Sex Researchers:

Background

She was born Evelyn Gentry in North Platte, Nebraska and grew in Colorado. She was the sixth of nine children. Although her family was poor, her mother encouraged her to get an education. She earned both her bachelor’s and her master’s degrees in psychology at the University of Colorado. She earned her doctorate in 1932 at Johns Hopkins University. She married her first husband, Donn Caldwell, a free lance writer, in 1941 but got divorced in 1947. Her second husband was Edward Hooker, an English professor at UCLA.
She taught psychology at UCLA from 1939-1970 (outside of one year at Bryn Mawr). In 1967 she was appointed chair of the National Institute of Mental Health’s Task Force on Homosexuality. The University of Chicago honored her by establishing the Evelyn Hooker Center for the Mental Health of Gays and Lesbians. The Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Center also gave her its highest award in 1989.

Records indicate that in the decades of 1950-1970, Evelyn Hooker pioneered and published a conceptual definition of homosexuality, changing the landscape of this sexual behavior from one of pathology to a normal type of sexual behavior in the minds of many in academia. Viewing this population through a psychological lens, Hooker looked at the homosexual male as one of unique expression in a society that was simply and largely misunderstood.

Hooker (1956) conducted research that created comparison groups of heterosexual and homosexual males and found no significant differences between the two cohorts. A series of tests given to these two groups included tools such as the: Make A Picture Story (MAPS), Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) and Rorschach Test, to determine similarities and differences. Hooker’s conclusions resulted in findings that are still being debated some fifty years later. Evidence of her studies seemed to prove to her that homosexuality did not exist as a clinical entity. In addition to the study of cohort groups, Hooker researched individual cases (1961), studied the relationships between males and their parents (1969), reviewed the incidence of venereal disease in this population (1962) and researched the possibilities of why homosexual behavior occurred. Hooker published these findings in a series of articles.

Hooker has been criticized as having no clinical experience in the study of human behavior but undertook the study to prove that homosexuals could function as normal human beings. (Her homosexual friends instigated the study). Her methodology is also in question since she recruited her homosexual subjects from an organized group. Critics believe other inaccuracies in her research cast doubts on her reliability as a researcher.

Hooker, E. (1956). A preliminary analysis of group behavior of homosexuals. Journal of Psychology, 42, 217-225.

Hooker, E. (1961). The case of El: A biography. Journal of Projective Techniques, 25, 252-267.

Hooker, E. (1969). Parental relations and male homosexuality in patient and non-patient samples. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 33, 140-142.

Hooker, E. (1962). Male homosexual life styles and venereal disease. Proceedings of the World Forum on Syphilis and Other Treponematoses (Public Health Service Publication No. 997). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Landess, T (n .d.). The Evelyn Hooker study and the normalization of homosexuality. Retrieved Sept. 11, 2004 from http://members.aol.com/poesgirl/hooker.htm

http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/html/hooker2.html

Additional readings

Hooker, E. (1957). The adjustment of the male overt homosexual. Journal of Projective Techniques, 21, 18-31.

Hooker, E. (1958). Male homosexuality in the Rorschach. Journal of Projective Techniques, 23, 278-281.

Hooker, E. (1960). The fable. Journal of Projective Techniques, 24, 240-245.

Hooker, E. (1961). Homosexuality: Summary of studies. In E. M. Duvall & S. M. Duvall (Eds.), Sex ways in fact and faith. New York: Association Press.

Hooker, E. (1963). Male homosexuality. In N. L. Farberow (Ed.), Taboo topics (pp. 44-55). New York: Atherton.

Hooker, E. (1965). An empirical study of some relations between sexual patterns and gender identity in male homosexuals. In J. Money (Ed.), Sex research: New development (pp. 24-52). New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Hooker, E. (1965). Male homosexuals and their worlds. In J. Marmor (Ed.), Sexual inversion: The multiple roots of homosexuality (pp. 83-107). New York: Basic Books.

Hooker, E. (1968). Homosexuality. In The international encyclopedia of the social sciences. New York: MacMillan and Free Press.