Homosexuality

by Charles W. Socarides

Book Overview

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0876683553
• ISBN13: 9780876683552
• Release Date: July 1977
• Publisher: Jason Aronson
• Length: 642 Pages
• Weight: 2.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

"Whats So Bad About Homosexuality...eh?

Really I could care less what gays do sexually. Thats a crude obsession of obscene and literal minded ignoramuses. I am not concerned with the tiny percentage of gays that are paedophiles. And to me the AIDS virus is a disease like any other. No, as a refugee from academia I am outraged by their intellectual dishonesty. By the sheer intellectual destruction they have deliberately visited on nearly every area of learning since they rose as a power group in the 1970's. The representative figure in all this is Michael Foucault, his central tenet was that every human creation was secretly informed by a struggle for social power. For Foucault every writer had a political agenda, every artistic institution was really about coercion and control. Admire Elizabethan theater? Dont! It was simply a platform where the aristocratic classes could propagandize the population! Think of Jane Austen's work as a miracle or English prose? Dont! Whats important is her hidden sexual agenda, the power arrangements of Regency England she suffered under. And on and on and on. during the 70s and 80s homosexuals took over University departments, came to dominate whole disciplines, and in true Orwellian fashion rewrote history to accord with their private neurotic obsessions. Their crime was nothing less than the betrayal of whole generations of students, eager for poetry and history and music and instead force fed the insane reductionism of Foucault. In classroom after classroom students were told that grace, manners, even truth..none of it exists. Everything is about power and control its all a human invention to gain power. Nothing has any "normality"..thus homosexuality isnt BAD..or an abberation its just different. You wonder why our culture has lost all civility? Why the relations between men and women have been poisoned? Look to what was done to society by homosexual activists in positions of great authority...as teachers of the young. The gays want to believe that criticism of them is criticism of their sexual orientation, its not, its criticism of a mentality thats made even truth impossible. This is an act of incredible destruction carried out so that a small band of men and woman could escape into claims of "everything is relative" and thus avoid the slightest introspection.

Disregard the 'activist' reviews - Read it and decide.

Read it yourself. Come to your own conclusions. Socarides offers a mountain of evidence of clear patterns of both behavior and childhood histories. AND that people can be cured of these obviosly dangerous behaviors. When people have to name call and trash a book they obviously haven't read...your only question should be what is it they DON't want you to hear. if a theory were absurd, wouldn't it be better to give it the light of day and humiliate the advocates? if dr. Socarides said homosexuality was say, causes by space aliens, wouldn't the actvists be pointing out how ridicolous it was. HMM, but supressed books, that's another story.

Brave and Factual-

In a search for facts I was pleased to find the content of this book painfully honest and written with courage. A frank documentary of homosexuality as related by obligatory homosexuals, which may be uncomfortable to read, but worth reading. If you are looking for a way to "get back to center" and sort out the confusion, this may help. A compassionate compilation of information directed at true concern for the homosexual in our society, and how the Gay Movement may or may not be helping it's own cause. I hope homosexuals will give this book and it's author due respect.

Reparative therapist speaks to modern concerns

According to Charles Socarides, all sexual perversions, heterosexual and homosexual, including regressions with an Oedipal component(conflict with the father), can be traced back to an unacceptable primary feminine identification resulting from a separation/individuation crisis with a rejecting or intrusive mother. This means reparative psychology applies equally well both to homosexuals and heterosexuals who retain an unacceptable primary feminine identification, with a regression to sexual perversion. A clarification about homosexual choice: According to reparative therapy, the primary regression to homosexuality occurs so early in development(by age 3 to 4)that it is essentially permanent and intractable at that time. So, in a true sense, there never was a choice in becoming homosexual as a child. Indeed, it is impossible to change sexual orientation later as well, unless the individual first completes the omitted Oedipal development. In point of fact, however, reparative therapy is typically sought out for other distressing reasons, e.g., suicidal reaction to loss of an idealized lover without whom the individual feels he or she cannot maintain a separate existence. At the outset, virtually all homosexuals enter reparative therapy personally convinced that their own homosexuality is inborn and unchangeable, and not developmental and curable.Modern culture is already glaringly visual and sexualized. This is also consistent with Socarides' reparative viewpoint, which, by extension, suggests that today's sexual culture is likely traceable to pre-oedipal failures in development. This raises an ominous ethical question: are there really two separate subclasses of human beings, the Oedipal successes, i.e., those who have successfully completed psychosexual development, including separation and individuation from their mothers and fathers, and the pre-oedipal failures, who haven't?Look at the enormous focus on bodily perfection and idealized youthful looks today. Does this suggest that something is perhaps fundamentally , "reparatively" amiss with our culture? All the focus on aerobics and body enhancements, including plastic surgery, for example, suggests a core disenchantment with our naturalistic humanity in favor of some idealized--and perverse--sexuality. Obsession with the new-style wonder bras are a perfect example, so to speak: they are worn by women not to attract even more, unneccessary men(...)but to repair a defective body-and-gender-image with an idealized, perfected, "reparative" self-image. Socarides' psychoanalysis of the sexual perversions also accounts for bingeing/purging and anorexia as similarly self-reparative of a defective body image and incompletely developed sense of gender.Furthermore, all sex of the sex of the sex industry, including pornography, can be seen as a problem of inappropriate, or pathological distance, traceable to unhealthy patterns of rejecting, or non-involved distancing, or distorted narcissistic intrusi

An alternative to political correct "research"

Dr. Charles Socarides documents that there exists a highly interesting scientific and human understanding of the issue of homosexuality which is in contrast to the current "liberal" statements concerning homosexuality. His book is of importance also as an evidence for free speech in the Western World.