Fredric Wertham
Description
Fredric Wertham was born in Munich. After studying mecicin in Germany and Enlgand, he was influenced by the work of Sigmun Freud and decided to specialize in psychiatry. In 1922 he moved to the U.S. to join Johns Hopkins Hospital in Maryland, and he became a U.S. citizen in 1927. In 1932 he moved to New York City to examine convicted felons for the New York Court of General Sessions. In 1946 he opened a clinic in the basement of St. Philip's Church in Harlem, where he specializing in treating black teenagers. In 1954 he published his most influential work, Seduction of the Innocent, in which he described the lurid violence, sex, drug use, and other crimes depicted in comic books (including crime, superhero and horror comics) and his belief — stated as fact — that these books have harmful effects on the childhood development. In addition to the obvious violence and sexual titillation, he also found hidden sexual imagery in background drawings as well as evidence that Batman and Robin were romantically involved and Wonder Woman was a lesbian. Public shock at these revelations led to a U.S. Congressional inquiry into the comic book industry and resulted in the creation of the Comics Code. In 1953 he also appeared before the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, to which he testified about the link between comic books and juvenile crime. As a result, comic book publishers voluntarily adopted the Comics Code Authority to censor their own content. Wertham went on to write on other topics of interest to him, such as the psychological effects of racial segregation, or how medical professionals worked with Nazis in the German holocaust. He worked as a professor of psychiatry at New York University, a senior psychiatrist in the New York City Department of Hospitals, and a psychiatrist and the director of the Mental Hygiene Clinic at the Bellevue Hospital Center. He died in 1981 at his retirement home in Kempton, Pennsylvania at age 86. Wertham's research papers were donated to the Library of Congress in 2010, and as a result they became publicly available. Investigation into them records has shown that his research did not support the conclusions he made in Seduction of the Innocent, and that his warnings about the harmful effects of comic books are largely baseless.
Books
The World of Fanzines
There are well over 200 fanzines in current distribution, originating in almost every state in the U.S. as well as in Canada, England, Germany, Ireland, Spain, and Sweden. This is the first book about them. Few persons outside the science fiction field (where, historically, fanzine publication appears to have begun) know the meaning of the portmanteau word, fanzine (amateur fan plus magazine). Fanzines are published, written, and illustrated by young persons, usually well under 30, and bear such names as ANDROmeda, BeABohema, Comickazi, Granfalloon, and Varolika. The history of the genre is brief, dating from the 1930s, but many of the publishers and contributors have achieved considerable distinction as writers, including Poul Anderson, Ray Bradbury, and Richard Lupoff. Coming to this serious study of an unusual subject with his considerable expertise in the field of violence, Dr. Wertham has been struck, first, by the nonviolent, creative aspects of the genre and, second, by the amateur status of fanzines. His conclusion, which will surprise many readers, is that herein may lie a message for our unheroic age.
The Circle of Guilt
In 1955 a New York City court sentenced Puerto Rican immigrant and teenage gang member Frank Santana to twenty-five years to life for second-degree murder. Fredric Wertham, one of the most influential authorities on child psychology in the twentieth century, was outraged and felt compelled to write The Circle of Guilt. He had conducted multiple interviews with Santana and created an extensive psychological profile on him. Wertham saw unsettling patterns in the ways in which the case was reported, investigated, and deliberated. Media portrayed the victim, a white teenager named Bill Blankenship, as a "model boy" and reported the killing as "unprovoked." In the furor surrounding the case, Santana was often called a "hoodlum." Wertham suspected otherwise. In The Circle of Guilt, the psychiatrist uncovers a paradigm of fear, racism, distrust, and prejudice. He argues that the press's presentation of the case reflected extreme cultural bigotry. Wertham also reveals Blankenship's activity within teen gangs and asserts that Santana's actions were shaped in part by his unmediated exposure to mass media.
Dark Legend
A Bantam Matrix, #SM1035 With a special essay by the author
The Show of Violence
In our dreams and fantasies, we are all murderers, leveling whole cities with our unconscious hates and fears. Most of us are content merely to dream. But in some, their dreams lunge out into nightmarish reality: mothers kill their own children; shy, gentle boys become mass murderers; old men lash out in violence. What is it that pushes them beyond fantasies into brutal violence? What are the mental states which lead to murder? How does the mind of the murderer differ from that of a normal person? How does society contribute to murder? Can a murderer be completely sane? These are just a few of the urgent questions which Fredric Wertham, author of Dark Legend, discusses in The Show of Violence.
A Sign for Cain
In his first complete study of human violence, Dr. Wertham writes: "From my psychiatric and sociological studies I have arrived at a double thesis. On the one hand, violence is becoming much more entrenched in our social life than people are willing to believe. On the other hand, it is in our power eventually to conquer and abolish it." His book is a shocking, unsparing analysis of violence in all its aspects, which poses "the great question before mankind: Can we abolish violence without violence?" For concrete facts about the climate of violence, this distinguished psychiatrist and social critic draws on sociology, criminology, history, art and literature, current events, and his own case files. His style is felicitous, pithy, and clear, free of jargon, and informed with human understanding.