Excerpts from an article by HARRY STACK SULLIVAN (1941).
Sullivan- a closeted homosexual- was instrumental in developing the psychiatric screening system used by the U.S. during WWII to evaluate potential recruits for homosexuality.
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[T]here are among every people some few who are simply incapable of full social life-- the psychopath* absolutely; the detached, unsocial people, relatively; and the already demoralized people, at least temporarily.
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There are also some few-- or many, depending on the community-- who are actually hostile to the social order and to those who live adequately in it.
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[T]here are disaffected groups who are preoccupied with goals inconsistent with the common purpose; and some of these groups are so antagonistic that they are seditious or frankly mutinous.
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I can but enumerate some of the ideas which seem to me to offer a basis for building up a counter-strategy for protecting our people… a little strategy of terror of our own.
The ideas which I am about to offer, I fear, will in some cases be quite unwelcome.
They nonetheless represent the upshot of my attempt to figure out what we can do to protect our population from, shall I say, further demoralization....
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[This] seems to require that persons who, by reason of personality disorder, mental defect, or mental disorder, cannot reasonably be converted into trustworthy citizens of the nation at war, must be cared for in circumstances that reduce to a minimum the chances of disastrous effects from their limitations.
This is rather a cold-blooded proposition.
Actually, as Dr. White once said, "The mental hospital is the only place where a person is entitled to enjoy a mental disorder", and in the nation at war the psychopathic* personalities, among others, certainly might well be out of harm's way in a civilized version of a concentration camp.
The general situation would be notably more stable and trustworthy by virtue of their absence.
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It may seem an unpleasant prospect.... War, however, just is not a comfortable pattern of living.
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* A "psychopathic personality": One whose "moral and active principles of... mind are strongly perverted or depraved; the power of self-government is lost or greatly impaired and the individual is found to be incapable... of conducting himself with decency and propriety in the business of life." By 1941, homosexuality was frequently referred to, in medico-legal discourse, as a "psychopathic personality disorder".
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Next: Chapter 1 of "My Prison-Cure In America": "A Doctor Came Into My Bedroom, And I Woke Up."
Cover image: Quote from Jay Halperin, via Karl Whittington.
