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For two and a half millenia, homosexual behavior has been devalued or forbidden in Western culture. Priests, inquisitors, civil authorities and, since the late 19th century, psychiatrists have acted as agents of social control in this area. A surprisingly high level of homosexual activity in the general population was nevertheless documented by Kinsey et al. (1948, 1953). The work of Hooker (1957) during the following decade demonstrated no over-representation of psychopathology among nonclinical homosexuals. The American Psychiatric Association slowly modified the nosologic classification of homosexuality from Psychopathic Personality, in the first Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM; ), to Sexual Deviation in the 1968 DSM-II, to Sexual Orientation Disturbance in the post-1974 DSM-II (1974), to the current category of Ego-Dystonic Homosexuality (DSM-III; 1980).
The specific diagnostic criteria in DSM-III for ego-dystonic homosexuality are twofold:
The individual complains that heterosexual arousal is persistently absent or weak and significantly interferes with initiating or maintaining wanted heterosexual relationships, and