richard c friedman 79 a psychiatrist who challenged the notion that samesex attraction was curable died march 31 in an important book he challenged the widely held freudian notion that samesex attraction was curable finding it instead rooted in biologycreditvia sue matorinmay 4 2020in the 1980s when marriage and adopting children seemed impossible dreams for gay men the psychoanalyst richard c friedman became their championhis 1988 book male homosexuality a contemporary psychoanalytic perspective showed that sexual orientation was largely biological and presented a case that helped undermine the belief held by most freudian analysts at the time that homosexuality was a pathology that could somehow be curedi felt an ethical obligation to find the reasons for antihomosexual prejudice he once told an interviewer his wife susan matorin a clinical social worker at the weill medical college of cornell put it more plainly straight people had the same personality issues and they got away with murder but gay people were stigmatized and he didnt think that was rightdr friedmans motivation wasnt political he very much felt like you followed the science and it didnt matter what the political backdrop was his son jeremiah a screenwriter in los angeles said in a phone interviewalthough the american psychiatric association the dominant mental health organization in the united states changed its diagnostic manual in 1973 and stopped classifying homosexuality as an illness psychoanalysts continued to describe homosexuality as a perversion and many believed it could be cureddr friedman using studies of identical twins and theories of developmental psychology made a scholarly rather than ideological case that biology rather than upbringing played a significant role in sexual orientationit was a direct challenge to popular freudian theories and thrust him into the center of debates among the more established heavyweights of psychoanalysis it led to a model in which analyst and patient simply assumed that homosexuality was intrinsic said jack drescher a professor of psychiatry at columbia university who knew dr friedman and would later offer his own critiques of dr friedmans theory as new approaches to working with gay and lesbian patients emergedgiven that he was a younger colleague it was brave of him to take older experts on professor drescher said but it was in keeping with who he was he had an edge and wasnt afraid of anybody he saiddr friedman died on march 31 at his home in manhattan though the specific cause was not clear ms matorin said he had for years been grappling with a number of health problems including cardiac and metabolic conditions he was 79richard c friedman was born on jan 20 1941 in the bronx the oldest of three sons of william friedman and henrietta fuerstein his father was a food inspector for the city his mother a teacherhis parents instilled in their sons a deep love of learning all three would go on to become doctors and of music insisting on violin and piano lessons dr friedman would help pay for medical school by playing the