Photography courtesy of Christel Sagniez via Pixabay
In the 1940s and 1950s, psychiatrists commonly “treated” patients for being gay or gender-variant. Their methods differed but were often very harsh and attempted to create negative associations with these “nonstandard” thoughts in patients’ minds. However, one psychiatrist in Washington, DC, Benjamin Karpman, had a different treatment method: he asked his patients to write. Following his advice, they kept journals of their daily activities, thoughts, and feelings; wrote autobiographies; and recorded and analyzed their dreams.
Regina Kunzel, Larned Professor of History and Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Yale, came across these writings, which inspired her book, In the Shadow of Diagnosis: Psychiatric Power and Queer Life. Through her book, Kunzel explores the way psychiatric treatment shaped the lives of queer patients and discusses how these patients responded to or resisted treatment. “Among the things [the writings] made me reckon with is the power of stigma of psychiatric diagnosis and the shame that people carried with them as a result,” Kunzel said.
In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), but that did not end the pathologization of queer identities overnight. The treatment of homosexuality as a disorder lingered in the DSM’s diagnostic criteria for years. Even now, the pathologization of queerness lies hidden in our discourse. The current wave of anti-trans legislation, for example, often references the DSM for support. We may not have lived through it, but the unique writings of Karpman’s patients have given us a window into a dark past that continues to impact all of our futures.