An American Obsession: Science, Medicine, and Homosexuality in Modern Society [Paperback]

Jennifer Terry (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0226793672 | ISBN-13: 978-0226793672 | Publication Date: December 15, 1999 | Edition: 1

Drawing on original research from medical texts, psychiatric case histories, pioneering statistical surveys, first-person accounts, legal cases, sensationalist journalism, and legislative debates, Jennifer Terry has written a nuanced and textured history of how the century-old obsession with homosexuality is deeply tied to changing American anxieties about social and sexual order in the modern age.

Terry's overarching argument is compelling: that homosexuality served as a marker of the "abnormal" against which malleable, tenuous, and often contradictory concepts of the "normal" were defined. One of the few histories to take into consideration homosexuality in both women and men, Terry's work also stands out in its refusal to erase the agency of people classified as abnormal. She documents the myriad ways that gays, lesbians, and other sexual minorities have coauthored, resisted, and transformed the most powerful and authoritative modern truths about sex. Proposing this history as a "useable past," An American Obsession is an indispensable contribution to the study of American cultural history.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this persuasively argued social history, Terry, an associate professor of comparative studies at Ohio State University, contends that homosexuality "has acquired a symbolic centrality in American culture" as a dominant marker between the "normal" and the "abnormal" across a diverse range of disciplines and milieus. Drawing upon a wide range of materialsAfrom personal memoirs to legal cases, yellow journalism, pulp fiction, religious writings, psychology texts and "scientific" studies (which prove to be not all that scientific)ATerry demonstrates how, over the past 100 years, theories about the causes, nature and possible "cure" for homosexuality have focused far more on notions of sexuality, sin, gender and "social good" than on homosexuality itself. Analyzing the work of such 19th-century sexologists as Krafft-Ebing, Magnus Hirschfeld and Havelock Ellis, she illustrates how their na?ve, often contradictory theories became so influential that they still inform contemporary thought, including "gay gene" studies and the religious beliefs and rhetoric of the Christian right. While her broad survey is vital to the book, Terry's real strength is her detailed explorations of individual groupsAsuch as the Committee for the Study of Sex Variants, a multidisciplinary group of physicians and scientists who, in 1935, attempted to understand the "problem" of homosexuality on a scientific basisAand events, such as the harsh religious, psychoanalytic and cultural backlash against Kinsey's work in the early 1950s. Her exhaustively researched, astute synthesis is not only an original and important contribution to lesbian and gay studies, but sheds new light on the sociology of American life and the history of science.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

By examining an array of medical and scientific texts published over the last two centuries, Terry (comparative studies, Ohio State Univ.) offers a detailed history of how it came to be that "Homosexuality, while socially stigmatized, has acquired a symbolic centrality in American culture, figuring as a scandalous transgression against which notions of normalcy, in a vast array of domains, are defined." Beginning with European scientific classificatory practices of the mid-1800s--which rendered homosexuals medically inferior--this "historian of effects" demonstrates the ways in which scientists shaped modern American ideas about the acceptable and the transgressive. She concludes with "a consideration of the legacy of etiological theories" of homosexuality. Terry's provocative account consistently goes beyond issues of race, class, gender, education, and politics to analyze the agendas of various groups and the implications of their obsession for all Americans. Recommended for subject collections.
-James E. Van Buskirk, San Francisco P.L.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 551 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (December 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226793672
• ISBN-13: 978-0226793672
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #220,958 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Publishers Weekly review (October 11, 1999), February 3, 2000

By 

Paul Robinson (Stanford University) - See all my reviews

This review is from: An American Obsession: Science, Medicine, and Homosexuality in Modern Society (Paperback)

From Publishers Weekly (October 11, 1999) In this persuasively argued social history, Terry, an associate professor of comparative studies at Ohio State University, contends that homosexuality "has acquired a symbolic centrality in American culture" as a dominant marker between the "normal" and the "abnormal" across a diverse range of disciplines and milieus. Drawing upon a wide range of materials - from personal memoirs to legal cases, yellow journalism, pulp fiction, religious writings, psychology texts and "scientific" studies (which prove to be not all that scientific) - Terry demonstrates how, over the past 100 years, theories about the causes, nature and possible "cure" for homosexuality have focused far more on notions of sexuality, sin, gender and "social good" than on homosexuality itself. Analyzing the work of such 19th-century sexologists as Krafft-Ebing, Magnus Hirschfeld and Havelock Ellis, she illustrates how their naïve, often contradictory theories became so influential that they still inform contemporary thought, including "gay gene" studies and the religious beliefs and rhetoric of the Christian right. While her broad survey is vital to the book, Terry's real strength is her detailed explorations of individual groups - such as the Committee for the study of Sex Variants, a multidisciplinary group of physicians and scientists who, in 1935, attempted to understand the "problem" of homosexuality on a scientific basis - and events, such as the harsh religious, psychoanalytic and cultural backlash against Kinsey's work in the early 1950s. Her exhaustively researched, astute synthesis is not only an original and important contribution to lesbian and gay studies, but sheds new light on the sociology of American life and the history of science. Copyright Publishers Weekly. All rights reserved.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Joanne Meyerowitz, editor of Not June Cleaver, February 3, 2000

By 

Paul Robinson (Stanford University) - See all my reviews

This review is from: An American Obsession: Science, Medicine, and Homosexuality in Modern Society (Paperback)

"Jennifer Terry's engaging book provides a sweeping overview of American scientific thought on homosexuality. No one else has provided the depth of analysis or the breadth of coverage offered here. Terry makes a compelling argument: Homosexuality served as a marker of the `abnormal' by which the `normal' was defined."

3.0 out of 5 stars Review of Kindle version, December 24, 2011

By 

J. Fried "Beware Abstractions" (San Mateo, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: An American Obsession: Science, Medicine, and Homosexuality in Modern Society (Kindle Edition)

This is a review of the Kindle version of this book. I've not completed reading it yet, so this review will be limited to my concerns about the book's appearance and usability on the Kindle. A later addition to this review will cover the content of the book.

I am disappointed with the Kindle version of this book. The fonts look very poor. One of the reasons that many of us purchase Kindle versions of books is to provide us with good typeface presentation to make it easier to read as well as control over the presentation, ie., choice of typeface, line spacing, etc., in order to ensure consistency of presentation that is required by those of us with reading difficulties. So, in this case i've lost both the controls and the font face provided really looks like a poor photo copy. My second concern is that the footnotes are not actually active. With Kindle, or any ebook for that matter, you expect to be able to click on footnote numbers so that you can be taken to the actual footnote which is located elsewhere in the book. With a book like this easy access to the footnotes is very important in that it allows for an easy reading flow. For this book the footnotes are merely text so that if you want to read the footnote you have to search through the book, there is no index to the footnotes, to find the footnote.

Given that the price difference between the Kindle and print versions is very little, and that the price of the book is expensive when compared to other Kindle books of a technical nature, i am very disappointed. I appreciate the rave reviews others have given this book, but their reviews are about the content rather than the presentation. I feel that my 3-star rating is actually rather high given the poor quality of the Kindle version.

My review of the content will follow once i've completed reading the entire book, which will be a while given the quality of the Kindle edition presentation.