The later social adjustment of a group of borderline defective delinquents trained at the oaks school 1

In Part 1 of this article, the author provides an overview of the history of psychoanalytic treatment of those identifying as homosexual. In Part 2, the author interviews “Rob” to more fully demonstrate the corrosive effects over a lifetime of analytic and psychotherapeutic treatment, as it had once been practiced. Rob, a man primarily attracted to men, spent many years in treatment with different therapists and analysts during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Now in his early eighties, Rob is married and remains closeted to all but a few close associates. When Rob entered treatment many years ago, he was told that his homosexual attractions were symptoms of an illness and with treatment he could change. Rob's experience is uncannily similar to multiple reports that exist in the professional and lay literature. Rob knows that nothing can undo the damage he suffered, yet it remains his wish that the psychoanalytic community would acknowledge, and even apologize, to all those who were harmed—including the many who took their lives—by theories and practices that were once so central to mainstream psychoanalysis.