The Committee for Maternal Health and The Single Woman
Dickinson's Committee for Maternal Health was a platform from which he could begin to carry out this new type of sexological research. It became widely known as a source for sexological knowledge in America. By the late 1920s, the committee was receiving requests for information and assistance concerning sex matters from doctors, journalists, and others interested in sexuality.32 James Reed called it the American "publisher and clearinghouse" of sexological information.33 This was because of the respect Dickinson received in the medical community, the committee's birth control advocacy, and the committee's publications. Dickinson used the committee as a platform for his medical agenda.
One of the more interesting books concerning sexuality was The Single Woman. Dickinson wrote the book with Lura Beam. Using her psychology background, she helped to interpret Dickinson's case studies and formulate them into something coherent for the reader. She was put forward as a coauthor, but her role in the publication was less significant than Dickinson's role. She was sympathetic to the situations of homosexuals, but her perspective rarely came across in the book.34 Dickinson may have just wanted a woman's name attached to the book. He might have thought a woman writing about female sexuality with him would make the book more palatable to the reader. To be sure, Lura Beam's perspectives on female sexuality, whatever they were, did not receive the attention that Dickinson's ideas did.35
The Single Woman represented an attempt to understand comprehensively the sexuality of single women including such areas as autoeroticism, heterosexuality, and homosexuality. The case studies concerning homosexuals contained within this book attempted to describe the etiology of homosexuality, but failed to make definitive statement on the subject. It contained case studies of thirty-two people who experienced same-sex desire; twenty-eight of these were women. The four men described in the text were brought to Dickinson's attention by his patients who were their wives or lovers. The female patients did not come to Dickinson for treatment of homosexuality, he discovered their same-sex desires in the course of gynecological treatment. He admitted that the data he obtained was limited and that many of his patients resisted questioning about their sexual practices. Dickinson concluded that their reticence was the result of their modesty or shame.36
The tone of this work in regard to homosexuality was relatively tolerant, nonetheless it did not legitimize it. Homosexuality was seen in this study as, "a transient attempt to recreate life by love for the same sex with or without a specifically sexual consummation."37 Whether it was merely fantasized about or actually practiced, same-sex eroticism was seen as transient in the study for two reasons. Firstly, most of the subjects eventually pursued a heterosexual lifestyle according to Dickinson.38 Secondly and more importantly, homosexuality was seen as a wrongful phase, a misstep that could only imitate love. True love was believed to be only the product of a man and a woman's interaction throughout Dickinson's writings. Also, it can be discerned from this statement that not only were physical homosexual relations under scrutiny, but even desirous thoughts needed to be revealed to the physician. Therefore, all aspects of his subject's lives needed to be interrogated; the pathology of same-sex desire seemed to be all pervasive for Dickinson.
Dickinson seemed not to subscribe to ideas of sexual inversion in this study. Dickinson wrote concerning the women in the study, "no transference of feeling to maleness is recorded, the female element functions along its various levels as child, equal, and mother.39" The women were described as "feminine" but pursued an inappropriate sexual object. The three roles Dickinson ascribed to women, child, equal, and mother, were still fulfilled, but in a imitated form. For Dickinson, these roles were transitory stages in homosexual women's relationships that were linked to the different roles that women could apparently only achieve in the family and/or society. He saw these women as acting "feminine" in a pathological context.
A reversible quality of love appears and the same body lives at its chronological age and also in the childhood and the teens. This has likeness to the dream and the day dream and is the self's own wishes in animation. It is itself and had a lover; it is the child and has a mother or it is the mother and has a child. It slips back and forth from one relationship to another, making the self tall inside the life and motives of another. It serves whatever age period is concerned, engages whatever part of personality - sexual, romantic, conscientious, or familial is uppermost.40
Same-sex desire was turned into a juvenile fantasy by Dickinson. It was both dream and wish fulfillment for him. Women were represented as both child and mother simultaneously; their desires constantly changing focus, but always within the bounds of maternity, childhood, and love. Child and mother were roles that were sexually charged in Dickinson's writings; they constituted essential components of female sexuality. The bourgeois family was naturalized by Dickinson and somehow thought to exist within the woman.
Women were represented as the natural source of the family. As such, Dickinson believed the roles within the bourgeois family structure for women, wife and mother, were the source and limit of women's sexuality. Dickinson linked this to what he believed was an intrinsic feminine instinct. Women who loved women were misusing this instinct in the gynecologist's opinion. Speaking of marriage earlier on in his career he defined the "good" woman as the heterosexual woman. "The main surprise will be the straightforward naturalness with which the good woman will accept the occasion, unabashed, possessed as she is by the great primal instincts of love and maternity."41 The homosexual represented the pathological use of the "feminine" sex drive.
Seeing female sexuality only within the context of instinctive familial relationships precluded an equitable evaluation of women's lives. The feminine was constructed as purely functional and positioned as the source and result of the family.42 Dickinson was producing a history of woman; the woman-child became her lover's equal during courtship and then eventually became a fertile mother who should reproduce the cycle. Of course, homosexuality in women disrupted this cyclical vision of femininity even though it was being represented by Dickinson as being contained within it.43
This schematic picture of women's lives sets them apart from men. They were tied to natural cycles in a way that men were not; the instinctual aim of women's lives was familial love and reproduction. Dickinson was drawing upon earlier visions of women. This connection between women and nature was common in the late nineteenth century. This view was used to underpin both feminist and antifeminist debates.44 The lack of reproductive possibilities in the same-sex relationship turned homosexuals into imitations of their heterosexual counterparts in Dickinson's eyes.45 Dickinson described the structure of same-sex relationships as a hallucinatory reproduction of different-sex relationships.
An obvious likeness to family life appears in this building up of obligations and also in the myths and traditions which characterize expressions of inner life. The use of heroic and symbolic names, identification with flowers, animals, poetry, totems, and historical characters appear between two people as living fantasy, sexual in origin, expressing romantic conceptions or constructing family relationships.46
Dickinson turned same-sex love relationships into a fantastic delusion. The myth he constructed turned the love these women shared into something false. The only way they could recognize their relationships was in terms of heterosexual familial relations. Being seen as mimetic of heterosexuality, homosexuality was discounted as a unauthentic practice in this work. Therefore same-sex relationships could not draw upon the naturalized truth of different-sex eroticism. Insertive intercourse between man and woman was solely designated as natural and healthy. In the logos of Dickinson's sexology, homosexuality was excluded from the truth of the healthy body and transposed onto the psychic world of fantasy.
The male subjects in the study revealed another side of Dickinson's view of homosexuality. "The doctor's interest in this subject was kept alive by his observations on men, especially husbands of patients."47 The four cases of male homosexuality included in The Single Woman are all described as an inability of these men to have proper intercourse which ended in some form of tragedy. One of the men, described as having a "great desire for leadership among men and boys ," killed himself after his relationships with men were discovered.48 Another married man in the study, labeled as "artistic", would not have children with his wife and slept with other men in his "professional field". The couple went their separate ways in divorce. The third case involved a husband who was a "leader of men who both gave and demanded hero worship" and had an "antipathy to sexual relations."49 This man left his family and was diagnosed with "distorted homosexuality and paranoia" even though there was no evidence that he had slept with other men.50
The fourth male homosexuality case presented dealt with the issue of seduction. The subject was forced into "passive pederasty" by a group of male strangers and could no longer have intercourse with women. Dickinson discounted this man's story of being raped. He put it in quotes to suggest the fraudulence of his story, to make it seem that this man was making an excuse for his homosexuality or that he had wanted to be raped. This case was an example of the author's ability to discount the speech of the patient. Dickinson not only had the sole right to interpret the results of the interview, but the ability to call into question pieces of the patient's story. The power dynamic between the sexologist and the subject was clear. Dickinson could call into question any of the subjects' statements and claim they misspoke because of shame or fear. The doctor was deliberately placed as the sole source of truth in the text.
These cases are symptomatic of Dickinson's thinking. They are examples of how Dickinson thought homosexual relationships could be dangerous. They were problematic for him because they involved the break up of families. Desire for people of the same sex was represented as a direct transgression against the family structure resulting in tragedy for both the transgressor, the male homosexual, and the transgressed upon, the wives and children. Male homosexuality was equated with an uncontrolled and destructive sexuality; by default the lives of these men were rendered bleak and certainly pathological.51 The discussion of male homosexuality set the stage for Dickinson presentation of female same-sex eroticism in The Single Woman. The male homosexual was constructed as "unhappy," "tragic," and a liar; his life, in some senses, was seen as not worth living. This image would linger in Dickinson's discussion of female homosexuality. It would serve as a basis for his understanding of same-sex eroticism between women. Furthermore, Dickinson went into greater depth in his investigation of female homosexuality principally because he was a gynecologist. Dickinson had intimate access to women's bodies; he could not study men in the same detail.
One of the more interesting books concerning sexuality was The Single Woman. Dickinson wrote the book with Lura Beam. Using her psychology background, she helped to interpret Dickinson's case studies and formulate them into something coherent for the reader. She was put forward as a coauthor, but her role in the publication was less significant than Dickinson's role. She was sympathetic to the situations of homosexuals, but her perspective rarely came across in the book.34 Dickinson may have just wanted a woman's name attached to the book. He might have thought a woman writing about female sexuality with him would make the book more palatable to the reader. To be sure, Lura Beam's perspectives on female sexuality, whatever they were, did not receive the attention that Dickinson's ideas did.35
The Single Woman represented an attempt to understand comprehensively the sexuality of single women including such areas as autoeroticism, heterosexuality, and homosexuality. The case studies concerning homosexuals contained within this book attempted to describe the etiology of homosexuality, but failed to make definitive statement on the subject. It contained case studies of thirty-two people who experienced same-sex desire; twenty-eight of these were women. The four men described in the text were brought to Dickinson's attention by his patients who were their wives or lovers. The female patients did not come to Dickinson for treatment of homosexuality, he discovered their same-sex desires in the course of gynecological treatment. He admitted that the data he obtained was limited and that many of his patients resisted questioning about their sexual practices. Dickinson concluded that their reticence was the result of their modesty or shame.36
The tone of this work in regard to homosexuality was relatively tolerant, nonetheless it did not legitimize it. Homosexuality was seen in this study as, "a transient attempt to recreate life by love for the same sex with or without a specifically sexual consummation."37 Whether it was merely fantasized about or actually practiced, same-sex eroticism was seen as transient in the study for two reasons. Firstly, most of the subjects eventually pursued a heterosexual lifestyle according to Dickinson.38 Secondly and more importantly, homosexuality was seen as a wrongful phase, a misstep that could only imitate love. True love was believed to be only the product of a man and a woman's interaction throughout Dickinson's writings. Also, it can be discerned from this statement that not only were physical homosexual relations under scrutiny, but even desirous thoughts needed to be revealed to the physician. Therefore, all aspects of his subject's lives needed to be interrogated; the pathology of same-sex desire seemed to be all pervasive for Dickinson.
Dickinson seemed not to subscribe to ideas of sexual inversion in this study. Dickinson wrote concerning the women in the study, "no transference of feeling to maleness is recorded, the female element functions along its various levels as child, equal, and mother.39" The women were described as "feminine" but pursued an inappropriate sexual object. The three roles Dickinson ascribed to women, child, equal, and mother, were still fulfilled, but in a imitated form. For Dickinson, these roles were transitory stages in homosexual women's relationships that were linked to the different roles that women could apparently only achieve in the family and/or society. He saw these women as acting "feminine" in a pathological context.
A reversible quality of love appears and the same body lives at its chronological age and also in the childhood and the teens. This has likeness to the dream and the day dream and is the self's own wishes in animation. It is itself and had a lover; it is the child and has a mother or it is the mother and has a child. It slips back and forth from one relationship to another, making the self tall inside the life and motives of another. It serves whatever age period is concerned, engages whatever part of personality - sexual, romantic, conscientious, or familial is uppermost.40
Same-sex desire was turned into a juvenile fantasy by Dickinson. It was both dream and wish fulfillment for him. Women were represented as both child and mother simultaneously; their desires constantly changing focus, but always within the bounds of maternity, childhood, and love. Child and mother were roles that were sexually charged in Dickinson's writings; they constituted essential components of female sexuality. The bourgeois family was naturalized by Dickinson and somehow thought to exist within the woman.
Women were represented as the natural source of the family. As such, Dickinson believed the roles within the bourgeois family structure for women, wife and mother, were the source and limit of women's sexuality. Dickinson linked this to what he believed was an intrinsic feminine instinct. Women who loved women were misusing this instinct in the gynecologist's opinion. Speaking of marriage earlier on in his career he defined the "good" woman as the heterosexual woman. "The main surprise will be the straightforward naturalness with which the good woman will accept the occasion, unabashed, possessed as she is by the great primal instincts of love and maternity."41 The homosexual represented the pathological use of the "feminine" sex drive.
Seeing female sexuality only within the context of instinctive familial relationships precluded an equitable evaluation of women's lives. The feminine was constructed as purely functional and positioned as the source and result of the family.42 Dickinson was producing a history of woman; the woman-child became her lover's equal during courtship and then eventually became a fertile mother who should reproduce the cycle. Of course, homosexuality in women disrupted this cyclical vision of femininity even though it was being represented by Dickinson as being contained within it.43
This schematic picture of women's lives sets them apart from men. They were tied to natural cycles in a way that men were not; the instinctual aim of women's lives was familial love and reproduction. Dickinson was drawing upon earlier visions of women. This connection between women and nature was common in the late nineteenth century. This view was used to underpin both feminist and antifeminist debates.44 The lack of reproductive possibilities in the same-sex relationship turned homosexuals into imitations of their heterosexual counterparts in Dickinson's eyes.45 Dickinson described the structure of same-sex relationships as a hallucinatory reproduction of different-sex relationships.
An obvious likeness to family life appears in this building up of obligations and also in the myths and traditions which characterize expressions of inner life. The use of heroic and symbolic names, identification with flowers, animals, poetry, totems, and historical characters appear between two people as living fantasy, sexual in origin, expressing romantic conceptions or constructing family relationships.46
Dickinson turned same-sex love relationships into a fantastic delusion. The myth he constructed turned the love these women shared into something false. The only way they could recognize their relationships was in terms of heterosexual familial relations. Being seen as mimetic of heterosexuality, homosexuality was discounted as a unauthentic practice in this work. Therefore same-sex relationships could not draw upon the naturalized truth of different-sex eroticism. Insertive intercourse between man and woman was solely designated as natural and healthy. In the logos of Dickinson's sexology, homosexuality was excluded from the truth of the healthy body and transposed onto the psychic world of fantasy.
The male subjects in the study revealed another side of Dickinson's view of homosexuality. "The doctor's interest in this subject was kept alive by his observations on men, especially husbands of patients."47 The four cases of male homosexuality included in The Single Woman are all described as an inability of these men to have proper intercourse which ended in some form of tragedy. One of the men, described as having a "great desire for leadership among men and boys ," killed himself after his relationships with men were discovered.48 Another married man in the study, labeled as "artistic", would not have children with his wife and slept with other men in his "professional field". The couple went their separate ways in divorce. The third case involved a husband who was a "leader of men who both gave and demanded hero worship" and had an "antipathy to sexual relations."49 This man left his family and was diagnosed with "distorted homosexuality and paranoia" even though there was no evidence that he had slept with other men.50
The fourth male homosexuality case presented dealt with the issue of seduction. The subject was forced into "passive pederasty" by a group of male strangers and could no longer have intercourse with women. Dickinson discounted this man's story of being raped. He put it in quotes to suggest the fraudulence of his story, to make it seem that this man was making an excuse for his homosexuality or that he had wanted to be raped. This case was an example of the author's ability to discount the speech of the patient. Dickinson not only had the sole right to interpret the results of the interview, but the ability to call into question pieces of the patient's story. The power dynamic between the sexologist and the subject was clear. Dickinson could call into question any of the subjects' statements and claim they misspoke because of shame or fear. The doctor was deliberately placed as the sole source of truth in the text.
These cases are symptomatic of Dickinson's thinking. They are examples of how Dickinson thought homosexual relationships could be dangerous. They were problematic for him because they involved the break up of families. Desire for people of the same sex was represented as a direct transgression against the family structure resulting in tragedy for both the transgressor, the male homosexual, and the transgressed upon, the wives and children. Male homosexuality was equated with an uncontrolled and destructive sexuality; by default the lives of these men were rendered bleak and certainly pathological.51 The discussion of male homosexuality set the stage for Dickinson presentation of female same-sex eroticism in The Single Woman. The male homosexual was constructed as "unhappy," "tragic," and a liar; his life, in some senses, was seen as not worth living. This image would linger in Dickinson's discussion of female homosexuality. It would serve as a basis for his understanding of same-sex eroticism between women. Furthermore, Dickinson went into greater depth in his investigation of female homosexuality principally because he was a gynecologist. Dickinson had intimate access to women's bodies; he could not study men in the same detail.
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