Psychiatry and the gay Holocaust (original) (raw)
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In the late 1970s, a new model for sex reassignment was developed in Norway. While people seeking medical treatment to transition had until then been cared for in an unorganised way, a new team based in a medical sexology department at the Oslo Health Council became the main medical facility for this group of patients. The team consisted of psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, nurses and GPs with a professional interest in lesbian and gay health, sexuality and the negative health effects of stigma and discrimination, and many of the professionals were themselves lesbian or gay. However, the team’s normalising and depathologising approach to lesbian and gay patients did not translate into a similar approach to transgender patients. The professionals approached the question of sex reassignment from the standpoint of sexology and social medicine, but anchored it in a diagnostic and pathologising model of transsexuality. Based on archival material and oral history interviews with health professionals and former patients, the chapter analyses the role of psychiatric expertise in the welfare state context. It argues that the role of psychiatric expertise in trans healthcare, i.e. the administrative function of psychiatrists in decisions about non-psychiatric hormonal and surgical treatment, highlights the historical significance of the non-formalised evaluative expertise of psychiatry to the welfare state – of psychiatric practices beyond psychiatry. Drawing on science and technology studies, I explore how experts standardised and legitimised psychiatric practices by incorporating them into existing epistemologies and infrastructures, but also how psychiatry was transformed in the process.
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According to Be´hague (2008) anthropologists working in an array of countries have demonstrated how the expansion and diffusion of psychiatric processes has resulted in shifting definitions of 'that which is considered ''pathological" and so, of that which falls legitimately under psychiatry's domain. This expansion means that psychiatric practice has become increasingly important not only for defining and treating mental illness, but also for the creation and management of modern identities and of modern society itself.
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FOCUS, 2020
The inclusive lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer community (LGBTQ+) is a diverse and underserved population in the United States. The prevalence of mental illness among this population makes the ethical considerations surrounding evaluation and treatment for this population particularly compelling. Compared with their heterosexual counterparts, LGBTQ+ youths have higher rates of mental illness, including depression, suicide, anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder, and alcohol and drug misuse, as well as preventable sexually transmitted infections (1). Elevated rates of mental illness may be attributed to the high degree of stress and discrimination faced by LGBTQ+ individuals compared with that of heterosexual and cisgendered individuals (i.e., those whose gender identity matches the sex assigned at birth) (2). More specifically, the elevated prevalence that exists is likely attributable to persistent social stigma and discrimination that have been internalized by many individuals in this population. Both internalized and externalized homophobia and transphobia can contribute to problems with self-acceptance, anxiety, depression, forming intimate relationships, and being open about one's sexual orientation (i.e., an individual's innate attraction to members of the same sex, opposite sex, or both sexes) and gender identity (i.e., an individual's identification as male, female, or other gender) (3). Therefore, it is paramount for mental health care providers to attune to this population. Working with LGBTQ+ populations can be challenging for some providers in the field of psychiatry, given the amplified degree of vulnerability and intimacy that can exist in therapeutic relationships. Additionally, physicians and health professionals often have little to no formal training in human sexuality and gender identity, despite their important role in human development, psychology, and relationships (2). Nevertheless, psychiatrists, after educating themselves, should strive for open discussion of issues pertaining to gender and sexuality with their patients to develop a therapeutic alliance and normalize conversations surrounding these topics. In this article, I attempt to emphasize ethical guidelines when working with LGBTQ+ populations, with a focus on understanding and confronting common limits on expertise and scope of practice with working with LGBTQ+ patients.
British psychiatry and homosexuality
The British Journal of Psychiatry, 1999
Access the most recent version at DOI: 1999, 175:106-113. BJP M King and A Bartlett British psychiatry and homosexuality. References http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/175/2/106#BIBL This article cites 0 articles, 0 of which you can access for free at: permissions Reprints/ permissions@rcpsych.ac.uk to To obtain reprints or permission to reproduce material from this paper, please write to this article at You can respond http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/eletter-submit/175/2/106 from Downloaded The Royal College of Psychiatrists Published by on March 9, 2013 http://bjp.rcpsych.org/ http://bjp.rcpsych.org/site/subscriptions/ go to: The British Journal of Psychiatry To subscribe to
Surveilling the Mind and Body: Medicalising and De-medicalising Homosexuality in 1970s New Zealand
‘Medicalisation’ of same sex relations is a phenomenon that reached its peak in the 1950s and 60s. The rise of gay liberation produced a divisive political contest with the psychiatric profession and adherents of the orthodox ‘medical model’ in the United States and – to a lesser extent – in the United Kingdom. This socio-historical process occurred throughout the English-speaking world, but much less is known about its dynamics in smaller countries such as New Zealand where the historiography on this issue is very sparse. The methodology situates New Zealand within a transnational framework to explore the circulation of medical theories and the critical responses they were met with. The article is anchored around three key local moments in the 1970s to consider the changing terrain on which ideas about homosexuality and psychiatry were constantly rearranged during this decade. This power struggle took a number of twists and turns, and the drive toward medicalisation alternated with a new impetus to de-medicalise same-sex sexuality.
Homosexuality and Psychoanalysis Meet at a Mental Hospital: An Early Institutional History
Journal of the HIstory of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 2019
Psychoanalysis in the United States reached its golden age in a few decades following World War II. An unprecedented number of middle-class Americans met their psychotherapists in private offices, considering these sessions on a couch a part of modern, urban, and stressful life. The same era brought homosexuality to a heightened scrutiny. Not only psychoanalytic interest in sexuality, but also the culture of conformity in the Cold War era contributed to an increased medical attempt to "cure" homosexuality by changing it into heterosexuality. Obscured by this well-known historical narrative is the psychoanalytic practice that took shape in institutional settings before its rise to professional prominence. Indeed, between the 1910s and 1940s, select mental hospitals in the US were staffed by psychoanalytically-minded psychiatrists. These physicians may not have been formally trained by Freud, but their interactions with patients clearly reflected their aspiration to understand relationships among intra-psychic dynamisms, social inhibitions, and symptoms of mental illness. Homosexuality did not escape these doctors' attention, as their in-depth talk therapies revealed its surprising commonality and even its potential normalcy. By shedding light on the rhythm of institutional life at the Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital in Towson, Maryland, one of the progressive mental hospitals that employed psychoanalytically-oriented psychiatrists in the 1920s, this article explores two under-examined aspects of the history of psychiatry: the prevalence of psychoanalytic practices before 1950 in mental hospital settings on the one hand, and the comparatively less-pathologizing clinical approach to homosexual experiences among the era's psychoanalysts, on the other. Such inquiry is inspired by Gerald Grob's scholarship that has delineated the rise and fall of US mental hospitals most definitively. Too, the paper is homage to his (trans-institutional) mentorship, which encouraged a broad range of historical inquiries.
Sexual Offence, Diagnosis, and Activism: A British History of LGBTIQ Psychology
American Psychologist, 2019
This article charts the historical period from the 1950s to the 1990s, focusing on the role of Psychology in the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ) people in Britain. Psychology has been, and is, central to the social, legal, and medical understandings of biological sex and how best to understand diversity in gender and sexuality. Likewise, gay liberation and liberationist politics also had an effect on Psychology. For the 1950s to 1960s, we outline how psychologists influenced the law in relation to the Wolfenden Report (1957) and how expertise was centrally located within the 'psy' disciplines. Following this, in the 1960s to 1970s, activists began to challenge this expertise and became increasingly critical of pathologization and of 'treatments' for homosexuality. They did not reject Psychology wholesale, however, and some groups engaged with queer affirmative psychologists who had similar liberatory aims. Finally, for the 1980s to 1998, we highlight the establishment of the Lesbian and Gay Section of the British Psychological Society, which signaled institutional recognition of lesbian and gay psychologists. This is explored against a backdrop of a specific British history of HIV/AIDS and Section 28. The past 50 years have been a battleground of categories in which LGBTIQ people were conflated, compared, and confused. We demonstrate that psychologists (not all of whom adopted a pathologizing perspective), alongside politicians, lawyers, doctors, journalists, and activists, all played a role in the boundary-making practices of this period. Across this entangled history, we demonstrate varied and significant shifts in the legitimacy of professional and personal expertise.
‘Queer’ treatments: giving a voice to former patients who received
Aims and objectives. The study aimed to examine the experiences of patients and meanings attached to ‘treatments’ of sexual deviations, which included homosexuality and transvestism, in the UK (1949–1992), exploring reasons for such treatments, experiences and how individual lives were affected. Background. Male homosexuality remained illegal in England until 1967 and, along with transvestism, was considered an antisocial sexual deviation that could be cured. Homosexuality remained classifiable as a mental illness until 1992. Nurses were involved in administering treatments to cure these individuals; however, there is a paucity of information about this nowdiscredited mental health nursing practice. Design. A nationwide study based on oral history interviews. Methods. Purposeful and snowball sampling was utilised when selecting participants for the study. Participants were recruited via adverts in gay establishments/media. All participants gave signed informed consent. Face-to-face oral history interviews were conducted and transcribed for historical interpretation. Results. Seven former male patients made contact, aged 65–97 years at interview. All reported that the treatments had been unsuccessful in altering their sexual desires or behaviour. Most sought treatment owing to unsupportive and negative attitudes from friends, family and wider society. Others selected treatments instead of imprisonment. Most eventually found happiness in same-sex relationships. However, all were left feeling emotionally troubled by the treatments they received. Conclusion. Defining homosexuality and transvestism as mental illnesses and implementing what could be argued to be inefficient treatments to eradicate them appears to have had a lasting negative impact on the patients who received them. Relevance to clinical practice. Nurses who care for older gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender patients need to be mindful of their potential past treatment by healthcare services and ensure that they are non-judgmental and accepting of their sexual orientation and current gender.
Healing the gays: a brief history of how homosexuality became an illness
In a Christian symposium about conversion therapy practices through a religious approach, a so called 'ex-gay' claimed about himself: 'I felt it [where 'it' stands for sexual conversion from homosexuality to allegedly gained heterosexuality] it was what I had to do in order to gain a right to live on the planet.' The necessity to find a cure to our sexuality is basically due to social consent to an heteronormative perception of reality, of a life that must be considered as conventional by society and, thus, far from any kind of 'diversity' (Haldeman, 1994). This means that homosexuality is perceived as an illness from that kind of society that stigmatizes it, or something undesirable. As psychiatrist Bieber in 1962 said, homosexuality must be considered as a pathology, and consequenty it cannot be compatible with a happy life, and again, Nicolosi later will say 'I do not believe that gay lifestyle can ever be wealthy nor that the homosexual identity can ever be completely ego-syntonic" (Nicolosi, 1991, p. 13). Since homoeroticism is then an undesirable condition, there have been many ways to contain it. Gay people are induced to feel uncomfortable with their sexual orientation, and this is because of many different reasons: the social stigma and devaluation of homosexuality, gender roles of wives and husbands, religious values that make their sexual orientation incompatible with their beliefs, low self-esteem due to their homoerotic impulses, etc. The scope of this essay is to give a general introduction to how the practices of sexual conversion have developed throughout psychiatric history and how homosexuality has become an illness to cure, but at the same time I will try to examine the progress obtained from LGBT rights in order to recognize homosexuality not as a deficit to medicalize, but as a variable in human sexuality. Furthermore, after this research I am induced to think that the mixture of the boundaries between those which were considered as medical practices of conversion (and also the political and religious beliefs of those who worked in order to enact these conversion) are the living proof of how this system of adequacy to an heterosexual society had rather more moral than medical necessities. Especially in a span of time that goes from the 40s to the 70s of 20 th century, many medical practices were enacted in order to cure homosexual men and lesbian women who felt inadequacy with their sexual orientation. These treatments, that will all be considered as being part of the project of the so called 'sexual conversion therapy' or also 'reparative therapy', seeked to 'bring back' to the norm all the gay subjects exposed to it. A lack of faithful empirical data and the declassification, in 1970's, of homosexuality as a mental illness will gradually reduce trust into these therapies from the mainstream medical establishment.