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By Daniel Cappon, M.D. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1965. 302 pp.
SEXUAL INVERSION. THE MULTIPLE ROOTS OF HOMOSEXUALITY. Edited by Judd Marmor, M. D. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1965. 358 pp.
On the heels of the well-written and instructive clinical research report on homosexuality by Bieber and others1 come these two books whose authors were familiar with the prior volume.
Cappon's book is a hodgepodge of psychiatry, sociology, pseudopsychoanalysis, therapeutic aggressiveness, and cloying piety. It is aimed like buckshot at every conceivable reader. It contains a morsel of value for everybody but the gleaning is more arduous and confusing than instructive.
The volume edited by Marmor begins with his lengthy introduction followed by seventeen chapters from various contributors: The View of the Biological Sciences, The View of the Social Sciences, The View of the Clinician. This turns out to be a multidisciplinary scientistic façade for a familiar dreary attack on 'classical' psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts who are pictured as therapeutically impotent with homosexuals because they are bound by Freud's theory of constitutional bisexuality, etc.
Understandably there is no accurate presentation of Freud's views; no systematic account of the development of psychoanalytic theory; no mention of recent and important psychoanalytic contributions to the subject. Also virtually ignored is the relationship of homosexuality to the other perversions.