that it can be cured, and that it is a disorder associated with "severe unconscious self-damage". Publication history First published in 1956 by Hill & Wang, the book went through numerous different editions. A seventh edition was published in 1971. Reception Media commentary Homosexuality: Disease or Way of Life? received a positive review in Time, which endorsed Bergler's views and praised him for discrediting "popular misconceptions" such as that "homosexuality is an incurable, hereditary condition" and therefore normal for some people. However, the book was greeted with an "outpouring of denunciatory rage" from gay rights activists, according to Ronald Bayer. Bayer contrasts this response to that accorded to previous works by authors who had argued that homosexuality is a disease, writing that the outrage represented "a shifting tone in the discussion of psychiatry within the homophile movement", and was partly due to awareness that the book could be used by opponents of gay rights. The gay periodicals such as Mattachine Review and The Ladder published articles critiquing the book. It was discussed in the Mattachine Review by authors such as Sam Morford, the journalist Gilbert Cant, Peter Jackson, Robert Phillips, Luthor Allen, and Richard Mayer, and was reviewed in The Ladder by Carol Hales. Hales argued that Bergler was "anti-homosexual" and refused to recognize a distinction between stable and unstable homosexuals. She questioned whether he believed his own claims, and suggested that he might have studied "only emotionally immature and mentally disturbed homosexuals." She considered it regrettable that Homosexuality: Disease or Way of Life? had been published at a time when gay people were beginning to gain greater acceptance, because it could be used by "bigots and the prejudiced", but concluded that it could not "delay the march to progress." She urged gay readers of the book to consider it a challenge and refute his claims. According to Bayer, Morford argued that because Bergler had simply defined homosexuality as a disease, he was not writing as a scientist, and that rather than being objective, Bergler's work was motivated by "maniacal moralism". Morford referred to Bergler as a pompous neo-Freudian. Cant's review was the subject of several letters to the Mattachine Review, and Cant responded to these letters. According to Bayer, Phillips argued that Bergler had "drawn his conclusions from an unrepresentative sample of homosexuals", while the authors of letters to the Mattachine Review compared Bergler's approach to a sociological study