Items

• A family matter : a parents' guide to homosexuality
  Psychologist Charles Silverstein (1935-2023) was a writer and pioneering advocate for LGBTQ+ rights. His presentation to the American Psychiatric Association (APA) contributed to the removal of homosexuality as a mental illness from the APA’s ‘DSM’ (the ‘Diagnostic and Statistical Manual’) in 1974. Three years later, he published his first book, ‘The Joy of Gay Sex’, co-authored with Edmund White – another ‘Operation Tiger’ seized title – and, in the same year, ‘A Family Matter’. While ‘The Joy of Gay Sex’ focused on a community of men who have sex with men, ‘A Family Matter’ is a contribution to the genre of books intended to help parents of lesbian and gay children “come to terms with their own feelings about homosexuality”. In a briefing document about the seized titles, the Defend Gay’s the Word Campaign noted that the book was “Dedicated to his ma and pa!!”
• The homosexual matrix
  First published in America by McGraw-Hill in 1975, the preface to this British edition includes author C.A. Tripp’s (1919-2003) reflections on the book’s initial reception. More positively received than the author had hoped among the scientific community and in much of the media, including ‘Newsweek’, it nevertheless provoked anti-gay moralising in ‘Time’ magazine and ‘The New York Times’, while some papers cancelled their reviews altogether. Tripp, a psychotherapist, fails to mention that the book was also criticised by LGBTQ+ reviewers for its pseudo-scientific categorisation of gay men into ‘types’, its misogyny, and its refusal to engage with gay liberation as a social movement. The striking typographic cover design is by Marcy J. Katz. The edition on display is from the library of actor, author and bookseller Noel Lloyd.
• Women and madness
  Since publication in 1972, this feminist work on women’s psychology has sold over 2.5 million copies. Psychologist Phyllis Chesler (1940-) interviewed women who had been psychiatry or psychotherapy patients and wove their experiences into a book which explores the ways in which women are stigmatised, abused and oppressed by a patriarchal medical establishment. The book is held in multiple UK academic libraries. It is unclear which edition of the book was seized during ‘Operation Tiger’ – the Allen Lane edition is shown here – but more likely it was the 1973 version from the US mass market publisher Avon Books. Chesler sued the owners of Avon for publishing the book with differences from her original text.