Homosexuality and psychology

Psychology was one of the first disciplines to study homosexuality as a discrete phenomenon. Prior to and throughout most of the 20th century, common standard psychology viewed homosexuality in terms of pathological models as a mental illness. That classification began to be tested in research, which hasn't produced strong empirical evidence regarding homosexuality as a disorder. A large number of professionals in medicine, mental health, and the behavioral and social sciences, "sit on the fence" regarding the classification of homosexuality as a mental disorder. In more recent years many have claimed the conclusion as accurate, and that the DSM classification reflected tested assumptions that were based on once-prevalent social norms and clinical impressions from "official" samples which consisted of patients seeking therapy and individuals whose conduct brought them into the criminal justice system.

Since the 1970s, the consensus of the behavioral and social sciences and the health and mental health professions globally is that homosexuality is a healthy variation of human sexual orientation, although some professionals maintain that it is a disorder. In 1974, the American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder. The American Psychological Association Council of Representatives followed in 1975. Thereafter other major mental health organizations followed, including the World Health Organization in 1990.

The view of homosexuality as a psychological disorder has been seen in literature since research on homosexuality first began; however, psychology as a discipline has evolved over the years in its position on homosexuality. Current attitudes have their roots in religious, legal and cultural underpinnings. In the early Middle Ages the Christian Church ignored homosexuality in secular society; however, by the end of the 12th century hostility towards homosexuality began to emerge and spread through Europe’s secular and religious institutions. There were official expressions condemning the "unnatural" nature of homosexual behavior in the works of Thomas Aquinas and others. Until the 19th century, homosexual activity was referred to as "unnatural, crimes against nature", sodomy or buggery and was punishable by law, sometimes by death. As people became more interested in discovering the causes of homosexuality, medicine and psychiatry began competing with the law and religion for jurisdiction. In the beginning of the 19th century, people began studying homosexuality scientifically. At this time, most theories regarded homosexuality as a disease, which had a great influence on how it was viewed culturally. There was a paradigm shift in the mid 20th century in psychiatric science in regards to theories of homosexuality. Psychiatrists began to believe homosexuality could be cured through therapy and freedom of self, and other theories about the genetic and hormonal origin of homosexuality were becoming accepted. There were variations of how homosexuality was viewed as pathological. Some early psychiatrists such as Sigmund Freud and Havelock Ellis adopted more tolerant stances on homosexuality. Freud and Ellis believed that homosexuality was not normal, but was "unavoidable" for some people. Alfred Kinsey's research and publications about homosexuality began the social and cultural shift away from viewing homosexuality as an abnormal condition. These shifting viewpoints in the psychological studies of homosexuality are evident in its placement in the first version of the Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM) in 1952, and subsequent change in 1973, in which the diagnosis of ego-dystonic homosexuality replaced the DSM-II category of "sexual orientation disturbance." However, it was not until 1987 in DSM-III-R that it was entirely dropped as a mental disorder.

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