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All articles in this issue of Psychodynamic Psychiatry deserve editorial comment, however, this being impossible for practical reasons, we have decided to begin a discussion of sex and gender psychology here. Our point of departure is the Shapiro and Pinsker article, “Termination Was Not the End,” published in this issue (Shapiro & Pinsker, 2016). In subsequent editorials we will extend this discussion to include bias toward lesbians, bisexual men and women, transgender people, and heterosexual people as well.
Dr. Edith T. Shapiro, a psychiatrist-psychoanalyst, reports the attitudes and feelings she had about a gay patient she treated in the 1970s who seemed to become heterosexual as a result of psychotherapy. This change was viewed as a positive outcome until she learned that, following termination, the patient was probably murdered in a gay bar. Her reminiscences convey a sense of the climate of belief of heterosexual psychotherapists more than 40 years ago. She also expresses regret (even remorse) about a relationship that remained in her mind year after year as she wondered what she might have done differently. In her article she looks back at her young therapeutic self from the perspective of a contemporary psychotherapist in her 70s.
Much has changed in the decades since Shapiro, an inexperienced trainee, met her deceased patient. Her intellectual foundation has shifted considerably and one cannot help but feel her sadness that she—and we—did not know then what we know today. Part of the existential burden of being a physician or a therapist of any type is that at any given time our knowledge is inadequate to ameliorate the suffering of all our patients. Although we learn more and more over time, we can