To the Editor: Re “The Secrets Ed Koch Carried” (front page, May 8): I read about former Mayor Ed Koch’s closeted state of mind with a mixture of anger and sadness.
As a gay psychiatrist who, in the 1980s, watched patients, friends and colleagues get sick and die from AIDS, I felt anger about the closeted mayor who refused to advocate forcefully enough for them.
Yet I also felt sadness as a psychoanalyst who has observed, studied and written about the psychology of being in the closet.
I understand the suffering that such a state of mind entails. The psychological efforts, known as dissociation, of maintaining a compartmentalized state of mind often lead to errors in judgment.