GLR November-December 2022

Holiday Issue: ‘The Empty Couch’ FROM THE EDITOR

L ET US celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Ameri can Psychiatric Association’s decision to delist “homo sexuality” as a mental illness in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual ( DSM ). This is the bible for psychiatric the ory and practice, the arbiter of what is “normal” and what is pathological, so the inclusion of homosexuality was a constant drag on any effort by gay people to gain social acceptance or to organize a political movement to that end. The reversal came late in 1973 when the APA board voted to declassify homosexuality as a psychiatric condition. But the most dramatic and memorable event came a year earlier at their annual meeting, which featured a panel of gay and lesbian ac tivists, one of whom, John E. Fryer, appeared in a mask so that he could tell his story as a gay psychiatrist, which he did with passion and eloquence. This event was discussed in an article by Malcolm Lazin in our May-June 2022 issue, which elicited a letter to the editor from Lawrence Hartmann, a psychiatrist who played a major role in the decision to delist, who points out that the APA’s de cision was the culmination of a lot of hard work and persuasion inside the organization. In an Open Letter, Dr. Hartmann takes us behind the scenes and reveals what it took to get the board to reverse its position on a critical social issue. Another influential member of the APA, Jack Drescher, is interviewed in this issue about his extensive research on the

DSM decision and its aftermath. He suggests that most psy chiatrists at this time still believed that homosexuality was a mental illness but grudgingly voted to delist in an APA-wide vote the following year. After that, the medical model fell into fairly steep decline, and the APA has been a leading opponent of “conversion therapy” for many years. The collapse of the medical model invites the question of where it came from initially, and a thorough answer is provided in a reprised piece by Vernon Rosario, who traces the origins of “homosexuality” as a medical condition to late 19th-century Germany. It made its way from Europe to the U.S. and even tually into the first DSM in 1952. This was the era in which treatment for homosexuality included electro-shock, aversion therapy, and even chemical castration. Indeed “the couch” was only the mildest intervention that was used. Clearly the APA’s turnabout was a response to changes in “the Zeitgeist,” which was exploding with Women’s Lib, the Sexual Revolution, and post-Stonewall activism. Barbara Git tings embodied all of these strains as a radical lesbian femi nist, and she was one of the people on the famous John Fryer panel (along with Frank Kameny). In a speech that’s reprinted here, she describes the background to the APA panel and the importance of its decision, which made it possible for the gay liberation movement to go forward, unencumbered by the stigma of mental illness. R ICHARD S CHNEIDER J R .

JEWISH LES COLLECTED POE

an ch A t vid 31# en d political activist, Ir , viv ild Holocaust sur or ailblazing lesbian poe r able work. r incompar 11#%(8,- ," '"(5 5#2*) , ,7 8) (!# '*)( %,/+1#( oice. T merican v ual A +')4 8) 2 68(21 2-$ 8-$ " # his - 8 a t, each for tr nnect and r e y turn, a deep desir r t. A able hear s a vulner ant intelligen s vibr na’ roub People in T ah Schulman, author ~Sar .” t ese pages anscend minates and tr s uth to t ce co eve ha “Ire h illu he %, &, CTIVIST BIAN A MS OF A PIVOTA

L

From

examining A volume

P $29 95 . many Ger twentieth-century in early and stigmatizatio ment empower caught between queer lives aper .

n

le of

and Ka Edited by

olina Kühn r ff Mirjam Zado

ess.org Visit weslpr Call 800-537-5487 orite booksell our fav om y der fr Or

er

ersity of y the Univ ed b tribut Dis

.ed s.uchicago ess www.pres Chicago Pr u

The G & LR

4