Fritz Klein
SAN DIEGO (AP) -- Dr. Fritz Klein, a psychiatrist who
studied bisexuals and their relationships and helped launch a foundation
promoting bisexual culture, died May 24 of a heart attack, his partner Tom
Reise said. He was 73.
Klein's life work was defined by his belief that sexual orientation is
fluid and changes throughout a person's life. Klein believed the number of
men who were sexually active with both sexes had been undercounted and
unrecognized by the scale developed by Alfred C. Kinsey in the 1940s.
Working at his private psychiatric practice in the 1970s, Klein
developed a scale that measured not only sexual experiences, but also
sexual attractions, emotional preferences, social preferences, and
self-identification pertaining to a person's past, present and ideal
future.
Klein organized conferences and support groups for bisexuals in New
York and San Diego, and in 1978 wrote "The Bisexual Option," a book that
traced a historical overview of bisexuality. He also co-authored "Man, His
Body, His Sex," and was an editor of The Journal of Bisexuality.
