Evelyn Hooker

Lore & Background

Evelyn Hooker was born Evelyn Gentry in North Platte, Nebraska, and grew up in the Colorado Plains. Her mother, Jessie Bethel, who had a third-grade education, urged her to pursue education. Hooker earned a PhD in psychology from Johns Hopkins University in 1932, despite facing gender-based discrimination. After teaching at Whittier College, she contracted tuberculosis and spent a year in a sanatorium. She later received a fellowship to the Berlin Institute of Psychotherapy, where she witnessed the rise of Hitler and Kristallnacht; the Jewish family she lived with was later killed in concentration camps. These experiences sparked her desire to overcome social injustice.

In 1944, while teaching at UCLA, a student named Sam From confided that he was gay and introduced Hooker to his circle of homosexual friends, including writer Christopher Isherwood and poet Stephen Spender. From challenged her to scientifically study homosexuality. Hooker obtained a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health and gathered 30 homosexual men (via the Mattachine Society) and 30 heterosexual men, matched by IQ, age, and education. She administered psychological tests and asked experts to identify the homosexuals and rate their mental health; no detectable difference was found. Her work was published in 1956, just before Sam From died in a car accident.

Reader's Guide

Evelyn Hooker's 1956 study was critical in refuting the then-dominant view that homosexuality was a mental disorder. By using matched samples and blind expert ratings, she demonstrated that homosexual men were as well-adjusted as heterosexual men. She argued that earlier researchers had created a false correlation by studying homosexual men with a history of mental health treatment. Her findings directly challenged cultural heterosexism and the classification of homosexuality as developmentally inferior. Over the following decades, her work gained wider acceptance and was adopted by the gay rights movement. In 1967, the director of the National Institute of Mental Health asked her to produce a report on how the institute should treat homosexual men; the report recommended decriminalization and equal rights. Though its publication was delayed by the Nixon administration, it was eventually published by a magazine in 1970. Hooker's research laid the groundwork for the eventual removal of homosexuality from the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. She retired from UCLA in 1970 and entered private practice, serving mostly gay and lesbian clients. The University of Chicago opened the Evelyn Hooker Center for Gay and Lesbian Studies in her honor, and she was the subject of the 1992 Academy Award–nominated film Changing Our Minds: The Story of Dr. Evelyn Hooker.

Did You Know?

• Hooker's mother, who had a third-grade education, told her to pursue an education because it was the only thing that could not be taken away.
• She was refused entry to Yale's PhD program because she was female, but earned her doctorate at Johns Hopkins University.
• While studying in Europe, she witnessed Kristallnacht and later learned the Jewish family she lived with was killed in concentration camps.
• Her groundbreaking research was published in 1956, the same year Sam From, the student who inspired her work, died in a car accident.