Leslie Margolin
Biographic Data
| ID | 150689 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Leslie Margolin |
| GIVEN NAMES | Leslie |
| FAMILY NAME | Margolin |
| SIGNATURE | MARGOLIN L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Iowa |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5635-3778 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 125 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1987 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Therapist Self-Disclosure: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Why is absent/low sexual desire a mental disorder (except when patients identify as asexual)
This analytic essay challenges the psychiatric practice of treating absent/low sexual interest/desire/arousal as a mental disorder. It does so by calling attention to the fact that asexuality is treated differently than other non-heterosexual orientations. The current DSM contains no psychiatric diagnosis which has, as its primary symptom, same-sex sexual desire. Yet, the same DSM offers diagnoses such as male hypoactive sexual desire disorder an…
The Third Backdoor: How the DSM Casebooks Pathologized Homosexuality
This study argues that institutional psychiatry's pathologizing stance on homosexuality persisted after 1973, when the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It persisted not only through the well-known diagnoses of "ego-dystonic homosexuality" and "gender identity disorder of childhood," but also through case studies published in four editions of the DSM Casebooks (1…
Eros under patriarchy: A study of Basson’s ‘sexual response model’
Basson’s ‘sexual response model’ may have been developed to more accurately represent women’s sexual interests and behaviour – to challenge previous sexual desire models based on men’s sexuality – but in sex therapy practice, it appears to sanction men’s right to define and govern heterosexual interactions. Close readings of Basson’s case studies show how, instead of helping men better understand and adapt to women’s sexual needs, the sexual resp…
Madman in the Closet: "Homosexual Panic" in Nineteenth Century New England
This analysis uses trial records from the 1860s to explore a same-sex male relationship that devolved into panic and murder. The paper's goal is to better understand how, during the middle of the nineteenth century, men who had sexual feeling for other men were forced into spaces that were qualitatively different than our current understanding of "the closet." The paper concludes that what we now call "coming out" was not an option during this er…
Dilators, Q-tips, and Extortion: How to Train a Woman for Intercourse in the “Post-Feminist” Era
This article examines cases where heterosexual partners present dramatic discrepancies in sexual interest, with the male partner wanting more sex and the female partner wanting less. The main finding is that sex therapists tacitly assume that the couple will be better off if the female can come around to wanting more sex. The relation between that bias and the practice of sex therapy appears akin to the relation between a sculptor’s hands and the…
Rogerian Psychotherapy and the Problem of Power: A Foucauldian Interpretation
Guided by Foucault’s argument that “knowledge is an ‘invention’ behind which lies something completely different from itself: the play of instincts, impulses, desires, fears, and the will to appropriate,” this study considers the possibility that “nondirectivity” in Rogerian psychotherapy operates as a trope for power. This is partly based on Edwin Kahn’s observation that nondirective therapists may be less mindful of their own fallibility than o…
Freud, Dora, and Compulsory Sexuality
In this examination of Freud’s Dora, I show that Freud insisted that Dora’s comments and gestures reflected her underlying sexual motivations, despite her repeated denials and objections. The main point is that, just as Freud “ruled in” certain ways of talking, defining Dora’s sexual fantasies and dreams as acceptable and valid representations of her feelings, so also, Freud “ruled out” other kinds of talking, in particular, Dora’s accounts of no…
Sexual frigidity: The Social Construction of Masculine Privilege and Feminine Pathology
This study examines how mid-twentieth century physicians used the term ‘sexual frigidity’ to disempower women. Conceptualizing medical texts as accounts, I focus on how medical authors saw, described and explained sexual frigidity from the 1930s to the 1960s in both scientific writings and in those aimed at the general public as sex guides, marriage manuals and advice columns. The study concludes, that behind the pretext of treating a woman’s fri…
When a Slap is Not Just a Slap: The Construction of Normal Violence in Psychiatric Treatment
This research shows how a psychiatrist who was forced to surrender his medical license for criminal and ethical violations, including beatings, kidnapping, false imprisonment, and sexual abuse, was shielded from criticism by his professional colleagues. In their descriptions of his work, they routinely omitted details of his patients’ pain and injuries while concurrently proclaiming his therapeutic successes and good intentions. This single case …
Under the cover of kindness: The Invention of Social Work
In Under the Cover of Kindness, Leslie Margolin looks at how this country's social welfare system developed and with what results. From his detailed examination of social work texts, primarily case histories, he argues persuasively that social work disguises its own assumptions and claims to power as a way of further legitimizing its actions. By attending to these case histories, Margolin shows how social work entails not only the intrusion into …
Goodness Personified: The Emergence of Gifted Children
Goodness Personified: The Emergence of Gifted Children
This paper explores the emergence of “gifted children” as a recognized, enforceable social category. The paper begins with an examination of psychologists' representation of “gifted children” during the first decades of the century. In particular, attention is drawn to early gifted child scholars' emphasis on the superiority of the white upper classes and the inferiority of dark-skinned and working-class peoples. The second part of the paper deal…
Status Characteristics and Performance: An Assessment of their Effects on Acceptance of Influence
According to the theory of status characteristics, both status characteristics and performance information are combined to arrive at a single evaluation of the group member (combining). In this paper, an alternative formulation is proposed which maintains that status characteristics are used as a means of forming evaluations of group members only when members do not have access to performance information. When such information is available, it is…
Deviance on Record: Techniques for Labeling Child Abusers in Official Documents
An analysis of 120 official records was done to show how social workers “prove” that someone committed child abuse. That more than half of the suspects either denied the accusations or were not interviewed in the course of investigations was not much of a limitation, since suspects were routinely defined as “non-credible” witnesses. The only time their testimony was taken seriously was when they agreed with the allegations. Conversely, victims we…
Beyond Maternal Blame: Physical Child Abuse as a Phenomenon of Gender
This study begins with an examination of why men have been left out of physical child abuse research. An attempt is then made to include them by focusing on the motivational processes and social structures that differentiate men's physical child abuse from women's. It is argued that widespread gender imbalances in power, men's lack of role models and rewards for nurturant activity, and their socialization to violence, bear a direct relationship t…
Abuse and Neglect in Nonparental Child Care: A Risk Assessment
Child abuse by baby-sitters: An ecological-interactional interpretation
Gender and the stolen kiss: The social support of male and female to violate a partner's sexual consent in a noncoercive situation
When vocabularies of motive fail: The example of fatal child abuse
Gender and the prerogatives of dating and marriage: An experimental assessment of a sample of college students
When a kiss is not just a kiss: Relating violations of consent in kissing to rape myth acceptance
Assessing mothers' and fathers' violence toward children as a function of their involuntary participation in family work
The Family as a Looking Glass: Interpreting Family Influences on Adolescent Self-Esteem from a Symbolic Interaction Perspective
This study examined why investigations into the family influences on adolescent self-esteem have either not used data from parents, or, when such data was used, have found very weak correlations. Given symbolic interactionism's postulate that individuals learn who they are by observing how significant others respond to them, it was hypothesized that parents' global appraisals of their adolescents' competency would improve the explanatory power of…
The Family: A Sociological Interpretation
Under the cover of kindness: The Invention of Social Work
In Under the Cover of Kindness, Leslie Margolin looks at how this country's social welfare system developed and with what results. From his detailed examination of social work texts, primarily case histories, he argues persuasively that social work disguises its own assumptions and claims to power as a way of further legitimizing its actions. By attending to these case histories, Margolin shows how social work entails not only the intrusion into …
Deviance on Record: Techniques for Labeling Child Abusers in Official Documents
An analysis of 120 official records was done to show how social workers “prove” that someone committed child abuse. That more than half of the suspects either denied the accusations or were not interviewed in the course of investigations was not much of a limitation, since suspects were routinely defined as “non-credible” witnesses. The only time their testimony was taken seriously was when they agreed with the allegations. Conversely, victims we…
When a kiss is not just a kiss: Relating violations of consent in kissing to rape myth acceptance
The Continuing Role of Physical Attractiveness in Marriage
This study examines the role of physical attractiveness in marriage. It shows that the decreases in physical appearance normally associated with aging affect husbands' responses to their wives more than wives' to their husbands. Evidence is presented that the husband's sexual interest, happiness in the sexual relationship, and, to a lesser extent, unfaithfulness are affected. This differential response of husbands and wives to each others' physic…
When vocabularies of motive fail: The example of fatal child abuse
Goodness Personified: The Emergence of Gifted Children
This paper explores the emergence of “gifted children” as a recognized, enforceable social category. The paper begins with an examination of psychologists' representation of “gifted children” during the first decades of the century. In particular, attention is drawn to early gifted child scholars' emphasis on the superiority of the white upper classes and the inferiority of dark-skinned and working-class peoples. The second part of the paper deal…
Abuse and Neglect in Nonparental Child Care: A Risk Assessment
Gender and the prerogatives of dating and marriage: An experimental assessment of a sample of college students
Child abuse by baby-sitters: An ecological-interactional interpretation
Why is absent/low sexual desire a mental disorder (except when patients identify as asexual)
This analytic essay challenges the psychiatric practice of treating absent/low sexual interest/desire/arousal as a mental disorder. It does so by calling attention to the fact that asexuality is treated differently than other non-heterosexual orientations. The current DSM contains no psychiatric diagnosis which has, as its primary symptom, same-sex sexual desire. Yet, the same DSM offers diagnoses such as male hypoactive sexual desire disorder an…
The Third Backdoor: How the DSM Casebooks Pathologized Homosexuality
This study argues that institutional psychiatry's pathologizing stance on homosexuality persisted after 1973, when the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It persisted not only through the well-known diagnoses of "ego-dystonic homosexuality" and "gender identity disorder of childhood," but also through case studies published in four editions of the DSM Casebooks (1…
Madman in the Closet: "Homosexual Panic" in Nineteenth Century New England
This analysis uses trial records from the 1860s to explore a same-sex male relationship that devolved into panic and murder. The paper's goal is to better understand how, during the middle of the nineteenth century, men who had sexual feeling for other men were forced into spaces that were qualitatively different than our current understanding of "the closet." The paper concludes that what we now call "coming out" was not an option during this er…
Dilators, Q-tips, and Extortion: How to Train a Woman for Intercourse in the “Post-Feminist” Era
This article examines cases where heterosexual partners present dramatic discrepancies in sexual interest, with the male partner wanting more sex and the female partner wanting less. The main finding is that sex therapists tacitly assume that the couple will be better off if the female can come around to wanting more sex. The relation between that bias and the practice of sex therapy appears akin to the relation between a sculptor’s hands and the…
Freud, Dora, and Compulsory Sexuality
In this examination of Freud’s Dora, I show that Freud insisted that Dora’s comments and gestures reflected her underlying sexual motivations, despite her repeated denials and objections. The main point is that, just as Freud “ruled in” certain ways of talking, defining Dora’s sexual fantasies and dreams as acceptable and valid representations of her feelings, so also, Freud “ruled out” other kinds of talking, in particular, Dora’s accounts of no…
When a Slap is Not Just a Slap: The Construction of Normal Violence in Psychiatric Treatment
This research shows how a psychiatrist who was forced to surrender his medical license for criminal and ethical violations, including beatings, kidnapping, false imprisonment, and sexual abuse, was shielded from criticism by his professional colleagues. In their descriptions of his work, they routinely omitted details of his patients’ pain and injuries while concurrently proclaiming his therapeutic successes and good intentions. This single case …
Status Characteristics and Performance: An Assessment of their Effects on Acceptance of Influence
According to the theory of status characteristics, both status characteristics and performance information are combined to arrive at a single evaluation of the group member (combining). In this paper, an alternative formulation is proposed which maintains that status characteristics are used as a means of forming evaluations of group members only when members do not have access to performance information. When such information is available, it is…
Beyond Maternal Blame: Physical Child Abuse as a Phenomenon of Gender
This study begins with an examination of why men have been left out of physical child abuse research. An attempt is then made to include them by focusing on the motivational processes and social structures that differentiate men's physical child abuse from women's. It is argued that widespread gender imbalances in power, men's lack of role models and rewards for nurturant activity, and their socialization to violence, bear a direct relationship t…
Gender and the stolen kiss: The social support of male and female to violate a partner's sexual consent in a noncoercive situation
The Family as a Looking Glass: Interpreting Family Influences on Adolescent Self-Esteem from a Symbolic Interaction Perspective
This study examined why investigations into the family influences on adolescent self-esteem have either not used data from parents, or, when such data was used, have found very weak correlations. Given symbolic interactionism's postulate that individuals learn who they are by observing how significant others respond to them, it was hypothesized that parents' global appraisals of their adolescents' competency would improve the explanatory power of…
The Family: A Sociological Interpretation
The Continuing Role of Physical Attractiveness in Marriage
This study examines the role of physical attractiveness in marriage. It shows that the decreases in physical appearance normally associated with aging affect husbands' responses to their wives more than wives' to their husbands. Evidence is presented that the husband's sexual interest, happiness in the sexual relationship, and, to a lesser extent, unfaithfulness are affected. This differential response of husbands and wives to each others' physic…
Assessing mothers' and fathers' violence toward children as a function of their involuntary participation in family work
The Family as a Looking Glass: Interpreting Family Influences on Adolescent Self-Esteem from a Symbolic Interaction Perspective
This study examined why investigations into the family influences on adolescent self-esteem have either not used data from parents, or, when such data was used, have found very weak correlations. Given symbolic interactionism's postulate that individuals learn who they are by observing how significant others respond to them, it was hypothesized that parents' global appraisals of their adolescents' competency would improve the explanatory power of…
Gender and the prerogatives of dating and marriage: An experimental assessment of a sample of college students
When a kiss is not just a kiss: Relating violations of consent in kissing to rape myth acceptance
Child abuse by baby-sitters: An ecological-interactional interpretation
Gender and the stolen kiss: The social support of male and female to violate a partner's sexual consent in a noncoercive situation
When vocabularies of motive fail: The example of fatal child abuse
Abuse and Neglect in Nonparental Child Care: A Risk Assessment
Status Characteristics and Performance: An Assessment of their Effects on Acceptance of Influence
According to the theory of status characteristics, both status characteristics and performance information are combined to arrive at a single evaluation of the group member (combining). In this paper, an alternative formulation is proposed which maintains that status characteristics are used as a means of forming evaluations of group members only when members do not have access to performance information. When such information is available, it is…
Deviance on Record: Techniques for Labeling Child Abusers in Official Documents
An analysis of 120 official records was done to show how social workers “prove” that someone committed child abuse. That more than half of the suspects either denied the accusations or were not interviewed in the course of investigations was not much of a limitation, since suspects were routinely defined as “non-credible” witnesses. The only time their testimony was taken seriously was when they agreed with the allegations. Conversely, victims we…
Beyond Maternal Blame: Physical Child Abuse as a Phenomenon of Gender
This study begins with an examination of why men have been left out of physical child abuse research. An attempt is then made to include them by focusing on the motivational processes and social structures that differentiate men's physical child abuse from women's. It is argued that widespread gender imbalances in power, men's lack of role models and rewards for nurturant activity, and their socialization to violence, bear a direct relationship t…
Goodness Personified: The Emergence of Gifted Children
This paper explores the emergence of “gifted children” as a recognized, enforceable social category. The paper begins with an examination of psychologists' representation of “gifted children” during the first decades of the century. In particular, attention is drawn to early gifted child scholars' emphasis on the superiority of the white upper classes and the inferiority of dark-skinned and working-class peoples. The second part of the paper deal…
Under the cover of kindness: The Invention of Social Work
In Under the Cover of Kindness, Leslie Margolin looks at how this country's social welfare system developed and with what results. From his detailed examination of social work texts, primarily case histories, he argues persuasively that social work disguises its own assumptions and claims to power as a way of further legitimizing its actions. By attending to these case histories, Margolin shows how social work entails not only the intrusion into …
Goodness Personified: The Emergence of Gifted Children
When a Slap is Not Just a Slap: The Construction of Normal Violence in Psychiatric Treatment
This research shows how a psychiatrist who was forced to surrender his medical license for criminal and ethical violations, including beatings, kidnapping, false imprisonment, and sexual abuse, was shielded from criticism by his professional colleagues. In their descriptions of his work, they routinely omitted details of his patients’ pain and injuries while concurrently proclaiming his therapeutic successes and good intentions. This single case …
Dilators, Q-tips, and Extortion: How to Train a Woman for Intercourse in the “Post-Feminist” Era
This article examines cases where heterosexual partners present dramatic discrepancies in sexual interest, with the male partner wanting more sex and the female partner wanting less. The main finding is that sex therapists tacitly assume that the couple will be better off if the female can come around to wanting more sex. The relation between that bias and the practice of sex therapy appears akin to the relation between a sculptor’s hands and the…
Rogerian Psychotherapy and the Problem of Power: A Foucauldian Interpretation
Guided by Foucault’s argument that “knowledge is an ‘invention’ behind which lies something completely different from itself: the play of instincts, impulses, desires, fears, and the will to appropriate,” this study considers the possibility that “nondirectivity” in Rogerian psychotherapy operates as a trope for power. This is partly based on Edwin Kahn’s observation that nondirective therapists may be less mindful of their own fallibility than o…
Freud, Dora, and Compulsory Sexuality
In this examination of Freud’s Dora, I show that Freud insisted that Dora’s comments and gestures reflected her underlying sexual motivations, despite her repeated denials and objections. The main point is that, just as Freud “ruled in” certain ways of talking, defining Dora’s sexual fantasies and dreams as acceptable and valid representations of her feelings, so also, Freud “ruled out” other kinds of talking, in particular, Dora’s accounts of no…
Sexual frigidity: The Social Construction of Masculine Privilege and Feminine Pathology
This study examines how mid-twentieth century physicians used the term ‘sexual frigidity’ to disempower women. Conceptualizing medical texts as accounts, I focus on how medical authors saw, described and explained sexual frigidity from the 1930s to the 1960s in both scientific writings and in those aimed at the general public as sex guides, marriage manuals and advice columns. The study concludes, that behind the pretext of treating a woman’s fri…
Eros under patriarchy: A study of Basson’s ‘sexual response model’
Basson’s ‘sexual response model’ may have been developed to more accurately represent women’s sexual interests and behaviour – to challenge previous sexual desire models based on men’s sexuality – but in sex therapy practice, it appears to sanction men’s right to define and govern heterosexual interactions. Close readings of Basson’s case studies show how, instead of helping men better understand and adapt to women’s sexual needs, the sexual resp…
Madman in the Closet: "Homosexual Panic" in Nineteenth Century New England
This analysis uses trial records from the 1860s to explore a same-sex male relationship that devolved into panic and murder. The paper's goal is to better understand how, during the middle of the nineteenth century, men who had sexual feeling for other men were forced into spaces that were qualitatively different than our current understanding of "the closet." The paper concludes that what we now call "coming out" was not an option during this er…
Why is absent/low sexual desire a mental disorder (except when patients identify as asexual)
This analytic essay challenges the psychiatric practice of treating absent/low sexual interest/desire/arousal as a mental disorder. It does so by calling attention to the fact that asexuality is treated differently than other non-heterosexual orientations. The current DSM contains no psychiatric diagnosis which has, as its primary symptom, same-sex sexual desire. Yet, the same DSM offers diagnoses such as male hypoactive sexual desire disorder an…
The Third Backdoor: How the DSM Casebooks Pathologized Homosexuality
This study argues that institutional psychiatry's pathologizing stance on homosexuality persisted after 1973, when the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It persisted not only through the well-known diagnoses of "ego-dystonic homosexuality" and "gender identity disorder of childhood," but also through case studies published in four editions of the DSM Casebooks (1…
Psychology (25 works) · Social Psychology (20 works) · Social Psychology (14 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Developmental psychology (12 works) · Medicine (10 works) · Gender Studies (9 works) · Law (8 works) · Poison control (8 works) · Gender Studies (7 works)