Far From the Tree

by Solomon, Andrew

  He has lectured widely and is a Lecturer in Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College; Special Adviser on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Mental Health at the Yale Department of Psychiatry; a director of the University of Michigan Depression Center, Columbia Psychiatry, and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory; a member of the Board of Visitors of Columbia University Medical School and the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance. In 2008, Solomon received the Society of Biological Psychiatry’s Humanitarian Award for his contributions to the field of mental health, and in 2010, the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation’s Productive Lives Award. He is also a fellow of Berkeley College at Yale University and a member of the New York Institute for the Humanities and the Council on Foreign Relations.

  He lives with his husband and son in New York and London and is a dual national.

  www.andrewsolomon.org

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  Permissions

  Jacqueline Clark, excerpt from untitled poem (“And when I tried to find the”). Reprinted with the permission of the author.

  Emily Dickinson, “I Felt a Cleaving in My Mind—.” Reprinted by permission of the publishers and the Trustees of Amherst College from The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Thomas H. Johnson, ed., Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Copyright 1951, © 1955, 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

  Jennifer Franklin, excerpts from Persephone’s Ransom. Copyright © 2011 by Jennifer Franklin. Reprinted with the permission of Finishing Line Press, www.finishinglinepress.com.

  Emily Perl Kingsley, “Welcome to Holland.” Copyright © 1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. Used with the permission of the author. All rights reserved.

  Elaine Fowler Palencia, “Taking the Train” from Taking the Train (Grex Press, 1997). Reprinted with the permission of the author.

  Ned Palmer, “Girls” as found in Greg Palmer, Adventures in the Mainstream: Coming of Age with Down Syndrome (Woodbine House, 2005, and Bennett & Hastings, 2012). Reprinted with the permission of Cathryn C. Palmer.

  Wallace Stevens, excerpt from “The Poems of Our Climate” from Collected Poems. Copyright 1954 by Wallace Stevens and renewed © 1982 by Holly Stevens. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

  ALSO BY ANDREW SOLOMON

  The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

  A Stone Boat

  The Irony Tower: Soviet Artists in a Time of Glasnost

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  Notes

  A few notes on the notes. First, I allowed everyone I interviewed the choice of being quoted by name or pseudonymously. I have indicated all pseudonyms in the notes. Though I attempted to stay as true as possible to the identities of those who are quoted pseudonymously, I have changed some personal information to protect the privacy of people who wished me to do so.

  I have put into these notes citations for all quotations from printed sources; everything else is from personal interviews conducted between 1994 and 2012.

  To avoid making this book even longer than it is or festooning it with ellipsis marks, I have condensed some quotations from written material. Where I have done so, the full text appears in the online notes.

  Links embedded in the online notes lead to full text of articles, either freely available, by subscription or for individual purchase; PubMed, ERIC and National Criminal Justice Reference Service abstracts; and Google Books entries for books consulted. Additional information on sources—including WorldCat entries showing library holdings worldwide—can be found in the bibliography.

  Epigraph

  See The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (1990), pages 193–94.

  I: Son

  1 Donald Woods Winnicott first promulgated the idea that “there is no such thing as a baby” in his 1952 paper, “Anxiety associated with insecurity,” later anthologized in Through Paediatrics to Psycho-analysis (1958) where it appears on page 98; see also The Child, the Family, and the Outside World (1987). He repeated this ide often in his lectures and writing.

  2 My investigation of Deaf culture resulted in an article, “Defiantly deaf,” New York Times Magazine, August 29, 1994.

  3 The Cochlear corporation website (http://www.cochlear.com) contains numerous instances of the word miracle; see also, for example, Aaron and Nechama Parnes’s report from the 2007 Cochlear Celebration, “Celebrating the miracle of the cochlear implant,” at http://www.hearingpocket.com/celebration1.shtml. For the other side of the story, see Paddy Ladd, Understanding Deaf Culture: In Search of Deafhood (2003), page 415: “In the 1990s, genetic engineering has initiated the process of trying to identify ‘the deaf gene,’ thus bringing within theoretical reach what might be termed the ‘final solution’—that of eradicating Deaf people altogether.” Harlan Lane likened attempts to eliminate deafness to attempts to eliminate ethnic groups in Paul Davies, “Deaf culture clash,” Wall Street Journal, April 25, 2005.

  4 For more on the ideal age of implantation for cochlear implants, see Chapter II: Deaf in this book.

  5 Studies establishing a heightened risk of abuse for children who do not resemble their fathers include Rebecca Burch and George Gallup, “Perceptions of paternal resemblance predict family violence,” Evolution & Human Behavior 21, no. 6 (November 2000); and Hongli Li and Lei Chang, “Paternal harsh parenting in relation to paternal versus child characteristics: The moderating effect of paternal resemblance belief,” Acta Psychologica Sinica 39, no. 3 (2007).

  6 For more on the Copenhagen interpretation, see the entry “Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

  7 The theologian John Polkinghorne reported this interpretation in keeping with what he had learned from Dirac. From page 31 of Polkinghorne, Science and Theology: An Introduction (1998): “Ask a quantum entity a particle-like question and you will get a particle-like answer; ask a wave-like question and you will get a wave-like answer.”

  8 “All I know is what I have words for” comes from part 5.6 of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922): “Die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt.” C. K. Ogden translates the sentence as “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world”; that version occurs on page 149 of Ludwig Wittgenstein, , translated by C. K. Ogden (1922).

  9 From the entry “apple” in The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs, edited by Jennifer Speake (2009): “The apple never falls far from the tree: Apparently of Eastern origin, it is frequently used to assert the continuity of family characteristics. Cf. 16th cent. Ger. der Apfel fellt nicht gerne weit vom Baume.”

  10 From the opening of Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina: “Happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”. The line is the first in the book and occurs on page 5 of this edition: Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, translated by Constance Garnett (2004).

  11 Early development of gay children is discussed on pages 16-21 of Richard C. Friedman, Male Homosexuality: A Contemporary Psychoanalytic Perspective (1990).

  12 Balkan Armenian Restaurant at 129 E. Twenty-Seventh Street became famous for both its delicious, reasonably priced food, and for its advertising postcards, which the management would stamp and mail for customers who wished to share their culinary good fortune with friends. I hav
e never been able to reproduce the ekmek; someday, I hope to rediscover it.

  13 For more information on gender-atypical color preference as a predictor of homosexuality, see Vanessa LoBue and Judy S. DeLoache, “Pretty in pink: The early development of gender-stereotyped colour preferences,” British Journal of Developmental Psychology 29, no. 3 (September 2011).

  14 The unforgettable last line, “Wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest a little boy and his Bear will always be playing,” occurs on pages 179–80 of A. A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner (1961 ).

  15 See Amos Kamil, “Prep-school predators: The Horace Mann School’s secret history of sexual abuse,” New York Times Magazine, June 6, 2012.

  16 The quotation about “wounded, confused people” is from a Facebook post by Peter Lappin.

  17 For more information on surrogate partner therapy, see the website of the International Professional Surrogates Association, http://surrogatetherapy.org/.

  18 The gay-damning quotation comes from “The homosexual in America,” Time, January 21, 1966.

  19 Hendrik Hertzberg, “The Narcissus survey,” New Yorker, January 5, 1998.

  20 On December 22, 2011, Michigan governor Rick Snyder signed House Bill 4770 (now Public Act 297 of 2011), the Public Employee Domestic Partner Benefit Restriction Act. The law took effect immediately and two weeks later became the subject of a lawsuit filed by four public employees thereby deprived of benefits for their same-sex partners. See “Gov. Rick Snyder signs domestic partner benefits ban,” Associated Press, December 22, 2011; and Chris Geidner, “ACLU sues to stop Michigan law that ends public employer same-sex partner benefits,” Metro Weekly, January 5, 2012. The text and legislative history of House Bill 4770 can be found on the website of the Michigan legislature, http://www.legislature.mi.gov/mileg.aspx?page=getobject&objectname=2011-HB-4770.

  21 Anti-homosexuality legislation in Uganda was originally proposed in 2009, shelved after international protests, then resurrected in February 2012; see Josh Kron, “Resentment toward the West bolsters Uganda’s anti-gay bill,” New York Times, February 29, 2012; and Clar Ni Chonghaile, “Uganda anti-gay bill resurrected in parliament,” Guardian, February 8, 2012; see also, three notes down, reference to Scott Lively.

  22 The description of torture and murder of gays in Iraq comes from Matt McAllester, “The hunted,” New York, October 4, 2009.

  23 The This American Life episode “81 Words” (at http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/204/81-Words) is an absorbing account of the removal of homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; see also Ronald Bayer, Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnosis (1981).

  24 This passage references Scott Lively, Redeeming the Rainbow: A Christian Response to the “Gay” Agenda (2009). Representative passages include this one from page 11: “As much as we care for individual ‘gays’ and lesbians we may know as family members, neighbors or co-workers, and as much as we want all homosexuals to be saved and delivered from their bondage to sin, we cannot ignore that our ‘gay’ activist adversaries are some of the ‘wolves’ we were warned about. They are cunning and relentless pursuers of their own selfish interests, which they cannot achieve without first defeating us.” See also page 17: “Discrimination based on race or skin color is morally wrong because there is no legitimate reason for it—the criteria are both morally neutral and immutable. Such discrimination springs from irrational prejudice. However, homosexuality involves voluntary sexual conduct that has negative personal and social consequences. It is perfectly reasonable and responsible to discriminate against homosexuality on religious, moral, sociological and public health grounds. As the Scripture states in Ephesians 5:11, ‘[H]ave no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them.’”

  Scott Lively has recently been sued by a Ugandan gay rights group, who have accused him of fomenting persecution of gays in their country; see Laurie Goodstein, “Ugandan gay rights group sues U.S. evangelist,” New York Times, March 14, 2012.

  25 The response of the surrogate-shopper to Ray Blanchard appears in “Fraternal birth order and the maternal immune hypothesis of male homosexuality,” Hormones & Behavior 40, no. 2 (September 2001), and is described in Alice Domurat Dreger, “Womb gay,” Hastings Center Bioethics Forum, December 4, 2008.

  26 The debate over Maria Iandolo New’s administration of dexamethasone to expectant mothers is chronicled in Shari Roan, “Medical treatment carries possible side effect of limiting homosexuality,” Los Angeles Times, August 15, 2010. Primary sources in the debate include (in chronological order) Peter E. Clayton, et al., “Consensus statement on 21-hydroxylase deficiency from the European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology and The Lawson Wilkins Pediatric Endocrine Society,” Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism 87, no. 9 (September 1, 2002); Alice Dreger, Ellen K. Feder, and Anne Tamar-Mattis, “Preventing homosexuality (and uppity women) in the womb?” Hastings Center Bioethics Forum, June 29, 2010; Ellen Feder, et al., “Letter of concern from bioethicists,” fetaldex.org, 2010 (http://fetaldex.org/letter_bioethics.html); Laurence B. McCullough, et al., “A case study in unethical transgressive bioethics: ‘Letter of concern from bioethicists’ about the prenatal administration of dexamethasone,” American Journal of Bioethics 10, no. 9 (September 2010); Maria Iandolo New, “Description and defense of prenatal diagnosis and treatment with low-dose dexamethasone for congenital adrenal hyperplasia,” American Journal of Bioethics 10, no. 9 (September 2010); Alice Dreger, Ellen K. Feder, and Hilde Lindemann, “Still concerned,” American Journal of Bioethics 10, no. 9 (September 2010); and Maria Iandolo New, “Vindication of prenatal diagnosis and treatment of congenital adrenal hyperplasia with low-dose dexamethasone.” American Journal of Bioethics 10, no. 12 (December 2010).

  27 For an example of African-American objections to the language of civil rights being used by gay people, see this statement by North Carolina minister Rev. Patrick Wooden, quoted in David Kaufman, “Tensions between black and gay groups rise anew in advance of anti-gay marriage vote in N.C.,” Atlantic, May 4, 2012: “African-Americans are appalled that their Civil Rights movement has been co-opted by the so-called Civil Rights movement of the homosexuals. It is an insult, it is angering when LGBT groups say there is no difference between being black and being homosexual.”

  28 My friend is not the only person to propose this; see David Benkof’s article “It’s time for gay humility to go along with gay pride,” Houston Chronicle, June 26, 2009.

  29 “If you bring forth what is within you . . .” is Saying 70 in Elaine H. Pagels, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (2003), page 53.

  30 Maternal infanticide statistics occur on page 42 of James Alan Fox and Marianne W. Zawitz, “Homicide trends in the United States” (2007), in the chart “Homicide Type by Gender, 1976–2005.” See also Steven Pinker, “Why they kill their newborns,” New York Times, November 2, 1997.

  31 Parental rejection of visibly disabled children is discussed on pages 152-54 of Meira Weiss, Conditional Love: Parents’ Attitudes Toward Handicapped Children (1994). For a dated, albeit useful, review of literature on familial adjustment to severe burn scars in children, see Dale W. Wisely, Frank T. Masur, and Sam B. Morgan, “Psychological aspects of severe burn injuries in children,” Health Psychology 2, no. 1 (Winter 1983).

  32 The US Administration for Children and Families estimates that “anywhere between 30–50% have a developmental disability”; see US Department of Health and Human Services, “Adopting Children with Developmental Disabilities” (1999). A more recent study from the CDC found that the majority of adopted children have significant health problems and disabilities; it also found that adopted children are more likely than biological children to be receiving adequate parental attention and health care; see Matthew D. Bramlett, Laura F. Radel, and Stephen J. Blumberg, “The health and well-being of adopted children,” Ped
iatrics 119, suppl. 1 (February 1, 2007) (finding that about 20 percent have moderate to severe health problems, about 37 percent have special health care needs, about 17 percent have developmental disabilities, about 23 percent have learning disabilities, and about 27 percent have emotional/behavioral problems.

  33 The first occurrence of the term commercial eugenics appears to occur in M. MacNaughton, “Ethics and reproduction,” American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology 162, no. 4 (April 1990). Watergate co-conspirator-turned-evangelist Chuck Colson helped move the meme in his article “Judged by our genes? Genetic screening,” Breakpoint Prison Fellowship, April 24, 1996: “We’re not talking here about racial or political eugenics—the kind practiced in Nazi Germany, where Jews were labeled genetically inferior. Instead, we might call it commercial eugenics—where parents act like consumers who treat their babies as merchandise that must fit certain specifications.”

  The term commercial eugenics was later adopted and widely broadcast by the economist Jeremy Rifkin, first in his article “Patent pending: Consumer-driven science and the new eugenics,” Mother Jones, May–June 1998: “Prenatal testing has already prepared the way for the acceptance of genetic intervention and commercial eugenics. Amniocentesis, the oldest and most widely used method, dates back to the 1960s. Although prenatal tests can detect genetic disorders, as of now, less than 15 percent of those disorders can be treated. This means that for the vast number of seriously debilitating or fatal diseases that are testable in the womb, the only choices are abortion or bringing the baby to term.”

  In 2002, Rifkin joined forces with conservative commentator William Kristol to sound the alarm about the dangers of commercial eugenics; see their letter to the editor, “Biotech battle,” Forbes, April 15, 2002: “The prospect of a Brave New World creates strange bedfellows, including us, a hawkish Reagan Republican and a dovish left intellectual and activist. But the issues of the biotech age invite us to think anew. Issue No. 1: human cloning. Humans have always thought of their children as a gift bestowed by God or a beneficent nature. In its place, the new cloned progeny would become the ultimate shopping experience, designed in advance, produced to specification and purchased in the biological marketplace. A child would no longer be a unique creation. Human cloning opens the door to a commercial eugenics civilization. Life science companies already have patented both human embryos and stem cells, giving them ownership and control of a new form of reproductive commerce with frightening implications for the future of society. We should not be fooled about the stakes. This is the first major test of the biotech age, a moment of decision for a civilization that may have gone too far already in the commercialization and destruction of the human and ecological worlds.”