the history of clinical psychology as a subfield.

This week’s Lesson covers the history of clinical psychology as a subfield. Part of that history concerns the treatment of LGBTQ+ individuals and the pathologizing of homosexuality throughout the 20th century. For this assignment, view the digital exhibit “A Clockwork Lavender”, made available through the Cummings Center for the History of Psychology. The exhibit provides a detailed account of psychology’s fraught history with the LGBTQ+ identity dating back to the late 19th century and throughout the 1970s and 1980s—until homosexuality was removed as a mental disorder from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

As you view and read the exhibit, answer the following questions:

1) Why is it important that Havelock Ellis studied non-criminal cases? Think about how imprisonment or institutionalization could affect an individual. How might studying exclusively criminal cases impact sexologists’ understanding of homosexuality?

2) Why was the research and writing of sexologists like Havelock Ellis and Magnus Hirschfield censored or destroyed? Think about how interactions with gay patients and correspondents influenced the sexologists. How might greater knowledge about marginalized people have impacted the political and legal structures of countries like England and the German Empire?

3) Why did Mr. Lin and others like him seek treatment for their sexual orientation or gender identity? Consider the legal persecution of LGBTQ+ people and the lack of anti-discrimination protections. How did legislative and societal pressures support the practice of conversion therapy?

4) Research conducted by Alfred Kinsey, Benjamin Harris, and Evelyn Hooker helped to affirm for the LGBTQ+ community a notion of normalcy previously reserved only for cisgender heterosexual individuals. What about those who could not easily fit this standard of normalcy? How do you think the needs of the community differed based on race, class, and gender? Who stood to benefit the most from this research?

5) Why did it matter that members of the AGP were psychologists and mental health professionals? Consider the arguments of those who saw homosexuality as a disease. How did the visibility of people like Steve Morin and John E. Fryer contradict these arguments?

https://www.uakron.edu/chp/education/a-clockwork-lavender