Review author: Douglas Kimmel, PhD
Summary:This book by Gayle E. Pitman largely mirrors that film and reads like a trip down memory lane for those of us who knew Evelyn or have watched the film.
Citation: Pitman, G. E. [Illustrated by S. Green]. (2021). Evelyn Hooker and the fairy project. Washington, DC: Magination Press (152 pages).
Imagine being a 6th or 7th grade student and walking into your school library and seeing this book on display! What a change from my growing up experience during the time when Hooker was actually conducting her research at UCLA!
The “Note to Reader” at the beginning of the book makes it clear that the book is designed for allies as well as GLBTQ+ youth. “However you may identify, once you leave this book, we encourage you to use respectful terms for accurate identities and orientations.”
I recall Evelyn as she entered the room at the convention hotel at an ALGP meeting in Los Angeles, and her comments of amazement that we were meeting openly at APA! When I organized our first program for Division 44, she was on a panel titled: “From Mental Illness to an APA Division.” The symposium was filmed by James Harrison and led to the documentary about Hooker's research in the 1950s, Changing Our Minds: The Story of Dr. Evelyn Hookeropens in new window.
This book by Gayle E. Pitman largely mirrors that film and reads like a trip down memory lane for those of us who knew Evelyn or have watched the film. It is a faithful narrative of her story with details that were new to me, such as her birth in North Platte, Nebraska, where the family were tenant farmers and moved frequently. Pitman added interesting historical perspectives and details that made Evelyn's eventual scholarship to attend the University of Colorado a remarkable achievement of her mother's desire that she be educated: “Get an education and they can never take that away from you [p. 7].”
The details of discrimination as a woman seeking a PhD in psychology, surviving tuberculosis, being challenged by a student to study homosexuality among normal gay men, receiving a research grant from NIMH and eventually becoming the chair of an NIMH Task Force (whose report was suppressed by the Nixon administration) were well described and illustrated by Sarah Green.
Less familiar to me was that the NIMH report she prepared was eventually published by One Institute Quarterly, and that Frank Kameny and Barbara Gittings, along with the Gay Liberation Front, used the report to launch their campaign against the American Psychiatric Association to change the diagnosis of homosexuality leading to the remarkable 1972 panel discussion with “Dr. H. Anonymous” as a gay psychiatrist in disguise. We all know the ending: “By 1987 – 30 years after Evelyn Hooker published her groundbreaking study…the American Psychiatric Association was finally taking a clear stand that same-sex attraction was in no way a mental illness. [p. 114].
The last chapter details the accolades in her hometown of Los Angeles and the awards given by the America Psychological Association. The book concludes with brief sections: an Historical Timeline, a series of Discussion Questions, Further Learning suggestions, a section “How to be an LGBTQ+ Ally,” and a list of Resources.