MENTALITY AND HOMOSEXUALITY

Boston: Meador Publishing Company, 1937. First edition. Very good plus.. First printing of this psychology book written with the aim of finding and removing the "cause" of homosexuality and gender-nonconformity, owned by a doctor who espoused less harmful practices. Though Joseph Nicolosi is generally credited as the founder of the abusive practice now known as "conversion therapy," Samuel Kahn was actually one of its early practitioners and MENTALITY AND HOMOSEXUALITY predates Nicolosi's work by decades. The bulk of Kahn's observations originate from a large study undertaken on 500 prisoners while he was a psychiatrist for the Department of Correction in New York City; "a system of re-education should be developed" (143) he notes in his conclusion. Kahn would later test and apply his theories by founding the Quakerbridge School, which a former student recalled as a "penal colony [...] where I was diagnosed and treated as a 'moral defective and constitutional psychopath'" (Langer).

The owner of this book, psychologist Dr. Henry Guze, took a different view than Kahn. One of the founders of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, Guze was particularly interested in the struggles of his transgender patients. Though he still expressed views on the nature of gender and homosexuality that were typical of the mid-20th century, he wrote about transgender people sympathetically in publications such as his 1967 "The Transexual Patient: A Problem in Self-Perception." An interesting association that embodies both the progress and the lack thereof in LGBTQ+ studies. 8'' x 5.25''. Original green cloth boards. No dust jacket. 250 pages. Ownership stamp and signature of Henry Guze to front flyleaf. Binding with a touch of bumping to corners and spine ends. Leaves with a hint of toning, tiny spot of soil to fore-edge. Firm.