The Course of Gay and Lesbian Lives: Social and Psychoanalytic Perspectives (Worlds of Desire: The Chicago Series on Sexuality, Gender, and Culture)
At the cross-section of social science and psychoanalysis, this new contribution to the Chicago Sexuality, Gender, and Culture series offers a dense and illuminating history of psychoanalytic opinion and practice regarding homosexuality. Sidestepping the current scientific obsession with determining biological or societal causes for variant sexual desire, the authors focus on the meaning of being homosexual and the ways that therapy can help gay patients rebuild their egos after a lifetime of prejudice--much of it on the part of their doctors and analysts. While the American Psychiatric Association voted to remove homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual in 1973, essentially concurring that gayness should no longer be considered a mental illness, psychoanalytic theory continues to regard homosexuality in the same light as Dr. Freud did at the turn of the 20th century.The Course of Gay and Lesbian Liveswas written for therapists, scholars, and advanced students of psychoanalysis.--Regina Marler