title: Sullivan's closet: a reappraisal of Harry Stack Sullivan's life and his pioneering role in American psychiatry.
abstract: Although Harry Stack Sullivan (1892-1949) was one of the foremost figures in American psychiatry, much about his personal life remains obscure, this despite a 1983 biography by Helen Swick Perry that hints at, but ultimately denies, his homosexuality. Rumors about Sullivan's homosexuality, fueled by his living for 22 years with another man, his "foster son," were widespread during his life. Interviews I conducted with many of his contemporaries--colleagues, students, and friends--yielded sharply conflicting stories, but do substantiate that Sullivan was, for his time, openly homosexual. In addition, I discovered that Sullivan's experimental treatment ward for schizophrenics at the Sheppard-Pratt Hospital in Baltimore, which he ran from 1925 to 1929, and which brought him worldwide attention, was more daring and radical than his biographer has written. Sullivan was, perhaps, the first to use para-professionals to treat hospitalized schizophrenics, an approach that was considered revolutionary in the 1920s. What was not widely known, though, was that almost all the men on the all-male ward during those five years, both the ward attendants, whom Sullivan selected and trained, and the patients, were gay.
authors.affiliation: Center for Research and Education in Sexuality, San Francisco State University, CA, USA.
authors.forename: M S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Allen
mesh_terms: D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D018451:Homosexuality, Male / Q000266:history*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011570:Psychiatry / Q000266:history*; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000266:history / Q000628:therapy; D014481:United States