Hooker, Evelyn (1907–1996)

views updated

Hooker, Evelyn (1907–1996)

American psychologist who conducted early studies on homosexuality. Born Evelyn Gentry in North Platt, Nebraska, in 1907; died in Santa Monica, California, on November 18, 1996; earned bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Colorado; Johns Hopkins University, Ph.D., 1932; married twice; second husband Edward Niles Hooker (died 1957); no children.

A pioneering researcher on homosexuality during the 1950s, psychologist Evelyn Hooker was born in North Platt, Nebraska, in 1907, but spent her childhood in northeastern Colorado. After receiving her undergraduate and master's degrees from the University of Colorado, and her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins, she joined the faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1932. Except for a year spent at Bryn Mawr, Hooker remained at UCLA for the next 30 years. It was there, during the 1940s, that she was introduced to the homosexual community at the university.

Hooker's work, financed through a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), was carried out during the 1950s, a period in which homosexuals were either ignored or anathematized by the medical and mental health professions. Writer Christopher Isherwood, who knew Hooker at that time, later recalled: "She never treated us like some strange tribe, so we told her things we never told anyone before."

Hooker's studies included administering three standard personality tests to two groups of 30 men, one heterosexual and another homosexual, who had been matched according to age, I.Q.'s, and educational levels. She then asked a panel of expert clinicians to assess the results without knowing the subjects' sexual orientation. The judges were unable to discern between the two groups on the basis of the test. "The most striking finding of the three judges," wrote Hooker, "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 parapsychology." Her findings were delivered to the American Psychological Association in 1956 and published a year later as "The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual" in the Journal of Projective Techniques.

As might be expected, Hooker's findings were widely suspect at the time. Many criticized her for recruiting her subjects through "homophile" groups, like the Mattachine Society, believing that the men she tested might be more content with their lives and anxious to prove that they were well adjusted. The study, however, led the American Psychiatric Association to begin to rethink its viewpoint on homosexuality. Seventeen years later, the association removed homosexuality as a psychological disorder from its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. In 1992, 36 years after she had first presented her research, the organization recognized Hooker with an award for distinguished contribution to psychology in the public interest.

In 1967, Evelyn Hooker headed a study group on homosexuality for the National Institute of Mental Health, which recommended a repeal of sodomy laws and better public education about homosexuality. After retiring from UCLA in 1970, she went into private practice and also established the Placek Fund of the American Psychological Foundation, which provides money for research into homosexuality. Hooker was married twice; her second husband, Edward Hooker, died in 1957. Evelyn Hooker died on November 18, 1996, at her home in Santa Monica, California.