This classification was challenged by gay rights activists during the gay liberation movement especially following the 1969 stonewall riots, and rendered problematic by research. In 1973, the american psychiatric association (apa) removed the diagnosis of “homosexuality” from the second edition of its diagnostic and statistical manual (dsm) This resulted after comparing competing theories, those that pathologized. The first dsm, created in 1952, established a hierarchy of sexual deviancies, vaulting heterosexual behavior to an idealized place in american culture. In the first edition of the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (dsm), published in 1952, homosexuality was classified under “sociopathic personality disturbance” (1) The last 70 years have brought psychiatry a long way, but it is only in the most recent version of the dsm that the last pieces of evidence of pathologizing homosexuality were removed (2)
The classification and understanding of homosexuality within the field of psychology have undergone profound changes over the past century The diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (dsm), published by the american psychiatric association (apa), has played a pivotal role in shaping societal and medical perspectives on homosexuality The epochal elimination of the homosexuality diagnosis from the apa’s influential bible, the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, or dsm, made the front page of the new york. Key points homosexuality wasn’t completely taken out of the dsm until 1987 The dsm is a book used by health care professionals in the united states to diagnose mental disorders The diagnosis is replaced with the category of “sexual orientation disturbance”
As an orientation, homosexuality refers to “an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affection, or romantic attractions primarily to” people of the same sex “it also refers to an individual’s sense of personal and social identity based on those attractions, behaviors expressing. While others are frequently credited with the removal of homosexuality from dsm, it was psychiatrist thomas szasz who first opposed the medicalization of homosexuality. 50 years ago, the american psychiatric association voted to delete homosexuality from the dsm in a highly fraught process that has important lessons for us today. Jack turban, m.d., a child and adolescent psychiatry fellow at stanford university school of medicine, is among the generation of psychiatrists who entered the field after the diagnosis of homosexuality was removed from dsm For him, watching the documentary “cured” and learning the details about the fight to remove homosexuality was incredibly impactful—and it paralleled issues that are.
This article provides a critical overview of both the historical and current diagnostic categories from the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (dsm) that perpetuate. This represented a compromise between the view that preferential homosexuality is invariably a mental disorder and the view that it is merely a normal sexual variant
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