Richard C. Friedman (January 20, 1941 – March 31, 2020) was an academic psychiatrist, a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, and a faculty member at Columbia University.
[1] Friedman studied at Bard College in the early 1960s, received his MD from the University of Rochester in 1966 and completed his psychiatric residency at Columbia University in 1970, following which he spent two years with the United States Army Medical Corps working in the psychiatric department of William Beaumont Army Medical Center in El Paso, Texas, with the rank of Major.
He held both posts concurrently with that of Research Professor of Psychology at the Derner Institute, Adelphi University (appointed 1989).
He noted that erotic desire for the opposite-sexed parent was not universal and that homosexuality was not a symptomatic response to unconscious fears of heterosexuality.
The book had a major impact on the field and led to significant changes in the way psychoanalysts and psychotherapists understand and treat non-heterosexual patients.