenge soon after, but then life intervened, derailing her research until 1953, when she secured an unlikely government grant to pursue a study comparing 30 straight men to 30 gay men.
Three years later Dr. Hooker presented the results of her study, “The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual,” at the 1956 American Psychological Association (APA) convention in Chicago (the study was published in 1957). She rocked the profession by demonstrating that gay men were just as sane as straight men. While it would be another seventeen years before the American Psychiatric Association would remove homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual’s list of mental illnesses, it was Dr. Hooker’s study that paved the way, legitimizing homosexuality as a respectable field of study.
There’s so much more to this story and the study. And fortunately there are many resources, a sampling of which you’ll find below.
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Katharine S. Milar, PhD, a professor of psychology at Earlham College, offers a concise overview of Dr. Hooker’s life and work for the American Psychological Association’s “Time Capsule,” including details about how she conducted her landmark study (which was derisively referred to as “The Fairy Project” by some federal officials).
For a broad overview of Dr. Evelyn Hooker’s life, including a biographical sketch that was adapted from an article in the American Psychologist, as well as tributes and obituaries, have a look here.
The American Psychological Association provides a summary of Dr. Hooker’s groundbreaking study—“The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual”—here. A copy of Dr. Hooker’s paper is available here, but access is restricted (or requires payment).
In 1991, Dr. Hooker was given the APA’s Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest. And in 1992 the documentary Changing Our Minds: The Story of Dr. Evelyn Hooker, premiered. You can watch a clip from it here. But be warned, the archival footage about lobotomies is horrifying.
You can find Dr. Hooker’s oral history in Eric Marcus’s book Making Gay History.
Beginning in 2008, the APA’s “Division 44” (Society for the Psychological Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Issues) named an annual award in Dr. Hooker’s honor: Evelyn Hooker Award for Distinguished Contribution by an Ally.
Here is an overview of the American Psychological Association’s current work concerning LGBTQ rights. Dr. Hooker’s work is cited in the opening sentence.
The Kinsey Institute at Indiana University offers a treasure trove of information and research on human sexuality and gender.
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