You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Our meetings this year mark the 20th anniversary of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis. As a milestone year, a look back is inevitable. I have been asked to cover the major developments in sexology during the period 1956 to this bicentennial year and I am to do this in 30 minutes. This brief time slot necessitates a selective approach, so I shall refer to the work that has been most meaningful to me in my own pursuits. The three topics I shall discuss-homosexuality, gender identity, and sex therapy-are not only of special interest to me, but they have stimulated great interest in psychiatry over this score of years and there have been significant contributions in each area.
It was exactly 20 years ago, at the annual meetings of the APA in Chicago, May 1956, that our research team on homosexuality consisting of members of the Society of Medical Psychoanalysts first presented preliminary findings of a study we started in 1953 on male homosexuality. The round table meeting was followed by a lively discussion with many valuable comments and suggestions that helped us proceed with the next phase of our study. In 1962 we completed it and our book on male homosexuality was published (Bieber et al. 1962). The years since then have marked a period of social and ideological change on a scale I could scarcely have imagined had I not been witness to it. We started our research during the infamous McCarthy era when homosexuality was among the unmentionables in the media. Since then, not only has there been a tremendously stepped up interest in the subject among psychiatrists, but it is a popular topic on TV shows, in the