10 John Fryer

There are few professionals out there who are willing to risk it all to stand on principle. In the case of John Fryer, it was professional esteem, respect, licensure, and, most of all, his livelihood. Only 50 years ago, society saw homosexuality as a scourge to be cured, removed, and eradicated. This discrimination was usually justified through religious or cultural context. The ignorance around homosexuality helped perpetuate myths that made it harder to research, discuss, and ultimately understand. This paper aims to review the life and work of Dr. John Fryer, from his humble beginnings to his professional standing at the end of his life.

General Biography

Dr. John Fryer was born on November 7, 1937, in Winchester, Kentucky. He later died on February 21, 2003, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Fryer grew up in Kentucky and dubbed himself a “Kentucky Farm Boy,” and graduated high school at the early at the at age of 15. According to Barry (2022), Fryer’s childhood friend Betty Lollis lauded him as a childhood prodigy from elementary school. Unfortunately, this also opened Fryer up to bullying by classmates, who identified him as “just a boy the boys laughed at and teased.” Sadly, these kids were also the only friends Fryer had growing up, so they became his closest friends. After receiving his bachelor’s degree from Transylvania University in Lexington, Fryer enrolled in medical school at Vanderbilt University at age 19. After completing his medical residency at Ohio State University, Fryer had multiple internships, including the Menninger Foundation in Topeka, Kansas, the University of Pennsylvania, and finally, Norris State Hospital, where he finished his residency (Barry, 2022).

During Fryer’s medical internship at the University of Pennsylvania, he experienced his first significant setback related to disclosing his sexual orientation. At dinner, Fryer told a family friend that he was gay, and it eventually made its way up to his administrator, who threatened to fire him or let him resign (Barry, 2022). According to Society (2017), Fryer’s time at the Menninger Foundation was especially difficult since he had recently lost his job at the University of Pennsylvania, while simultaneously having to guard against further ostracization. After completing his residency, Fryer joined the faculty at Temple University in Philadelphia to teach as a psychiatry professor until he retired in 2000. He liked to describe himself as a Kentucky farm boy.

Important Achievements

Fryer earned multiple awards during his career in psychology, including the Distinguished Alumnus award from Vanderbilt University and the Distinguished Service award from the Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists, now called the Association of LGBTQ+ Psychiatrists. The Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists, in coordination with the American Psychological Association, took the extraordinary step of creating the John E. Fryer, MD, Award to “honor individuals whose work has contributed to the mental health of sexual minorities” (APA, 2023). The John Fryer Award is one of only eight Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) awards offered by the American Psychiatric Association. There are only 35 psychologists with their awards named after them, making it a very prestigious honor for Fryer.

According to Lenzer (2003), Fryer specialized in the treatment of drug and alcohol addiction, as well as death and bereavement. This led to Fryer eventually starting his own practice, focusing on treating those with addiction. Fryer was also a major source of support for those suffering through the AIDS crisis during the 1990s. Fryer would see patients in his home instead of his practice at Temple University to protect their anonymity. Fryer continued to experience professional difficulties, as he watched his colleagues earn tenure or move up the promotion ladder while he remained stagnant. Fryer carried a sense of resentment toward his career progression for what it could have been, had he not faced discrimination as a homosexual. Additionally, Fryer never had a long-term relationship, which left him feeling like he was left behind or always on the fringe. It wasn’t until much later that the magnitude of his contributions to the field were realized and appreciated.

Historical Context

According to Congress (n.d.), the years of 1966 through 1969 were a particularly unpleasant time to be LGBTQ+ in America, so much so it was named the Stonewall Era by the gay community after the Stonewall Inn. The inn served as one of the most popular gay bars in New York City, drawing the ire of regular law enforcement scrutiny and police raids due to the criminalization of homosexuality at the time. The Stonewall Inn was no stranger to monthly police raids, but the raid on June 28, 1969 finally boiled over when the Stonewall was raided, along with 5 other gay clubs. Gay patrons were regularly exposed to beatings, arrests, and sometimes hospitalization. This steeled the will of the gay community to organize a resistance or uprising called the Stonewall Uprising. The response was swift and severe, due to being labeled as “riots” by law enforcement. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the end of police raids and discrimination faced by the gay community. It was just the first time there was organized resistance to the marginalization of the community.

According to Salerno (2022), during the 1960s and early 1970s, homosexuality was classified as a mental illness. If it were discovered that a psychologist or psychiatrist was homosexual, they would lose their medical license due to an identified mental illness. This drove anyone who was gay or lesbian underground out of fear of being discovered. Fryer challenged the notion at that time that no psychiatrist could be gay, stating “I am a homosexual. I am a psychiatrist. Like most of you in this room, I am a member of the American Psychiatric Association, and I am proud of that membership” (Woody et al., 2016).

Leading up to the 1972 American Psychiatric Association meeting, the movement to challenge stigmatizing beliefs homosexuality was picking up steam. Research published by Dr. Alfred Kiensey was considered to be the first significant work leading to changes in beliefs about sexuality and sexual behavior in men that (Kirby, 2003) “began to change the popular imagination in American society with Sexual Behavior in the Human Male.” (Kirby, 2003). Findings in the Kinsey Report suggested that (Kirby, 2003) “37% of the population had some sort of overt homosexual act to the point of orgasm, and that only 4% of the population was exclusively homosexual.” This work was expanded by Dr. Evelyn Hooker, who challenged the inclusion of homosexuality in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) by using sampling and statistics to reject homosexuality as pathological (Kirby, 2003). Hooker went on to elaborate in her paper “The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual” (Hooker, 1957) that psychology was being used to isolate and punish the homosexual community in other countries.

Fryer was influenced by a few prominent figures in psychology, including Barbara Gittings, the gay rights activist who initially convinced Fryer to come forward. According 217 Boxes (2018), there were no gay psychiatrists or psychologists willing to come forward, so Fryer felt the need to help bring about change. Fryer agreed to make a speech in front of his peers at the American Psychiatric Association annual meeting, but only if he hid his identity under the guise of “Dr. Anonymous,” using a Nixon Mask, voice-altering microphone, and baggy jacket (Woody et al. (2016).  Fryer went on to influence other gay and lesbian psychologists and psychiatrists to acknowledge who they were. Unfortunately Fryer was later fired by an administrator for his sexual orientation, reasoning that they could tolerate Fryer being gay or flamboyant, but not gay and flamboyant. By breaking the dam as Dr. Anonymous, Fryer acknowledged that anyone can be gay and be a psychologist. After the American Psychiatric Association finally agreed, they rescinded homosexuality as a mental disorder in the DSM.

Historical Impact

Fryer’s contributions drove the gay rights movement from a secret annual meeting out into the light. The impact of his speech was extensive due to the fact that it called a psychological foundation into question. At the American Psychiatric Association meeting in 1972, Fryer shattered the long-standing notion that it would be impossible to be a successful psychologist and be homosexual, as it was presumed to be a mental disorder that peers would easily identify. For some, it also called into question what else the APA or field of psychology had incorrectly presumed, eventually extending to United Nations Human Rights Commission. According to Kirby (2003), “On April 24, 2002, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights had to face, for the first time, a resolution on human rights and sexual orientation.” This lead to the entire UN grappling with what should be considered a human right. On top of that, Poland and Brazil sponsored a resolution showing a trend toward acceptance and challenging beliefs about sexuality expanding past the US and Western Europe.

Psychology has progressed from Fryer’s influence for multiple reasons. Fryer endured hiding his sexual orientation his entire adolescence and part of adulthood out of fear that it would damage his reputation. But due to the steps he took, others where were able to follow in his footsteps. In fact, the first openly gay APA chief executive and medical director, Dr. Saul Levin, would not have had the chance to serve had the stigma of being gay not been dismantled in the medical and psychological profession.

According to Gordon and Twiss Houting (2016), Fryer also had an impact on the expanding expansion of the secret clubSecret Club of Gay Psychiatrist Psychiatrists, or “Gay PA”, to the now prominent Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists. Fryer also insipired over 100 gay Psychologist psychologists that attended the 1972 APA meeting to “pull their courage by their bootstraps and discover ways in which you as a homosexual psychiatrist can be appropriately involved in movements which attempt to change the attitudes of both homosexuals and heterosexuals towards homosexuality. For all of us having something to lose.” During his speech, Fryer keyed in on how damaging the DSM’s label of homosexuality was, not only to patients, but also doctors and the profession as a whole.

References

217 Boxes. (2018). Retrieved from http://217boxes.com/: http://217boxes.com/john-fryer-biography/

APA. (2023). John Fryer Award. Retrieved from psychiatry.org: https://www.psychiatry.org/membership/awards-leadership-opportunities/awards/fryer-award

Barry, E. (2022). He Spurred a Revolution in Psychiatry. Then He ‘Disappeared.’. Retrieved from The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/02/health/john-fryer-psychiatry.html

Congress, L. o. (n.d.). Library of Congress. Retrieved from 1969: The Stonewall Uprising: https://guides.loc.gov/lgbtq-studies/stonewall-era

Gordon, A., & Twiss Houting, B. A. (2016). Unmasking “Dr. Anonymous” in the John Fryer Papers. Pennsylvania Legacies, pp. 3-5.

Hooker, E. (1957). The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual. Journal of Projective Techniques 21:1, 18-31. doi:10.1080/08853126.1957.10380742

Kirby, M. (2003). The 1973 deletion of homosexuality as a psychiatric disorder: 30 years on. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 674-677.

Lenzer, J. (2003, March 22). Retrieved from National Library of Medicine : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1125557/

Salerno, J. A. (2022). Revisiting and Disavowing the New York Academy of Medicine’s 1964 Report on Homosexuality. The New York Academy of Medicine, 608-609.

Society, K. H. (2017, July). kshs.org. Retrieved from Kansas Historial Sociaty: https://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/menninger-clinic/12147

Barry, E. (2022, May 2). He spurred a revolution in psychiatry. then he “disappeared.” The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/02/health/john-fryer-psychiatry.html

Gordon, A., & Twiss Houting, B. A. (2016). Unmasking “dr. anonymous” in the John Fryer Papers. Pennsylvania Legacies, 16(1), 3. https://doi.org/10.5215/pennlega.16.1.0003

Hooker, E. (1957). The adjustment of the male overt homosexual. Journal of Projective Techniques, 21(1), 18–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/08853126.1957.10380742

John Fryer Award. Psychiatry.org – John Fryer Award. (n.d.). https://www.psychiatry.org/membership/awards-leadership-opportunities/awards/fryer-award

John Fryer Biography. 217 Boxes of Dr. Henry Anonymous. (2018, April 3). http://217boxes.com/john-fryer-biography/

Kirby, M. (2003). The 1973 deletion of homosexuality as a psychiatric disorder: 30 Years on. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 37(6), 674–677. https://doi.org/10.1080/j.1440-1614.2003.01269.x

Lenzer, J. (2003, March 22). John Fryer. BMJ : British Medical Journal. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1125557/

Menninger Clinic. Kansas Historical Society. (n.d.). https://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/menninger-clinic/12147

Psychological specialties in historical context. News. (n.d.). https://www.teachpsych.org/ebooks/psychspec

Research guides: LGBTQIA+ studies: A resource guide: 1969: The stonewall uprising. 1969: The Stonewall Uprising – LGBTQIA+ Studies: A Resource Guide – Research Guides at Library of Congress. (n.d.). https://guides.loc.gov/lgbtq-studies/stonewall-era

Salerno, J. A. (2022). Revisiting and disavowing the New York Academy of Medicine’s 1964 report on homosexuality. Journal of Urban Health, 99(4), 607–609. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-022-00668-w

Woody, W. D., Miller, R. L., & Wozniak, W. J. (Eds.).;. (2016). Psychological Specialties in Historical Context: Enriching the classroom experience for teachers and students. Retrieved from http://teachpsych.org/ebooks/