The Inheritance of Shame: A Memoir

Author, Peter Gajdics, spent six years in a bizarre form of conversion therapy that attempted to “cure” him of his homosexuality. Kept with other patients in a cult-like home in British Columbia, Canada, Gajdics was under the authority of a dominating, rogue psychiatrist who controlled his patients, in part, by creating and exploiting a false sense of family. Juxtaposed against his parents' tormented past - his mother's incarceration and escape from a communist concentration camp in post-World War II Yugoslavia and his father's upbringing as an orphan in war-torn Hungary - THE INHERITANCE OF SHAME explores the universal themes of childhood trauma, oppression and intergenerational pain. Told over a period of decades, the story shows us the damaging repercussions of conversion therapy and reminds us that resilience, compassion and the courage to speak the truth exist within us all.