Those 50’s Psychiatrists (Ch11 Peiss -Spring Break)
He became linked to the Comics Code Authority, which published seal like this on approved comics:
In part the thought behind the was clearly, if they could isolate the cause, they could prevent “abnormal” sexuality from developing. In a sense, science would triumph over sexuality, in being able to control it. But in 2010 his files were “unlocked” by the Library of Congress, and Carol Tilley, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, took it upon herself to carefully examine his “case studies”. She wrote an article for the academic journal, Information and Culture, where she explained how much of his test evidence was clearly fabricated to further his theory. One other interesting thing to note about Fredric Wertham is that some of his earlier work was used for the cause of civil rights in Brown v. Board. Its like something about the field of sexuality inspired a kind of cruel passion accompanied by some scientific apathy. I remembered a news article my mom was telling me about. It was an in-depth story on a man who had been born in the late ‘50s and was essentially the experiment of a psychiatrist. His mother was having twins, the man and his brother. When she gave birth however, one of the babies had deformed genitals. A psychiatrist told them that the best course was to completely castrate the boy and give him hormones; he described a smooth easy transition into girlhood. His parents weren’t well educated, and of course it was a newly burgeoning field at the time, so without much consideration they took the psychiatrist at his word as a medical professional. The psychiatrist though, was envisioning his name published in medical journals, awards, grants, all from his successful gender reassignment course. As the child grew his parents dressed him and treated him like a girl, gave him a variety of hormones, and had him attend therapy sessions, all according to the psychiatrist’s plan. And they didn’t tell the child the circumstances of his/her birth. But in the interview the man said he always felt confused and conflicted, like he didn’t fit in. he was increasingly unhappy, but still the doctor pushed hormones, pushed his “experiment” to work. Eventually the man found out the truth and tried to revert back to the male sexuality he identified with.
The professionals in the medical field at the time were competitively advancing new theories, often at the expense and exploitation of subjects.
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