George W. Crane: “Case Records of a Psychologist”, April 21, 1939

The Pittsburgh [Pennsylvania] Press prints a column by a Northwester University psychologist advising parents about how to bring up their child to become heterosexual, not homosexual.

[Main Headline:] Encourage Child to Mix Friends

Hugo belongs to that group in society who are emotional misfits. They are frowned un and treated like lepers. Be sure you aren’t guilty of predisposing your children so that they enter this psycholocial no-man’s land.

By Dr. Geo. W. Crane

Psychologist, Northwester University

Case L-190 – Hugo G., aged 21, is a professor’s son.

“I’ve never had much to do with girls,” he confessed nervously. “And I never had many friens. But I seem to value friendships far beyond the viewpoint of other people.”

“I’d literally die for a friend. I select a boy and pal around with him to the exclusion of everybody else. If he has no money, I share my picket-book with him. I give him my car to use.”

“Nothing is too good for him. I get more pleasure in being with a boy friend than in having a date with a girl.”

“But my boy friend usually bleeds me for all the money he canh get, and after he has affronted me for months, I finally get the point and look elsewhere for another pal.”

“Dr. Crane, what is wrong with me? What can I do to lead a more normal life?”

Diagnosis:

This young man has never done anything sexually wrong. He has been brought up in an idealistic type of home. His father was always so preoccupied that he never was a pal for the boy.

The youngster grew up feeling somewhat ostracized, because he wasn’t adept in boys’ games. He His mother had died in his infancy. Hugo became his father’s shadow. He had a very lonely childhood.

Our emotional development proceeds through several states. At the beginning we are egocentric, meaning that the world is our oyster. This is the infancy stage.

Then we reach the parental stage, wherein we include our parents as important personages in our lives. Next, we arrive at the gang level.

AT THIS time we pal around with our own sex almost exclusively. Boys have no use for girls, and they dislike boys. Sooner or later, however, we proceed to the heterosexual stage of emotional growth, wherein we focus our attention and affection on the opposite sex.

Probably 90 per cent of us become adults in emotional growth, meaning heterosexuals. But from 5 to 10 per cent remain fixated at the gang stage. They simply don’t grow up emotionally.

Hugo is a good example of a man who is an adult in years but a child in his emotional age. He has remained at the gang level.

This is no disgrace, nor adequate reason fro society’s looking on him with horror as if he were a leper. It simply means that his environment did not predispose him to normal emotional development.

AT THE AGE of 10 years, it is normal to be most interested in one’s own sex. At 21, however, it is not the normal thing.

The best cure for homosexuality is prevention. Never let a boy or girl become so aloof from social contacts and so surrounded by its own sex at the age of puberty that it misses the wholesome influences which build heterosexual attitudes.

It is never too late for an adult homosexual to grow up emotionally, but it requires more perseverance than most of them will spend.