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JAA 36(1):210-212 (2008)

American Psychiatry and Homosexuality: An Oral History, Edited by Jack Drescher, M.D. and Joseph P. Merlino, M.D., Harrington Park Press, New York & London, 2007, 299 pp., $49.95.

Author: Joseph R. Silvio MD

Edited by: César A. Alfonso MD

Abstract

Rarely is a psychiatric book described as captivating and inspiring, but American Psychiatry and Homosexuality: An Oral History is definitely both. In this wonderful collection of verbatim interviews with seventeen courageous individuals who contributed to the 1973 APA decision to declassify homosexuality as a psychiatric illness, the editors Jack Drescher and Joseph Merlino have provided a glimpse into a struggle for civil rights that has been largely unappreciated. As Barbara Gittings stated in her Preface to the book:

It's difficult to explain to anyone who didn't live through that time how much homosexuality was under the thumb of psychiatry. The sickness label was an albatross around the neck of our early gay rights groups-it infected all our work on the other issues. Anything we said on our behalf could be dismissed as “That's your sickness talking.” The sickness label was used to justify discrimination, especially in employment, and especially by our own government.
Page 210
Some brutal methods for curing us in vogue at one time included incarceration in mental hospitals, lobotomies, and aversion therapy. The latter is where they show you pictures of the “wrong” kind of sexual partner and give you an electric shock, and then show you pictures of a person you should like and play nice music to persuade you to change your choice of sexual partner, (p. xv)

Gittings was part of a group of gay rights activits who in 1970 disrupted a panel on aversive therapy for homosexuality at the APA meeting, seized the microphone, and demanded that the APA “Stop talking about us and start talking with us” (p. xvii). This led to the creation of a panel at the next APA meeting in 1971 entitled “Lifestyles of Non-Patient Homosexuals,” which was followed by an invitation for Gittings and Frank Kameny, another gay rights activist, to participate on a panel entitled “Psychiatry: Friend or Foe to Homosexuals: A Dialogue.” Since they, as laymen, were going to debate two psychiatrists, they fel

JAA 36(1):210-212 (2008)

American Psychiatry and Homosexuality: An Oral History, Edited by Jack Drescher, M.D. and Joseph P. Merlino, M.D., Harrington Park Press, New York & London, 2007, 299 pp., $49.95.

Author: Joseph R. Silvio MD

Edited by: César A. Alfonso MD

Abstract

It's difficult to explain to anyone who didn't live through that time how much homosexuality was under the thumb of psychiatry. The sickness label was an albatross around the neck of our early gay rights groups-it infected all our work on the other issues. Anything we said on our behalf could be dismissed as “That's your sickness talking.” The sickness label was used to justify discrimination, especially in employment, and especially by our own government.
Page 210
Some brutal methods for curing us in vogue at one time included incarceration in mental hospitals, lobotomies, and aversion therapy. The latter is where they show you pictures of the “wrong” kind of sexual partner and give you an electric shock, and then show you pictures of a person you should like and play nice music to persuade you to change your choice of sexual partner, (p. xv)