Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 January 2018
Bene (1965) in a previous issue of this Journal, has summarized the main evidence for the view that homosexuality is a product of defective role training and is not a result of any direct genetic mechanism. It is becoming apparent that once a child has been pronounced as a boy or a girl it has to learn the forms of behaviour appropriate to its ascribed sex. The learning or conditioning mechanism by which the child learns to make its role performance congruent with its' ascribed sex is not understood. Comfort (1964) has suggested that sex-typing may be some form of imprinting. Hampson (1965) investigating several types of hermaphroditism has found evidence that if the gender role has to be changed after about the third year of life, increasing psychological difficulties are encountered. He also points out that the development of the gender role coincides with that of language.
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