Audio Interview, Dean Hannotte, undated
- BRUCE JEWELL: Dean you're a counselor here
- at the Ninth Street Center.
- Is that correct?
- DEAN HANNOTTE: Yes, it is.
- BRUCE JEWELL: As such, you're obviously
- familiar with Dr. Rosenfels' book, Homosexuality
- and the Creative Process, which was published in 1971
- or thereabouts.
- As I remember, this book didn't get a great deal of press,
- but it did stir controversy among those who read it.
- Could you tell me something about the book
- in terms of what the hypothesis or theory of the book is?
- I know it's not involving changing homosexuals
- to heterosexuals just to change them to heterosexuals.
- But that's about all I know about it.
- DEAN HANNOTTE: Yeah.
- Well, the book presents a rather radical thesis, in my opinion.
- It presents the thesis that homosexuals
- are in a superior position to heterosexuals
- in finding out the real roots of their own creative reachings
- in life.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Those are fighting words.
- (unintelligible).
- DEAN HANNOTTE: (Hannotte laughs) Yes, they are.
- And by the creative reachings, he's
- referring to everything about men
- and about women, that is searching for a better
- life, a more complex world to live in that fulfills
- his highest aspirations.
- And the thesis of the book is that by denying
- our homosexual feelings, we have cut off
- the best parts of our own inner feelings,
- in our own inner capacities to reach out to one another,
- and that the denial of these feelings and these capacities
- has crippled men's ability to cooperate,
- to get along in all kinds of areas of life.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Are you saying, when you're saying men,
- are you referring to all men?
- Or men who would call themselves homosexuals, if asked, or asked
- about their sexual preferences?
- DEAN HANNOTTE: Well, I'm referring
- to all men, because whether or not
- they ever felt any explicitly homosexual impulse,
- they are still programmed by the anti-homosexual conditioning
- society, so that in fact, they do not have the opportunity
- to find out whether or not they could
- become practicing homosexuals, or committed homosexuals.
- As far as I can determine, most men
- have latent homosexual capacities
- of a very strong variety.
- I think civilization is, if you will,
- a homosexual phenomenon, that much
- of what goes on in the highly complicated ways in which men
- cooperate and build together is based
- on a tremendous sense of feeling for one another,
- that could easily flow into sexual channels
- if it were permitted.
- And therefore, the reason it's not happening
- is because of the tremendous prejudice and barrier
- that is erected by society against explicit homosexual
- feeling.
- They really feel very threatened by it.
- And the reason is, because as homosexuals, they are one,
- in touch with a capacity which is denied by taboo to most
- people in the world.
- And two, by virtue of being excluded from society's norms,
- by being taught, really at a very early age, if they felt
- homosexual early, that society is not on their side,
- that this encourages them at a very early age
- to seek out the truth in areas different from the normal
- avenues of truth in society.
- And this can be an advantage.
- This is a tremendous advantage to those
- who want to expand man's understanding, want
- to find new answers.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Well, I can see where
- being a member of almost any minority group
- would tend to cause one to question
- and perhaps even become more aware out of a need.
- On one hand to question out of a need to find out what's
- happened, why things should be uncomfortable,
- as they often are.
- And two, to become aware as a matter of survival.
- But I don't know that those would be
- uniquely homosexual attributes.
- It seems to me that they'd be found in most minority groups.
- DEAN HANNOTTE: I think in homosexuals,
- we're looking at a group of people
- who have found it possible and in many cases, necessary,
- to accept something coming up in them that is very radical
- and has very sinister implications to society.
- And this is similar to the way society regards many minority
- groups.
- The difference is that in becoming homosexual,
- a person is accepting something that makes him more beautiful,
- or gives him access to more of his inherent goodness
- as a human being.
- After all, if you can love another person,
- that's to society's benefit, no matter how you cut it.
- And that's what homosexuality does.
- It takes away a barrier to intimacy
- which, when left standing, freezes out
- most kinds of interchanges that men can have
- with men, and women with women.
- BRUCE JEWELL: I can see in the point being made,
- in a sense that it's not being made,
- but it's there, that in normal everyday human relationships,
- there's a social structure which directs people
- to act in a certain manner.
- They get married and have children or whatever.
- And you don't have to think too much about it
- if you're heterosexual.
- If you're homosexual, you really have
- to find out your own foundation, your own starting point,
- and build something there that is very real to you.
- This in itself, I would suppose, is a creative act.
- DEAN HANNOTTE: Yes, it certainly is.
- And it also explains why many homosexuals are in trouble
- in the world, in terms of not being
- able to establish meaningful relationships. (unintelligible)
- BRUCE JEWELL: Well, what kinds of solutions
- are you are offering?
- How, if I were to approach you, and said to you, look,
- in the last year, I've had three relationships.
- Every one of them has gone nowhere.
- What would you say to me?
- DEAN HANNOTTE: Well, I would say--
- BRUCE JEWELL: Obviously, I'm asking you,
- in a question like that, what can you
- offer me that's different, and how would you go about it?
- DEAN HANNOTTE: Yes, well, in the first place,
- we don't try to remake people.
- That's one of the things we believe in, that people come
- to life with certain resources.
- And furthermore, that some people
- have more resources than other people to grow.
- And we make it very clear to people
- who attempt to become involved in the world of growth
- that we have established here at the center,
- that some people may not find it suited to them.
- The world that we have created here
- is the world of interpersonal challenge,
- as well as support, so that we feel
- that it is our right and our responsibility
- to assist people in facing their inadequacies as well
- as their strengths.
- And this, of course, has to be done in a very responsible way
- in order to not get out of hand or become sadistic,
- or become simply meaningless.
- BRUCE JEWELL: I've often been struck that among all men,
- there is a particular fear of what is called passivity.
- Which to me, at least, means not so much passivity
- in its more positive sense as acceptance
- or being willing to be acted upon
- rather than acting upon someone else.
- Now, it's my personal belief that this
- is a primary problem among homosexual men,
- because they had to overcome this.
- There isn't the woman who's been trained
- in the passive, accepting role for them to turn to.
- They have to turn to other men, who are afraid,
- it seems to me, of taking a passive, accepting role.
- DEAN HANNOTTE: Yes, well we can--
- BRUCE JEWELL: Do you face that problem?
- DEAN HANNOTTE: Yes, we do.
- It's one of the crucial problems that creative men face,
- homosexual men face.
- I agree with you.
- We would expand your terminology a bit,
- and include the concepts of masculinity and femininity
- within the homosexual culture itself.
- As Paul's book explains, human nature
- becomes very much a more understandable thing
- when you realize that people, regardless of their gender,
- develop along lines that have either
- to do with as Jung would have said,
- extroversion or introversion.
- We're always taking that one step further, and use the terms
- masculine and feminine.
- In other words, there are masculine men,
- there are feminine men, in the same breakdown
- that might be taken with women.
- As far as passivity is concerned,
- when you look at a feminine man who really wants
- in himself to love deeply and fully,
- and to give in a submissive way, this
- can have very creative potential,
- especially if he's able to find a similarly
- motivated masculine man who wants
- to be beautiful to that other person, who wants
- to, in a constructive way, dominate or well,
- be masculine, be everything that the word masculine implies.
- And we deal very much in our work here
- with the concept of psychological polarity,
- the way in which these two different types interact
- with one another, because we feel
- that as a model of human relationships, it's very rich.
- It's also very radical, because most people who
- are at all liberated from cultural stereotypes
- react violently to the terms masculinity and femininity,
- because they've been so abused and misused
- in a culture that is insistent upon men being restricted
- to a masculine image, and women being
- restricted to a feminine image.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Can you give me a fairly concise definition
- of how you see masculinity and how you see femininity?
- DEAN HANNOTTE: Well, sure.
- I would just say, take those terms
- in their most rich meaning and extract everything from them
- that has anything to do with gender or genitals.
- And you'll find that the basic concepts that we use here,
- a masculine person is one who is assertive,
- who is able to take responsibility
- for other people, who is interested in power in its most
- constructive sense, who channels energies towards manipulating
- the world, his world, and the people in it,
- so that the world becomes richer in the process.
- A feminine person is a person who
- is oriented toward their inner feelings, who needs,
- as it were, to be in love with someone or something,
- and uses those feelings to orient himself to that love
- object, to produce insight, to produce understanding,
- to really in that sense, become an influence on the development
- of that person.
- Getting in touch with your inner identity
- gives you all the more access to independence,
- from social roles to start with.
- If you really know what your inner needs are,
- then you can stand up to society with a lot more
- vigor and a lot more inner resources, because you'll
- have those resources.
- They will be there.
- And a feminine man, for instance,
- who cannot face his inner feminine sensitivity,
- and who is always blocking it by adopting a machismo stance
- towards life, really ends up being far more dependent
- on those very machismo images than the feminine man who is
- able to accept his sensitivity and finds that he is free now
- to go his own way and explore his own world,
- and find that it is quite different from conventional
- society.
- The more people learn about themselves, the more free
- they become of convention.
- Because then they can establish their own world,
- and their own identity within that world
- with much more assurance and a much greater sense
- of inner identity.
- BRUCE JEWELL: So you would say for example,
- when we talk about machismo, a man who
- has to project a masculine image, that is perhaps
- at its most obvious level, wearing cowboy hats
- and boots everywhere.
- And is in fact, continuously threatened
- that that image may crumble under some kind of impact.
- Whereas a person who has developed
- in accordance with his self, rather than with an image which
- is projected in essence from outside,
- is likely to be stronger and better able to take
- care of himself.
- So in fact, even a feminine person,
- in becoming that person, almost goes
- into the opposite in that he begins
- to get the strength that the person preoccupied
- with masculinity is trying to achieve.
- DEAN HANNOTTE: Exactly.
- As a matter of fact, we teach people that the more in touch
- you become with your inner sensitivity,
- the more you may find that you'll have to react in a kind
- of abrupt manner towards the world,
- because the world in general has no use for people who really
- know themselves .
- And this is something that homosexuals have to face.
- And it's something that anybody who
- wants to get into a deeper understanding of life
- has to face.
- That conventional morality and conventional ways
- of looking at things really are set up
- for the-- well the greatest good of the greatest number.
- But they also are significant deterrents
- towards real social progress, because real social progress
- relies on people understanding themselves in the deepest ways.
- And being able to have the flexibility
- with which to experiment with new modalities
- of relationships.
- BRUCE JEWELL: So what you're saying in essence
- is that truth and integrity are enough to bring one
- into disrepute.
- DEAN HANNOTTE: Oh, exactly.
- BRUCE JEWELL: That's a pretty heavy condemnation
- of the way things are done.
- DEAN HANNOTTE: Yes, and that's the way
- I'm sure most people here at the center feel.
- We feel that we're a very revolutionary force in society.
- And that's why we don't have any respect
- at all for conventional psychiatrists, psychoanalysts,
- or psychologists.
- I mean, there are always exceptions, and many of them
- have done good things.
- But basically, we feel that it's the dropout, it's the radical,
- it's the deviant who is in a position
- to extend truth and right in civilization.
- And any student of history you can
- see that this is in fact, true for the most creative people.
- But we also recommend that this mode of existence
- be adopted by all those who feel that they don't need
- to cloak themselves with a shield of false prestige
- and authoritarian power, such as most psychoanalysts do.
- You find that most of the prestige that these people hide
- behind is a cloak to disguise the fact that they really
- don't understand other people.
- But more than that, they don't care about other people.
- And homosexuals are in a very good position
- to understand this very well.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Yeah, I think there's
- a lot of support from what you're
- saying about those professions.
- I know from working in hospitals that psychiatrists
- have a reputation of having the greatest difficulty of getting
- along with their staff and so on,
- because they're so authoritarian.
- And that's not an ideal situation to grow up in.
- Now, role-playing is something that we've kind of touched on.
- What particularly concerns me is the type of role-playing
- that we see of the I want a real man,
- and I want to be a real man type.
- We both seem to agree that this as an image of oneself
- and putting that demand upon others,
- is a real obstacle to becoming an independent person,
- and a complete person, a person who
- is responsive to himself and to his environment.
- How do you handle that problem?
- Do people come in here, who are devoted,
- say, to the machismo image?
- DEAN HANNOTTE: Sure.
- They do.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Do they come in here with problems, and how
- do they respond?
- DEAN HANNOTTE: Well we--
- BRUCE JEWELL: They might be very threatening.
- You know (unintelligible)--
- DEAN HANNOTTE: Yes.
- Sure.
- Well, you know, you find out that most people out there who
- are say living as a machismo type are
- hiding their inner femininity.
- And on the other hand, many people
- who seem to flaunt a kind of superficial feminine capacity
- are basically masculine people showing off
- and trying to look good.
- So what we teach people tends to pull the rug out
- from under them.
- That's the first thing it does.
- The second thing it does, if they have the capacity
- to get to the next step, is it liberates them.
- And it makes them realize that they
- don't have to play games of that sort with themselves.
- That, in fact, if they want really to be assertive,
- say, in some big way, some responsible way,
- that by understanding it and understanding that it's really
- expressing something very beautiful of them,
- that they can approach it much more calmly, much less
- defensively, and with the support of more people.
- Because after all, if you're simply
- on display, if you're, you know, wearing a costume of some sort,
- you're not really getting the love of other people.
- That isn't the point.
- The point is that you're entertaining people.
- So really, you're just being an entertainer.
- But what we feel is that the basic motivations for human
- intimacy have to do with things like love and power,
- and how they interact, so that a person who has a masculine
- side, he has-- by the way, I do--
- who needs love, is not likely to be very long contented
- with, say, wearing a cowboy hat and an outfit in a gay bar,
- because although that might get you attention,
- and although it's certainly fun, it wouldn't get me
- the kind of love that I really want to pursue,
- the kind of life that I've cut out for myself.
- So that the kind of assertiveness
- I would be talking about is the assertiveness that
- comes with knowing what's right and doing what's right,
- and being able to help other people do the same.
- It's a basic gut level sense of morality,
- if you will, that governs my behavior
- and which characterizes my life, and which other people can
- perceive and pick up on, and if they have it in them to do it,
- love.
- BRUCE JEWELL: All right.
- Now, you've stated quite unhesitatingly
- that you have a masculine psyche.
- How did you arrive at this conclusion?
- (Hannotte laughs)
- And how do other people arrive at the conclusion
- that they have feminine psyches?
- DEAN HANNOTTE: Yes.
- BRUCE JEWELL: These are new vocabularies.
- DEAN HANNOTTE: Yes, they are.
- BRUCE JEWELL: They're not immediately
- understandable to me.
- DEAN HANNOTTE: Well, I don't blame you.
- But I think that they're elemental kinds of concepts,
- in that working with them for any time at all,
- they would become natural to you,
- especially working in this environment.
- That's what we find, at any rate,
- that they really become like second nature.
- They're really non-technical jargon, essentially,
- they're very basic kinds of ways of describing people.
- I found out that I had a masculine psyche
- through being Paul's student, and also through being
- his lover for many years.
- I originally set out in life thinking that my need for love
- was so upsetting and so appalling,
- in the sense that it was upsetting me
- and radically changing a lot of my expectations of life.
- And also that I saw that there was so little
- love in the world, that I decided
- that the least I could do at this point in history
- would be to be a provider of love for other people.
- And so I went around kind of masochistically doing things
- for other people in a way that was essentially selfish.
- Essentially I was saying, I need some love,
- but I don't know how to get it.
- So I'll show some to you and then maybe you'll
- be nice enough and see something in me worth loving.
- Well, those kind of dynamics don't really
- work that well, in a big way.
- But I didn't understand it enough to do anything about it.
- Well, I met Paul in 1966.
- And he said that a lot of the problems I had had,
- particularly in regards to my attempts
- to love people in some sort of universal way, which
- never really allowed me to sustain a sense of commitment
- to them.
- In other words, every time I would feel in love with them,
- or that I could love them, it would break down
- into some kind of depression.
- So it wouldn't work.
- Well, he explained that this problem, very often
- happens in people who are masculine, who are basically
- assertive, who are basically movers, leaders,
- who don't have a world that loves them,
- who don't have really a responsive environment in which
- to manipulate, in which they can grow.
- And he said that he loved me.
- And that that kind of influence could really
- make me come alive.
- Well, of course as soon as he said that,
- I started coming alive.
- And I felt that I had hit upon something
- that was going to be very, very important to me.
- I began to see that a lot of my fraudulent attempts
- to love people in some kind of self-effacing way
- was essentially a kind of masochism of sorts.
- Feminine people who don't have ideals to focus upon, to love,
- really, to idealize, are very subject to sadistic breakdowns,
- where they want to satisfy their inner intensity
- through the medium of cruelty to others, or self-aggrandizement,
- or aggression.
- And these concepts of aggression, we
- keep very much distinct from the concept
- of a healthy assertiveness.
- And it's an important distinction,
- because after all, power has in our time
- become a very much maligned concept
- on the basis of confusing it, in my opinion, with aggression.
- Aggression we would define as the irresponsible use of force,
- be it psychological or otherwise,
- that undermines other people, and enriches yourself
- in some selfish way.
- Self-assertion, on the other, we would
- describe as the responsible, the healthy, the natural,
- and spontaneous use of energy in a way that liberates you
- towards a heightened sense of involvement with other people,
- and also enriches them if they have
- an interest in having a person like that in their life.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Yeah, I've sometimes thought vis-a-vis
- power that the whole idea of it has come into disrepute,
- because a lot of power has fallen into, through
- the encouragement of the kind of economic system we have,
- into adult children whose real motto is gimme, gimme, gimme,
- a whole lot of gimme and no give.
- (laughter)
- All right, now how does a feminine man,
- let us say, respond?
- Does he become effeminate?
- Is he necessarily an effeminate person?
- DEAN HANNOTTE: On the contrary, most effeminate men
- are using that characteristic to display attributes
- of themselves in a very exhibitionistic way
- and tend psychologically in that moment, to be masculine.
- BRUCE JEWELL: That's what I thought.
- Some of the most aggressive men I've met in the gay movement
- were sometimes transvestites or something like that.
- That's great. (Jewell laughs)
- DEAN HANNOTTE: Yes.
- As a matter--
- BRUCE JEWELL: A great deal of aggression or assertiveness
- about them.
- DEAN HANNOTTE: Yes.
- Actually, a feminine man who is exploring his inner depth
- is likely to become much less concerned with such things
- as social display.
- He's likely, if he can handle it,
- to become much more aware of his need
- to idealize another person, to really find
- beauty in another person, and he's
- going to get interested in things
- like protecting himself from a world that
- is very hostile to sensitive people in general.
- And also he's going to try to associate
- with assertive men who similarly can handle their own needs
- to be assertive, because that kind of interaction
- is really the most--
- one of the most constructive kinds of relationships
- there can be.
- Even the ancient Greeks knew this,
- because their model of the wise elder
- man and the beautiful young boy has
- many qualities similar to the model I'm describing.