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from About NARTH
Dr. Charles Socarides, Lover Of Humanity
By Dr. Benjamin Kaufman
At one time, the name of Charles Socarides was known throughout the world to
every student of sexual development. Familiarity with Charles' work was
required, particularly for those training to become psychoanalysts.
Charles W. Socarides, M.D.
Dr. Benjamin Kaufman
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Now, for most men and women, simply to become such an icon with an unquestioned
place in the heady atmosphere of the intellectual elite would be sufficient. To
have achieved stature, name recognition, and be acknowledged internationally
among one's colleagues as a distinguished member of prestigious faculties and
professional organizations would be more than enough to satisfy a lifetime of
ambition. Charles Socarides could have, for the rest of his life, settled back
with a worldwide reputation. He could have remained aloof and apart from the
battle trenches where the fiercest of cultural battles was just beginning to be
fought. But in his 70th year, after forty years as a clinician and a scholar,
Charles entered those trenches using his psychoanalytic knowledge to become a
social critic in addition to being a clinician, researcher and scholar.
The impetus for Charles's calling to the cultural wars began in 1973 when
politicized professional organizations turned a hundred years of hard won
scientific discovery, knowledge and theory of psycho-sexual development upside
down and inside out. At that time, the diagnosis of "homosexuality" was removed
from the manual of psychiatric diagnosis of mental illness, which was intended
to reduce discrimination and accommodate those in psychic pain from incomplete
sexual development. Over the years, this original intent has been elaborated and
expanded into a variety of public policies, all of which Charles referred to as
being part of the re-drawing of male/female design to make homosexuality the
equivalent of heterosexuality in marriage, child-rearing, education, and in
every institution of public life.
Charles always supported tolerance, but courageously emphasized the distinction
between tolerance and approval of the paraphilias. He asserted that "there is
one thing I know as a psychoanalyst, I know this: people don't get to the bottom
of their pain by lying about it to themselves or to the world."
Charles pointed out that "...at this moment in history ...a new sexual revolution
has become inextricably bound to the concept of freedom." Charles was first
among psychoanalytic clinicians to take to the public square and ask -- but
freedom from what, and for what? Does this freedom bring real happiness or
empty promises? Is any form of sexuality as good as any other? And are we
better off being set free of the constraints of responsibility and tradition?
Charles poses these questions and many others in his work referring to the
paraphilias, A Freedom Too Far.
I was familiar with Charles' academic writings on sexuality for many years. His
publications stood alongside the most well-known of the theory builders and
clinicians who influenced my training as a psychiatrist and later as a
psychoanalyst. I was surprised to read that he had been picketed and protested
at one of his talks, as I would have expected him to be just another
psychoanalytic scholar whose work put him above the cultural fray, not one who
would get into the cultural trenches and risk a pristine career. I had yet to
associate the Charles of the printed word in the pages of his publications with
Charles the person, the parent, the husband and father.
I met Charles in 1991. I learned that he and I shared the belief that we needed
an organization where teachers and social critics would not be alone and
isolated. We called on Joe Nicolosi, who was already as hard at work on the West
Coast as Charles was on the East. Charles pulled a fast one and got us a room at
The Waldorf Astoria during the December 1991 Meeting of The American
Psychoanalytic Association. We were surprised that 25 people showed up including
Dean Byrd, the late Harold Voth, and Toby Beiber. Our committee created NARTH.
Charles said at that time "...you know they're going to wipe the floor with us."
We didn't have long to wait, as we were immediately noticed by The American
Psychiatric Association and their Committee on Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual
issues. The Journal of The American Psychiatric Association reported that the
GLB committee proposed "...finding a way to isolate "The National Association for
Psychoanalytic Therapy of Homosexuality."
It was really to Charles Socarides that this attempt to silence NARTH was
directed, as he was the most outstanding, outspoken, and listened-to member of
the American Psychoanalytic and American Psychiatric organizations who was
willing to take such a position. And he did this not only inside the protected
confines of organizations, but on the radio, television, and newspaper venues in
our country. It was Charles who would be the one to provide the most unyielding
lift-off energy with his fundamentalist Greek commitment to science, and his
truthful, direct talk, in which the rest of us found support for our own
convictions. He liked to cite a psychoanalytic researcher who said something
like this: "...make one concession on science, and you might as well pack it in."
But Charles will always be remembered best by his patients whom he loved and
helped to find the happiness he felt every human deserved.
Charles Socarides, who gave us the words and pages, has left us. But Charles
the husband, father, and parent who had such a love of humanity -- so much that
he gave his whole person to it -- will be remembered through his legacy of
scientific inquiry, search for truth, and his help to those men and women who
seek to realize their complete human potential.
Benjamin Kaufman, M.D. is co-founder of NARTH and former Clinical Professor
of Psychiatry, University of California at Davis, Psychoanalyst.
Updated: 20 February 2008
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