Evelyn Hooker

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Evelyn Hooker (September 2, 1907 - November 18 1996) is a North American psychologist most notable for her 1957 paper The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual in which she administered psychological tests to groups of homosexual and heterosexual people and asked experts, based on those tests alone, to select the homosexuals. The experiment, which other researchers subsequently repeated, demonstrates that homosexuals are no worse adjusted than the general population, and therefore being in their right minds would not, given an option, have chosen homosexuality over the more socially acceptable heterosexuality.

As a result of her studies and the verifications thereof, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its handbook of disorders in 1973.

References

[UCD Epitaph]
Hooker, Evelyn (1957). The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual. Journal of Projective Techniques, 21, 18-31.

External links

[Defending the deviates. Evelyn Hooker documentary Changing our minds on video.] A review of the above documentary
[Her entry at QueerTheory.com]

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