Edited correspondence on the status of homosexuality in DSM-III

Abstract

In 1973, after a prolonged period of social agitation and professional conflict, the American Psychiatric Association deleted homosexuality from its official listing of psychiatric disorders (DSM-II). In its place a new classification for homosexuals distressed over their orientation was to be included in DSM-II. Four years later an acrimonious dispute surfaced over the status of homosexuality in the revised APA nomenclature of disorders (DSM-III). The edited correspondence of the participants in this dispute is presented here as a way of revealing the lingering conflict over homosexuality within American psychiatry.