Psychologists' Attitudes toward Homosexual Psychotherapy Clients

Abstract

Forty male and forty female psychotherapists were asked to rate both a hypothetical client, based on an intake case history, and their concept of the “psychologically healthy person” on a semantic differential scale. Participants were assigned case histories where the hypothetical client was a heterosexual male, heterosexual female, homosexual male, or homosexual female. Attributions of psychological health were found to differ as a function of sexual orientation of client and sex of therapist. No significant difference was found between evaluation of male homosexual and female homosexual clients. Results are discussed in terms of the significance of perceived violations of sex‐role stereotypes in the evaluation of psychological health.