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Britain 1995: Professor Charles Socarides is honored by being invited to give the prestigious annual lecture of the Association of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists, the organization of psychoanalytic psychotherapists within the National Health Service, known as the APP. What does this mean and what happened as a result?
Attempting a cultural map of psychoanalytic homophobia might be a rather grim albeit usefully strategic task. There seems to be very little available knowledge, anecdotal or otherwise, for countries other than the United Kingdom and the United States as to the existence of gay and lesbian analysts and therapists, the policies of different psychoanalytic societies in relation to training, or the psychoanalytic frames of reference within which lesbian and gay patients are viewed and treated. Nor is there much documentation of how change comes about, especially as regards institutions. Disorienting Sexuality, as well as providing various critiques of existing psychoanalytic theories, is a compelling record of the experiences of discrimination, and thus speaks vividly to anyone at the cutting edge of psychoanalytic homophobia. It documents ways of struggling to survive personally as lesbian and gay within the American psychoanalytic arena, and also of creating various non-homophobic forms of psychoanalytic therapy and theory. It is very much a dispatch from the various frontlines; in this sense it is an invaluable historical document and indeed itself an instrument of change. What is, however, also needed is more of an historical perspective and analysis of how changes come about in psychoanalysis.