Clarence Arthur Tripp, known professionally as C.A. Tripp, was born on October 4, 1919, in Denton, Texas. He was the great nephew of Robert Henry Evers, who founded Evers Hardware in Denton in 1885. At age three, his family moved to Corsicana, Texas, where he lived until graduating from Corsicana High School and moving to New York City to study photography at the New York Institute of Photography and later at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), graduating in 1941. During this time, he became a member of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. While studying at RIT, his photography won multiple awards and lead to a position at the prestigious Kodak Research Laboratories.

Tripp briefly served in the U.S. Navy before being discharged for medical reasons, only to be hired by 20th Century Fox in New York City to make propaganda films during WWII. While working as a photographer, he became interested in the psychology of homosexuality after meeting and becoming friends with respected New York psychiatrist, and George W. Henry, and Theodor Reik, a psychologist and student of Sigmund Freud.

Tripp contacted Afred C. Kinsey after reading his work in 1948 and was invited to visit the Institute for Sex Research in Bloomington, Indiana. This led to a mentorship until his death in 1956. At Kinsey’s suggestion, Tripp went back to school to pursue psychology. He completed his undergraduate degree from the New School for Social Research in 1953 and received a doctorate from New York University in 1957.

In 1975 he published The Homosexual Matrix; this scholarly work positing that male homosexuality was not failed heterosexuality. Tripp maintained a private practice in psychology for many years. Prior to his death in 2003, he had been working on a biography of Abraham Lincoln which included reports of several same-sex relationships. The book, The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, was published posthumously in 2005.