Evelyn Hooker, Ph.D.
September 2, 1907 - November 18, 1996
 
Biographical Sketch
(adapted from the American Psychologist, 1992, 47, 499-501).

 

Photo: Young Evelyn Hooker

 

Biography

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Evelyn Hooker was born September 2, 1907, the sixth child of nine in her grandmother's house, next door to Buffalo Bill's home in North Platte, Nebraska. Had she been born a few months earlier, it would have been in a sod house in the Sand Hills where her parents lived out a poverty-ridden existence, the lot of farmers in that area. Until she was 12, there was a succession of farms, some rented, and a section of land unbroken by plow in northeastern Colorado. Also, there was a succession of one-room schoolhouses, the only source of books.

Through all these early years, there was a constant theme provided by her mother (a true pioneer who had been brought to Nebraska in a covered wagon): "Get an education and they can never take it away from you." She had only a third grade education.

When Evelyn was ready for high school, her mother picked up the family and moved to Sterling, Colorado, the county seat with a large high school. Situated out on the plains, Sterling High School was quite extraordinary for its place and time. Many of the teachers had master's degrees. In her senior year, Hooker entered an honors program, with a course in psychology. She planned to attend a teacher's college, but the faculty pressured her to go to the University of Colorado. They succeeded in convincing her, and she entered the university with a tuition scholarship in the fall of 1924.

Learning that the psychology department had a system of using seniors as assistants for quiz sections in the introductory class, she determined to become a psychology major. In part, she saw this as a way out of the drudgery of housework, by which she earned her way through the university. Very quickly, however, what had been a means to an end became an end in itself.

She enrolled in a course of comparative psychology with Karl Muenzinger. Hooker knew then why she had chosen psychology: Muenzinger had a very clear, analytical mind, and his brilliant lectures were an invitation to the student audience to participate in the scientific enterprise. In her senior year, Hooker was offered an instructorship, which made it possible for her to work toward a master's degree with Muenzinger. He suggested that the relation between rate of learning in white rats and vicarious trial and error (VTE) might be an interesting and rewarding topic. Later, Edward C. Tolman chose this topic for explication in his American Psychological Association (APA) presidential address, using graphs from Hooker's master's thesis.

It was 1930. The United States was in the depths of depression. Again, Hooker was offered a position at Boulder. It was very tempting, but Muenzinger was determined that Hooker go to an eastern university for her PhD. She wanted to go to Yale University to work with Robert M. Yerkes. However, the chairman of the department was a Yale PhD, and he refused to recommend a woman. So she went to Johns Hopkins University.

Very quickly, it became apparent that Hopkins, in many ways, was the ideal place for Hooker. It was a very small department, both in the number of faculty and graduate students. It was located in an old building off campus so that informal, easy relations developed between faculty and students. O. Hobart Mowrer was also a graduate student at that time. Hooker had gone to Hopkins with the intention of continuing work on VTE, but the faculty thought it uninteresting. Her dissertation problem was concerned with discrimination training. She was granted the PhD in 1932. As the depression worsened, there were almost no positions for PhDs; by sheer luck, Hooker obtained a teaching position in a small women's college near Baltimore.

In the fall of 1934, she became ill with tuberculosis and, through the kindness of friends, came west to a sanitarium in California and remained. Two years of rest and convalescence became an oasis of reading and reflection.

After a year of part-time teaching at Whittier College, she received an anonymous fellowship for a year in Europe, especially Germany, in 1937-1938. The specific, ostensible purpose was to study psychotherapy at the Institute for Psychotherapy in Berlin. Her interests had been increasingly turning to clinical psychology. More interesting and more terrible were the events outside the institute. Living with a Jewish family, she saw these events through their eyes. After the Austrian Anschluss, she went on an Intourist tour with English and American friends to Russia just after the last big purge of 1938. The year in the two totalitarian states intensified a very deep concern, present from childhood, to find a means of making her life count in helping to correct social injustice.

After another year at Whittier College, Hooker applied to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) for an appointment in the psychology department, then chaired by Knight Dunlap. He informed her that however much he would like it, he could not persuade the department to appoint another woman because it already had three who were "cordially disliked." Instead, he introduced her to the head of the extension division and appointed her as research associate in the psychology department. With the exception of one year at Bryn Mawr (1947-1948), Hooker remained very happily at UCLA until 1970, when she resigned her Research Career Award and developed a private practice.

Teaching became a source of great satisfaction, and she earned a reputation as one of the best. It was in this capacity that the invitation came to conduct research with homosexuals. A very bright student in one of Hooker's classes (1945) sought to extend the relationship outside of class, and in so doing met Hooker's husband (she had married Donn Caldwell, a freelance writer, in 1941). As a couple, they were invited to social occasions with her student and his friends.

After several years, the former student began urging Hooker to conduct research with them. She finally did some exploratory research with them. However, her life had changed, including a divorce in 1947, so the project was put on ice. She was married again in 1951 in London, England to Edward Niles Hooker, a distinguished professor of English at UCLA.

In 1953, Hooker applied to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) for a six-month grant to study the adjustment of nonclinical homosexual men and a comparable group of heterosexual men. If the study section thought it worthwhile, she would pursue it. The reply was not long in coming. John Eberhart, chief of the Grants Division, flew out to spend a day with her. The application, she was told, was quite extraordinary, especially because it was then the height of the McCarthy era. The legal penalties for homosexual behavior were severe. The psychiatric diagnosis was severe and pervasive emotional disorder. There were simply no scientific data about nonimprisoned, nonpatient homosexuals. Eberhart said, "We are prepared to give you the grant, but you may not receive it, and you won't know why and we won't know why." Not only did she receive it, but NIMH continued the renewal until 1961, when she received the Research Career Award.

Hooker's research (1957) demonstrating that expert clinical judges could not distinguish the projective test protocols of nonclinical homosexual men from a comparable group of heterosexual men, nor were there differences in adjustment ratings, was validated soon thereafter by other investigators. Not until 1973, however, did the American Psychiatric Association delete homosexuality from its diagnostic handbook. Meanwhile, the gay and lesbian liberation movement in the 1960s took cognizance of these research findings. It was a source of great satisfaction for Hooker to have contributed in some measure to this new freedom and to a partial lifting of the stigma. Her life was immeasurably enriched by the research and by friendships with men and women across the entire spectrum of occupations and life styles.

 
1991 Award Citation

Photo: Evelyn Hooker circa 1992

Biography

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Eulogies:
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Bibliography

 

Evelyn Hooker received the 1991 Award for Distinguished Contribution to Psychology in the Public Interest, presented by the American Psychological Association. The citation read:

"When homosexuals were considered to be mentally ill, were forced out of government jobs, and were arrested in police raids, Evelyn Hooker courageously sought and obtained research support from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to compare a matched sample of homosexual and heterosexual men. Her pioneering study, published in 1957, challenged the widespread belief that homosexuality is a pathology by demonstrating that experienced clinicians using psychological tests widely believed at the time to be appropriate could not identify the nonclinical homosexual group. This revolutionary study provided empirical evidence that normal homosexuals existed, and supported the radical idea then emerging that homosexuality is within the normal range of human behavior. Despite the stigma associated with homosexuality, she received an NIMH Research Career Award in 1961 to continue her work. In 1967, she became chair of the NIMH Task Force on Homosexuality, which provided a stamp of validation and research support for other major empirical studies. Her research, leadership, mentorship, and tireless advocacy for an accurate scientific view of homosexuality for more than three decades has been an outstanding contribution to psychology in the public interest."

 
APA Monitor
(American Psychological Association)
January, 1997

 

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  In Memoriam

Psychologist Evelyn Hooker, PhD, the researcher who demonstrated that there is no measurable psychological difference between heterosexual and homosexual men, died at her home in Santa Monica, Calif., in November. She was 89.

Hooker, a psychology professor at the University of California at Los Angeles for 30 years, embraced the gay rights movement in the 1940s when she befriended a gay man, Sam From, who convinced her to study the population. She conducted what became a well-known project, "The adjustment of the male overt homosexual."

In the study, Hooker administered three standard personality tests to two groups of 30 men. In one of the groups, the participants were gay. The two groups were matched in age and IQ, and were equal in educational levels.

Hooker had three expert clinicians examine her results. Unaware of the subjects' sexual orientation, the judges could not distinguish between the two groups based on the test results. And they found no discernible pathology among the gay participants.

The study results came at a time when gay men were considered "maladjusted" and were generally ignored by health and mental health professionals. The findings were criticized by others in the field, who said Hooker conducted the study on members of "homophile" groups who fought for gay rights, and were thus probably better adjusted than those not affiliated with such groups.

Despite the criticism, Hooker's study led the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1973. She was honored with the 1991 APA Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest.

After Hooker retired from the university, she maintained a private practice until the 1970s. In 1967, she was appointed chair of the National Institute of Mental Health's Task Force on Homosexuality, a group that recommended the repeal of sodomy laws and encouraged better public education on homosexuality.

Hooker was also instrumental in establishing homosexuality as a field of study. The University of Chicago honored her for this accomplishment by establishing the Evelyn Hooker Center for the Mental Health of Gays and Lesbians.

 

 
Myrna Oliver
Los Angeles Times
November 22, 1996
Page 32

 

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  Evelyn Hooker: Her Study Fueled Gay Liberation

Evelyn Hooker, the psychologist whose 1950s research showing that homosexuality is not a mental illness helped fuel gay liberation, has died. She was 89.

Hooker, who has been called "the Rosa Parks of the gay rights movement" by historian Eric Marcus, died Monday at her home in Santa Monica.

In a highly controversial report in 1957 called "The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual," Hooker challenged then-prevailing beliefs about homosexuality. Her landmark study of gay men showed that homosexuals were not inherently abnormal and that there was no difference between the pathologies of homosexual and heterosexual men.

Several years later the American Psychiatric Assn. finally agreed, and in 1973 struck homosexuality from its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders. The American Psychological Assn. followed suit in 1975. In 1992, the group awarded Hooker its lifetime achievement award, its highest honor.

Hooker was the subject of a documentary film, Changing Our Minds The Story of Dr. Evelyn Hooker, produced by David Haugland in 1992. The film was nominated for an Academy Award.

"Gives a kind of finality to one's life, doesn't it?" she told The Times, pleased with the documentary. "I don't exactly say my last goodbye to the world on film, but it does sum me up like nothing else."

She politely but consistently shredded the hero's mantle that gays and lesbians tried to wrap her in, claiming that "curiosity and empathy" rather than special courage compelled her to do her famous study. Her work began when she befriended Sam From, a gay man who attended one of her psychology classes at UCLA. He persuaded her to study non-pathological homosexuals.

The novel concept and the initial research set her on a new professional course. She continued her work with homosexuals for the remainder of her career and for many years headed the National Institute of Mental Health's Task Force on Homosexuality.

One of her most lasting contributions, which garnered her several major awards, was to legitimize homosexuality as a field of study. The University of Chicago honored her by establishing the Evelyn Hooker Center for the Mental Health of Gays & Lesbians. The Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Community Center gave her its highest honor in 1989.

Born Evelyn Gentry in North Platte, Neb., she grew up in Colorado and earned bachelor's and master's degrees in psychology at the University of Colorado. Her doctorate was from Johns Hopkins University.

Hooker taught psychology at UCLA from 1939 to 1970, and then continued her private practice for another decade.

The widow of UCLA English literature professor Edward Hooker, she is survived by two sisters, Mildred Haugh of Downey, and Myrtle Fisher, who lives in Colorado.

A memorial service is scheduled for 2 p.m. Friday, Dec. 20 at the UCLA Faculty Center.

The family has asked that memorial donations be made to Amnesty International, 322 8th Ave., New York, N.Y. 10001; the Southern Poverty Law Center, 400 Washington Ave, Montogomery, Ala. 36104, or the American Psychological Foundation, 750 1st St, NE, Washington, D.C. 20002 ().

 

 
David W. Dunlap
New York Times
November 22, 1996

 

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  Evelyn Hooker, 89, Researcher on Homosexuality

Dr. Evelyn Hooker, a psychologist who defied conventional wisdom and greatly emboldened the fledgling homosexual rights movement in the 1950s by finding there was no measurable psychological difference between homosexual and heterosexual men, died on Monday at her home in Santa Monica, Calif. She was 89.

Dr. Hooker, who spent 30 years teaching at the University of California at Los Angeles, began studying homosexual men in the late 1940s, a period in which they were considered maladjusted – at best – and generally ignored or anathematized by the medical and mental health professions.

"She never treated us like some strange tribe," recalled the writer Christopher Isherwood, who knew her at the time, "so we told her things we never told anyone before."

Her most significant work was a paper delivered in 1956 to the American Psychological Association in Chicago and published the next year as "The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual" in The Journal of Projective Techniques.

Dr. Hooker administered three standard personality tests, including the Rorschach ink-blot test, to two groups of 30 men, one heterosexual, one homosexual, who had been matched in IQs, age, and education levels.

She then asked a panel of expert clinicians to assess the results without knowing the subjects' sexual orientation. To their surprise, the judges were unable to discern between the two groups on the basis of the test.

"The most striking finding of the three judges," Dr. Hooker wrote, "was that many of the homosexuals were very well adjusted. In fact, the three judges agreed on two-thirds of the group as being average to superior in adjustment. Not only do all homosexuals not have strong feminine identification, nor are they all 'somewhat paranoid,' but, according to the judges, some may not be characterized by any demonstrable pathology."

Her study was criticized in many quarters, not least because it upended psychological orthodoxy. Among other objections was that she recruited her homosexual subjects through the assistance of "homophile" groups like the Mattachine Society, meaning that the men might be more content with their lives than the average homosexual and eager to prove that they were well adjusted.

Moreover, the study was published in a journal that did not reach a wide public audience. Nonetheless, it was considered a precursor to the decision 17 years later by the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from its list of disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.

"Her work in the 1950s really provided the framework within which the American Psychiatric Association could rethink its viewpoint," said Dr. Richard A. Isay, clinical professor of psychiatry at the Cornell University Medical College.

And 36 years after Dr. Hooker addressed the American Psychological Association, the organization gave her its award for distinguished contribution to psychology in the public interest, saying: "This revolutionary study provided empirical evidence that normal homosexuals existed and supported the radical idea then emerging that homosexuality is within the normal range of human behavior."

Evelyn Gentry was born in North Platte, Neb., in 1907 and grew up in northeastern Colorado. She earned her bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Colorado and her Ph.D., in 1932, from Johns Hopkins University.

Her exposure to the rise of Nazism while in Berlin on a fellowship in the late 1930s intensified her desire to make "her life count in helping to correct social injustice," said a 1992 article in American Psychologist.

She joined the faculty at UCLA in 1939 and, outside of one year at Bryn Mawr, remained there until 1970. It was at UCLA in the 1940s that she befriended a homosexual student, Sam From, who introduced her in turn to his circle of friends. It was From who said: "We have let you see us as we are, and now, it is your scientific duty to make a study of people like us."

At the peak of the McCarthy period, in 1953, she applied for and received a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health. "They talk about all this courage I'm supposed to have had," she recalled four decades later, in an interview with The Los Angeles Times. "I don't get that. Curiosity and empathy were what compelled me to do my study."

In 1967, Dr. Hooker was appointed to head a study group on homosexuality for the National Institute of Mental Health. That panel recommended a repeal of sodomy laws and better public education about homosexuality.

After retiring from UCLA, Dr. Hooker had a private practice until the late 1970s. She reviewed articles for professional journals and helped establish the Placek Fund of the American Psychological Foundation, which provides money for research into homosexuality.

She was also the subject of a 1992 documentary, Changing Our Minds: The Story of Dr. Evelyn Hooker, by David Haugland and Richard Schmiechen.

Her second husband, Edward Niles Hooker, died in 1957. She is survived by two sisters, Mildred Haugh, of Downey, Calif., and Myrtle Fisher, of Colorado.

 

 
John D'Emilio,
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute

 

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  Evelyn Hooker: Unsung Hero

Evelyn Hooker died in November at the ripe old age of 89. I'm willing to lay odds that not many of us know who she is or what she did. Yet she deserves the status of hero in our community as a pioneering psychologist whose research has changed our world. Her career is also a fascinating case study of the potentially productive relationship between "the expert" and a social movement.

Hooker earned a PhD in psychology in the early 1930s – not an easy achievement for an American woman of that era – and was teaching at UCLA when a former student who had become a friend challenged her to study him and his other gay male friends. "Science" was pretty clear in its attitudes toward homosexuality in the mid-20th century. Physicians, psychoanalysts, and psychologists agreed that homosexuality was a mental disorder that needed treatment and a cure. Since virtually all of the homosexuals whom professionals studied were either institutionalized or seeking medical help, it wasn't hard to prove that we were sick and disturbed.

With the help of the recently formed Mattachine Society in southern California, Hooker became the first professional to assemble a group of nonpatient gay men and match them with a group of heterosexuals with similar demographic characteristics. She then administered a series of standard psychological tests to each group and asked a panel of professionals, who were kept in the dark about the identity of the subjects, to evaluate the test results. Much to their surprise, and to Hooker's delight, they were unable to tell the homosexuals from the heterosexuals, and rated the gay subjects high in personality development and emotional adjustment. Two decades later, when I interviewed Hooker for a book I was writing on the homophile movement of the 1950s, she chuckled mischievously as she remembered how baffled the other professionals were by the outcome.

Hooker's work shattered conventional wisdom. Throughout the 1950s, Hooker kept giving papers at professional conventions and publishing scholarly articles about her research. In the 1960s, she began expanding her work to study gay men not just as individuals but as members of a community – a novel way of looking at us. Slowly, networks of dissenting medical and mental health professionals began to form, and Hooker's work was the catalyst that made it happen. She also kept up her ties with the homophile movement, and provided support and encouragement for their efforts to make change.

In 1967, Hooker was approached by the National Institute of Mental Health to chair a Task Force on Homosexuality. Gay activists were thrilled, since Hooker was clearly an ally. In fact, the composition of the Task Force seemed stacked in our favor. When the Task Force released its report in 1969, the final document was without doubt the most enlightened statement on homosexuality ever to have emerged from our government. I have often wondered what difference it would have made if the liberal Democrat, Hubert Humphrey, had been elected president in 1968, instead of Richard Nixon. Would the government have started to act on the recommendations of its own Task Force? Meanwhile, Hooker's work had started the ball rolling toward an historic achievement: the decision by the American Psychiatric Association in 1973 to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. Simultaneously, the open-minded approach of this pioneering psychologist also had its effects on her own professional organization, the American Psychological Association.

Today, in the 1990s, APA has probably done more than any other mainstream professional society to advocate for fair treatment of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgendered people. APA has a staffer dedicated to gay concerns; it produces publications that can be used effectively in advocacy work; it files court briefs and testifies at legislative hearings; and it actively encourages and supports groundbreaking research on issues of sexuality and identity.

We can't give Hooker credit for all these changes, of course. But it is possible to trace the historical lines of influence back to her pioneering scholarly work.

Sometimes, as I work on the task force to develop its Policy Institute, I watch swirls of activity around me as staff respond to the latest hot spot in some corner of the country. Frankly, I wonder whether it makes sense to be putting resources into research and the production of knowledge when there are so many immediate crises at hand. And then I remember the work of Evelyn Hooker, and the difference it has made, and I know that we need to operate on many fronts at once, that knowledge, as someone famous once said, is a form of power.

 

 

Biography

APA Award:
     Text of Citation
     Reflections

Eulogies:
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     LA Times
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Bibliography

  Selected Bibliography

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

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. (1959). What is a criterion? Journal of Projective Techniques, 23, 278-281.

Hooker, E. (1960). The fable. Journal of Projective Techniques, 24, 240245.

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

Hooker, E. (1961). The homosexual community. Proceedings of the XIV International Congress of Applied Psychology. Copenhagen, Denmark: Munksgaard.

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. (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.

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. 83107). New York: Basic Books.

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

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

Evelyn Hooker: Index
 
Return to "Facts About Homosexuality and Mental Health"
 
The Wayne F. Placek Award for research on lesbian and gay topics, funded by a bequest to Dr. Evelyn Hooker
 
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