Fredric Wertham

Fredric Wertham (20 March 1895 - 18 November 1981) was a Jewish German-American psychiatrist. He was an author who wrote about images in media. He thought that violent imagery in mass media and comic books was harmful to children. His best-known book was Seduction of the Innocent (1954). After this book became popular, the United States Congress took a close look at the comic book industry. Also, the Comics Code was made in response. He called television "a school for violence".
Biography
He was born on 20 March 20 1895 in Munich. He studied medicine in Germany and England. He and Sigmund Freud wrote letters to each other, and Wertham chose to study mainly psychiatry. In 1922 he was asked to come to the United States and to join the Phipps Psychiatric Clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. He became a United States citizen in 1927. He moved to New York City in 1932. He became the director of a psychiatric clinic connected with the New York Court of General Sessions. All people who were convicted of serious crimes had a psychiatric examination there. The report from those examinations were used in court. In 1935 Wertham spoke in court for the defense in the trial of Albert Fish, a serial killer. Wertham said Fish was insane.
Seduction of the Innocent
In Seduction of the Innocent, Wertham wrote about clear or hidden violence, sex, drug use, and other adult topics in "crime comics". Wertham used the words "crime comics" to mean popular comics about criminals and murder that were popular at that time. But, he also included superhero and horror comics in the same group of comics. He said that reading violent comics made children violent. However, this idea was from stories he had heard, not careful research.
Comics, especially the crime and horror titles started by EC Comics had many shocking or ugly images. Wertham often reproduced these pictures. He pointed out themes about death such as "injury to the eye" that he thought were common. One example Jack Cole's "Murder, Morphine and Me" in Magazine Village's True Crime Comics Vol. 1, #2 (May 1947). The story showed a character named Mary Kennedy who was a drug dealer. In her dream, she was almost stabbed in the eye with a needle by a drug addict.). Many of his other ideas seemed like nonsense to the comics industry. Wertham thought he saw hidden sexual themes in comics such as nude women hidden in drawings of muscles and tree bark. He also thought Batman and Robin were gay partners. Wertham's idea that Wonder Woman had a hidden story of bondage did have some facts to support it. Her creator William Moulton Marston had said the same thing. However, Wertham also claimed that Wonder Woman's strength and independence made her a lesbian.
Wertham's book had many problems. He did not clearly record information with citations or a bibliography. There was no way of knowing if the stories in his book were true. In 2012, Carol Tilley, a professor of library and information science, found that Wertham was not honest in Seduction. He changed many facts such as making children in the book younger than they really were.
Later career
Wertham's views on mass media have largely overshadowed his broader concerns with violence and with protecting children from psychological harm. His writings about the effects of racial segregation were evidence in the important Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education. Part of his 1966 book, A Sign for Cain, was about medical professionals and their actions in the Holocaust. He talked about the book on a popular TV program. Parts of these programs were shown at the 2003 Comic-Con International: San Diego
Beaty writes that in 1959 Wertham tried to sell an another book to follow Seduction of the Innocent. It was called The War on Children. The book was about the effect of television on children. Wertham was unhappy that no companies wanted to publish it.
Wertham always said he did not want censorship of comics. In the 1970s he was more interested in the good side of comics fan groups. In his last book, The World of Fanzines (1974), he concluded that fanzines were a good way to be creative. Wertham was asked to speak to the New York Comic Art Convention. Most comics fans still had bad opinions about him. They did not trust him and yelled at him during his speech. He soon stopped writing about comics.
Before he retired, Wertham had several jobs. He became a professor of psychiatry at New York University. He was 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 on November 18, 1981 at his retirement home in Kempton, Pennsylvania. He was 86 years old.
After his death
The Library of Congress keeps his papers. People were able to study them starting May 20, 2010. The library has a list of all of his writing. This list shows Wertham's many different interests.
Some of his writing
1948: "The Comics, Very Funny", Saturday Review of Literature, May 29, 1948, p. 6. (condensed version in Reader's Digest, August 1948, p. 15)
1953: "What Parents Don't Know". Ladies' Home Journal, Nov. 1953, p. 50.
1954: "Blueprints to Delinquency". Reader's Digest, May 1954, p. 24.
1954: Seduction of the Innocent. Amereon Ltd.
1955: "It's Still Murder". Saturday Review of Literature, April 9, 1955, p. 11.
1956: The Circle of Guilt. Rinehart & Company.
1968: A Sign for Cain: An Exploration of Human Violence. Hale.
1973: The World of Fanzines: A Special Form of Communication. Southern Illinois University Press.
1973: "Doctor Wertham Strikes Back!" The Monster Times no. 22, May 1973, p. 6.
References
Other websites
Fredric Wertham - on Lambiek Comiclopedia
Fredric Wertham - Anti-Comics Crusader Who Turned Advocate - condensed online version of Dwight Decker three part series listed above
The End of Seduction - lengthy history of Wertham and censorship of comics
Comics Reporter: "Let's You and Him Fight" Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 - Bart Beaty and Craig Fischer discuss Beaty's "Fredric Wertham and the Critique of Mass Culture"
Further reading
(1954). "Are Comics Horrible?" Newsweek, May 3, 1954, p. 60.
Decker, Dwight. (1987). "The Strange Case of Dr. Wertham" Amazing Heroes #123 (August 15, 1987); "The Return of Dr. Wertham" Amazing Heroes #124 (Sept. 1, 1987); "From Dr. Wertham With Love" Amazing Heroes #125 (Sept. 15, 1987) [three part series, see below for link to condensed version posted online under title "Fredric Wertham - Anti-Comics Crusader Who Turned Advocate"].
Gibbs, Wolcott. (1954). "Keep Those Paws to Yourself, Space Rat!" The New Yorker, May 8, 1954.
Beaty, Bart. (2005). Fredric Wertham and the Critique of Mass Culture.
Bart Beaty. Fredric Wertham And the Critique of Mass Culture. University Press of Mississippi, 2005.
David Hajdu. The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008.
James Bowman. "In Defense of Snobbery." August 26, 2008.
Amy Kiste Nyberg. "Seal of Approval: The History of the Comics Code." University Press of Mississippi, 1998.
1895 births
1981 deaths
American psychiatrists
German psychiatrists
People from New York City