Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnosis

Front Cover
Princeton University Press, Oct 21, 1987 - Medical - 242 pages

In 1973, after several years of bitter dispute, the Board of Trustees
of the American Psychiatric Association decided to remove homosexuality from its official list of mental diseases. Infuriated by the
Board's action, a substantial number of dissident psychiatrists
charged the association's leadership with capitulating to the pressures
of Gay Liberation groups, and forced the board to submit its decision
to a referendum of the full APA membership. Ronald Bayer presents
a political analysis of the psychiatric battle involved, from the first
confrontations organized by gay demonstrators at psychiatric conventions to the referendum initiated by orthodox psychiatrists. The result is a fascinating view of the individuals who led the debate and the fundamental questions that engaged them: social and cultural values, the definition of disease, and the nature of sexuality. Available for the
first time in paperback, the book includes a new afterword by the
author.

 

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Contents

Conclusion
179
Afterword to the 1987 Edition
197
Notes
219
Index
234
Copyright

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Page 16 - If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.
Page 206 - They conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone— the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.
Page 26 - One must remember that normal sexuality also depends upon a restriction in the choice of object ; in general, to undertake to convert a fully developed homosexual into a heterosexual is not much more promising than to do the reverse, only that for good practical reasons the latter is never attempted.
Page 180 - Let us define mental health as the adjustment of human beings to the world and to each other with a maximum of effectiveness and happiness.
Page 27 - Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation, it cannot be classified as an illness ; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function produced by a certain arrest of sexual development. Many highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern times have been homosexuals, several of the greatest men among them. (Plato, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, etc.) It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime and a cruelty too.
Page 206 - Against this background, to claim that a right to engage in such conduct is "deeply rooted in this nation's history and tradition" or "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty
Page 27 - I gather from your letter that your son is a homosexual. I am most impressed by the fact that you do not mention this term yourself in your information about him. May I question you, why you avoid it? Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation, it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function produced by a certain arrest of sexual development. Many highly respectable...
Page 88 - The Mattachine Society of Washington takes the position that in the absence of valid evidence to the contrary, homosexuality is not a sickness, disturbance or other pathology in any sense, but is merely a preference, orientation, or propensity, on par with, and not different in kind from heterosexuality.
Page 27 - I can abolish homosexuality and make normal heterosexuality take its place. The answer is, in a general way, we cannot promise to achieve it. In a certain number of cases we succeed in developing the blighted germs of heterosexual tendencies which are present in every homosexual, in the majority of cases it is no more possible. It is a question of the quality and the age of the individual. The result of treatment cannot be predicted. What analysis can do for your son runs in a different line. If...

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