The American Psychoanalytic Association issued an “overdue apology” Friday for having pathologized “homosexuality and transgender identities.”
To mark the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York City, the organization expressed its intention, in a press release, to formally apologize at the start of its 109th annual meeting in San Diego.
“In 1969, homosexuality was considered a mental illness and sexual orientation was conflated with gender identity by the mental health field,” the statement continued. “This led to many being coerced, either by force or choice, into traumatic and harmful methods to ‘cure’ homosexual desires and non-conforming gender identities. This belief also contributed to widespread discrimination and prejudice in housing, employment, healthcare, and in society at large.”
The release went on to place blame for such discrimination on the American psychoanalytic establishment, quoting the organization’s President Lee Jaffe, who said, “It is long past time to recognize and apologize for our role in the discrimination and trauma caused by our profession.”
The American Psychological Association defined homosexuality as a “sociopathic personality disturbance” in the first edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-I, published 1952. The second edition reclassified it as “sexual deviation” in 1968, and by the third edition in 1973, it had been removed.
The American Psychoanalytic Association is using this month’s 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Inn uprising to apologize for having treated homosexuality as a mental illness in the past. pic.twitter.com/fZWEC7aJUm
— CBC News Alerts (@CBCAlerts) June 21, 2019
