684 WERTHAM, FREDRIC
Clinic, NAACP Legal Defense Fund lawyers Jack Greenberg and Th urgood Marshall
asked Wertham to research the eff ects of segregation on children. Th is research later
became part of the groundbreaking anti-segregation case Brown v. Board of Education
of Topeka (1954). During this period, Wertham treated the sons of the executed spies
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, was appointed by Senator Estes Kefauver as sole psychiatric
consultant for the Senate Subcommittee on Organized Crime (1950), and became lead
witness for the Senate Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency (1953–56).
In addition to bringing psychotherapy to a neglected community, Wertham’s work at
the Lefargue Clinic provided the foundation for his ideas on the contribution horror
and crime comics made for a climate of juvenile violence. In 1948, Wertham organized
the fi rst symposium on media violence at the New York Academy of Medicine. Wer-
tham identifi ed media-induced violence as a public health issue; his arguments about the
harmful eff ects of media-induced violence and its connection to the rise of juvenile de-
linquency are summarized in his book Seduction of the Innocent (1954). Here, he argued
that the brutal and sadistic activity in many comics promoted a climate of violence and
a coarsening of society. He was also concerned with sexual images in comics, especially
with what he saw as the promulgation of images of homosexuality. Wertham concluded
that access to violent comics for children younger than 14 must be controlled. Although
Wertham, as a progressive, vigorously denied that he was advocating censorship, his
work stimulated the comic book industry to adopt a tactic of self-censorship via Th e
Code of the Comics Magazine Association of America (1954), generally known as the
Comics Code.
Wertham continued to probe not only how comic books, but also mass news
publications, television, and the movies infl uenced behavior and distorted perceptions of
teenagers and diff erent ethnic groups. Th e Circle of Guilt (1956) analyzes the paradigm
of fear, racism, and prejudice in New York and exposes both the failure and hypocrisy of
the legal system in complicity with the social service establishment.
In 1966, Wertham published A Sign for Cain: An Exploration of Human Violence , a
sociological history of violence in Western culture. Th is book focuses on the eff ects of
mass media exposure on the virulence of political tyrannies in the 20th century, on the
emergence of the legal and medical legitimization of violence, and on the willing accep-
tance of the value of violence.
His interest in youth and how communication shapes culture led Wertham to
publish his last book, Th e World of Fanzines: A Special Form of Communication (1973).
He sees fanzines not as a product of our society but a reaction to it. Th e culture of fan-
zines expresses a genuine voice wanting to be heard, defying the overpowering roar of
the mass media.
Selected Bibliography: Beaty, Bart. Fredric Wertham and the Critique of Mass Culture.
Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005; Gilbert, James. A Cycle of Outrage: Ameri-
can’s Reaction to Juvenile Delinquency. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995; Lent,
John, ed. Pulp Demons: International Dimensions of the Postwar Anti-Comics Campaign.
